This story is not recommended for children.

I see his shoes first. I wake up and my head’s spinning. I’m not sure how long I’ve been out on the streets at this point but it’s longer than a week. The first thing I want is to puke, but as I open my eyes I can see his shoes. Brown leather on black mud.

He’s talking to me, but I’m not sure what he’s saying. If I could just throw up I’d be fine, I think. The floor’s doing disco moves of its own. It’s in perpetual freefall, always slipping but never getting any further away.

And then his hands are on me. I fight him off, batting at him like he’s a swarm of flies or something. But I can feel myself moving. I’m suddenly cold and I realise I’ve lost the blanket. The fucker’s dragging me away from my stuff and I can’t stop him because I’m too far-gone.

I try to shout. I know what I want to say. I know what I want to call him. But it just comes out as something inhuman. The noise I make sounds stupid and incoherent even to my own ears. All the time he’s still talking to me like kind words will make it all right.

I’ve been drugged! Damn it! As soon as I realise what’s happened I find new strength from the fury of it. He’s spiked me and now… No way. No fucking way!

My fist connects with some part of his body and I hear his voice change. He’s calling out in pain. Good. Now I need to keep the edge. I force myself to open my eyes and look up from the floor.

He doesn’t look like I’d expected.

He looks…

Ordinary.

He’s sat back on the dirty ground with his legs out straight before him. His hands are covering his nose and I can see blood seeping from between his fingers. He’s moaning. Not paying me the slightest bit of attention any more. Ha ha! I broke his fucking nose! Now that’s class. That’s straight!

I’m not so far gone that I don’t realise the importance of breaking away while I have the chance, but I have the legs of a new born calf. There’s scaffolding over my head and I manage to take a hold of it and pull myself up. The rough metal is cold to touch but at least it’s solid. These dancing feet feel like lead. I turn tail and run, but the floor comes up to meet me again. Like it had been lonely without me. Extreme close up of ring pulls and plastic bottle caps. Nice.

“Wait!” The man with the broken nose is shouting. “Id’s okay!”

Like I have a choice. I force myself onto my back so at least I can see him coming. I can feel the poison running through my system like a ticket gone bad. My arms are on fire and my mouth tastes like a dance floor. I try to call out, warn him to back off, to cry for help. But again I end up sounding like the kind of girl who wears a crash helmet to school.

He doesn’t get up, but points with a blood stained hand in the general vicinity of where he’d pulled me from. I’d gone to sleep on the sidewall of some sort of factory, in an alcove where a dusty vent kept the ground warm and dry.

“You were sleeping udder a gas vent.” He says. “Nod exactly lethal bud it wouldn’t have done you buch good. Should have had warning signs on it, bud dobody comes out here.”

I don’t say anything. I’m taking in what he told me but it’s like I’m thinking through a straw. We stay like that for quite a while. Him nursing his broken nose. Me waiting for the fog to lift from my head so that I can use my body again.

Eventually he stands, hardly even looking at me as he wipes himself down. “This really hurts, by the way.”

“Is it broken?”

He shakes his head. “Don’t know. Don’t think you did it benny favours.” He has a handkerchief in his anorak pocket, which doesn’t surprise me. He looks like the type who wouldn’t leave home without one. He’s baby faced but not young. A man in his mid thirties with just a little bit too much forehead. Not enough to make him ugly or earn him a place in the circus. Just enough to guarantee he’d never make it as a singer. His chin is blue grey with course shadow and his clothes look like they’ve been fished for in a charity outlet. If he wasn’t so stocky I’d swear they were hand-me-downs. Here is a man who never learned to love his mirror.

I try my feet again, and after a few false starts he steps over and offers a steady hand. My head’s clearing a little so that when I finally get upright I can stay there. One in the eye for gravity, at least.

“How long have you been sleeping rough?” His nose is clearing a little.

“I’m not sleeping rough. I’m just filling in time until I can get to a friend’s place.” The lie slips out like it’s already greased up and waiting, making me sound stupid even to myself. I’m grateful that he pretends not to notice.

“Well, if you need a place to stay I help out at a kind of co-operative not far from here. You can rest up, get a decent meal?”

There’s always a catch. He’s probably running some scam. Some scheme. Sex or religion. I find myself shaking my head before I’ve even considered it properly.

“It’s fine if you don’t like the sound of it.” His tone is even, almost noncommittal. “But why don’t you take a look?”

I don’t trust him. But there’s something about him that’s so unthreatening, so completely guileless that makes me wonder why the hell I shouldn’t. It’s not as if I have a great deal of options open to me, is it? Perhaps it’s just a matter of taking the path of least resistance, but I’m tired of dunking dumpsters. And it’s been so long since I washed my hair I just want to rip it off. Anyway, what’s the worst that could happen? It’s not as if things could get much worse in a hurry.

He senses my change of heart and nods, smiling. “I’m Craig.” He says. “Craig Raeside.”

“Billy.” I tell him. “I’m sorry I hurt you, Craig.”

“Call me Ray.” He offers. Perhaps he notices something in my face, because he follows it with an explanation. “As in Ray – side? It’s what most people call me.”

I nod. But after an akward pause I find my voice. “Would you mind if I just called you Craig? I think it’s… nicer.”

He laughs a little uncertainly. “No problem.” He says. “Come on. Let’s get you fixed up with a meal and some bandages.”

I frown. A meal I can cope with. But bandages?

He gestures to my forearms, where red lines of various length and freshness break up the whiteness of the skin; the end result of a week with just shards of glass for company at night.

“Were you trying to climb over a fence?” He asks. I’m not sure whether he’s genuinely unaware of what caused the scars or just trying to provide me with a decent cover story.

* * *

Clara Jane’s eyes widen for the briefest moment until she realises where she is. She looks to her right, where Reuben sleeps on his back, still dead to the world. For a moment she thinks she’s overslept, until she notices the light in the room is coming from the Sunscreens. Dawn has broken inside the house, even though the real sun is still about three hours from putting in an appearance.

She slips her feet to the ground quietly, making an effort not to wake her bedmate. The floor is warm, a highly fashionable mosaic of hand-fired tiles, matt finished in earthy colours and laid out in an elaborately convoluted swirl. She steals out of bed and pads delicately across the room to the suite, easing the door closed behind her and turning the little lock.

The shower is simple enough to work out; she selects the temperature on a tiny screen and waits for the beep. During that time she makes herself busy by getting a large white towel and a dressing gown from the wardrobe.

There are mirrors on the towel cupboard. And her face drops as she catches sight of herself. She stands, looking at her stomach, tracing the white lines that cross her flesh like ugly route maps. How could Rueben have touched this? She turns, paying close attention to her thighs, where more of the marks lay in wait.

She’d begged him to turn out the light. But he’d taken it for false modesty and treated it as a game. Until he’d seen.

She had to hand it to him, though. He’d not let his face slip, but instead he’d acted as if they were the most natural things in the world. He’d even made a show of kissing some of them, “But now he knows”, she thinks. “Which means last night will probably be a one-off. The likes of Rueben aren’t interested in girls with scars like these,” she tells herself.

* * *

“This is the kitchen.” Craig gestures at the eclectic rows of tables and chairs. “I mean, we call it that. But it’s not a kitchen, is it? It’s a kind of dining room. The food gets made in the room out the back. But we still call it the kitchen.”

The room could seat a couple of hundred at a push, but there are only about a dozen people still at the tables. Most of them are smoking and chatting in small groups of two and three. None seem particularly interested in us. Close by is a table with a crate of bread wrappers and stale crusts on it. It looks as if it had held maybe twenty sliced loaves, which have now been reduced to crumbs and scraps.

“Looks like I missed lunch.” I’m smiling, but the catch in my voice surprises me and I have to take a slow breath to hold back the urge to sob. I don’t think he notices.

“I’m sure we can rustle something up for you.” He smiles and pulls a chair for me. “Why don’t you sit here while I see what they’ve got left?”

I nod and drop into the seat. There are tiny white crumbs on the table, and reddish sauce stains on the wood grain. I wipe at them with my hand as he disappears from view at the other end of the hall. The air is thick and humid here. Steam from the kitchen, the smell of food, of smoke. The low murmur of background noise. Friendly voices chatting. Distant pans being banged. The safety of company. I could just fall asleep right now.

Unity. That’s what he called this place. “Welcome to unity.” he had said, as if introducing his favourite son. I wanted to laugh. It was exactly as I’d imagined. Run down shacks and wriggly tin fences, arbitrary walkways strewn with rubbish and garlanded with laundry. It was packed full of children, cats, old engine parts. Maybe even a couple of dogs, although I couldn’t be sure of it. Wires and conduits were twisted and crossed above head height and water pipes snaked apparently at random, often across the paths at just the right level to trip an unwary traveller.

But how many unwary travellers would there be in a place like this? The shacks were in various states of decay, although many had windows and solid looking roofs. Some even had flowerbeds, although it was too early in the year to tell what might sprout from them.

The place was a slap to the senses. Music hammered from open windows. People shouted. Engines revved, generators belched out thin blue smoke, children squealed, rotting vegetables stank. Unity.

And all of this, all this theatre of life, took place under the noses of a hundred thousand travellers. Unity occupied the ground directly below a junction of three elevated roadways. The sweeping triangular shape of it filled their sky like a colossal tripod, blocking out the sun but also keeping off much of the rain.

There was a sign. “A home. A chance. A voice. Unity.” It had been designed to incorporate the triangular meeting of roads as a motif. As ugly as the skyway was, they had made it their own.

“This is about the closest you’ll get to independent living these days.” Craig had told me. “It might look like a den of thieves and vagabonds, but it’s not. This is where people come to start again. People from all walks of life come here, looking for a chance to get a foot on firm ground. Debt, out of date qualifications, misplaced investments, redundancy. Sometimes perfectly ordinary folk slip through the cracks of society. And if they’re very lucky, this is where they end up.”

“Lucky?”

“Well, ordinarily there’s a bit of a waiting list, and an interview. I mean Unity might not be the Ritz but it’s better than going it alone. We’ve got a state-recognised school staffed entirely by volunteers. There’s a clinic, of sorts. Some of the guys and girls can offer counselling or retraining, whereas others are handy with their hands and can help build places to live. We like to encourage people who can bring something to the community if we can.”

I had stopped walking and looked at him. I could feel my heart sinking even though I was careful not to show it. “So I’ll need skills to be allowed to stay? And qualifications?”

“Not if the head of the admissions board approves your application first.” He had said. “What did you do? In your last job, I mean.”

I wanted to lie, but I wasn’t quick enough to think of anything plausible. Anyway. There was no point in telling him I was a nurse or a dataminer if someone was going to expect me to prove it. “I’m a dancer.” I said, with a sigh. “They call me Move Mistress.”

And then he had smiled. In fact he’d grinned. “That’s class! Where’ve you danced?”

I shrugged. “Powder Monkey, The Gas Bar, Cattle Market, Fiasco.”

“Straight?” His eyes were wide.

“Yeah. And at Trans Mission, The Goo-girl ‘Plex, Ticket Ape.” There was a smile spreading on my face to match his. I could feel it.

“You’ve danced at the ‘Plex? Shit, Billy. Consider yourself approved!”

“No way! Just like that? “

“You’re kidding? You’re famous! You’re just what we need around here. A bit of glamour for a change.”

I’d tried not to look embarrassed. “So I take it that you’re the head of the admissions board?”

He looked at me, still smiling. “You’re bright, Billy. “He said. “I’ll give you that.”

…Now I’m waking up and Craig is standing with a plastic plate. I’ve been lying against the table using my forearms as a pillow and it feels as if my eyelids have been stuck together. I manage a weak smile as he hands me a fork.

“Hey there, sleepy head!” He places the plate where my head had been only a few moments before. Spaghetti and mince steams up at me.

“They’re out of cheese, but there’s still a bit of garlic bread. Would you like some juice?”

I look down gratefully at the steaming meat and pasta, but I’m too worried to enjoy it. I don’t want to tell him, but I have to. “Craig. I haven’t got any money.” I can feel tears pricking at my eyes, trying to force their way out.

“Don’t worry.” He winks, conspiratorially. “Neither has anybody else around here.”

* * *

Maggie filled my world. I once saw an ancient kiddie’s program that had a bear living with a family in a town. What the film makers had done was make everything else in the world out of paper, such as the people he spoke to and the cars he drove in, but they left the bear looking real in three dimensions. Don’t ask me how they did it. Don’t ask me why they did it. It’s just that that silly little programme is the closest I can compare to a life with Magdalene in it. She was the only solid thing in the whole world and everything else was just cut out of the same grey sheet.

For a start, she was older than me. I’m not just talking about a couple of months. I was sixteen, she was twenty one. Now that’s street-cred, as our grandparents would have said. An age gap like that’s a canyon when you’re still at school. She was already successful, reasonably loaded, dynamic, cultured, athletic, graceful, funny, and devastatingly gorgeous. I was just a smitten kitten with hooks in my skin and a shiny blue head.

As far as I could see – and my opinion of her has never wavered – she casts no shadow. She was absolutely flawless. Of course, I’m writing this knowing that she’ll be reading it later, so I’m bound to say that, aren’t I? But I mean it. I’m not just writing it for fun. I need you to understand just how captivated by her I was. How totally absorbing it was- still is- to be with her.

I was walking out of school and it was dark already. November going into December. Of course, I had more on than frilly knickers at the time. Dress codes being what they were in school I didn’t get the chance to shine until after hours. I was blue of course, and bald, despite the head teacher endlessly pleading with me to invest in a wig. But I had on what my mother would have called sensible shoes, and a uniform that was stitched so cheaply you could count the threads with the naked eye.

As the exodus began we all removed our ties and wrapped them securely around our right wrists. Left wrists were for girls, or boys who liked boys. Sometimes I wore one on each, just to shake up the establishment a little.

I distinctly remember shouting very loudly in a jocular argument about whether or not Sandalwolf were a better band than The Melancholy Reptiles. I won’t tell you which I was arguing for. If you have to ask then you wouldn’t get it anyway. We were falling over each other in that way boys do when their hormones are up, unsure whether to kill or mount each other but settling any for physical contact we could get.

And there she was. Standing right by the school gate, looking straight at me and smiling.

Blaine Marshall was there like a shot. “Hello, sweetheart.” he said, sliding up close.

Her hair fell in ringlets about her face, green eyes sparkling. She nodded at Blaine and then walked straight up to me without showing the slightest hesitation. Before I even taken a breath she’d planted her lips on mine and we were joined like fractal keys, tasting each other’s tongues for the benefit of a very excitable audience.

“Trev!” Blaine was open mouthed. “She your girlfriend?”

I was walking on air. “Of course I’m his girlfriend.” Maggie laughed, slipping her arm through mine and leading me away from the dumbstruck onlookers.

“Fuck me.” Blaine said.

“No – fuck me!” That was Lloyd, bless him. He got a good laugh.

And then Maggie delivered her coup-de-grace. A little way ahead, the doors on a bright purple Avon lifted, silently. “Can I offer you a lift?”

“You’ve got an Avon?” Blaine looked ready to come on the spot. The Avon was the porn queen of compact racers. Smooth, feminine curves, glossy edges, and a deep-throated purr.

Maggie slowed right down as we pulled past the school gate, giving me time to take a good look at their faces. I think that was the first time I ever spotted it. That longing. I looked at them and they looked back, and in that moment I knew that I wasn’t like them any more. They weren’t looking at the car. They weren’t looking at Maggie. They were looking at me. And every one of them wore that same look of longing on their faces.

“That was straight, Maggie.” I told her. “That was just so straight.”

She smiled. “One thing you’ll learn: it doesn’t matter what you are. Only what they think you are.”

“You never told me you had an Avon. I’m so fucking impressed!”

She turned to me. Giving me her look. “It belongs to my boss. I just borrow it. By the way, I don’t like swearing. Not unless we’re having sex, in which case you can talk as dirty as you like.”

Ever seen a blue boy turn red?

Her face cracked, stern features breaking into the biggest grin that almost squeezed her freckles together. “Oh – my –God!” She said, slowly. Eying me hungrily. “Please tell me I’m right. You’re a cherry boy, aren’t you?”

“No.” I felt the anger rising in me. But all she did was raise her eyebrows. I let out my breath and unclenched. “Yes.” I admitted, quietly. Staring at the road.

Maggie loved it. “Fantastic! A virgin of my very own! Mister, you’ve got some serious education to look forward to! When do you want to start?”

Her words were like a static charge. I felt it in my chest, a fluttering. I was tingling and my knickers were tightening. I watched her drive, paying close attention to the contours of her blouse and wondering what it might be like to unfasten those little buttons. As she put her foot down and headed out of the city I realised I was giggling like a little boy.

* * *