Then – 6th March
‘How many people left now?’ Sinclair asked.
‘Six,’ Ella said, looking up at Castle Rise just as the reporter was doing, at all the empty windows, some whitewashed, some bare, boarded over by Callum – their handyman of last resort – with whatever he could scavenge off the building site that now separated the flats from the river. Work was beginning on the second apartment block, only footings at the moment, but Ella knew how quickly it would climb.
Sinclair took out a packet of Greek cigarettes and lit up, cupping his hands against the stiff wind blowing off the water. ‘Six people, Ella; that’s no kind of fighting force.’
‘Are you regretting getting involved now?’
‘Molly has a way of dragging people into things,’ he said, with a faint smile. ‘But I’m happy to help, you know that.’ He took another pull of his cigarette. ‘Are you regretting getting involved now?’
‘Of course not,’ Ella said. ‘I’m proud of what we’ve made. The book’s going to be brilliant and we’ve raised twenty thousand pounds for a homeless shelter. How can I regret that?’
He gave her a searching look. ‘Did you think you were going to stop the demolition with it?’
‘No. God, do you think I’m stupid?’
‘That’s the last thing I think you are.’
Ella felt her cheeks flush with the compliment and was glad he wasn’t looking at her any more, his attention turned towards the building now.
‘You might have got somewhere if it had some architectural merit,’ he said. ‘Not quite brutalist, not quite modernist. It’s no Balfron Tower.’
Way of the world, she thought. Only the beautiful get defended. And Castle Rise was, unquestionably, ugly. Low and long and squat, built in rough, reddish-brown bricks that reminded her of public toilets in dodgy parks and shopping centres in dying cities. Flat-roofed and four storeys high, it was a toad of a building, vaguely malevolent-looking with its deep recesses and blunt turrets at the corners.
But it was the inside that mattered, she reminded herself.
People made places.
Briefly she thought of the village where she grew up, all chocolate-box cottages and Britain in Bloom plaques, an immaculate, sterile enclave.
‘How was Athens?’ she asked, pushing the thought aside.
‘Still smouldering,’ Sinclair said. ‘But no one’s much interested now. If the riots start again, then yeah, they’ll want coverage. Otherwise . . . who gives a shit if the hospitals have run out of penicillin and the suicide rate’s sky-rocketing? That’s not sexy.’
She flicked an eyebrow up at him. ‘Unlike this story.’
‘You know what my editor’s like – she’ll print anything with a photo of a pretty girl to head it up.’
Ella gritted her teeth. He was joking because he knew it annoyed her how so much of the press had been focused on her youth and her looks. Which were nothing special but, since politics was showbusiness for ugly people, anyone even slightly more attractive than average counted as ‘hot’.
Although, according to the trolls who targeted her day and night, she was ‘too gross to get raped’.
No doubt Sinclair’s editor had them in mind when she green-lit the profile, knowing her haters outweighed her supporters two to one and in the cut-throat world of online journalism all clicks counted as equal.
A few spots of rain hit her face.
‘Shall we go up?’
They headed for the main doors and Ella punched a code into the electric keypad. As they entered, an elderly man togged up in a bright orange padded jacket was coming out.
‘Hey, Derek, going to the shops?’
‘Jenny fancies cream cakes. I have my orders.’ He nodded towards Sinclair. ‘Who’s this young man? Your fella?’
‘This is Martin; he’s writing a piece about Castle Rise.’
‘Good to meet you, sir.’ Sinclair held out a hand and Derek shook it briskly. ‘How long have you lived here?’
‘Me and Jenny were the first couple to move in. Nineteen sixty-eight. Had our picture in the local paper getting the keys.’ Wistfully he stared beyond them, to the green space in front of the building, where the grass was now churned up and the trees were reduced to stumps.
The developers had torn up the communal garden within weeks of buying the land, reminding the residents that they no longer controlled their environment.
‘They’ll not force us out,’ Derek said, his voice low and hard. ‘No matter what dirty tricks they try. We were first in, we’ll be last out, even if it’s in boxes.’
Sinclair was watching him intently, seeing what she had seen in the old man herself, she guessed. A strength at odds with his soft face, the kind of hard-won toughness he’d earned during a lifetime driving cabs around the parts of the city where not getting tipped was the least of your worries.
‘You come up and talk to us,’ he said, jabbing a finger at Sinclair. ‘Three-oh-nine. There’s plenty we can tell you about what’s gone on here.’
Derek walked away, out through the doors and into the grim morning.
‘He seems determined,’ Sinclair said.
‘Derek’s a good guy, stubborn as hell.’ Ella led Sinclair into the stairwell. ‘His wife’s the same. She had a massive stroke about six months ago and somehow the developers got wind of it, bumped the offer by five per cent and promised them accommodation in an assisted-living facility out in Romford. They should have taken it really, I told them no one would think any less of them if they went. Given the circumstances.’
‘But they’re still here.’
‘She wouldn’t go. She could hardly speak but she made it abundantly clear she wanted to come home. She’s made a bit of a recovery but the state the building’s in . . . it’s not helping.’ Above them a door slammed against the wall as it was flung open. ‘Thing is, her whole life’s been here. She had two kids here, lost both of them. She’s convinced some part of her boys is still in the flat. How could you leave thinking that?’
Ella nodded to a young woman coming quickly down the stairs, saw her eyes flick, predictably, towards Sinclair as she said hello. Ella knew the kind of smile he’d be giving the girl. He liked them young and smart enough to recognise his influence.
‘She’ll be at the party later, if you’re hanging around,’ Ella said.
‘Oxford Union tonight.’ He winced. ‘Sorry. Don’t know how I got double-booked but—’
‘It’s fine,’ she said, hoping her disappointment didn’t show. ‘Way more important that you get to our future overlords than keep preaching to the choir here.’
Up to the fourth floor. Sinclair was dragging his feet as they went to the far end of the hallway, past doors kicked in, standing open on rooms that exuded the smell of mould and rot, dust hanging in the air, dead flies peppering the carpets. Some had been stripped bare, others vandalised by exiting tenants in fits of rage; a few had been left as if their owners were due to return at any moment. Those were the ones that unnerved Ella. So easy to imagine somebody coming out of the kitchen with a cup of tea, or water gushing suddenly in the bathroom, a tuneless whistle rising above it.
Ella unlocked the door of the Moores’ old flat with the key she’d found after they moved.
Everything in the flat was as they’d left it, except for the photographs missing from the walls and the surfaces stripped of trinkets. They hadn’t owned much. Were savers rather than consumers. Had a thirty-year-old three-piece suite, unfashionable shelves and coffee table, pot lamps with cardboard shades scorch-marked from the dusty bulbs inside.
Ella couldn’t work out why they’d left so much behind. Was it simply a matter of speed, or were there too many painful memories bound up in the items? Would it be easier to start again without being reminded of this place?
She hoped they’d bought nice new things for their old age. Allowed themselves to recapture the thrill of decorating a new home they must have felt the first time around.
‘It’s like the Mary Celeste,’ Sinclair said, going through into the kitchen.
‘You’re better than that cliché,’ Ella called after him. She sat down in one of the armchairs next to the electric fire, reached to turn it on, wanting to chase the chill out of the room, and stopped herself, remembering that the power was off.
Sinclair came back, nodded towards the sofa where her sleeping bag was unfurled. ‘Are you living here now?’
‘I’ve just been here for a couple of nights. There’s been a lot to do and,’ she sighed, ‘the developers stepped up the pressure on another tenant. I wanted to be here to help her deal with it.’
He turned the other armchair to face her. ‘You wanted to stop her caving to the pressure, you mean.’
Ella felt her face harden, seeing the amusement in his eyes, hating the insinuation. Had it been a mistake to trust him? He’d promised a sympathetic profile and some positive coverage of the residents’ fight, but he was a hack all the same.
Molly said never to trust the mainstream media. They were just the propaganda arm of the establishment, but that was another cliché and one Ella wouldn’t live by.
The key was picking friendly journalists, watching your words, saying nothing off the record you wouldn’t say on it. And, crucially, giving them nothing to pique their interest beyond the bounds of the story you were selling. Most didn’t have time to go into full investigative mode. Not now. Not like back in Molly’s day.
Even Martin Sinclair, with his big, sexy expense account and his non-fiction bestsellers, was working to tighter deadlines and narrower margins. He would save his splurges for stories much bigger than her and Castle Rise.
‘It’s been a hard winter,’ she said. ‘That takes the fight out of people. Do you think this was a pleasant place to spend Christmas?’
Sinclair nodded his understanding as he reached into his waxed-cotton messenger bag to take out his recording equipment. Primary and back-up, two small devices.
‘What about you? Did you go home for Christmas?’
‘Shall I wait until we’re running to answer that?’
He shrugged, leaning towards her, placing the recorders on the arm of her chair. ‘Up to you.’
‘You want to hear me say it?’ she asked.
A rueful look creased Sinclair’s brow. ‘Ella, I know what it’s like to disappoint a father. Believe me. The only way my old man would think this is honest work is if I filed my copy from the bottom of a coal mine.’
‘Dad doesn’t talk about his work and I don’t talk about mine,’ she said, the lie slipping out with ease, because it wasn’t entirely a lie. They didn’t talk, they argued. ‘We have enough in common – hiking, rugby league, craft beers – we can spend hours together without mentioning our jobs.’
‘He must be proud of what you’re achieving,’ Sinclair said. ‘Even if he doesn’t agree with your politics.’
‘I’m not doing this to get anyone’s approval. Least of all his.’
Another semi-truth and she heard the fierceness in her voice as she delivered it, knew it made her sound defensive. Sinclair could draw whatever conclusion he liked, probably the one every journalist had. That this crusade, as they generally described it, was a rebellion against her upbringing. As if she was solely defined by her father’s career in the police force.
‘All I’ve ever wanted to do is help people,’ she said. ‘That’s what this Kickstarter project is about. Helping people who are being forced out of their homes and economically penalised for simply living on land which now has a frankly obscene market value.’
She kept going, telling him the figures – that these flats were compulsorily purchased at prices decades behind the booming London market; £150,000 for the flat they were sitting in, and the one that would be built in its place would sell for four times as much.
‘These aren’t going to be new homes for London’s keyworkers. They’re safety deposit boxes for overseas buyers, bought with money nobody bothers to check the source of.’ Ella moved forward in her chair. ‘People like the Moores, and Derek and Jenny Kerr, are being economically cleansed from their homes in order to create shiny new money-laundering opportunities.’
‘Can you prove that?’ Sinclair asked. ‘It’s a strong accusation.’
‘I’ll send you the research,’ Ella said. ‘Thirty per cent of new homes in London are bought with money held in complex shell schemes where the actual buyer can’t be identified.’
Sinclair put his hand up. ‘But this development. Can you prove it’s happening here?’
‘I didn’t say it’s happening here, I said it’s a city-wide problem.’
She got up and beckoned him to follow her. Led him out through the sliding doors on to a balcony.
The wind was more insistent on the fourth floor than it had been on the ground, carrying the sounds of the building site in front of them, engine thrum and radios playing, voices shouting. Heavy lorries had been coming and going all morning, working on removing a pile of rubble two storeys high; all that remained of the building that had stood there before Christmas.
‘See that,’ Ella pointed to the top of the new apartment block to their right, its vaguely Scandinavian cladding, the gleaming steel and acres of glass. ‘The penthouse sold for one point five million over a year ago. Off-plan. The buyer never even saw it. Nobody lives there.’
‘That’s pretty standard,’ Sinclair said, leaning against the edge of the balcony, close enough to her that their arms were pressed together. ‘It doesn’t mean I should put you in print accusing the developers of facilitating fraud.’ He gave her one of his paternalistic looks. ‘I’m just trying to keep you out of trouble, Ella.’
‘Trouble’s good for the cause,’ she said, smiling slightly.
Sinclair didn’t smile back. He turned and braced his hand against the balcony, almost enveloping her, and she thought of the last time they’d been this close. A bar in Hoxton, a mutual friend’s birthday, kitschy cocktails and a klezmer band playing R&B covers on the roof terrace and then they were going downstairs, silently, him trailing her to the basement and the sudden hush of the ladies’ loo where they fucked urgently in a cubicle while other women came and went and pretended they heard nothing.
‘I saw that piece you wrote,’ he said. ‘About the death threats.’
‘It’s the cost of being a woman in public, right?’
‘But you’re okay?’ he asked tentatively, his thumb brushing across her wrist. ‘It’s not escalated?’
‘Escalated beyond the decapitation and rape threats?’ A deep sigh rose up in her chest. ‘None of them are brave enough to act.’
‘You can’t know that.’
‘I’m still here, aren’t I?’
She squinted into the wind, looking for the part of herself that refused to be scared, the part that had brought her this far and would see her through to the end. Some days it was there and some days it wasn’t and then she had to fake it like she faked so much else. Today she felt thin and brittle, so insubstantial that a strong gust might knock her down. But she couldn’t let Sinclair see that.
She straightened her spine.
‘Nobody’s going to silence me.’