Broken Homes

like Muslims, but then what does a Muslim look like?’
    ‘Chip pan,’ said Lesley quickly. ‘Accident with a chip pan.’
    The woman gave me such an unfriendly look that I took a step back.
    ‘It wasn’t him who did it was it?’ she asked. ‘Only we don’t stand for that kind of stuff round here.’
    Lesley assured Betsy that it had been an industrial accident rather than domestic violence, but I was still pleased when Kevin arrived and I could retreat into what had suddenly been designated as ‘men’s work’. Kevin himself was a big man with sandy hair and layers of muscle under rolls of fat. He lifted his end of Lesley’s bed with ease while Sasha carried one of the smaller boxes.
    ‘What do you do, then?’ asked Kevin.
    ‘Anything I can get,’ I said.
    Kevin nodded sagely. He was an old hand at cramming stuff into the lift, so we only had to make two journeys. It was a neighbourly gesture that either demonstrated that the spirit of community was not dead or allowed Kevin to suss out whether we had anything worth nicking. Or possibly both.
    Lesley returned the favour by running an IIP check on the whole family as soon as our front door was safely closed. While she did that, I put Toby’s lead on and headed out to the shops.
    Of the three elevated walkways leading from the Ground Floor, two went to the Old Kent Road and Heygate Street respectively, piercing the blocks in front of them exactly the same way the monorails do in old-fashioned depictions of the future. Both of these had been sealed off at the block end by Southwark Council to restrict access and prevent vandalism. The last remaining walkway was the one built on pillars over the access road and gave out in the gap between two blocks at the corner of Elephant Road. I’d wondered about the culvert. But as I walked away from the tower I realised, looking around, that I couldn’t see any roads or signs of vehicles at all. Stromberg, I decided, had he been given the budget, would have gone the whole hog and buried the road underground. When I reached the ramp at the far end I turned to look back and saw that the blocks acted as gigantic garden walls cupping a green bowl in which grew some of the biggest plane trees I’ve ever seen, thirty metres tall some of them, high enough to overhang the walkway and, sheltered as they were, they were nonetheless in full spring leaf. And rearing out of the centre was the dusty brown crenellated spike of Skygarden Tower.
    ‘Fuck me,’ I said to Toby. ‘We’re living in Isengard.’
    It started raining as soon as I was off the estate. But one good thing about Skygarden was that it was handy for the shops. On the way back I let Toby off his lead but, far from rushing off to explore, he stuck close to my heel and seemed grateful to reach the lifts.
    As I juggled my shopping bags looking for my keys, I noticed a nervous white woman eyeing me from the flat to our right. She was small, thin, with long lank brown hair and dressed in a faded red sweatshirt and faded jeans that were probably much tighter before she lost weight. I recognised the mixture of hope and trepidation on her face and realised that she was our resident fallen princess.
    Every estate has at least one of these per block. Middle- or upper-middle-class girls who’ve managed to overcome the advantages of their birth and end up in council housing with a child or an addiction or both. They’re easy to spot because they have a constant air of bewilderment, as if they can’t understand why the universe has stopped tilting in their favour. They don’t get much in the way of sympathy on an estate – I’m sure I don’t have to explain why.
    ‘Hello,’ I said.
    ‘Hi,’ she said. ‘Have you just moved in?’
    She advanced along the walkway until she was halfway towards me and then hesitated. Her feet were bare and she placed them like a ballerina.
    ‘Just this morning,’ I said. ‘Got any tips?’
    ‘Not really,’ she said and advanced again.
    I put my bags down and stuck my hand out. ‘My name’s Peter Grant,’ I said using my full name in the hope that she’d reciprocate. She gave me a limp handshake.
    ‘Emma Wall,’ she said – it’s so much easier to run someone through the system if you have their full name.
    Close up she smelt of cigarette smoke and twitched like a junkie, but if I had to guess I’d have said she was in recovery. Not that you can really tell – I should know.
    ‘How long have you lived here?’ I