On Friday nights, we kick ball at a five-a-side. Kevin is the only one who is truly gifted, with an angelic touch that could stop anything dead. The rest — Dion, Miles and me — are backing singers for the main show. It’s always the four of us, or at least it feels like always: Kevin, tall and quiet and magnetic; Dion and Miles, who are most similar in build and temperament, always getting at each other, but quick to turn anger into laughter; and me, happy whenever in their company. We are fearless in each other’s presence, our bodies free to sing their songs.
Tonight, we walk home, sweaty, from the football pitch, to my place. Kevin’s in a student house where it’s never quite the right temperature, freezing in the winter, a sweatbox in the summer; Dion’s studio flat is tiny; and Miles has been crashing with me for a few weeks now, so it’s always here that we end up. We order in, sprawl on the sofa and have vicious, friendly debates. At some point, someone puts on a film but we don’t watch it. Kevin admonishes Miles about a girl he went out with in our first year (“Nothing against Hannah, you were the one that was a mess”); Barfest comes up, that weekend where we and all the other students from the Midlands converged upon Leicester for a never-ending party. We talk about the time we were all hired to work the night shift at a car park and our supervisor found us kicking ball at 3am, using the barriers as goal posts, desperately trying to stay awake. Soon we’ll be back home, scattered across London: I’ll be heading back to Lewisham, Dion to Seven Sisters, Kevin to Hillingdon, Bermondsey for Miles. But not yet.
The time comes and goes for them to leave and no one moves. Not until around three, when we all heap into Kevin’s car, the sleek, black BMW he saved and saved for, on the search for chips, all craving something. We eat with the car doors open, our legs sprawled on the pavement, salad from the boxes straying to the ground. The birds have started their dawn chorus early and we are also creatures in flight, getting back into the car, taking a left when we should take a right, taking the ring road out of the city centre. The country park never closes, and we slide into the car park and out of the car. I hear the soft whisper of sleep as, one by one, we yawn. But we’ve come too far now. Dawn is cracking the sky indigo, daybreak humming its quiet.
We wander a muddy path until we reach a wooded clearing. Kevin has a ball and starts juggling it from one foot to the other, passing it to Dion, who wastes no time in tapping it to Miles, who, after bouncing it on foot, knee, chest, heads it towards me. I slip a little, but still manage to stretch a foot out, tapping the ball up. The next touch is too quick and suddenly, I’m out of control, trying to keep this ball in the air, and I hear them all shouting my name: Michael, Michael, come on, Michael. But it’s not meant to be. We groan as the ball hits the ground, bounces once, twice, rolling away from us. Kevin is grinning at me. Dion is gazing up into the trees. Everything is still. And that’s when Miles says, “Let’s take a trip.”
It’s 6am when we make it back to mine. In the woods, we all agreed to Miles’s idea but now, back in my living room, we know we need to show each other we meant it.
“All right, lads,” Dion says, rubbing his hands together once more.
“Where we going?”
“To the coast. Somewhere with water,” I say. The others murmur in agreement. Mum always used to tell me about those trips she would take as a teenager with her friends to Labadi Beach and I tried to imagine her then, young, unburdened, picking her way across sand or stone towards a shoreline, but I never quite could.
“Brighton?” Kevin suggests.
“Nah, nah,” Miles says. He pulls an A–Z from the shelf and flicks through the pages, before splaying the book across the table. We crowd around him as his finger trails across the paper like he’s doing a dot-to-dot. “So we’ll go from there… through here… all the way to… here.”
“What’s in…” Dion squints at the page, “Dover?”
“The ferry.” Dion gets up from the table, taking a seat on my sofa.
“Yeah, I don’t know about all that, man.” He takes a purple durag out of his pocket and begins to sling it over an immaculate haircut.
“Yeah man, all that driving?” Kevin says.
“We’d split the load,” Miles says.
From the sofa, Dion is already shaking his head. “This feels like another one of those situations.”
“Another one of what situations?”
“Where Miles has a mad idea and we all go with it,” Dion replies.
“It’s not like that,” Miles says. “It’s never like that.”
“Really, bro?” This, delivered with a tired smile, has an edge which borders on unkindness. “This feels like that rave in Leeds.”
“How was I meant to know it was gonna be locked off by the time we got there?” I try to reel it in.
“Let’s at least think about this,” I say.
“Let’s not.” Miles, palms skyward, paces about the room. “Let’s just do it. What’s stopping us?”
“We can’t just get up and go,” Kevin says.
“Why? Student loan just dropped so we’re good. I know none of us are due anywhere for at least another couple of weeks. Come on. Aside from Leeds, every road trip we’ve taken has been calm.” This gets us all smiling. “When’s the next time we could do this?”
Dion glances at me, then at Kevin, who is nodding. His bottom lip pokes out, eyebrows raised.
“OK. So say we get to Dover. We take the ferry to France. What next?”
“Wherever the wind takes us,” says Miles. “Or something like that.”
At the traffic lights at the edge of the city, Ty pulls up beside us, his long, slender arm resting on his car door. His engine hums like his being, low and sure.
“Where you man going?”
“Road trip,” I reply, from the passenger’s seat.
Ty looks away. “You man are crazy!” He pulls off between amber and green, surely past 40, 50, 60. Kevin gives chase for as far as he can maintain 40; it’s not long before Ty’s car hits the turn off for the motorway and is gone. That’s how Ty has been for the three years we’ve known him, like a ghost, a glimmer, a flash of gorgeous light which never stays long. One time, outside a house party, leaning against his car with a red cup in hand, he told me he was here for a good time, not a long time. There was more to say, like, nothing is promised, or, life is too short, ad-libs or maxims our parents would speak, but Ty only smiled, the gold in his mouth glinting.
“Yo, stub that out, man!” Kevin shouts, looking up at the rear-view mirror. I glance over my shoulder and Dion has a lighter raised to a smouldering joint. “I gotta get rid of it before we leave the country.”
“Why’d you even bring it?” Kevin shakes his head. “Tryna get us bagged?”
“That’ll be your fault for driving such a bait car,” Dion replies. We say nothing to this, knowing that if we are stopped, at any time, there’s more at play than the car.
“Just pull over, man,” Miles says. Kevin says nothing but pulls off into a side road. Miles and Dion jump out and are a few steps gone when Miles turns to beckon me. I raise my hand to say it’s OK. I want to go too but figure I should stay and keep the peace, which mostly involves me saying nothing, while Kevin sighs heavily, his head tipped back against the headrest. They return after five minutes, dragging their legs heavy like cinderblocks, their minds moored to stone islands. Miles, leaning into the space between driver and passenger seat, his eyes wide and black, alive, saying, “Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go!”
The wind, as Miles described it, takes us from Coventry to Dover, Dover to Calais, through the French countryside, along a playlist which features jungle and garage cuts. Our car erupts when we hear the opening lines of “Incredible”, and we wheel it up again and again, to hear the lines as we might have heard them first, as those in a rave mid-’90s might have heard them. We all get too excited when “A Little Bit of Luck” comes on and sing badly to “Summer of Love”.
Summer’s here, leaning in through our open windows, flashes of gorgeous light and warmth we know don’t stay long. Kevin beams at the open road, or to some thought I’m not privy to, or maybe it’s just this moment bringing him joy. The others play cards on the back seat. I rest my arm on the edge of the open window, like Ty did, here for a good time, and the wind takes us forward, further. Towards Paris, eschewing the Eiffel Tower in favour of Pigalle, heading towards the multicoloured basketball court where Dave and AJ Tracey filmed part of their “Thiago Silva” video, where we have an impromptu photo shoot, playing the song from K’s portable speaker, rapping along. We make it back as an inspector is scribbling the car adjacent a ticket and we scramble into our car, veering away towards the motorway. We drive and drive until we pass the border of Paris and keep going. We drive and drive, because we don’t know what else to do. We drive and drive, because, why not?
After a day, we stop off in Nîmes, which Dion tells us is the town his mother came to when they moved to France, before moving to London. He’s too young to remember but even if he doesn’t know specifics, he can feel it. It’s a slow, old city and by the time we arrive at 8pm, much of it is closed. We check into an Airbnb Miles booked en route and do rock-paper-scissors for who will sleep in the two singles, who will top and tail in the double. Miles and I get the singles and Dion insists the competition is rigged.
To make up for it, Miles and I dash to the supermarket, racing each other around the aisles. When we return to Kevin and Dion, the room is heavy with smoke. I fry chicken in shallow oil and we eat with our hands, the grease soiling our fingers. It’s as warm outside as it is inside. We sit shirtless on the short balcony, sending smoke into the night. There’s the faint crackle of thunder, but the air holds. I don’t remember falling asleep but when I wake, Miles is in the other bed, Kevin and Dion are sprawled out on the sofas in the living room. Music still murmurs from the portable speaker in the corner of the room. I don’t know this song. From out on the balcony, I see dawn is cracking the sky. I hear a stirring inside and Kevin comes out to join me. We nod and smile but we don’t speak. We don’t need to. We watch the city as it stutters awake. Kevin’s phone vibrates across the table. He snatches it up and declines the call. The phone rings again. He does the same.
“Becca?” I ask. He nods.
“What you gonna do?”
He shrugs.
“What does…” I repeat the lifting of the shoulders, “mean?”
“I dunno. Trying not to think about it.”
“You’re not scared?”
“Of course I am. Everything’s changing.”
“Yo, we need to be out by 12, you know.”
“How you mean? You only booked one night?” Dion asks.
“Yeah, man!” Miles stuffs a hoodie into his bag. “Gotta keep it moving.”
“To where?”
“The water. Let’s hit the coast.”
“Yeah, but where man?”
“Barcelona.”
Dion’s eyes narrow. “But we’re in France.”
“Yeah. But we get in the car, drive into Spain, down to Barcelona.”
“Ah! Silly me, thanks for clearing that up.” Dion kisses his teeth. “Yeah, no, I’m not doing that.”
“Listen, man, I’ve got a friend…”
Ah, come on, Miles…”
“Hear me out! I’ve got a friend, said we can crash at her place. She’s saying there’s a massive party tonight that we cannot miss. You’re telling me, we’ve come all this way and you don’t wanna go party? We just gonna chill in the apartment? Could’ve done that at home, man.”
Dion rubs his forehead. He looks up, first at Kevin, then me. “You man OK with this?”
“I’m down,” I say.
Kevin shrugs. “If there’s a party, I’m deh deh.”
Dion knows when he’s beaten.
“This has to be the last stop, man.”
Barcelona is a few hours away and we make a slow lope down the coast, arriving late in the afternoon. We clink cervezas at a tiny bar tucked into one of the tall and narrow streets. We eat lunch at a restaurant in the Old Town, ordering too much tapas, watching Dion squirm trying octopus for the first time. Leaving the restaurant, Dion walks ahead of us, past a pair of women, and one of them turns her head to look back at him the same moment he does to her, so we hang back, watch as he wrangles his way around the few Spanish phrases he knows. She’s beautiful and he’s gorgeous and it’s not just what we can see, it’s the way they stand, the way they smile, who they are. They seem to glow. He hands over his phone and she punches in her number. We wait until the two women have rounded the corner, before we run around the streets, celebrating like boys. We all giddy, we all nostalgic, we all time
travelling.
And then we pile back into the car. We drive and drive, until the sky begins to darken. Miles rings and rings his friend, but she doesn’t pick up. Kevin begins to fume, his driving more and more erratic, until we hit a hidden pothole and there’s a pop like the thud of thunder.
No one says anything. We manage to pull over before the car comes to a halt. We all get out to inspect the damage. The tyre on the driver’s side has split, already soft and lopsided. Kevin swears but it’s Dion who spills, turning to Miles.
“You always do this…”
“Dion…”
“Nah, nah. F*** this.”
“Dion, it’s calm,” I say.
“Nah, leave me!” There’s a brief scuffle, as Kevin and I try to cut him off from Miles, but his anger pulses and climbs, and he pushes his way between us, towards Miles.
“Calm down, man,” Miles says.
“Don’t tell me to calm down.” Dion squares up. “This situation is anything but calm.”
I go to interrupt again but Kevin signals I should hang back. Suddenly their heads are touching, dark crowns in the dusk.
“Come then.” Miles takes a step back, undoes the studs from both his ears and his chain too, sliding the length into his pocket. His left fist curls slightly, like he’s holding a drumstick. The other hand talks as he does. “You wanna hit me? Come hit me.”
There’s silence here and Dion looks at the ground. I resist the urge to look away. Miles sighs. “Just say what you wanna say, man.”
I want Dion to speak for us. To say we’re scared. Scared we won’t be able to do this anymore. That we might start living our lives in fear, rather than the freedom we have around one another. Scared we might know death. Scared we might stop dreaming of lives as chefs and musicians and footballers. Scared we might stop dreaming. That we’ve been through a lot together and done a lot of growing in this time, but if given the choice, we might wheel up the past few years, start this music again. I want Dion to speak for us. I want him to say everything’s changing. But I don’t think he knows how to say this. I don’t
think any of us do.
Instead, it is Miles whose shoulders relax first, reaches in his pocket and puts the studs back in his ears, who moves towards Dion and holds him close in the slow darkness. Dion’s anger slumps out of him. Kevin pulls at me and we go towards them. The four of us here, together, our bodies pressed close.
We leave the car where it is and walk a few minutes until we reach an open expanse. None of us realised how close we were to the water. The beach never closes. The sky is starless. We’re all beautiful under the blue of an early moon.
Mum always told me about those trips she would take to Labadi Beach with her friends. Impromptu trips where someone would rent a van, not unlike the tro-tros which ferry Ghanaians around the city, and drive to the coast. A boombox slung atop someone’s shoulder, the ocean and each other for company. In this moment, I am her, this careful abandon like a shirk, a shake, a twist away from a life I know. In this moment, we are a hopeful song. In this moment, we are fearless and languid.
I look at my friends, as we make our way down the beach, scattered with people here and there, down to where the shore breaks. We take off our shoes and let the water lap at our feet. The world stretches as far as we can see. I know, in this moment, I love them. I know, in this moment, if I say it aloud, my own words will return to me like an echo. I know that, in time, the echo will fade. But not yet.
Caleb Azumah Nelson is a British–Ghanaian writer and photographer. It was his dream to become an author, a dream which began as a teenager in 2019, after his godfather, aunt and three of his grandparents died. In 2021 he released his debut novel, Open Water, which won the UK’s ‘Costa Book Award for First Novel’. His follow-up novel ‘Small Worlds’ was published in 2023, and is a coming of age story of a Ghanian Londoner trying to make amends with his inner-self within a bitter world full of temptations.