A few days after Ally Pally,
after skating around the rink like
happy
kids at Christmas,
Nicu and I meet near the Tube station
and I tell him exactly what to do.
‘You watch them coming through
the barrier,
and if they put a ticket in
and it
pops out
again,
it’s probably a Travelcard,
and that’s what we want.
You understand what I’m saying?’
He nods. ‘I understand, Jess.’
‘Good.
Then, just as they get out of
the station,
you ask if they’ve finished with the card
cos you have to get to Holloway
to see your sick dad or whatever.
You get me?’
He nods again. ‘I get you, Jess.’
‘Then you give the cards to me,
and I’ll sell ’em on to
the people at the ticket machines
for half of what they’d usually pay.
Right?’
He gives two thumbs up. ‘Right, Jess.’
And then we get going,
blagging tickets,
selling them on,
making a fiver a time
until I’ve got fifty quid
in the back pocket of my jeans
and Nicu has two spare
Travelcards to get us into London.
So we take the Tube,
the Piccadilly Line all the way to Leicester Square,
and from there straight into
Häagen-Dazs, where I order the fattest cone
they’ve got and four scoops of
cookie dough ice cream.
‘What do you want?’ I ask Nicu.
‘I want same as you, Jess,’ he says,
eyes so fixed on my face that
I blush.
‘All time same as you.’