Untitled by Steve Mowat

Pick em up outside the opening night of a hip new club night in your "minicab". Listen to them babbling about a party at an address somewhere in North London. Nod, be friendly. Happily put on the mixtape that one of them produces from a brightly coloured retro bowling bag. Pretend to be oblivious to their talk about drugs, and only snatch glances in the rear view as they hastily make out, leaning all over each other. Ask em where they've been. Keep smiling. Tell them that it's been quiet tonight, but it's normally busy. Oh me? I'm going to go back home once I drop you off. Yeah, you're my last fare. Drive slowly through the dead industrial slums of stratford. When the girl child starts saying that you're going the wrong way, just tell them that you're taking a short cut, and it's a flat fee. There's...roadworks.

Pull up on a bit of land that was previously a plastic-injection manufacturing plant, but now is just an expanse of old concrete, with a few bits of metal jutting out the ground. The alarm bells will be ringing now. She's going "what the fuck?! Where is this? What the fuck?". Get out the car, and she'll get out with you, the boy now paralysed with fear. He's convinced you're going to rape her (you're not), but something about the scene stops him from acting. It's all so...cinematic. He's already writing a blog about it behind those beautiful, bloodshot eyes. He knows that he should get out and help, but best make sure it's really serious, because he's never even clenched a fist. He tries it now, and there's a weakness running from his elbow to his bejeweled wrist. Anyway, she'll sort it out. Part of why he likes her is because she knows how to stand her ground.

So you get out and the girl is shouting, getting out her mobile. Just reach out and knock it out her hand. Won't take any effort, just raise your arm and it'll clatter on the soaking black concrete. She realises that it's all going wrong. The whole scene is only lit by the dreary lights of the homebound office managers and account assistants, passing in their mondeos on a road 20 metres away. She looks at you, the fuck you melting like an icecube in a frying pan. It falls away before your eyes. Lock the doors to the car with the remote keys so the boy can only watch, the rain drumming on car roof, and the smell of an old 'Magic Tree' air freshener reminding him of his grandparents' ride. You wouldn't know he was in there, if the passing lights weren't catching his glasses.