Free In the Heart of the City by Cath Staincliffe

In the Heart of the City
    T hese streets are mine, that’s what I’m thinking. Unbelievable, bruv. We’re all here: Coxie and Jonny and Stella, all the crew from the estate. There’s this buzz – like massive. We go down Market Street and then along into St Ann’s Square. More people coming all the time. Waves of them, like they’re turning up for a rave or something. Yeah, like a sea of us, you know. Everyone hoods up, bandannas on. My heart’s booming, a pulse so sweet and fierce and the blood zipping round like it’s on fire. Totally alive. Like we’d all woken up and decided to do this thing, not taking no shit no more. So we took to the streets. Yeah. Our streets.
    First I hear is a message from Coxie, saying meet in Piccadilly Gardens. I let Stella know, but she already does. We’re all going, everyone’s going to be there. Solid. We seen the news: Tottenham, Croydon, Birmingham, now it’s our turn. We take the baton.
    The Dibble do nothing for long enough. We turn a corner and they’re there and they don’t even have shields. They’re statues, bruv. Can’t touch us. That feeling! Like the buzz from a game, GTA or COD, ambush or firefight and everything inside you jumps, but bigger. Real.
    That feeling; together, on a roll, no one to stop us. Maybe once in a lifetime you get that. Guess if you’re in the army, got a gun, popping the Taliban, you get that sort of kick, but the rest of us? Seeing people get out of your way. Taking what you want.
    There’re loads of little kids and some older people, but mainly it’s peeps our age from the shit parts of town, but it’s like we’re all on the same team, even though we’ve never met before. We get into T-Mobile while there’s still some shit left. Coxie’s crowing and Jonny’s hollering and I get myself a BlackBerry and another one for Stella. Sound, bruv. Round on King Street someone’s broken into Diesel and we go in and I grab a hoodie. Ditch mine and put it on there and then. Fresh.
    Running back through to Market Street and this fire’s burning in Miss Selfridge and Stella goes, ‘No great loss there, then.’ She never shopped there, I reckon. I laugh and I think I’ll ask her out next time I get chance, cos she dumped Dale a while back and there ain’t been anyone else on the scene. She’s nice, Stella, she’s bright, she’s got attitude, smarts. Well fit n’ all. My old phone keeps going but half the messages are my mum wanting to know where I am, telling me to come home.
    Like I’m going to miss this.
    Round the side of Afflecks we run into this woman, she doesn’t move out of the way and she goes down with a right bang. Some of us stop. She doesn’t say anything, just looks at us. She looks right at me. I can see she’s scared. Maybe a bit angry, but mostly she looks like she wants to cry.
    They knock me down. I’m trying to get back to my flat in the Northern Quarter. I’ve been seeing friends for a drink after work in the south of the city and heard there was trouble so left early; the buses and trams have stopped, but I got the train back in. My hand scrapes against the pavement and I feel the burn. There are words, shouts and someone tugging at my bag, which I would gladly give them but it’s caught on my arm and there is a tussle over it. They empty it on to the pavement and share out what’s worth keeping: my phone, money, cards. Now will they leave me be?
    But they wait; it’s all gone quiet. Someone has stopped the frame and we are suspended. Frozen. It’s only a moment. A second long, maybe, a heartbeat. Except my heart isn’t beating, it has stopped and the possibilities hang there in the hiatus, each fringed with fear; that they will rape me, stab me, kill me.
    Forty-five years old, and only a few times I’ve known that sort of terror. Once in a car, when the wheel came off and we were careering into the hard-shoulder, the noise terrific and the vehicle sliding along the Tarmac. Another time when a man