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KARA   I’ve been doing this lately, leaving the flat when Luke’s at work, switching the phone to airplane mode It feels like practice, like I’m building up to something   London is skittish and excitable, a collective disquiet in the dusk The fires have been lit and the air is cinder toffee and carbon I’m following the dark gleam of the river Lea, the domes of light over Canary Wharf No one knows I’m here and the feeling is sweet and weightless like candy floss   I waited until Luke had crossed the square, disappeared on to Mile End Road, before I grabbed the ankle boots from the cupboard, dusted my face with bronzing powder He’d left towels on the bathroom floor, a sheen of condensation on the walls I rubbed a circle in the mirror, raced through the ritual: orange lipstick, copper eyeshadow, black kohl The minutes had colluded with him as he paced and nitpicked in the hallway, I thought he’d never go   Canning Town is there, a mute glow beyond the pylons and recycling plants of Star Lane Visibility is patchy, a brownish fog rising from the marshes at Leamouth The terrain is deeply ingrained, I could draw all its lanes and alleys if I had to, but tonight it plays tricks, forges duplicates and wrong turnings I crisscross avenues of crashed cars and high brick walls, stopping sometimes to look through padlocked gates There are yards inside yards, palettes burning like signalling beacons It should be easy to find Idris, to follow the map with the Ordnance Arms circled in black The lines are scored deep, still legible in the half-light of stalled construction sites Seeing him in September had caught me off guard; he was suddenly there in front of McDonald’s, eyes lasering through the crowds I’d been out of circulation so long I’d started to think I’d imagined those years before Luke; they were like pages in a dream journal, marvellous and unreachable But in the blue-white light of that shopping centre, with its auto-tuned pop and