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‘Yeah,' Natalie replied, feeling a sense of relief. ‘Yeah, rap's cool, I used to love MC Lucky till he got all serious. Now I'm into the Tribe and stuff like that.'

‘Me too, I love the Tribe. If yu like the Tribe, you'll like dis place, dis place is great for rap tunes. Try and make it down there if you can, see ya later maybe. It's girls free before ten.'

With that all three turned around and went into the fried chicken shop.

The Gang of Three were rounding off their conversation behind Natalie. Natalie was still recovering. She began to wonder if she sometimes looked threatening and if she herself had been misjudged by people in the past. For people to be friendly, did they have to have permanent smiles on their faces?

Martin joined her with the other two following. ‘Who were they?'

‘Who?'

‘Those black girls you were talking to.'

‘Me friends.'

‘I didn't know you had black friends.' Martin spoke in almost a whisper.

‘I haven't got black friends,' she replied firmly. ‘I've just got friends.'

Martin looked around and again in a whisper he said, ‘Hush.'

Martin knew that there was no way he would get away with a racist remark here. The group they had been talking to had ethnic origins that ranged from the Philippines, to Africa and Bosnia and he was not going to upset any of them.

‘Let's make a move,' he said.

They walked down Green Street. Green Street was a street with two personalities. By day it was a shopping area, at night clubbers used its kebab houses,
restaurants and Indian take-aways. Groups gathered on corners.

As they walked, Martin tried to guess the smells he came across: fish and chips, curries, pizza and kebabs. Not being an imaginative eater, he got many of them wrong but it was sometimes hard to distinguish smells in places where they all seemed to meet. As they passed the various butchers, all of them played dodge the chicken heads. He remembered how Green Street was described as the heart of the Asian community in a school project that he had done on local history. He picked out Chinese shops, African dress shops, a Filipino bookshop, shops that sold jellied eels, Jamaican breads and Somalian foods. Then he saw a reminder of the sadder side of life in this area. Many of the shops had metal shutters on their windows and doors to protect them from racist attacks. But here racists had even attacked the shutters. Some of the shutters had racist graffiti painted on them and others had scorch marks left after fire bomb attacks.

At the end of Green Street there was a massive police station that towered way above the other buildings. Martin stopped and looked up at it. ‘Forest Fortress. I hate this place.'

Natalie quizzed him. ‘What do you hate, the place or the people in it?'

‘I don't care about the people in it, man. Just look
at that building, it's the most uninviting building I've ever seen.'

Mark looked up at the dull red brickwork. ‘It's a cop shop, cop shops ain't supposed to look inviting. It's supposed to be a symbol of authority.'

‘You mean state oppression,' Martin replied. ‘The papers said thousands and thousands of pounds been spent on this place – can't they make state oppression or authority look pretty, man?'

Natalie gently slapped Martin around the back of his head. ‘What do you know about state oppression, stupid?'

Next door to the police station was ‘Prizes Galore'. Outside it said ‘
Amusement Arcade
' but in truth it was just an old shoe shop with a couple of gambling machines in it. When Natalie and the Gang of Three arrived it was packed out and not one of the gamblers in there was over 18. Even the girl giving out the change looked underage. Here there was no such thing as silence; the machines constantly buzzed and bleeped. A pinball machine in one corner let out a
Hammer Horror
style howl every two minutes if no one played it, whilst in another corner a fruit machine shaped like a woman actually spoke. ‘Play me, play me, play me.' Together they walked around, watching the games that were being played. When Martin heard the fruit machine calling
play me
, his eyes lit up with excitement. ‘I'll play you,' he exclaimed.

Natalie put herself between him and the machine. ‘No, cause I know once you get playing we're gonna be stuck here all night – and how much money you got anyway?'

‘Ah, don't worry, I got money and I only want one game.'

Mark took a good look at the machine and laughed. ‘He just fancies her.'

Matthew agreed. ‘Yeah, hey, don't be fooled, Martin, she's only after your money.'

Martin began to search his pockets for change but Natalie wouldn't give him a chance.

‘Come on, let's go, I'm not staying here.'

Martin put on his ‘puzzled' face and asked, ‘What's up?'

‘OK den, you stay, I'm going somewhere else.' With that Natalie headed for the door.

Martin raised his eyebrows and turned to follow her. Mark and Matthew followed him.

Outside the arcade Mark took control. ‘Right. Where we going den? We're just wasting time, let's go somewhere good.'

‘I know,' Matthew replied. ‘Let's go to the Unity Club.'

Martin was quick to interrupt. ‘No way, man, that place is for soft kids. Table tennis, pool, tiddlywinks – that's no way to spend your Saturday night.'

The Unity Club was a youth club in a church run
by a priest named Tony. In reality the Unity was not the coolest place to go, but the kids in the area sometimes used it as a meeting place and as somewhere to shelter from the rain.

‘Yeah, you're right,' Matthew acknowledged. ‘We should go somewhere where there's music.'

Martin's face lit up. ‘I've got an idea, a good one as usual. Let's go to dis new rave club. It's called Psycho and it's just on Forest Road.'

Mark was never keen on rave music. ‘Nah, rave music, boff boff, bang bang, all night and the people are weird.'

Matthew agreed. ‘Yeah, last time I went to one of dem raves up in Ilford, someone tried to sell me drugs every five minutes.'

Martin started to defend his idea but he sensed that he had already lost this one. ‘There's drugs everywhere, man, everywhere ya go there's dealers.'

‘Yeah, but those rave places are crazy on Es and at least in other places ya not getting it every five minutes.'

Martin gave up and turned to Natalie, who was reading the leaflet given to her outside the fried chicken shop. ‘That's it,' she said, ‘let's go there, only three pounds entrance, ladies free before ten.'

‘What kind of sounds?' Mark enquired.

‘Rap,' Natalie replied.

Martin put on his ‘disgusted' face. ‘RAP!' He moved close to Natalie, took a corner of the leaflet and read it out loud.

He looked at Natalie. ‘I'm not going there, it's all black music.'

Natalie was outraged. ‘What you on about – nearly all music's black music. What do you know?'

‘The place is gonna be full of blacks, they don't like us … OK, some like us but not in their clubs.'

‘I'm fed up of you, if you don't come with me I'm
going there on my own, I got friends there.'

Martin couldn't quite believe what he was hearing but he could tell that she meant it. Mark tried to make peace. ‘It's only three pounds each and we all got over three pounds, so let's go. If we don't like it, we'll move on. I reckon it'll be OK!'

‘Me too,' Matthew agreed. ‘Anyway, Martin, what you got against blacks? No black's ever hurt you.'

‘I ain't got nothing against blacks, they're just different, they dance different and everything.'

Natalie walked away from the group and called Martin over to her. ‘If you don't like someone just because they're different you got problems. What do ya expect, everyone to be like
you
? Maybe you should have went out with Pat James, she doesn't like anyone.'

‘Do you think dat's funny?'

‘No, I'm not messing, if you keep on like this I won't go out with you anymore. Yu gotta respect people and if you don't wanna go to the rap club don't force yourself but I'm going.'

‘Ya really serious?'

‘Yeah.'

Martin got the message loud and clear. As they joined Mark and Matthew he proclaimed in a mediocre rap style,

‘
OK, you guys,

me and you and the girl I love

are going to

the rap club.
'

Mark was surprised by his quick change of mind. ‘Are you OK, mate?'

‘Yeah, man, rap's cool.'

They arrived at Dancemania with ten minutes to go before ten o'clock. Martin couldn't help noticing how big the two bouncers were who stood at the door and how they looked like identical twins. The counter staff and the other club goers all looked big too. To his surprise they weren't all black.

At the youth club dances and the raves that he had been to in the past, most of the people were around his age. At these places he was quite well known. But here he was just like anyone else. He felt a sense of adventure, like going into an unknown world.

Mark and Matthew handed their three pounds each to their leader Martin and he paid the entrance fees. This gave him a feeling of importance. The woman taking the money just waved Natalie on and they were in. The dance floor was packed with bodies moving to the music. There was no order. This was freestyle with people dancing any way they wanted to. A cloud of tobacco smoke hung just below the ceiling. Martin
thought that the way the lights impacted on the smoke made the place look heavenly.

The four newcomers stared into the dance floor. The music was as loud as the raves that they were accustomed to but the outstanding feature with this sound system was the bass. The floor shivered with the bass notes and even though the four had not fully acclimatised yet, they could not stop themselves from nodding their heads and tapping their feet to the beat. The bass made sure of that, it was unnatural to fight it.

Natalie felt someone gently pull her ponytail. It was one of the girls from the fried chicken shop, the one wearing the Jamaican flag. She had to shout directly into Natalie's ear to be heard. ‘So ya made it, den?'

‘Yeah.' Not having spoken since being inside the club Natalie did not realise how easy it was for words to get lost.

‘Pardon?'

‘I said YEAH,' Natalie shouted.

‘Which one's ya boyfriend, den?'

Natalie pointed to Martin, who by now was nodding frantically to a record by the rapper Freak Froggy Frog.

‘Does he like rap, den?'

‘He does now,' Natalie replied with a smile on her face.

‘Come here and meet me home girls.'

‘Meet your who?' Natalie shouted.

‘Me home girls, me crew, me frens.'

Natalie signalled the three to follow her and they followed Natalie's new friends to a corner of the club where the music was just a couple of decibels lower than on the dance floor.

The painted brick walls covered with condensation made it look as if even the walls were sweating. This corner was more relaxed, people came here to chill out or cool down when things got too hot. The other two girls that Natalie had met outside the fried chicken shop were drinking beer and looking out for people they knew. As the two groups met they greeted each other with a nod. Not a word was spoken until Matthew felt that he had to say something and exercise his tongue.

He leant over to Natalie. ‘Hey Natalie, introduce us to ya friends, I feel stupid.'

Natalie leaned over to the girl wearing the Jamaican flag. ‘What's your names?'

She gathered them all together into a tight little circle and they introduced themselves to each other. The Jamaican flag girl was called Marica. She was the small one, only five foot and a great basketball player. The girl wearing the
I Love Jamaica
T-shirt had just returned from Jamaica with her parents. This was the reason for all the Jamaican paraphernalia. Her name was Tina but everyone called her
Teen.
The tallest of
the three was called Nasreen which meant Jericho Rose. When she first told Marica and Teen what her name meant they began to call her
Jericho Rose
and she hated it, so they now called her
Naz
. Because of her height people always thought she was a basketball player but she hated basketball and was crazy about West Ham United Football Club.

A couple of attempts were made to strike up some conversation but the volume of the music only allowed a few words to be said at a time. An exchange of ideas or a debate on a theory was very difficult.

For the next couple of records, everyone stood around nodding their heads to the music. Teen left the group and quickly returned with two large cans of beer. She pulled the rings and opened both cans. After taking a sip from one she passed it to Marica, then she took a sip from the other can and passed it to Martin.

Natalie leaned over to Martin and shouted over the music. ‘What are you doing? You don't drink.'

Martin smiled and replied back loudly, ‘This ain't drinking. Two cans between seven people, you can't get drunk on that.'