Broken Homes

defunct playground. She was wearing an old-fashioned Mary Quant dress in green and yellow and her blonde hair was cut into a pixie bob under a battered straw sunhat. Her face and limbs were long and thin and seemed oddly out of proportion with her torso. She was standing in the shade of one of the smaller plane trees, so still that I wasn’t sure she hadn’t been standing all the time I’d been walking up and I just hadn’t seen her.
    I heard a child giggling from behind a nearby tree and the girl gave me a smile that was like the sun coming out from behind a cloud. Then she pivoted and skipped away so fast that I could barely follow the movement. A moment later a small brown imp of a girl broke cover from behind her tree and dashed after the older girl. This one I recognised – it was Nicky, who I’d last seen wearing Imperial Yellow at the Spring Court. Her river, the Neckinger, practically ran right under the estate.
    Toby gave chase, yapping continuously, his stubby tail wagging as he vanished into the shade. I followed at my own pace, letting the sound of Toby’s barking lead me in the right general direction. I’d gone ten metres or so when Nicky jumped out from behind a tree and yelled, ‘Boo.’
    I pretended to jump, which went down well – I’ve got a play centre’s worth of younger cousins, so I know how that game is played.
    ‘Behind you,’ shouted Nicky.
    I turned theatrically to find nothing behind me.
    ‘There’s nothing behind me,’ I said, which caused more laughter.
    I turned back to Nicky and this time I did jump – well, more accurately, I flinched.
    The girl in the green dress was standing right in front of me, her face centimetres from mine, her eyes were large and hazel with golden flecks around the iris. This close she smelt of rough bark and crushed leaves. I could also see that she was a grown woman, physically in her twenties, and that I’d been fooled by her body language into thinking her younger.
    ‘Boo,’ she shouted and laughed when I started back.
    ‘Old man,’ shouted Nicky.
    I turned to look, and when I turned back the woman in a green dress was gone – and so was Nicky.
    Toby came scampering towards me, stuck his nose into the grass in front of my feet and snuffled around. Obviously finding nothing, he looked up at me and gave me a frustrated yap.
    I told him to be quiet – I could see someone else approaching. Jake Phillips, activist at large.
    ‘I see you’ve discovered the true secret of Skygarden,’ he said and for a moment I thought he might be yet another supernatural something or other, but he went on to say that the trees were some of the finest examples of their kind of London.
    ‘They’re the real reason the council couldn’t get the tower delisted,’ he said.
    Behind him I saw two impish faces peering around a tree trunk and sniggering.
    ‘But there’s no one here,’ I said. ‘It wouldn’t be like this if people were still living in the blocks.’
    ‘You reckon?’
    ‘I know it,’ I said. ‘This would be dog shit central during the day and pusher park at night.’
    He squinted at me. ‘Are you working for the council?’
    ‘Chance would be a fine thing,’ I said.
    ‘Or the media, or County Gard?’ he asked.
    ‘Who’s County Gard?’ I asked, because the easiest way to deflect suspicion is to side track your questioner onto a subject that they love to talk about. Sure enough, Jake Phillips started in on a lengthy diatribe which I cut short because I couldn’t keep track without taking notes – and that would have been suspicious.
    ‘Look,’ I said. ‘I’ve got to finish walking the dog but I am interested in hearing more.’
    ‘Don’t give me that,’ he said.
    ‘No, seriously,’ I said. ‘I don’t believe in backing away from a fight. Besides, I’ve only just got here and I can’t be arsed to move again.’
    I may have come across as a little bit too keen, but characters like Jake Phillips have been fighting the long defeat too long to pass up any help they can get.
    ‘I’ll tell you what. Why don’t you and your partner come around to my place for tea?’ he said and gave me his flat number.
    I said I would, and we parted company – Toby was nowhere to be seen.
    I found Toby further along the vanishing path in a glade full of sunlight and shining dust motes. A wool blanket of scarlet and green had been spread upon the grass and upon it sprawled, in the approved French impressionist manner, Oberon, Effra