She laughed. “What did you have in mind, assassination? I think you’d probably get into more trouble than you could handle if you tried it, boyo.”
I shook my head. “I don’t know what I have in mind, but it just seems like such a waste of effort. These horrible wretches are sat in their penthouses, making the rest of us miserable, and they go off when they’re done, go to some big house in the country. They get to eat in posh restaurants while we literally eat rubbish from skips—”
“What the hell’s wrong with rubbish from skips?” Jem said, all mock-affronted.
I waved him off. “Nothing’s wrong, Jem. You’re the Sir Jamie Oliver of eating garbage, all right? But you get my point—they make us suffer and what do we do? We ask people nicely to go to their MPs’ offices and beg to have them debate a law that will put their kids in jail for downloading a film.”
“Well, what do you propose?” Chester said.
I was pacing now, and I thumped my hand against the door. “I don’t know, okay? Maybe—I don’t know, maybe you should make videos of these fat bastards eating babies for a change, instead of picking on Bullingham all the time.”
Chester shook his head. “Wouldn’t work, mate. No one knows who these people are. No one would recognize them. When I animate Bullingham eating babies and squishing puppies beneath his toned, spotty, hairy buttocks, it’s, you know, it’s commentary. No one has to ask, ‘Who’s the geezer with the babies in his gob, then?’ Wouldn’t work with some anonymous corporate stooge.”
I thumped the door again. “Fine. So let’s make them famous! We’ll follow them with cameras, go through their rubbish bins and post their embarrassing love letters, steal their kids’ phones and expose all the music they take for free.”
“They’d do you for harassment.”
I glared at all of them. “Fine,” I said. “Fine. Do nothing then. And when your mates start going to prison and you can’t get any friends together for a protest movement because they’re all banged up, you’ll see I was right.”
I sat down on the sofa, as far from Rabid Dog as I could. He still wasn’t speaking much when Twenty was around, though he’d got better at talking when it was just the boys. There was an uncomfortable silence. I stared at my bare feet.
Jem cleared his throat. “So,” he said. “So, I’ve got news, if you’re interested.”
Chester said, “I am interested in your news, good sire,” in an artificial voice.
“Well, I’ve been nosing around the town hall,” he said. “The title registry. Trying to figure out who actually owns this firetrap. After the way they ran us out the last time, I thought it must be some Russian mobster or something. But that ain’t it at all. You will never guess who our landlord is.”
Chester said, “Um, is it Sir David Beckham?”
“Nope.”
“The Archbishop of Canterbury?”
“Nope.”
“Mickey Mouse?”
“Nope.”
“Just tell us who it is,” I snapped. I wasn’t in the mood for playfulness.
“Only the bloody Bow Council! They ended up assuming the title for this place when the faceless corporate entity that bought it up declared bankruptcy and vanished up their own arseholes. They owned heaps of property all around here, and owed millions to the banks, so when they vanished, it was the banks sitting on all this stuff, and they auctioned it off, and the council bought it. So basically, this is a public building.”
I was interested in spite of myself. “So it was the council that sent those goons in after us last time?” Somehow I figured that the local government would be gentler in its approach.
“I wondered about that, too. But I found the minutes of a council meeting where they approved hiring this anti-squatter firm with the unimaginative name of SecuriCorp to get rid of scum like us. They’re notorious, SecuriCorp, hire a lot of crazy thugs, properly brutal. They’ve got a whole business model built on being savage pricks.”
I shook my head. “Well, then, I suppose it’s only a matter of time until they show up again.”
He laughed. “That’s where you’re wrong, chum. I did some more digging and looked up the Meter Point Administration Service. That tells you who supplies the electricity to the place. Our Authorized Energy Provider is Virgin Gas and Electric. So yesterday, I rang up their customer service line and introduced myself as the new tenant on these premises and asked to have a pay-as-you-go box fitted. They’re doing the job this week.”
I shook my head. “You what?”
“It’s brilliant, don’t worry. They’ll fit the mains box, and then we’ll have to go buy top-ups on a card at the newsagent’s. It’s just a few pounds a week. But once we’re paying for our power, we’re not guilty of Abstraction of Electricity anymore. And that means they can’t use SecuriCorp against us. Which means that they’re going to have to get rid of us the hard way.” He bowed in his seat. “You may applaud now.”
Chester and Rabid Dog clapped enthusiastically, and I joined in with them. It was a clever little hack. Thinking of it only made me more miserable. Everyone else had a way to solve their problems.
Me, I was just useless.
* * *
The day of action on the Theft of IP Bill went off even better than Annika and her mates had planned. In Bow and other East London districts, the average MP heard from 150 voters who showed up to explain why TIP was a bad idea. 26 dragged me out to the meeting with her MP, in Kensal Rise, a part of London I’d never been to before. It was a weird place, half posh and half rundown, with long streets of identical houses that ran all the way to the horizon.
Her MP’s surgery was in a storefront between a florist and a dinky café that was rammed with mums with babies. I was nervous as we rocked up, and more nervous still when a bored security guard made us empty our pockets, marched us through a metal detector, and demanded to see our IDs.
26 was cool as a cuke. “You can’t make us show ID to see our MP. It’s the law: ‘It is unlawful to place any condition on the ability of a lawful resident of an electoral district to communicate with his Member of Parliament, Councillor, or other representative.’”
The security guard furrowed his brow like he was experiencing enlightenment (or taking a particularly difficult crap). 26 took a deep breath and prepared to throw more facts at him, but a voice called out from behind him, through an open door: “It’s all right, James. I would recognize Ms. Kahn’s voice at a hundred yards on a busy street. Do come in, dear.”
It was a woman’s voice, moderately affectionate, middle-aged. It belonged to a moderately affectionate, middle-aged woman sitting on a sofa in a small office crammed with bookcases, papers, little kids’ pictures, and letters tacked to a huge notice-board, and a pair of huge, battered laser printers that looked like they should be at Aziz’s place. She stood up as we walked in, bangles on her wrist tinkling as she shook 26’s hand.
“Nice to see you again, dear. It’s been a busy day, as I’m sure you know. Who’s your gentleman friend?”
I had worn clean jeans and a T-shirt without anything rude written on it for the occasion, which was properly formal by Zeroday standards. Still, I felt as out of place as a fart in a palace.
“This is Cecil,” Twenty said. “He’s been helping out with the organizing.” It was true—I had spent a good twenty hours that week tweeting, emailing, calling, and messaging people from the mailing list, wheedling them to show up at their MPs’ surgeries. I could rattle off ten reasons you should do it, three things you should stress with your MP, and five things you mustn’t do without pausing for breath. It had made me feel a little less useless, but not much.
“Pleased to meet you, Cecil. I’m Letitia Clarke-Gifford, MP for Brent. Well, the two of you can certainly be very proud of yourselves. I’ve been seeing your army of supporters in lots of ten today, and I don’t think I’ll be able to get through them all even if I work through supper. From what I can tell, it’s the same all over the country. I expect i
t’s making quite an impression. A lot of my colleagues in Parliament like to use a rule of thumb that says a personal visit from a voter means that a hundred voters probably feel the same way. Even the very safest seats are in trouble when a thousand or more people are on your case about an issue.”
26 beamed. “I can’t believe the turnout—it’s amazing!”
I blurted out, “So, will it work?”
Both turned to look at me. 26 looked irritated. The MP looked thoughtful.
“I’ll tell you straight up, I’m not positive it will. It breaks my heart to say it, because your lot have clearly played by the rules and done everything you’re supposed to do. When voters across the country are against legislation, when no one except a few big companies are for it, it just shouldn’t become law.
“But the sad fact is that this is going to a three-whip vote.”
That jogged my memory, back to something Annika had said. “You mean if they don’t vote in favor of it, they get kicked out of their own party?”
She nodded. “It may not sound like much to you, but you don’t get to be an MP unless you’ve spent your whole life working in and for your party. All your friends will be in the party, your whole identity. It’s a miniature death penalty. Now, if all of the MPs in caucus defied the whip, I don’t think the party would cut them loose. But no MP can be really sure that her colleagues will vote for conscience, and no one wants to be the only one to stand up for a principle. They’re all thinking to themselves, ‘Hum, well, I’ll hold my nose and vote for this today, and that means that I’ll get to stay in Parliament and have the chance to do good for my constituents the next time.’ They call that ‘realpolitik’—which is a fancy way of saying, ‘I’ve got no choice, so I’ll pretend that it doesn’t bother me.’”
I looked at 26. It seemed like the MP was just saying what I’d been saying all week long: there was no point in playing along with the politics game, because the other side got to make the rules. Twenty’s rosebud mouth was pinched and angry.
“Why wouldn’t the party let them vote the way the people want them to? It just doesn’t make any sense.”
Clarke-Gifford shrugged. “Lots of reasons. The entertainment industry’s always been big here. Exporting our culture is part of the old imperial tradition: we used to own half the world, some MPs think we might end up owning half the world’s screens.
“Plus there’s the fact that the members and the party bigwigs get courted heavily by all these famous people. They get to go to the best parties in the country. Their kids go on holidays with popstars’ kids in exotic places. They go to premieres and get to go on the red carpet alongside of people who are literally legends, get their pictures in the papers next to film stars that every one of their voters idolize.
“When their good friends from the industry tell them that downloading is exactly like theft, they’re inclined to believe them. After all, don’t you believe the things that your mates tell you?”
“So we shouldn’t have even bothered?” 26 looked like she might cry. I quietly slipped my hand into hers.
“No, no. No! It’s not a wasted effort. If you lose this round, you can go back to your supporters and say, ‘see, see how big the stitch-up is?’ And they can go to their mates and say, ‘Look, hundreds and thousands of people asked their MPs to do the right thing, but big business forced them into voting against the public interest. Don’t you think you’d better get involved?’ Little by little, your numbers will grow, until they can’t afford to ignore you any longer. And in the meantime, there are some parties that let members vote their conscience, sometimes—our party, and the Greens; the LibDems, too.”
I tried to imagine explaining to my parents why they should rise up and shout in the streets about this. After all, this was the issue that had cost them their jobs, their benefits, their daughter’s education—their son! But I couldn’t imagine it. Mum could barely walk, let alone march down the road. And Dad? He’d be too busy trying to find a way to pay for dinner to join the revolution.
I looked at 26 again. She seemed to have got a little cheer and hope out of the MP, so I kept my gob shut.
Clarke-Gifford was also looking at 26, maybe thinking that she’d given her a little too much reality. “Besides, maybe I’m wrong,” she said, unconvincingly. “Maybe with all the support you lot have got today, the party won’t dare whip the vote in case they have a rebellion in Parliament. After all, Labour doesn’t want to be the party that votes for it if the Conservatives vote against it—or vice-versa.”
26 smiled bravely (and beautifully, I might add), and said, “That’s a really good point. If one party goes with us, it’ll make the other one look really bad. That’s something we could talk to Annika about. I still want you to meet her, Letitia—you’d get on so well.”
The MP smiled. “Well, I’m having my annual constituency garden party next month. Why don’t you bring her around then? There’ll be little sandwiches with the crusts cut off and everything. Bring your young man, too. Now, if you’ll excuse me, it sounds like there’s a new group of constituents in the front room waiting to tell me how terribly important it is that I vote against a tremendously important piece of legislation.”
We passed them on the way out, a group of ten people, clutching paper notes for their meeting with their MP. 26 quizzed them on how they came to be there and whether they’d ever done something like this before. It turned out that they were a church reading circle, and four of the members had had their Internet cut off so they’d come out. And no, they’d never come out for something like this before, but enough was enough.
As we walked away down the street, 26’s arm around my waist, my arm around her shoulders, I thought, What if they give up hope because the vote goes the wrong way? What had Annika said? “Eventually so many of us will be offline or in jail that there won’t be anyone left to organize.” But 26 was warm under my arm, and she’d promised to introduce me to her mum and dad, which meant that I was going to learn her real name at last—the visit to the MP’s office had given me a surname, Kahn, but her real first name remained a tantalizing mystery. I’d asked her what it was on that first night together, and she’d confessed to Sally, but she later swore it was Deborah, Sita, and Craniosacral. She’d answer to anything I called her, and all her friends called her Twenty or 26, and I enjoyed the mystery, but I was looking forward to puncturing it. And thinking about finding out her real name distracted me from feeling nervous about meeting her family. I had met loads of my friends’ parents before, but never my girlfriend’s parents. I had recurring panics when I thought about shaking the hand of the mother of the girl that I’d had sex with the night before.
Oh, didn’t I mention? Yes. We were having sex. Lots of it. And it was wicked. It didn’t happen until the third time she stayed over—we snogged and stuff, but I kept stopping short. Eventually, she asked me why I wasn’t trying to shag her and I hemmed and hawed and confessed that I’d never done it before. She gave me a big, sloppy kiss, said, “I’ll be gentle,” and stripped off. Since then, we’d been at it like rabbits. Disgusting. Drove my flatmates around the bend with our carrying on and grunting and that.
Yeah, I was pretty made up about all of it. But I had this nightmarish daydream in which I shook her mother’s hand and blurted, “Very pleased to meet you, ma’am. It’s really lovely, having it off with your precious daughter.”
“Nervous about meeting my parents?” Twenty said.
“Naw,” I lied.
* * *
They lived in one of the terraced Victorian row houses with a little garden out front. Twenty pointed out the stumps of an iron fence that had once surrounded the garden: “During World War Two, everyone pulled up their steel fencing and that to make into battleships. But there wasn’t any good way to recycle the metal so the government just dumped it all into the English Channel.”
“I did not know that,” I said. “Um. Look, are we going to go meet your mum and dad?”
She
laughed and gave my arse a swat. “Calm down, boyo. You’ll do fine. It’s not fashionable to say it, but my parents are actually quite cool.”
You know how houses have smells that their owners never seem to notice? 26’s house smelled great. Like the cedar chips they’d spread on the paths in the public parks every spring, mixed with something like lemon peel and wet stone.
The place had wooden floors and wooden steps leading up to an upper story, coathooks and framed antique maps, and books.
Thousands of books.
They teetered in stacks on the stairs and in the hallway. Shelves ran the length of the corridor, just about head-height, packed with a double row of books, some turned sideways to fit in the cramped space. They were in a state of perfect (and rather glorious) higgeldy-piggeldy, leather-bound antiques next to cheap paperbacks, horizontal stacks of oversized art books and a boxed encyclopedia serving as a little side table, its top littered with keys, packets of Kleenex, rolled pairs of gloves, umbrellas, and, of course, more books.
26 waved a hand at them. “My parents are readers,” she said.
“I can see that.”
She turned and called up the stairs, “Oh, parents! I’m home! I’ve brought a boy!”
A woman’s voice called down, “The prodigal daughter! I was on the verge of turning your bedroom into a shrine for my dear, departed offspring!”
26 rolled her eyes, but she was smiling. “I’ll just be in the kitchen, eating all your food, all right?”
I followed her down the short hallway, past a sitting room—more books, a comfy sofa and chair, a small telly covered in dust—and into an airy kitchen that led into a glass conservatory that showed a small back garden planted with rows of vegetables and wildflowers.
She went straight to the fridge and began pulling out stuff—a tall glass pitcher of what looked like iced tea or apple juice (it turned out to be iced mint tea, and delicious, too), half a rhubarb-strawberry pie, a small cheeseboard under a glass bell. She handed it to me and I balanced it on the parts of the kitchen table that weren’t buried in reading material. 26 jerked a thumb over her shoulder: “Glasses in that cupboard and cutlery in the drawer underneath it.”