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1	LOOSE CHANGE Andrea Levy First published in ‘The Independent on Sunday’
2	I AM NOT IN THE HABIT of making friends of strangers.
3	I'm a Londoner.
4	Not even little grey-haired old ladies passing comment on the weather can shame a response from me.
5	I'm a Londoner - aloof sweats from my pores.
6	But I was in a bit of a predicament; my period was two days early and I was caught unprepared.
7	I'd just gone into the National Portrait Gallery to get out of the cold.
8	It had begun to feel, as I'd walked through the bleak streets, like acid was being thrown at my exposed skin.
9	My fingers were numb, searching in my purse for change for the tampon machine; I barely felt the pull of the zip.
10	But I didn't have any coins.
11	I was forced to ask in a loud voice in this small lavatory, ‘Has anyone got three twenty-pence pieces?’
12	Everyone seemed to leave the place at once - all of them Londoners I was sure of it.
13	Only she was left - fixing her hair in the mirror.
14	‘Do you have change?’
15	She turned round slowly as I held out a ten-pound note.
16	She had the most spectacular eyebrows.
17	I could see the lines of black hair, like magnetised iron filings, tumbling across her eyes and almost joining above her nose.
18	I must have been staring to recall them so clearly.
19	She had wide black eyes and a round face with such a solid jaw line that she looked to have taken a gentle whack from Tom and Jerry's cartoon frying pan.
20	She dug into the pocket of her jacket and pulled out a bulging handful of money.
21	It was coppers mostly.
22	Some of it tinkled on to the floor.
23	But she had change: too much - I didn't want a bag full of the stuff myself.
24	‘Have you a five-pound note as well?’ I asked.
25	She dropped the coins on to the basin area, spreading them out into the soapy puddles of water that were lying there.
26	Then she said, ‘You look?’
27	She had an accent but I couldn't tell then where it was from; I thought maybe Spain.
28	‘Is this all you've got?’ I asked.
29	She nodded.
30	‘Well, look, let me just take this now...’
31	I picked three damp coins out of the pile.
32	‘Then I'll get some change in the shop and pay them back to you.’
33	Her gaze was as keen as a cat with string.
34	‘Do you understand?
35	Only I don't want all those coins.’
36	‘Yes,’ she said softly.
37	I was grateful.
38	I took the money.
39	But when I emerged from the cubicle the girl and her handful of change were gone.
40	I found her again staring at the portrait of Darcy Bussell.
41	Her head was inclining from one side to the other as if the painting were a dress she might soon try on for size.
42	I approached her about the money but she just said, ‘This is good picture.’
43	Was it my explanation left dangling or the fact that she liked the dreadful painting that caused my mouth to gape?
44	‘Really, you like it?’ I said.
45	‘She doesn't look real.
46	It looks like...
47	=N("’ Her eyelids fluttered sleepily as she searched for the right word, ‘a dream.’
48	That particular picture always reminded me of the doodles girls drew in their rough books at school.
49	‘You don't like?’ she asked.
50	I shrugged.
51	‘You show me one you like,’ she said.
52	As I mentioned before, I'm not in the habit of making friends of strangers, but there was something about this girl.
53	Her eyes were encircled with dark shadows so that even when she smiled - introducing herself cheerfully as Laylor - they remained as mournful as a glum kid at a party.
54	I took this fraternisation as defeat but I had to introduce her to a better portrait.
55	Alan Bennett with his mysterious little brown bag didn't impress her at all.
56	She preferred the photograph of Beckham.
57	Germaine Greer made her top lip curl and as for A. S. Byatt, she laughed out loud, ‘This is child make this?’
58	We were almost making a scene.
59	Laylor couldn't keep her voice down and people were beginning to watch us.
60	I wanted to be released from my obligation.
61	‘Look, let me buy us both a cup of tea,’ I said.
62	‘Then I can give you back your money.’
63	She brought out her handful of change again as we sat down at a table - eagerly passing it across to me to take some for the tea.
64	‘No, I'll get this,’ I said.
65	Her money jangled like a win on a slot machine as she tipped it back into her pocket.
66	When I got back with the tea, I pushed over the twenty-pences I owed her.
67	She began playing with them on the tabletop - pushing one around the other two in a figure of eight.
68	Suddenly she leant towards me as if there were a conspiracy between us and said, ‘I like art.’
69	With that announcement a light briefly came on in those dull eyes to reveal that she was no more than eighteen.
70	A student perhaps.
71	‘Where are you from?’ I asked.
72	‘Uzbekistan,’ she said.
73	Was that the Balkans?
74	I wasn't sure.
75	‘Where is that?’
76	She licked her finger, then with great concentration drew an outline on to the tabletop.
77	‘This is Uzbekistan,’ she said.
78	She licked her finger again to carefully plop a wet dot on to the map saying, ‘And I come from here - Tashkent.
79	‘And where is all this?’ I said, indicating the area around the little map with its slowly evaporating borders and town.
80	She screwed up her face as if to say nowhere.
81	‘Are you on holiday?’ I asked.
82	She nodded.
83	‘How long are you here for?’
84	Leaning her elbows on the table she took a sip of her tea.
85	‘Ehh, it is bitter!’ she shouted.
86	‘Put some sugar in it,’ I said, pushing the sugar sachets toward her.
87	She was reluctant, ‘Is for free?’ she asked.
88	‘Yes, take one.’
89	The sugar spilled as she clumsily opened the packet.
90	I laughed it off but she, with the focus of a prayer, put her cup up to the edge of the table and swept the sugar into it with the side of her hand.
91	The rest of the detritus that was on the tabletop fell into the tea as well.
92	Some crumbs, a tiny scrap of paper and a curly black hair floated on the surface of her drink.
93	I felt sick as she put the cup back to her mouth.
94	‘Pour that one away, I'll get you another one.’
95	Just as I said that a young boy arrived at our table and stood, legs astride, before her.
96	He pushed down the hood on his padded coat.
97	His head was curious - flat as a cardboard cut-out - with hair stuck to his sweaty forehead in black curlicues.
98	And his face was as doggedly determined as two fists raised.
99	They began talking in whatever language it was they spoke.
100	Laylor's tone pleading - the boy's aggrieved.
101	Laylor took the money from her pocket and held it up to him.
102	She slapped his hand away when he tried to wrest all the coins from her palm.
103	Then, as abruptly as he had appeared, he left.
104	Laylor called something after him.
105	Everyone turned to stare at her, except the boy, who just carried on.
106	‘Who was that?’
107	With the teacup resting on her lip, she said, ‘My brother.
108	He want to know where we sleep tonight.’
109	‘Oh, yes, where's that?’
110	I was rummaging through the contents of my bag for a tissue, so it was casually asked.
111	‘It's square we have slept before.’
112	‘Which hotel is it?’
113	I thought of the Russell Hotel, that was on a square with uniformed attendants, bed turning-down facilities, old-world style.
114	She was picking the curly black hair off her tongue when she said, ‘No hotel, just the square.’
115	It was then I began to notice things I had not seen before: dirt under each of her chipped fingernails, the collar of her blouse crumpled and unironed, a tiny cut on her cheek, a fringe that looked to have been cut with blunt nail-clippers.
116	I found a tissue and used it to wipe my sweating palms.
117	‘How do you mean just in the square?’
118	‘We sleep out in the square,’ she said.
119	It was so simple she spread her hands to suggest the lie of her bed.
120	She nodded.
121	‘Tonight?’
122	The memory of the bitter cold still tingled at my fingertips as I said, ‘Why?’
123	It took her no more than two breaths to tell me the story.
124	She and her brother had had to leave their country, Uzbekistan, when their parents, who were journalists, were arrested.
125	It was arranged very quickly - friends of their parents acquired passports for them and put them on to a plane.
126	They had been in England for three days but they knew no one here.
127	This country was just a safe place.
128	Now all the money they had could be lifted in the palm of a hand to a stranger in a toilet.
129	So they were sleeping rough - in the shelter of a square, covered in blankets, on top of some cardboard.
130	At the next table a woman was complaining loudly that there was too much froth on her coffee.
131	Her companion was relating the miserable tale of her daughter's attempt to get into publishing.
132	What did they think about the strange girl sitting opposite me?
133	Nothing.
134	Only I knew what a menacing place Laylor's world had become.
135	She'd lost a tooth.
136	I noticed the ugly gap when she smiled at me saying, ‘I love London.’
137	She had sought me out - sifted me from the crowd.
138	This young woman was desperate for help.
139	She'd even cunningly made me obliged to her.
140	‘I have picture of Tower Bridge at home on wall although I have not seen yet.’
141	But why me?
142	I had my son to think of.
143	Why pick on a single mother with a young son?
144	We haven't got the time.
145	Those two women at the next table, with their matching hand bags and shoes, they did nothing but lunch.
146	Why hadn't she approached them instead?
147	‘From little girl, I always want to see it...’ she went on.
148	I didn't know anything about people in her situation.
149	Didn't they have to go somewhere?
150	Croydon, was it?
151	Couldn't she have gone to the police?
152	Or some charity?
153	My life was hard enough without this stranger tramping through it.
154	She smelt of mildewed washing.
155	Imagine her dragging that awful stink into my kitchen. Cupping her filthy hands round my bone china. Smearing my white linen. Her big face with its pantomime eyebrows leering over my son. Slumping on to my sofa and kicking off her muddy boots as she yanked me down into her particular hell.
156	How would I ever get rid of her?
157	‘You know where is Tower Bridge?’
158	Perhaps there was something tender-hearted in my face.
159	When my grandma first came to England from the Caribbean she lived through days as lonely and cold as an open grave.
160	The story she told all her grandchildren was about the stranger who woke her while she was sleeping in a doorway and offered her a warm bed for the night.
161	It was this act of benevolence that kept my grandmother alive.
162	She was convinced of it.
163	Her Good Samaritan.
164	‘Is something wrong?’ the girl asked.
165	Now my grandmother talks with passion about scrounging refugees; those asylum seekers who can't even speak the language, storming the country and making it difficult for her and everyone else.
166	‘Last week...’ she began, her voice quivering, ‘I was in home.’
167	This was embarrassing.
168	I couldn't turn the other way, the girl was staring straight at me.
169	‘This day, Friday,’ she went on, ‘I cooked fish for my mother and brother.’
170	The whites of her eyes were becoming soft and pink; she was going to cry.
171	‘This day Friday I am here in London,’ she said.
172	‘And I worry I will not see my mother again.’
173	Only a savage would turn away when it was merely kindness that was needed.
174	I resolved to help her.
175	I had three warm bedrooms, one of them empty.
176	I would make her dinner.
177	Fried chicken or maybe poached fish in wine.
178	I would run her a bath filled with bubbles.
179	Wrap her in thick towels heated on a rail.
180	I would then hunt out some warm clothes and after I had put my son to bed I would make her cocoa.
181	We would sit and talk.
182	I would let her tell me all that she had been through.
183	Wipe her tears and assure her that she was now safe.
184	I would phone a colleague from school and ask him for advice.
185	Then in the morning I would take Laylor to wherever she needed to go.
186	And before we said goodbye I would press my phone number into her hand.
187	All Laylor's grandchildren would know my name.
188	Her nose was running with snot.
189	She pulled down the sleeve of her jacket to drag it across her face and said, ‘I must find my brother.’
190	I didn't have any more tissues.
191	I'll get you something to wipe your nose,’ I said.
192	I got up from the table.
193	She watched me, frowning; the tiny hairs of her eyebrows locking together like Velcro.
194	I walked to the counter where serviettes were lying in a neat pile.
195	I picked up four.
196	Then standing straight I walked on.
197	Not back to Laylor but up the stairs to the exit.
198	I pushed through the revolving doors and threw myself into the cold.