![]() We had met among half a million people, marching through London on 28 September 2002. But I looked fit and healthy, like I’d been on a spa break. I had recently lost two stone, due to a relationship breakdown. My belly proudly displayed its new tattoo, a self-designed mosaic of red and purple hearts. I had twisted my shiny chestnut hair into loose bunches, and an amber bindi winked out from my forehead. He was in a yellow hi-vis vest over a sky-blue T-shirt with a nondescript logo, polarised sunglasses masking his eyes. The day I first met Carlo was bathed in acid colours, a Lichtenstein painting. We sit in a rare familial silence, the pair of them flicking through their books, not really taking in any words. I hand each a copy of Undercover by Rob Evans and Paul Lewis, the Guardian journalists who had done so much to expose the scandal of undercover police forming relationships with female activists. My sister stares at her glass of wine, a faraway look in her eyes. Steve is now a senior trade union official. “Was he spying on Steve? Dan, too?” Dan was a close friend and colleague in the homelessness sector, as well as a trade union and anti-racism activist. I grew up in a working-class family, was traditionally leftwing and a trade union rep at work, but I wasn’t involved in any organised activism beyond the odd protest march. My sister starts to nod her head, piecing the bizarre story together and making the link to my friends at the time, who were trade union and anti-racism activists. “You lived with him for two bloody years.” “Two years.” My mum taps her long nails on the table in a slow beat. And I know it doesn’t make an ounce of sense, but I think I was a cover for him.” He was sent by the state to spy on my friends.” He was an undercover cop, working for special branch. “What I’m saying is that Carlo was not a locksmith. The Carlo you knew was not a real person. “Sorry, Mum, there’s no easy way to say it. I wish I could have avoided this revelation for longer. Our biannual visits are normally jovial affairs. I pause, looking at them both with an unusual seriousness. It’s one of the things we have in common. “He was targeting environmental groups, right?” My sister has always been politically aware. Have you heard in the news about the women who had relationships with men who turned out to be undercover police officers?” “Has he been in touch with you? Tell him to get to – ” It’s not something we talk about any more. It is almost 11 years since Carlo and I split up, leaving me homeless and devastated. This is not what either of them had expected. “I need to talk to you about Carlo,” I say.
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