The early morning radio played the sound of a meadow. Lavender attracts more bumblebees than honeybees because of their longer tongues, a zoologist who had never expected to speak on the radio said. The presenter laughed in their older person, educated person, Radio 4 way. The zoologist corrected the presenter. The presenter said that the weather that day would be crisp and fair, an English word meaning both light haired, light skinned, just and reasonable and moderate, and the experience of clement weather without rain or cloud or unbearable heat. Across the small island, and across one part of the other smaller island, people woke up, got dressed, showered, drank coffee, fed their children, overslept, got on trains and buses and started their cars; they walked into school halls, churches and community centres and voted.

No one slept. They stayed up all night. Melissa and Catarina watched the results come in at Ivy’s flat in Stockwell. They were drinking beers and gin and wine and eating pizzas. When the exit poll came they started to shout and grab each other. Femi called Melissa at 1am.

We kept Tooting. By over 15,000 votes. We took Battersea too.

She could hear him crying.

I didn’t think it was possible, he said.

Catarina put her hand up. She spoke loudly to project her voice.

Melissa watched as Catarina spoke, she heard the curves and corners of her accent. Catarina gesticulated. Behind Catarina’s hands and the profile of her face, the buildings turned blue under the lilac sky.

The blue buildings and the lilac sky filled her. She felt something like sureness in her body. Sureness that came from the words that Catarina spoke and the one hundred people listening with intention, who would discuss and think together into the night. They could make anything, unmake anything; the world stretched itself for them, as expansive as time, open and opening, mid pirouette

Melissa closed her eyes. She let herself fold into the night. She felt herself un bind.