Chapter One
Anika Lapo squints against the morning sun, watching as a fair-haired woman clings on to the railing of the stairs down to the opposite train platform, stretching up to pull one of the little apples off the tree that hangs over it.
She brushes it off on her top and munches.
Anika screws up her face involuntarily, but it smooths out again as she observes the woman’s pleased expression.
It would never occur to her that she’d have permission to do such a thing.
She pushes her sunglasses up her nose from where they’ve slid down over her sweat, and ties back the waist-length Senegalese twists installed last week as part of her plan to finally grow out her relaxer.
She never expected for them to be quite this long, which is making her self-conscious.
The onset of thirty-degree heat wasn’t anticipated for a start and this is attention-seeking hair, especially on her.
Wendy’s vivid blue eyes had widened when they met up for cocktails last weekend at their old local in Kentish Town – their first meet-up since moving out of the Vale Road maisonette a fortnight ago, after years of cohabitation as flatmates.
Wendy’s high-pitched enthusiasm at Anika’s new look seemed suspicious, like she wasn’t sure it was still her friend under all that hair.
Like Anika was a migrant to a new cultural space.
Anika lived there all the time of course, but within that particular friendship it was never really discussed, not even back in their university days.
It’s only just 8.30 a.m. and the city heat that soaked into the ground from the day before is already rising to mingle with the growing warmth in the air.
The weekend zipped by in a nauseating blur and Sunday night is still weighing on her.
It was embarrassing really – she and Len were only together for a few weeks.
She’s far more upset about the fact that he borrowed one of her albums and lost it.
How do you lose a whole vinyl record? And as if some bullshit reissue could in any way replicate the importance of the original record.
Anika had stood there staring at it – the photo of Al Green sitting in his white suit in that white wicker chair with I’m Still in Love With You written above his head – and marvelled at the irony of the title.
What a waste of time. The two hours of her life spent in that ‘women’s health’ clinic on Saturday that she’ll never get back. The three weeks of deluding herself that she was starting a ‘relationship’. The four-and-a-half hours getting her braids done.
The almost thirty years of her life she’s spent treading water.
Last night, Anika told her best mates, Shameeka and Tina, about it all.
Both called Len a wasteman in their group chat.
I know, Anika replied, even though she obviously didn’t know.
Shameeka typed, You just need someone who can draw you out of your shell, get to know the real you.
As if Anika’s some kind of military fortress of a person.
Maybe she was right, though – Anika hasn’t exactly been inundated with relationship options.
And settling into her own place these last couple of weeks, it’s been tempting to go full hermit.
Being alone is cool, but also … be careful what you wish for.
Anika is grateful when her train finally pulls in, drawing her attention away from her thoughts.
She steps aboard and spots a rare vacant seat.
A tall, white man with sweat patches blooming under the arms of his blue shirt shoots her a contemptuous look and mutters something she can’t hear when she beats him to it, but she just sits down and adjusts her earbuds, trying to ignore the hostile clench of his jaw.
‘Bruv, bruv, bruv, do you hear yourself, though?’ says the resonant voice in her ears over the bed of a familiar hip-hop instrumental – the one her favourite breakfast radio presenter, Cam Asiedu, always uses: J Dilla’s ‘One for Ghost’.
A classic, stuttering, soul-sampling hip-hop beat that she also loves and if she had to guess, she’d say it’s the broadcaster’s personal choice.
Just an instinct, obviously – she wouldn’t know for certain. She’d love to, though.
Anika glances down at her lap for a moment, imagining being face to face with Cam. An odd flush comes over her as she rolls his name around in her mind. Her thirstiness for the DJ isn’t some awkward secret, but she still feels the urge to keep it to herself.
Anika’s ears are drawn back to Cam’s voice.
‘How can you say that’s not misogynistic?
Do you even know what that—? You know what?
Never mind.’ There’s some aggravated, incoherent muttering from the other mic in the studio and Cam retorts lightly, ‘Hah hah! Bruv, I’m playing, I’m playing.
’ Anika can tell he’s not. ‘But still … Look, you know what? I reckon we just head straight into the next track, yeah?’
‘Yeah.’
She smirks at the monosyllabic response.
‘OK,’ Cam says on a sigh. ‘This next one is called “BloodFire”; the new album is You Will Know. King Grease is live with me in the studio, so, uh, let’s run this one …’
The SpinRadio ident plays, then a generic dancehall beat begins and Anika adjusts the volume on her phone and opens her text messages.
They’re the only place safe from Shameeka’s check-ins, which are peppered all over her other messaging app.
Her friend means well, but Anika doesn’t need the reminder of her sad state of affairs – where her life is now versus where she wants it to be.
And, in fact, the weight of her bag on her lap reminds her that she’s still carting around her bulky old five-year diary from when she was a kid, which she unearthed during her flat move.
On the first page, at twelve years old, Anika had written:
January 1st 2005
Dear Diary
How do I change my life?
God. How is she still pondering the same question eighteen years later?
It’s been oddly compelling to revisit her words from all those years ago.
Reading the diary’s pages back has been like time travel.
A strange mixture of ick-worthy, hilarious and brutal.
It gets harder when Anika thinks about the reason why she stopped keeping it, when she was seventeen and just six months shy of five years of daily recordings of her life …
The train doors beep a warning before closing at the next stop and Anika releases one of her long twists of hair from where she’s wound it tightly round her fingertip.
She focuses back on her phone screen, tapping through to some old sent messages.
The space underneath the five-digit text number for the radio station displays her regular, anonymous messages to the breakfast show.
The thrill of hearing her missives read aloud on the air from Cam Asiedu’s lips is ridiculous, but real. She fires off another.
LMAO. How are you gonna ask the man if he knows what misogynistic means? A. L., SE LDN.
The song on the radio eventually finishes and she turns the volume back up. Anika can hear the sarcasm dripping through Cam’s voice as it nestles back into her ears. He repeats the name of the song that just played, then chuckles his trademark chuckle.
‘OK, we’ve got some texts here … let’s get into a couple of these.
Shout out to … ah, A. L. in south-east London – OG listener!
’ He laughs, clearly reading the rest of Anika’s message to himself.
‘I aim to entertain. Good to hear from you. Um, shouts to the 893, don’t forget to leave us your name …
Right, people! We still have King Grease up in the studio, any questions for him or on this new album, hit us up on double five, three, two, one.
You’re listening to Cam Asiedu in the a.m.; we’ll be back right after this. ’
A honeyed RnB singer trills out, ‘Cam Asi-ayy-Doooo,’ then drops into a sultry bedroom voice to say, ‘I wake up with Cam Asiedu every morning,’ before jaunty commercials start to play and Anika dips the volume again. She hears enough of those as part of her job.
Anika would have no issue with waking up next to Cam either.
When he says her initials on the radio with that dose of oblivious familiarity, it sends self-conscious warmth spreading through her body.
Especially because every weekday she heads to the very place where, in a studio in the lofty heights of the glass building where she works, Cam Asiedu is broadcasting from.
SpinRadio is part of the same media corporation as the book publishers, newspapers and, of course, radio stations that make up the dubious empire in which Anika is a tiny cog, working in the on-air ad-sales department.
As more passengers crowd in around her on the train Anika looks up, realising they’re already halfway through the disappointingly short journey to Victoria.
This is where she starts losing her digital signal.
She rummages in her bag for the book on radio production that is meant to help her take a step towards her real goals, but then gets distracted as her eyes fall on the new press photo of Cam Asiedu in the radio-player app.
How does he look even better in this one than the last?
He wears a simple, oversized bomber-style leather jacket, his hair is a low-cut fade, his dark, smooth skin is pearlescent, and his lips, surrounded by a trim moustache above and goatee beard below, curve in a sexily knowing smirk that seems to pierce right through Anika’s screen and into her—
Buzzzz.