‘Anyway, yeah, SisterHood, was that what I was saying? It folded, mate, about a year ago. I was gutted. We was all gutted. But they just didn’t have the funds to keep affording their rent. They tried to keep doing it from people’s houses, but it didn’t work. So that’s what I thought, when we found the squat, there was a room big enough to start doing this all over again. You see? Me and Xanthe are starting up a new freesheet, a zine. We’ll work from here, lay it out, photocopy on the sly at the copy shop and leave piles of it in all the little caffs and community centres and stuff. I’m going to paint the front cover, every time, a different face of someone in the community. It’s going to be feminist, political, no effin poetry, yeah? That’s the plan, anyway.’ Sammi ended quietly, aware she’d been shouting, that the Scottish woman was smiling wide again. ‘You’re laughing at me.’

‘Naw. Well, aye, but it’s only because I think you’re fucking brilliant, Sammi.’

‘You what?’

‘I do. You’re brilliant. It’s been amazing to meet you and just hear you talk. I want to know you better.’

‘Really? You mean that?’

Clio had reached an arm out and pulled Sammi along the slates and in to her. She’d stroked her face and kissed her on the lips in a way that was and wasn’t sexual all at once, and then they’d cuddled up together, under the street light, sharing the last of the joint and a little silver hip flask of something much, much stronger than cider. Sammi had told her all about the squat, what they planned to do, about her ideas for the mural, about Xanthe’s free shop. She talked and talked; the words just kept coming from her, and all the while she felt warmth rising up between their two bodies, side by side, keeping each other from the cold. And Clio turned and smiled at her, and suddenly Sammi had it.

‘I do know you! You’re proper famous, intya? You had that song, when I was a kid. Rise up! People got to rise up!’

‘Aye, that’s me. But that was a long time ago now. Not so famous any more. One-hit wonder, eh?’

She grinned and blew a smoke ring, and Sammi gazed at its perfect circle for a second until it broke, drifted.

‘Well, what about you, then?’

‘What about me?’

‘Yeah. You know. You’re like a pop star and that. You was in Smash Hits. An now you’re in a party in a filthy dirty squat. How did you get –’ and here she started giggling, because it was fucking funny, everything was fucking funny ‘– rrrrrradicalized?’