Chapter 2
outh London air tastes of diesel and despair. I am Isla. I am sixteen years old, and I swear the sprawling estate we live on was constructed entirely from poured concrete and broken dreams. Being born here does not feel like a beginning. It feels like a life sentence. My twin brother, Casen, represents the other half of that sentence, but unlike me, he has embraced the bars of our cage. He is always out there with the Peckham boys, fully wrapped up in the relentless London bullshit. The drills, the postcode beefs, the silent and deadly code of the streets. All of it consumes him entirely. And me? I am just trying to survive the domestic warzone that is our flat.
Our mother is a walking cliché. She is a single mum in a cramped council flat that eternally reeks of stale fags and cheap wine. She has been on her own since we were in nappies, and she has spent every year since making it abundantly clear that Casen and I were the heavy anchors dragging her down. We never knew our real dad. We never even saw a faded photograph of the man. He was just a convenient ghost, a void we learned to navigate and ignore.
So you can imagine the sheer disbelief that hit me last week. Mum stood in the narrow kitchen, a cigarette dangling from her painted lips and a lukewarm can of Carling clutched in her fist. Beside her stood a strange bloke in a crumpled leather jacket. He looked like a bad night at the local pub personified.
This is your dad now, she announced, tossing the words out as casually as if she were predicting the afternoon rain.
I just stared at him. He offered a yellowed, uncertain grin, shifting his weight on the sticky linoleum floor. Casen scoffed from the doorway, his eyes already hardening with that street-taught suspicion, ready to bolt back into the concrete labyrinth he preferred over this domestic circus.
The silence that followed her declaration was absolute, heavy enough to choke on. The television droned in the living room, providing a tinny soundtrack to the absurdity unfolding by the sink. I looked from my mother’s defiant, glassy-eyed stare to the stranger's battered boots. He smelled of cheap aftershave and something distinctly metallic, a scent that immediately set my teeth on edge. You cannot just assign us a father, I wanted to scream, but the words withered in my dry throat. I knew better than to challenge her when she had that restless, reckless energy humming under her skin. Instead, I tightened my grip on the strap of my rucksack, the phantom weight of my drumsticks grounding me. If Casen had the streets, I had my rhythm, a private sanctuary built of beats and silence. But looking at this intruder trying to mold himself into a family dynamic that had rotted years ago, I knew the fragile peace I fought so hard to maintain was about to shatter completely.
