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sound familiar. Doug. Circles. Doug. The Gaps. It did sound familiar.
    In the gravel Saleem had drawn a circle. ‘That’s London,’ the said, completing it. She drew a horizontal line through the centre of the circle, cutting it in half. ‘And that’s the Thames,’ she added. ‘So that’s London and everything connects to everything else. And these are the postal districts, OK?’ She drew them in. ‘We’ve got plain North London, we’v e got plain West London, we’v e got plain East London . . .’ As she spoke she pointed, and I could hear the gravel kissing and knocking.
    ‘But here’s a problem, right. There’s South-West London postal districts and there’s South-East postal districts, and they, sort of, meet in the middle, which means that there’s no South. No plain South. And Doug’s upset about this. And there’s another problem too, right. There’s North-West and South-West and South-East, but there’s no North-East. Another Gap. No plain South and no North-East. And according to Doug, this is why London doesn’t connect. This is why London doesn’t work. Things aren’t properly linked. See what I’m getting at, Phil?’
    I nodded.
    ‘You see, the city is fucked, Phil, because of this little problem with the postal districts. And Doug is worrying about it, Phil. He’s thinking about it. These Gaps.’
    I stopped feeling the soil. I turned.
    ‘So what’s the problem? Why are you telling me this?’
    Saleem’s eyes popped. ‘Because Doug’s going absolutely rucking crazy. He’s got this meeting on Friday. Our whole fucking future depends on it, and he is going crazy. He’s crazy.’
    I turned away again.
    ‘Say something!’
    ‘He’ll be fine.’
    ‘No he won’t be fine. And that’s the worst part of it. You seem determined to ignore what’s going on right under your nose. He’s gone mad. I know all about it. I’m living in the same house as him. And no one asked me, incidentally, whether I minded or not. He just moved in and that was that. Anyhow , I can see my way around the whole thing but no one wants to know what I’ve seen.’
    Saleem scratched out her Postal District London and prepared the gravel for another design: a large phallus. Medieval. A two-foot phallus pointing west to her north and east to my south. Pointing, I decided, towards Ray, far away, digging his pit.
    ‘Doug’s OK.‘
    ‘OK? Jesus! You don’t know anything,’ she said, slitting her eyes, angry now, ‘You’re so in on yourself. There’s stuff going on here that you don’t know anything about. Private stuff. Everything’s a secret with Doug. You don’t know about Mercy and the diarrhoea. You don’t know about that mad man, that Chinaman, slinking about the place, poisoning everything. You don’t see anything through all that fucking hair. You don’t see anything.’
    Saleem pushed herself up, used her stick to pull herself up by. She works well without her leg, admittedly, is lithe when she wants to be.
    ‘And the thing is, she said, ‘I know you love this place. It matters to you. You depend on it the same way I do. But you won’t ever act, you won’t ever do anything. You’re dormant, just blind. Turning in on yourself.’
    I was surprised to be connected, all of a sudden, in a rush, like this, with Saleem. It was a curious sensation, this connection.
    ‘Forget it, then,’ she said, sounding defeated and afterwards, almost instantly, sounding defiant. ‘Looks like I’m going to have to be the one,’ she muttered, turning her back, ‘Me. Saleem. I am the one who’ll have to save things. Ray’s too stupid. You’re just a yak, a blob. And Nancy . . .’ She laughed. ‘I am the one,’ she said, darkly, stalking off, ‘just watch me.’

SO THIS IS the problem, I told the exhaust on the back of Nancy’s truck. The Park’s got another four months to run and we’r e almost broke. On Friday Doug’s going to meet Enfield Council’s Park Management Committee to re-assert