He pushed past me. I ran after him. ‘You can’t just say that,’ I said. ‘A wall to do what?’ I tried to turn him round. ‘Fucking stop, Kole.’

‘I don’t know yet. But it’s not fucking good, is it?’ He looked at me. He looked at his knife. We both looked down at that. ‘We can’t look like we stand for it. Not you, not me. I been making money, maybe the only one getting paid, so this isn’t messing around now, Chance. Nev’s had his head kicked in ’cos he was helping out. Not me, though. No one’s going to crucify me.’ I followed him out of the front door of the building. ‘The LandSave lot are all living at the Sands,’ he said. ‘The posh old hotel. But you probably know that, don’t you.’

I shook my head. ‘I’ve never visited her,’ I said. I could taste blood so strongly in my mouth, I ran my tongue over my teeth to see if I’d lost one. ‘Please, Kole. Whatever it is, it won’t be her fault. It isn’t my fault.’

‘Well fucking show it then,’ he said.

When we got to the Sands, there was a crowd of people out front. The first thing I noticed was Nev. Some men were holding him by the neck against the wall. One of them was punching him in the stomach, then the ribs. Stomach, ribs, and you could hear the different sounds each punch made.

‘Fuck that,’ Kole said. ‘I’m not ending up like him.’ He pushed his way to the front. Then made this showy sound, like he wanted people to hear, as he stamped on the back of Nev’s head. ‘Fucking scab,’ he shouted.

I looked up at the building, imagining you behind the curtains. I wanted you to be there. I wanted you to be nowhere near.

‘The fuck you keep looking at?’ Kole said. ‘People will notice. You want me to tell ’em all what you’ve been up to?’

‘Yeah, go on then, you idiot. Tell who?’

Then the sound of the crowd changed. Someone had come out of the building. More than one person – five. Guards.

Kole grabbed my arm and pulled me forwards into the crowd. Then a barging from behind pushed us faster still, till we ended up pressed up tight against the fence out front of the hotel. Kole put his hands on it, shook it so hard I swear I heard the metal bend.

That was the moment three of the guards stood forward at the same time. Their guns moved at the same time too, like extra limbs. Then the whole-ear sound of a rock cracking hard against a cymbal. They shot into the air.

Even Kole stumbled back. His hands went high – ‘Easy,’ he said – hands that calm down fighters in a pub. He made his way along the fence towards the guards, hands up still, and leaned forward. He started talking to one of them. I watched him, peace hands turning choppy then softening again. Then he turned back to the crowd.

‘They’re saying someone should speak!’ Kole shouted out to everyone behind him. ‘They say they want it one-on-one.’

Voices rushed between the groups of people standing there.

‘Well, I say I do it,’ Kole said. ‘No one’ll have one over me.’

I looked around. To the left of me, behind me. People’s faces. It was impossible to stop Kole if he wanted something, but no one trusted him. He knew that.

‘Objections?’ he said after that. ‘I’ll take the girl with me if you want. Keep things civil.’

It took a second before I realised it was me he was talking about. He walked back through the crowd, and he put his hand round the back of my neck.

Almost right away, the crowd parted. I looked up, a few people tried to catch my eye, someone nodded at me – encouragement, or something like it. Kole pushed me forwards, his hand heavy under my hair. I could hear a rushing in my ears. Two men with guns made a space between two barriers. Another two men were behind them, guns pointed at our chests. ‘Easy,’ Kole said again, loud enough for the crowd behind us to hear. ‘We’re company.’ My legs stiffened. Kole’s grip got tighter. ‘Excited to see your missus, are ya?’ he said into the space between his hand and my neck.

They patted us down before they let us through the door. Not just lightly – everywhere. When they pulled the knife from the back of Kole’s waistband, there were cheers from the crowd. ‘What?’ Kole said to the guy who took it. ‘It’s normal. I want that back afterwards.’

---

This silence as the doors shut behind us. The smell of fresh paint again. We were led through a wide doorway, two, then through to a room full of tables. The guards followed behind us. I looked back once or twice. Uniforms in patches of changing grey, camouflage shapes but for a city rather than anywhere green. When we stopped, a couple of the guards walked ahead. They made a five-man circle around us. I knew the room. It used to be a dance hall. High ceilings. Big windows. The windows were blacked out.

‘Where’s the one I been speaking to?’ Kole said, trying to prove his in. Now the crowd couldn’t see him, his manners were back. This thin surface of pallyness. My heart wouldn’t settle down. I tried to cough the feeling away.

Suddenly, the door to the room started to push open and my stomach spun like a coin thinking it might be you. But no, it was a man in a suit, no tie, who walked in.

‘This man I seen…’ Kole said. ‘I seen you,’ he said to him. ‘I seen you in the photos with the big man. Is he coming down or what? Meyer?’

The man seemed cold, bored. He didn’t answer the question. ‘I won’t take up too much of your time,’ he said, which meant we shouldn’t take up much of his.

I looked at him. Salt and pepper hair, barely any wrinkles. A tiny bit shiny between his eyebrows, a scar running along his nose. He looked at both of our hands like he might shake them, then decided against it. Took a little step back instead, like he didn’t want to share our air.

‘This is my daughter,’ Kole said. ‘Chance.’

‘Not your daughter.’ I pulled away, but he gripped my shoulder.

‘Chance,’ the man said. ‘What a fortunate name.’

‘It’s not yours though, is it?’ I said. Kole’s fingertips pushed harder against my skin. ‘And it seems I don’t have much luck.’

Kole laughed then, his take-up space laugh. One of his teeth was so chipped, it looked like a saw. He was smiling though, doing sweetness and light. ‘Be nice,’ Kole said to me. I wasn’t used to him playing any kind of long game. He turned to the man in the suit. ‘Got stuff to deal with, you see,’ he said to him. ‘Money for one, then I want to know more about this – this… thing you lot are building.’

‘People were saying it was flats, a new hospital,’ I said. ‘Something good.’

‘I hear they’re calling it a wall outside,’ the man said. ‘Which is all very well if you’re in pursuit of drama. Sorry to be prosaic, but it’s sea protection. And it’s been in the pipeline for many years. Every single person was informed.’

‘No, they weren’t,’ I said. I stared at him.

‘There were letters.’

The letter I’d taken so long to open. The letter I’d read high. C-protection. Containment. ‘Well they didn’t say where your barrier things would be.’

‘What did you imagine, may I ask?’ the man went on. ‘A large concrete monstrosity between you and the sea?’

Kole seemed to find that funny.

‘A significant sea wall has been in the pipeline for years,’ the man said again.

‘Maybe in rich parts of the country,’ I said. ‘But not here.’

‘Well,’ he said. He did this quick little exhale. ‘We have a duty to protect the country. Let’s put it this way. It’s got bad enough for the money to be found.’

‘Hold on for a sec,’ Kole said. ‘I’m not trying to be thick, but can you not see a problem with us being here, and the sea protection being way over there inland?’

The man’s face was static, his eyes almost bored. Some people are happy to leave silences. He let us do the work. We waited.

‘Go on then, mate, spit it out,’ Kole said.

‘Why do you think my team is here?’ he said finally. ‘People have been leaving for years. In a sense, they’ve gone ahead. But we’re here to—’ his eyes flitted across the room for how to say it ‘—bring up the rearguard, as it were.’

‘The who?’ Kole said.

‘The less socially mobile, shall we say.’ He shrugged with his mouth. ‘We’re here to negotiate the relocations.’

Kole looked at me as if I’d tell him what that meant.

‘To redistribute those in social housing,’ the man finished.

‘What do you mean redistribute?’ I said. ‘Redistribute us where?’

‘Inland,’ he said. ‘As you say. Away to safety.’

It hit me then, all through my chest, this tugging from nowhere. ‘But what if we don’t want to?’ I said.

‘What do you mean?’ he said.

‘What if we don’t want to go? What if we want to stay here?’ I said. Then the thought of you – how had it happened again? How had you not told me any of this?

‘I don’t have to tell you about the sea,’ he went on. ‘You live here. But what’s happening now. The tidal surge the other night. The floods two years ago.’

‘The washout.’

‘That was nothing.’

‘It wasn’t nothing.’

‘Believe me,’ he said, ‘in comparison, your “washout” will be nothing.’

‘Sure,’ I said. ‘If you leave us in the mud again.’

‘It’s going to get much, much worse,’ the man said.

‘You – or the sea?’

He looked at me.

‘Listen to the man,’ Kole said.

‘Don’t you start…’

‘LandSave is a once-in-a-generation project,’ the man said. ‘It stands to change everything.’

‘Good for you,’ I said.

‘It will save lives,’ he said. ‘Lives that need to be saved. Isn’t that what you want? People will drown otherwise.’

‘Why did you want to talk to us?’ I said. ‘I still don’t understand what you’re asking for.’

‘Just your support,’ he said. He smiled for the first time. Gently, a soft-light-bulb smile. I imagined the ways it must have worked for him. ‘Kind words in the right places. People don’t like change, you see. Particularly if it feels… I don’t know, thrust upon them.’

‘By someone like you.’ I looked at him. The open collar of his crisp white shirt. The snick of a fixed hare lip. His watch that was gold.

‘Well, exactly,’ he said. ‘Which is why we need allies. People who are known in the community. People who are liked.’ He said this looking at me.

‘She’ll do it,’ Kole waded in. ‘When you say relocate, what does that mean? Like a new start? A fresh start somewhere else?’

The man nodded.

‘And you making it worth our while when we get there?’ Kole said. ‘And I mean that. I want good stuff. All of it.’

The man nodded again.

Kole took hold of my shoulder. ‘If I say so, she’ll do it. We both will. Whoever you want us to speak to, we’ll do it.’