‘Oooh, feel the heat, feel the heat!’ squealed Magid, rubbing his little palm in. ‘You been shamed, man!’

‘Akchully, I’m not shamed, you’re shamed ’cos it’s for Mr J. P. Hamilton-’

‘Our stop!’ cried Magid, shooting to his feet and pulling the bell cord too many times.

‘If you ask me,’ said one disgruntled OAP to another, ‘they should all go back to their own…’

But this, the oldest sentence in the world, found itself stifled by the ringing of bells and the stamping of feet, until it retreated under the seats with the chewing gum.

‘Shame, shame, know your name,’ trilled Magid. The three of them hurtled down the stairs and off the bus.

And the 52 bus goes two ways. From the Willesden kaleidoscope, one can catch it west like the children; through Kensal Rise, to Portobello, to Knightsbridge, and watch the many colours shade off into the bright white lights of town; or you can get it east, as Samad did; Willesden, Dollis Hill, Harlesden, and watch with dread (if you are fearful like Samad, if all you have learnt from the city is to cross the road at the sight of dark-skinned men) as white fades to yellow fades to brown, and then Harlesden Clock comes into view, standing like Queen Victoria’s statue in Kingston – a tall stone surrounded by black.

Samad had been surprised, yes surprised, that it was Harlesden she had whispered to him when he pressed her hand after the kiss – that kiss he could still taste – and demanded where it was he might find her, away from here, far from here (‘My children, my wife,’ he had mumbled, incoherent); expecting ‘Islington’ or maybe ‘West Hampstead’ or at least ‘Swiss Cottage’ and getting instead, ‘Harlesden. I live in Harlesden.’

‘Stonebridge Estate?’ Samad had asked, alarmed; wide-eyed at the creative ways Allah found to punish him, envisioning himself atop his new lover with a gangster’s four-inch knife in his back.

‘No – but not far from there. Do you want to meet up?’

Samad’s mouth had been the lone gunman on the grassy knoll that day, killing off his brain and swearing itself into power all at the same time.

‘Yes. Oh, dammit! Yes.’

And then he had kissed her again, turning something relatively chaste into something else, cupping her breast in his left hand and enjoying her sharp intake of breath as he did so.

Then they had the short, obligatory exchange that those who cheat have to make them feel less like those who cheat.

‘I really shouldn’t-’

‘I’m not at all sure how this-’

‘Well, we need to meet at least to discuss what has-’

‘Indeed, what has happened, it must be discu-’

‘Because something has happened here, but-’

‘My wife… my children…’

‘Let’s give it some time… two weeks Wednesday? 4.30? Harlesden Clock?’

He could at least, in this sordid mess, congratulate himself on his timing: 4.15 by the time he got off the bus, which left five minutes to nip into the McDonald’s toilets (that had black guards on the door, black guards to keep out the blacks) and squeeze out of the restaurant flares into a dark blue suit, with a wool V-neck and a grey shirt, the pocket of which contained a comb to work his thick hair into some obedient form. By which time it was 4.20, five minutes in which to visit cousin Hakim and his wife Zinat who ran the local £1 + 50p shop (a type of shop that trades under the false premise that it sells no items above this price but on closer inspection proves to be the minimum price of the stock) and whom he meant inadvertently to provide him with an alibi.

‘Samad Miah, oh! So smart-looking today – it cannot be without a reason.’

Zinat Mahal: a mouth as large as the Blackwall Tunnel and Samad was relying upon it.

‘Thank you, Zinat,’ said Samad, looking deliberately disingenuous. ‘As for a reason… I am not sure that I should say.’

‘Samad! My mouth is like the grave! Whatever is told to me dies with me.’

Whatever was told to Zinat invariably lit up the telephone network, rebounded off aerials, radiowaves and satellites along the way, picked up finally by advanced alien civilizations as it bounced through the atmosphere of planets far removed from this one.

‘Well, the truth is…’

‘By Allah, get on with it!’ cried Zinat, who was now almost on the other side of the counter, such was her delight in gossip. ‘Where are you off to?’

‘Well… I am off to see a man in Park Royal about life insurance. I want my Alsana well provided for after my death – but!’ he said, waggling a finger at his sparkling, jewel-covered interrogator who wore too much eyeshadow, ‘I don’t want her to know! Thoughts of death are abhorrent to her, Zinat.’

‘Do you hear that, Hakim? Some men worry about the future of their wives! Go on – get out of here, don’t let me keep you, cousin. And don’t worry,’ she called after him, simultaneously reaching for the phone with her long curling fingernails, ‘I won’t say one word to Alsi.’

Alibi done, three minutes were left for Samad to consider what an old man brings a young girl; something an old brown man brings a young white girl at the crossroads of four black streets; something suitable…

‘A coconut?’

Poppy Burt-Jones took the hairy object into her hands and looked up at Samad with a perplexed smile.

‘It is a mixed-up thing,’ began Samad nervously. ‘With juice like a fruit but hard like a nut. Brown and old on the outside, white and fresh on the inside. But the mix is not, I think, bad. We use it sometimes,’ he added, not knowing what else to say, ‘in curry.’

Poppy smiled; a terrific smile which accentuated every natural beauty of that face and had in it, Samad thought, something better than this, something with no shame in it, something better and purer than what they were doing.

‘It’s lovely,’ she said.

Out in the street and five minutes from the address on their school sheets, Irie still felt the irritable hot sting of shame and wanted a rematch.

‘Tax that,’ she said, pointing to a rather beat-up motorbike leaning by Kensal Rise tube. ‘Tax that, and that,’ indicating two BMXs beside it.

Millat and Magid jumped into action. The practice of ‘taxing’ something, whereby one lays claims, like a newly arrived colonizer, to items in a street that do not belong to you, was well known and beloved to both of them.

‘Cha, man! Believe, I don’t want to tax dat crap,’ said Millat with the Jamaican accent that all kids, whatever their nationality, used to express scorn. ‘I tax dat,’ he said, pointing out an admittedly impressive small, shiny, red MG about to turn the corner. ‘And dat!’ he cried, getting there just before Magid as a BMW whizzed past. ‘Man, you know I tax that,’ he said to Magid, who offered no dispute. ‘Blatantly.’

Irie, a little dejected by this turn of events, turned her eyes from the road to the floor, where she was suddenly struck by a flash of inspiration.

‘I tax those!’

Magid and Millat stopped and looked in awe at the perfectly white Nikes that were now in Irie’s possession (with one red tick, one blue; so beautiful, as Millat later remarked, it made you want to kill yourself), though to the naked eye they appeared to be walking towards Queens Park attached to a tall natty-dread black kid.

Millat nodded grudgingly. ‘Respect to that. I wish I’d seed dem.’

‘Tax!’ said Magid suddenly, pushing his grubby finger up against some shop glass in the direction of a four-foot-long chemistry set with an ageing TV personality’s face on the front.

He thumped the window. ‘Wow! I tax that!’

A brief silence ensued.

‘You tax that?’ asked Millat, incredulous. ‘That? You tax a chemistry set?’