Burglary at My Fair Lady

Lauren and I sat beneath a willow tree covered in neon lights. It was late and we both drank greedily from cans of K cider. It was sweet and heavy. It made the lights overhead bleed into the canal.
Only the lampposts saw us as we staggered over the bridge and looked down at a large cafe boat, bobbing on the bible black water. We had made up our minds. We broke through the brick walls of the bridge and scrambled down to the empty embankment. The boat welcomed us in. It had been wondering where we were. I slipped in head first, tearing my brown woolen cardigan as I fell into the kitchen area. I loved that cardigan.
Inside we were safe. We danced wrecklessly across the red carpet to an audience of empty tables and chairs and faces golden and smiling softly, and the shadows danced with us. We decided this would be a ritual of ours, one we would performed each night, in secret. We had clearly lost our minds. I found a bottle of gin behind the bar and had my choice of a fine selection of champagne. Again we drank greedily and lingered and lingered.
We sat in silence, reminiscing as we stared, goggle-eyed at the canal's filthy surface, pigeon shit and rat innards. I heard echoes and ghosts of friends long gone but ever present. 'Stay Golden'. A mermaid compass. Dry knuckles and teary eyes. A lost Navajo ring. A fortune teller's anger. Manhattan. Penzance. Biarritz.
A figure moved at the end of the boat. We fell to the floor, frozen. How much time had passed? We tried to escape, clinging to each other as we left the boat behind. A voice called behind us. We had been caught. A wide-eyed old lady with red hair, angry and frightened at the sight of us, fled to call the police.
We were trapped. We sat as if waiting for something. I returned to the boat, to the scene of the crime for my phone, clumsily left behind. I climbed back inside and saw it glowing from a table beside empty champagne bottles. I crouched by the window and saw Lauren outside surrounded by people, frowning and questioning. At her side she calmly tapped the buttons of her phone. I looked down at mine. 'Get out now.' Without a thought I opened the window, looked down into the murky blackness and lowered myself into the icy water. A hundred years of filth and waste groped at my feet and legs. My clothes weighed me down, drowning me in the canal's poisonous, hepatitis abyss. I swam quietly and shivering violently, in my mind I was Rambo or the convict Magwitch. The voices disappearing behind me as I drifted beneath the bridge. I reached the other side, and pulled myself up onto the concrete ledge. I had escaped.
Shivering and sobering now, I looked back to the boat. A police van stopped on the other bridge along the canal. Shapes moved by the boat, then became clear. Policeman surrounded Lauren. I had to go back.
My feet squelched beneath me as I stood waiting for the police. I called to Lauren, but she did not answer. The handcuffs cut into my wrists and I was hauled like a martyr, dripping into the cage at the rear of the van. Was it the K or the boat that had betrayed us? I blame the boat, welcoming us warmly into its champagne music halls, and golden sunshine smiles, then holding us until the old lady arrived. Who can be sure? Our vans pulled away, leaving the canal still again. The boat swayed gently and the neon willow tree laughed silently to itself.