But what did that mean as far as the girl was concerned? Media? Or waitress? Designer? Charlotte Street had changed, even in the time I’d been in London. Once, it was all photography and fashion. Then advertising. For a while, TV and the odd bit of radio. Now – restaurants and bars. Only the Fitzroy Tavern seemed to have seen it all through, like the old man fighting off progress, stubbornly refusing to give up his place at the bar, even when they bring in a karaoke machine.
I kind of wanted to talk about her to Dev, but I’d been passing this off as just a silly thing to do; another excuse to go for a pint. Treating it like Dev’s idea, and one I would indulge him this once. I was playing it cool and changing the conversation whenever he brought her up, appalled at myself for actually wanting to bring her up myself.
‘Maybe her name’s Charlotte,’ he said, and I pretended to find my shoes suddenly fascinating. ‘Maybe her name is Charlotte Street. “Miss Charlotte Street”. Sounds like advice for a tourist.’
‘Tourists love Charlotte Street,’ I said, avoiding his eye.
And they do. Or, not tourists, exactly. Businesspeople. American businesspeople. There go some, right now, watches catching the evening sun, as they skip down the stairs of the Charlotte Street Hotel in its Farrow & Ball green, all smart suits and cleanshaven skin, silver Mercs arriving to pick them up for dinner at, I dunno … The Ivy, probably.
They glide by, and Dev and I watch them go.
‘It’d be nice to be American,’ said Dev.
‘They’re not all like that,’ I said. ‘Some of them are Hulk Hogan.’
Dev’s eyes darted up and down Charlotte Street, taking in the Londoners spilling out of the bars, laughing their way out of restaurants. There’s a holiday vibe to Charlotte Street. Something other. Something happy. It was obvious that Dev was looking out for the girl. I couldn’t help it. I did the same.
And then I stopped myself. I felt weird. Weird for being here, weird for being a hair away from stalking, but weird also because, what if? What if she turned up? Walked by? My stomach flipped slightly, the way it flipped the night I waited for Sarah in that Thai place off Piccadilly on our second proper date.
I kicked myself. This is not a date. This is stalking.
And then Dev’s eyes widened. He was looking at something. Something – or someone – just over my shoulder.
‘Her!’ he half-whispered, face perfectly still. ‘Is that her?’
I froze.
‘I don’t know,’ I said, eyes wide.
‘Blue coat?’
I nodded.
‘Shoes?’
‘Of course shoes,’
I turned, slowly.
‘No,’ I said, looking at the figure striding quickly by in a blue coat and shoes. ‘That’s a tall black man.’
Dev started laughing. Sometimes he is an idiot.
‘Well, I don’t know, do I? I’ve never seen this girl. What colour hair does she have?’
‘Sort of blonde.’
‘Sort of?’
‘Well, blondish.’
‘Eyes?’
‘Definitely.’
‘What colour eyes?’
‘That you’d have to ask her.’
‘You need to up your game, stalking-wise. My round!’
Dev walked inside, and I smiled, and shook my head and laughed. Because really, this was all so stupid. Stupid, but fun. If I’d come on my own, well – that would have been weird. And also, it would never have happened. But with Dev, it felt like, well, a bit of an adventure, somehow. Like stumbling across a signpost, and following it, just to see where it leads. And I wasn’t taking it seriously. Not really. I mean, this girl could be anyone. She could be a Nazi. And have a boyfriend. Who is also a Nazi. Perhaps they’ve just bought a Nazi dog, and in their spare time go Nazi dancing. There are more than one billion reasons why this complete and perfect stranger may be utterly unsuitable for …
Well, for what? What did I really expect to happen here? I mean, let’s say she turned up tonight? What then? What do I say that doesn’t sound odd, or creepy, or mental? Do I act casual? Do I tell her I saw her last night, as well, and that I had her camera, but that I didn’t give it to her in time? That I could’ve, but chose not to?
I looked at my watch. Five past six. This was pretty much the time. I glanced up the street, towards Snappy Snaps on the corner. A few people were milling about. A rowdy bunch were wandering towards Zilli’s. But no sign of The Girl. Not yet.
‘Here you go,’ said Dev, handing me my pint. ‘Seen her yet? She’s got to work round here. You’ve always seen her leaving, haven’t you? Never arriving?’
I nodded.
‘Yeah, she must work round here. Lot of high class escorts in this area. And traffic wardens, too. She’s probably one or the other. Which way does she go?’
‘Well – and again, I’ve only seen her twice – she tends to go this way. Both times she’s caught a cab.’
‘Interesting. Probably a local journey. The tube’s only up there. So we can safely say she works round here, and lives not far away. Unless she’s meeting a client.’
‘She’s not a high class escort,’ I say. ‘Or a traffic warden.’
‘Would explain the camera, if she was a traffic warden. They take pictures nowadays.’
‘Not on a disposable. Anyway, she’d have had a hat on.’
We were both staring up the street now.
But she wasn’t there. It was ten past, and she still wasn’t there. Dev looked at me and stuck his bottom lip out, and rocked on his heels.
I felt awkward again. The excuse didn’t seem to hold water anymore. Yeah, so there was a thin veil of ‘fun’ attached to this, but it was getting thinner. Dev clicked his tongue a few times and sniffed.
Oh, what were we doing?
‘Listen, let’s go,’ I said.
‘You must be joking!’ said Dev. ‘I want to hear what you say to her!’
Suddenly it didn’t feel fun any more.
‘No, I feel weird,’ I said. ‘Let’s go home. Play GoldenEye. Or FIFA.’
That usually worked a treat.
‘Let’s wait it out,’ said Dev, and we both stood in silence, and turned our eyes towards Charlotte Street.
We didn’t see her.
Of course we didn’t see her.
We’ve all been places two days in a row. That doesn’t make it tradition.
We stood outside with the rest of the pub, Dev rolling his cigarettes, the evening sun low in the sky, the street a warmed amber.
At seven thirty, or maybe seven thirty-five, we’d exhausted our conversation.
‘Shall we have the one we came for?’ shrugged Dev, and I said, ‘Not here.’
So we walked up Charlotte Street, towards the tube, and then, just on the corner, right outside Snappy Snaps, Dev stopped me.
‘This thing with Sarah,’ he said, touching my arm. ‘It must be difficult.’
I made a face and said, ‘No, no, God, no’, but he was still looking at me.
‘I mean, yeah, it’s kind of tough when it’s out of the blue and everything, but you know how things were, and … what are you doing?’
He’d made a small darting movement towards my jacket.
‘What was that?’ I said, but then I realised: he’d nicked something out of my pocket.
He held it up.
The camera.
‘If you can stop banging on about Sarah for two seconds,’ he said. ‘Come on! They close in half an hour!’
He jogged off, opened the door and walked into Snappy Snaps.
FOUR
Or ‘London, Luck and Love’
Dev had opted for the SuperXpress 24-hour processing, which sounds deeply impressive, until you remember that only flying to the moon in twenty-four hours could really be considered SuperXpress these days.
We would meet back here, he said, outside Snappy Snaps, the following evening. It seemed an unnecessary pronouncement, seeing as we’d probably travel in together.<
br />
And I know what you’re thinking: you’re thinking we shouldn’t have done that. It’s a gross invasion of someone else’s privacy. Two grown men developing the private photographs of a woman neither of us know. Because who knows what could be on there? Or who? And who knows what that who could be doing on there?
And you’re right.
Dev, though, had been reassuring. He said she would never find out. And if she did, it would only be because those photos had led us to her. Led me to her.
I’m not sure how Dev thought these might lead me to her. He doesn’t own a camera. Perhaps he thinks people who do often take pictures of themselves holding up pieces of paper with their contact details on. Maybe he thinks we all pose by street signs, and point to which house we live in, just in case a stranger finds our camera and might like to pop round. And let’s say that somehow, his wildest dream came true, and there was a picture like that in it – what then?
I go round, do I? I knock on the door, and say, ‘Hello! My friend and I developed your private photos and then studied them carefully so that we could come round your house and see you!’ She would never have her picture taken again.
‘What kind of saint are you?’ he said.
‘I’m not a saint,’ I said. ‘It’s just—’
‘What? You’re not interested? You’d rather never know?’
‘It’s just … this could be seen as creepy.’
Dev pressed his keyring. Wiiise Fwom Your Gwaaave.
‘How’s that relevant?’ I said.
‘I just mean, “get on with it”. Sorry, I thought that’d be more powerful than it was. Anyway, who’s going to know? You don’t have to write about it in the paper. We can have a cheeky look and then chuck them away if we need to. Besides, it’s a disposable, they’re likely to be all blurry and rubbish. She’s probably one of those quirky students who takes pictures of pigeons and lost gloves sitting all lonely on a fence and then writes pretentious captions underneath, like “Verisimilitude” or “The Mind Is Its Own Compass”.’
I nodded. Dev was right. There was always the outside chance she might be an idiot.
But I knew she wasn’t. And, already, I wanted to do right by her. It sounds weird, and it sounds strange, but I felt I owed her something. She wasn’t strictly a stranger any more; she’d smiled at me.
And then, and then and then … I also knew I’d done this before. Felt like this before. At school, for sure. College, too, maybe. A couple of times in my life, anyway, when I’d got an idea into my head about someone, allowed it to run free and develop.
There was Emily Pye at school. One year below me, and pretty; she’d smiled at me once as she walked past with her friends near the gates. At least, that’s how it’d felt. I realise now, she’d simply been smiling as she’d walked past. There was no ‘at me’ about it. Our eyes had met mid-smile, though, and she’d looked away quickly.
But that smile came to obsess my afternoon, and then my week, and then the last term of school. Emily Pye had smiled at me! Which meant … she liked me. Suddenly, from being a pretty girl in the year below, she’d become everything and anything I had ever wanted or desired in a life partner. She was perfect – and she liked me! Oh, Emily Pye, what times we would have! We would travel, and then we would settle down and have a living room with big sun-streaming windows and shelves full of books, and then we would keep a small apartment in New York, or perhaps Paris if we’ve had a child and don’t have enough frequent flyer miles to upgrade to business. I would excel at my job, and you would have one, too, because I am modern and encourage that kind of thing, and perhaps when we get a bit older you would start wearing little oblong glasses and long cardigans and we would still hold hands and walk in the park, and get takeaways too, because just because we were old doesn’t mean we couldn’t still be cool.
Emily was even a year younger than me, which everyone knows is precisely the right age a girlfriend should be. I was twisting almost any fact to make it fit, make it fate. All I’d wanted was to run into her somehow, and so I’d excuse myself from lessons just in case she’d done the same and we might pass each other in the corridors. I’d ride my bike near her house, wearing my mirrored Aviators, and I’d imagine stopping a robbery or saving a small child’s life just to get her attention. Emily Pye went from someone I’d never thought twice about to becoming someone I couldn’t stop thinking about, and only because she now seemed achievable. She’d noticed me. There was something there! I was in with a shot!
And so I’d written her a love letter. Well, not a love letter, really. A short note, saying I think we should meet up!, basically chickening out of talking to her properly and putting the ball in her court, but under a cloak of mystery and grown-up cool. And one night, after discussing it at great length with my very bored friend Ed, I thought, Yes, I’m going to do it, because I genuinely believed, in my stupid youthful head, that she’d been waiting for this. Waiting for my move. Waiting for this moment.
So I posted it through her door and then cycled away very very quickly. And, a day or two later …
Bzzzzz.
Hang on.
I was jolted from all thoughts of Emily Pye by a text. I stopped walking, and Dev did too.
‘What’s up?’ he said.
Sorry about going off on one yesterday. I still value you, Jase. Maybe we should talk. Got a lot to say.
‘You-know-who,’ I said, and Dev made an ‘Ah’ face.
I stared at the text. Oh, just let me be embarrassed and go home and sit in my room. And never has the phrase ‘got a lot to say’ been less appealing. ‘Got a lot to say’ means ‘Got a lot to say to you’ and ‘Got a lot to say to you’ means ‘I would like you to sit perfectly still while I tell you precisely what I think of you.’ And I couldn’t face that. Not yet. Yeah, so I’d have to see her again eventually, because as much as anything we were still friends, kind of. Friends is always what we’d been best at. I guess it’s the reason we could never be anything more.
I put the phone back in my pocket and half-smiled at Dev.
Anyway, I heard back from Emily Pye a day or two later, via one of her network of friends. As did everyone at school, most of whom then also saw my letter. Turns out she had absolutely no idea who I was. Not a vague idea, not an ‘oh yeah, what, that guy?’. No idea whatsoever.
And once more I present to you: hope. Ta-dah!
I decided, there and then, not to pick up the photos.
Mum and Dad were in town that night, down from Durham.
They were seeing Billy Elliot for the fourth time with Jan and Erik from over the road and were staying at their normal hotel in Bayswater. They haven’t worked out that the £12 a night they save by staying there is a little less than the £20 it costs them in taxis to the theatre and back.
‘Seems like we’re always coming to you!’ she said, mock-jokey, as soon as I saw her. We were at the usual Hungarian, the Gay Hussar at the top of Greek Street. We always eat here, because Dad likes looking at the cartoons on the wall – the ones of Michael Howard and John Cole – so he can pretend he spent his life at the centre of government, when in fact he mainly spent it at the centre of Bryant & Hawesworth Cladding & Ceiling Services Ltd. Mum likes the chilled wild-cherry soup, though I think she likes saying she likes it more than I think she likes it likes it. She certainly never made it for our tea.
Since me and Sarah split, I always got the impression they weren’t as pleased to see me. Paranoia, of course, but I also knew I was no longer quite the draw I once was. I was just Jason again; just Jason like I’d always been. I felt like I’d been a tower the world was finally happy with. I’d taken years to build and no one ever expected me to be finished. And now, just when the last few bricks were in sight, everyone’s grand project had toppled and crumbled and was in dusty pieces scattered across the ground, and everyone knew they’d have to rebuild me, but couldn’t be arsed to start straight away.
‘Why?’ they wanted to wail. ‘Why did you take our Sa
rah away from us?’
But they were loyal. They’d always love me. I always felt the distant accusation, though: that somehow, I’d wasted their time. It turned me back into a teenager.
‘Yeah, well, you only come down here to see Billy Elliot,’ I said, finally.
‘We come down here to see you,’ said Dad. ‘Billy Elliot is just a bonus.’
‘So how are things?’ asked Mum, moving things on, just like she was trained to. ‘How’s the “writing”?’
I ignored the speech marks.
‘Going well, yeah,’ I said. ‘Got a few commissions I have to get done tonight, so I’ll have to …’
I could see her face fall slightly.
‘Otherwise, you know. It’s a tough market. There’s a recession.’
‘Well, you’re well out of teaching,’ she said, nodding to herself. ‘Though, of course, it’s an option, isn’t it? But you’re well out of it. Aren’t you?’
‘Yes,’ I said, studying a sausage.
I guess we should talk about Stephen. But I left this jaundiced spotlight on me for just another triumphant second before I said, ‘And how’s Stephen?’
‘He’s doing well!’ they said, almost in unison.
My brother, Stephen, was always doing well. But this isn’t one of those tales of sibling rivalry. I didn’t envy his life. That’s not to say it wasn’t good; it was terrific, if you like that sort of thing. He was head of operations at MalayTel now, his kids were tanned and healthy, his wife funny and feisty and waist-deep in plans for their brand new azure-blue swimming pool. They’d be back at Christmas, Mum said, and I suddenly realised I’d be getting pep talks this year instead of just presents.
But no, I envied Stephen not his life but his direction. He’d only ever been on one path. From university to his first job in Singapore, to meeting Amy his first week at the company and starting a family, to moving his way up the company with solemn predictability. It was like he’d been given all his five-year-plans at once and simply popped them all in the same Excel document, ready to gradually tick them all off one by one. I was happy for him, but frustrated, too: he was happy, but I had my own brand of middle-class disappointment. One where you know you can’t blame your life on anyone but yourself.