Stitch-Up by Sophie Hamilton

last night?”
    â€œI use it as a precaution when I’m sussing out new routes. Most places I’ve checked. Know which cameras are live and which aren’t. It’s a science.”
    He slowly rotated the mirror, so that – bit by bit – we glimpsed a smart stuccoed street with a church and a country-style pub. The leafy street was deserted apart from a magpie strutting down the central road markings. White houses rose up on either side like glaciers.
    Uh oh, one for sorrow , I thought, surreptitiously saluting the magpie.
    â€œSee, there’s a camera above the pub, another on the offy and one on the church’s steeple.” Latif rotated the mirror slowly. “Most of the houses are rigged too.” He tsked. “Paranoids. This city is full of paranoids.”
    â€œEr, talking of paranoid.” I nodded towards his mirror-and-stick. “You’re a fine one to talk.”
    â€œYeah, but I’m paranoid in a good way.” He gave me that crooked smile again.
    â€œYeah. Right. Silly me. You channel good paranoia.” I rolled my eyes.
    He shrugged. “I hate the way there’s CCTV everywhere silently filming us going about our everyday lives. It’s nuts. That’s why I dodge the cameras. It’s an obsession.” He paused. “I know this’ll sound whack, but I believe thatCCTV cameras steal stuff from you. Spontaneity. Freedom. Your right to be different.”
    A smile twitched the corner of my mouth. “They haven’t cramped your style yet!”
    He shrugged. “Yeah! But I’m ahead of the game.”
    For a moment, I thought about telling him that I was a bit obsessive about stuff, too, that I micromanaged my world by counting – stars, steps, cars and magpies; that I wore lucky clothes, chanted calming words, repeated phrases and had a zillion bizarre rituals to help me get through life. But I couldn’t bring myself to tell him. My stuff was small – superficial somehow, while his concerns were part of some bigger picture which I was only just starting to think about.
    â€œGuess how many cameras there are in the UK?” Latif asked.
    He changed direction, doubling back down the street that we’d just come up.
    â€œA million?”
    â€œYeah right, and the rest.” He held the mirror up, twisting it back and forth until he snagged my image. He grinned when I looked away. “Eight million last count, but there’s probably more. We get caught on film at least three hundred times a day. We’re the most watched country in the world. But nobody gives a damn.”
    â€œSo? What’s the big deal? You’re fine as long as you don’t break the law.”
    I liked the fact my parents’ houses and apartments were protected by CCTV and state-of-the-art security. It mademe feel safe. I pictured our mansion in the Billionaires’ quarter: the watchtowers, the sentry box, the high walls and the cameras. It had better security than most prisons and, as my mother loved to boast, a better class of guard.
    Latif looked at me as if I were a signed-up member of a crackpot, right-wing loony party. “Get real, Dasha…” He trailed off, shrugged his shoulders, as if to say, “What’s the point? You know nothing.” Then he stalked off, eyes skywards – searching for surveillance.
    But Latif’s words stayed with me, and got me thinking about how the paparazzi as well as civilians with mobiles were always trying to sneak photos of celebrities and globals to sell to newspapers or post on the Internet; how everything was filmed, photographed, documented and dissected; how nothing was private; how globals and celebrities were always watched, too.
    We walked in silence as we crisscrossed the white-stuccoed grid of Georgian houses in a maddening game of snakes and ladders – two streets forwards, three streets back, as if Latif were determining our route by the throw of