“Seatbelt,” Viktor said as we slid in.
“I am not five.”
“Seatbelt,” he repeated. His accent was thicker. The way it gets when he thinks about bad roads.
I clicked it. He adjusted the angle of the rear camera with one touch and gave Marcus’s replacement a small nod that meant more than words. The convoy rolled.
London at eight thirty is coffee and school uniforms and men who run because they are late and proud of it. Today it was also signs on the tube and banners rolled tight under jackets and a weather that feltlike decision. Viktor watched the mirrors and the sky and the people on bridges. I watched him until I had to stop.
“Do I look like a man about to murder photographers,” I asked, because he likes me better when I keep things light at the wrong time.
“You look like a man about to speak the truth and regret it,” he said.
“That is closer.”
He softened his jaw by one millimeter, which is his version of a smile, and turned back to the work. We crossed the bridge with no drama. The square opened in front of us like a chest. Sound hit the glass. Drums. Voices that have learned the rhythm of being ignored.
The organizers metus before we were fully stopped. Two women and a man in safety vests with eyes that weighed me and found me necessary. I shook their hands and said their names back until they nodded. You cannot fake that sound. A nod that says you remembered.
“Stage is small,” one said. “No barriers. The mic keeps cutting.”
“I can use my voice,” I said. “It was built by opera.”
She laughed without wanting to. That helped.
Viktor stood where he could see approach lanes and rooftops and all the places where bad decisions live. He handed me a small card Élodie had made with three bullet points I had not asked for. I slid it into my pocket like a talisman. He checked the camera angles with his eyes as if he could shift them by will. The liaison gave him a hand sign for trouble that looked like tying a scarf. He nodded once. Plan made.
I walked the edge before I stepped up. It mattered to look people in the face first.
The square was a living thing. Drums at the south side keeping a heartbeat. A brass whistle calling and answering to the chant that ran the length of the crowd.
“Whose streets.”
“Our streets.”
It rolled like weather. Then another.
“What do we want.”
“Housing.”
“When do we want it.”
“Now.”
Placards bobbed on broom handles and cut-up cardboard. Rent is not a luxury. Care not crowns. You can’t eat promises. Some were neat, stenciled. Some were frantic and beautiful. A child had drawn a house with too many windows and a smile.
Smell of wet wool and coffee from flasks. Engine grease from delivery bikes clustered at the curb. Fried onions from a cart that had decided history needed lunch. Rain in the air that could not decide if it wanted to fall.
Faces. A nurse in worn trainers with a cracked phone case and a name badge turned around because she did not trust her manager. A man with paint under his nails and an invoice folded small in his back pocket. A woman in a hijab pushing a pram and steering with one hand while she filmed with the other. A student with a buzz cut and an old football scarf. A grandmother in a wheelchair whose sign said I have marched since ‘78 and I am not tired yet.
Union banners with stitched letters held high by men who had learned to carry weight. Teenagers with glitter on their cheeks and fierce jaws. Two lads who looked like they came for spectacle until they realized they had come for themselves. A pastor with a collar and a hand on the shoulder of a boy who was shaking too hard to clap.
Police at the edges in lines that breathed. Helmets clipped to belts. Faces set to neutral. Boots in place to pivot if the weather turned. Plainclothes in the seams. I could see them by the shoes and the way they watched exits, not speeches. Viktor saw them too. I felt the knowledge move through him like current.
Chants shifted. New cadence. “We work. We pay. We stay.” The drumline picked it up and made it feel like a promise. A flare of color near the back that might have been smoke or just a scarf. The air tightened. Then loosened. A steward with a bright vest put a hand on a shoulder and a small disaster did not happen.
I kept walking. Shook hands until my palms were gritty with cardboard paint. Listened until stories filled my ears and pressed against the cage of my ribs.
