‘Before the other speakers arrive and give you the usual meaningless, virtue-signalling platitudes about how united we all are and how easily medieval religion fits into a twenty-first-century democracy, I would like us to remember a police officer called Raymond Vann,’ he said.
Somewhere out in the darkness, someone shouted an obscenity. Heads turned towards the harsh sound, and then back to the young man on the bandstand.
‘Raymond Vann was let down by the police, let down by the legal system, and let down by the leaders of this country – all those tenth-rate men with first-class educations.’
‘Go back to Soho!’ shouted one London voice in the darkness.
‘When you go back to Pakistan!’ shouted another.
Laughter. Applause. Jeers. Obscenities and heads were turning, ready to take it to the next level. I could feel peace receding into the darkness and looked around for the tousled red hair of Edie Wren.
I could not see her.
But I saw that the heckling was coming from the right of the bandstand. The gang of local youth we had seen at the gates had swollen in number. There were twenty or thirty of them now. Layla Khan was still at the centre of them, a big grin on her face.
‘Those leaders did not understand Raymond Vann and they do not understand you,’ George Halfpenny said. He looked out at the crowd. ‘You are the heirs of a thousand years of freedom, a freedom that has been won by men like Raymond Vann. You—’
And then there was another kind of light in the darkness.
The sudden flare of fire as a rag soaked in petrol was lit.
In the brief flash of light I saw laughing young faces, their eyes shining with hatred, and then suddenly the flaming bottle was arcing through the night. It hit the metal fence that surrounds the bandstand and exploded with a whoosh of air and fire.
George Halfpenny fell backwards.
Richard stared at him, dumbfounded.
And then all hell broke loose.
‘Kill the bastards!’ someone shouted. ‘Kill the lot of them!’
And suddenly the air was full of missiles. The crowd were throwing anything they could find in the vague direction of the gang of locals. Bottles, rocks, cans of drink. Most of it fell well short. But in the sudden flare of light from the fire, I saw Layla in the middle of the locals. She was not laughing now.
‘Layla!’ Edie shouted.
And I saw that Edie was ahead of me, closer to the bandstand, trying to push her way through to Layla.
‘Edie!’ I shouted, then something hard and metallic smacked against my neck and sent an ice-cold spray down my back, and when I looked up I had lost sight of her.
There were screams and curses and punches wildly thrown as people struggled to get away from the violence or into the thick of it. Young men with Halfpenny haircuts, their faces twisted with fury, were already lashing out with boots and fists at the local youth. Heavily outnumbered, the locals fought back. Layla stood just behind the frontline, edging away from the violence while sticking up two fingers at the crowd with all the venom of an English archer at Agincourt.
Police in riot gear were shoving their way towards the trouble but they had hung back too far at the start of the evening.
I looked for Edie but I could not see her and cursed.
Then I saw something strike Layla Khan and I saw her go down. I forced my way through the crowd, who were mostly anxious to go in exactly the opposite direction. When I found Layla she was on her hands and knees in the middle of the violence.
I scooped her up in my arms. Then Edie was by my side. She placed her hand high on Layla’s forehead and her fingertips came away wet with blood.
‘Let’s get her out of here,’ she said.
One of the locals, a tall youth with a failed beard and last season’s Arsenal shirt put his hands on me. Still holding Layla against me, I crisply bounced my forehead off the bridge of his nose. Edie kicked his legs from underneath him and he went down hard.
We joined the crowd trying to get away from the trouble and we did not look back.
Layla twisted in my arms and stared at me bleary-eyed.
‘Do you want to get yourself killed?’ Edie shouted at her. ‘Why the hell are you here?’
‘Because you –’ Layla shouted back, taking in the police, the crowds and everyone with a George Halfpenny jarhead haircut – ‘are down here.’
As the crowd thinned, Edie brushed Layla’s hair from her face and winced at the sight of the egg-sized lump on her head, just where the hairline began.
‘Hospital,’ Edie told me.
‘No,’ Layla said. ‘Not hospital.’ She struggled from my arms and swayed unsteadily on her feet. ‘Take me home,’ she said. And suddenly she was a child again. ‘Please, Edie.’
So with Layla holding on to Edie for support we left the park and began walking towards Borodino Street.
‘I’m sorry about your grandfather, Layla,’ I said. ‘He was a decent man.’
She watched me impassively, waiting.
‘I held him when he died and I will never forget it,’ I said. ‘And what I will remember is that he died saying your name. He was worried about you, and full of love for you.’
Her mouth flinched. She looked at the ground, letting that long black hair fall over her face. Edie patted her back.
‘And I know that your grandfather wouldn’t want this for you, Layla,’ I said. ‘Whatever you think you are doing tonight. Whatever you’re drinking. Whatever you’re smoking. Whoever those boys were. Your grandfather would want something better for you.’
It was a nice speech. I was quite proud of myself.
But Layla Khan just laughed.
‘My Papa-Papa wanted me to be a part of this country,’ she said. ‘His generation wanted to integrate.’ She said it like it was a dirty word. ‘Smoking, drinking, fucking.’
‘Hey,’ Edie said, looking affronted. ‘Your mouth, young lady.’
‘How do we integrate when you wouldn’t want to live next door to us?’ Layla asked me, and I had no answer for her.
And then Edie chuckled.
‘What have you done to your hair, girl?’ she said, stroking Layla’s head. Layla tugged at her fringe and now I saw that her jet-black hair was tinged a garish shade of crimson.
‘It’s Boots own-brand Neon Red,’ Layla said. ‘That’s what it said on the bottle. Don’t you like it?’
Edie grinned at her. ‘You always look pretty,’ she said. ‘Neon Red or no Neon Red.’
We were standing outside the house now, the front garden still stacked high with the debris of the search teams. I stood on the pavement and watched as Edie walked Layla to the front door. Layla still clung to Edie, and it was as if she was reluctant to let her go.
Her grandmother opened the door. Behind Azza Khan, I could see that the floorboards and parts of the ceiling were still torn open.
‘Layla was in the park,’ Edie said. ‘There was trouble there tonight. You should keep her home until it passes.’
Edie paused, and I realised that she had never heard the woman speak a word of English.
‘Mrs Khan,’ Edie said. ‘Do you understand what I’m saying?’
Azza Khan looked evenly at her granddaughter.
And then she took the girl’s pretty face in one rough hand.
At first I thought the old woman was examining the girl’s injury.
But then I saw that she was looking at the trace of lipstick on Layla’s mouth, and the cheap red streaks in her sleek black hair and that she was smelling whatever the girl had been drinking or smoking.
‘I understand very well,’ Azza Khan told Edie.
And then the old woman’s open palm cracked hard against Layla’s face.
‘Whore,’ she said. ‘Just like all the little teenage whores in this country.’
Layla’s tears came immediately, and they were the hot and bitter tears that come not from pain but humiliation. She fled sobbing up the staircase.