Natasha Brown (2)

I don’t know which firm, specifically, the protests were targeting. I was a new grad back then, in crispy Primark shirts and soft M&S trousers. Excited, terrified, eager to work. The guards had cordoned off the building’s entrance with metal barriers. I pressed through the crowds; a mass of sandals, blonde dreadlocks and body odour. Their poster boards and voices jeered from all sides. Arms crossed, I kept my head down and walked quick, focused on the ground ahead. Some shouted as I showed my card. Security lifted aside the barrier to let me through.

Their eyes held. They watched me cross the divide and disappear through revolving doors.

•

Let’s say: A boy grows up in a country manor. Attends a private preparatory school. Spends his weekends out in the barn with his father. Together they build a great, stone sundial. The boy, now a young man, achieves two E-grades at A-level, then travels to Jamaica to teach. His sun shadows cycle round and round and he himself winds up, up. Up until the boy, an old man now, is right up at the tippity-top of the political system. Buoyed by a wealth he’s never had to earn, never worked for. He’s never dealt in grubby compromise. And from this vantage, he points a finger – an old finger, the skin translucent, arm outstretched and wavering. He points it at you: The problem.

Always, the problem.