¶ There was a big moon that night. muddled on occasion by the passing clouds she would peer down onto the Thames, through dusty sky panels, and onto our faces.

It was called Fish Island because of the factory warehouses which processed fish. One was still operational, and when walking past you could smell the reek of the dead fish; it was nearly impossible to avoid.

The rest of the old factories were now only known by the colour of their cast iron gates : Black Gates, Red Gates and one called A12.

And then there were the squatters who had taken over an empty lot and put tarp all around the fence so you couldn’t see in,

but if you climbed, you could peer over and see their campers illuminated by large bonfires at night.

The island never slept and the police never came, so there was no one to make them wake.

But it finally happened on a summer Sunday morning when the rave-goers lost in Puck’s magic dust met strollers with prams.

The screeching of seagulls, I remember, barely cut the tension in the air.

‘Beauty is fleeting,’ he would say, words almost lost in the thumping music next door,

‘like smoke’ : beautiful curls sweeping up and through the air like our entangled limbs on that ripped red-fuchsia couch … ‘but gone in a moment.’

Glass and titanium eclipsed the cool gaze of the moon from our faces;

our playful glares grew lost in its shadows. ∎