Cat and the Time Travelling Vespa: Fishwife

Cat Rossi had rebuilt the Vespa from a heap of bent metal and wild hopes. The frame came from a garden in Peckham, the engine from a bloke in Walthamstow, the cherry paint from a tin labelled “Lipstick Red” that glowed like tomato skin in the autumn light of 1984. When she kicked the starter, the two-stroke sang like a wasp that had swallowed a harmonica. It was beautiful.

Her GS160 looked like the machines mods leaned on in old photos, part mirror, part moon. Cat didn’t lean; she rode — boots on the little platforms, her mum’s scarf flicking her neck. She knew the scooter travelled time. Last spring she’d nipped to 1970 and returned with silver boots she absolutely hadn’t paid for. Time was petrol on flagstones; and Cat had already had a few temporal adventures.

That night London smelt of rain and chips. Cat parked outside Tempo Records beneath a poster of The Cure’s smeared eyeliner. Mr Kapoor, hair quiffed like a stubborn Elvis, slid a letter across the counter. FINAL DEMAND shouted up at her.

“We could busk,” Cat said.

He smiled without his eyes. Tempo had saved her twice — once with a cassette handed across the counter, once with a rare 7-inch for her dad before the hospital smell took him. The shop was thin as a book turned sideways, walls patched with Top of the Pops notices and polaroids of lanky boys in eyeliner. In the glass case, a space where an LP ought to be.