My phone vibrated in my pocket again, but I couldn’t face another text from her, knowing it’d be a ‘chin up’ or a ‘sorry’ or a sad face or something. I’d wait until I’d found a cab. I didn’t want to walk home tonight.
I waved down a black cab near the Regent and climbed in.
‘Stoke Newington,’ I said, and the cabbie nodded.
‘Good night?’ he said.
‘Can we have the radio on, please?’ I said, shooting that down.
He obliged. Some dance track and a DJ with ideas above his station. Quick joke about the weather, time check, song intro. One link, one thought – that’s what they tell you is all the public can stand. Maybe they’re right. Sometimes you want radio to not listen to.
I pulled my phone out, wondering how to reply to Laura.
But the text wasn’t from Laura.
Number unknown.
Hi love. Good luck. A. x
A?
A for Andy?
My heart raced. It had to be him. Come on. ‘Hi love’, with a kiss? It had to be the guy.
What do I write back?
Or do I phone him?
He’ll think it’s Hayley – he’ll answer.
But then what? How do I keep him on the line? How do I get answers?
I stared out the window as we took the back route round Islington, towards the roundabout.
And then …
‘Mate …’ I shouted. ‘Mate!’
The cabbie, startled, turned.
‘What?’
‘What is this?’ I said, panicked. ‘This, what is it?’
‘This what?’ he said.
‘This music!’ I said, trying to be as quick as I could so I could still hear it, but it was slowing, it was ending, ‘What’s this music?’
It was still in my head as I got home. I kept it there, repeating the words over and over.
I was sure I’d heard what I’d heard.
But what if I hadn’t? What if I was going mad?
I’m sorry I’ve been so distant, I am just elsewhere.
You must be so confused and wonder if I still care …
I grabbed the postcard from the table. Read it. Sank into my sofa.
The words. The words were the lyrics.
I got my phone out again, ready to dial, ready to launch into something at this Andy guy, but then I thought wait, wait … be clever, here. You have his number. Bide your time. There must be a better way.
I flipped open my laptop.
Tapped his number into google.
One result.
CC UK – Wednesdays. 6.30pm. Holiday Inn Express. Wandsworth.
Then the last few words …
Call Andy, on …
[3]
I sit on the Eames chair in the corner of his apartment on Bleecker.
There is a fresh pot of coffee on the stove, and Saturday Night Live plays out on the television set in the corner of the room. Comedian Eddie Murphy is pretending to be the musician Stevie Wonder, at which the audience whoops and hollers.
The old man tends to the plants at the window, kneeling on a patchwork ottoman.
‘The aspect many have trouble grasping,’ says Cockroft, standing up to turn the television off, ‘is that most people are other people.’
‘How so?’ I say.
‘Their thoughts are someone else’s opinion, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.’
‘Is that true of you?’
‘I should say so,’ he says, turning to me. ‘I just quoted Oscar Wilde.’
‘How did you fall into it?’ I ask, as he sits down at the table.
‘I did not fall into it,’ he says. ‘I leapt into it. I leapt into it with great vigor, and longing, and passion.’
‘But why?’
He lays out two cups, and pushes a bowl of brown sugar toward me.
‘Because I had found something.’
I take a sugar cube and drop it in my cup.
‘Was finding it enough?’ I ask. ‘Did you not have enough?’
‘I had found something, and no, finding something is not in and of itself enough. To know you have found something worth finding, you must first have lost something worth losing.’
He takes a sugar cube and lets it slide down the curve of his cup.
I say nothing, allowing the silence to drown out what is unsaid. What I would have asked the last time we met is not necessarily what I might ask now. I would rather he tell me than I ask him to.
He takes a breath.
‘I lost Mae first to another man, and then to the Gods.’
American Airlines flight 330 out of Chicago.
‘She was coming back to New York, maybe to tell me, maybe not.’
It was 1965. They knocked on his door that night. He did not yet know, but he had already lost her to the man she’d booked a seat next to.
‘I struggled with it all, of course I did. When she was gone I was struck by what was left. Me. Only me. Our infant daughter, of course, but our memories halved. And I was left not with a bitterness that she may have sought comfort elsewhere, but left instead with the fact that she was gone and I was not.’
He could not cope. He could not look at his life. His past was gone, ruined with his future.
And this was when Ezra Cockroft first realized there must be something else he could do.
ten
The Holiday Inn Express, Wandsworth.
Thirty minutes of free Wi-Fi per night. A new snack menu in the lounge bar including Chicken Tikka Masala (£9.95) and Chilli Con Carne (£8.95). Free hot breakfast with (selected) hot items. Work desk and hairdryer in every room. Just metres from Trinity Road roundabout.
I know this because I’d checked the website on my phone as I sat in a Costa nearby, and now that I was here … well, was this where they always met? Hayley and Andy? To have an affair? Or do … whatever it was they were doing? Why the Holiday Inn Express? Why not just treat yourself, and go for the Holiday Inn? What was the rush?
The lounge bar was quiet. Bucket seats. Faint music – prominent clarinet – the odd thwoosh of someone cleaning a milk frother or banging a coffee pot behind a thin wall.
On my left, an unhappy couple sat silently at a too-small table.
She was younger than he was. Pale skin, straight black hair, skinny jeans, maybe mid-twenties. He was a larger, older, black man with a copy of the Mail and a plate of eggs, trying to avoid her eye.
He took a sip of his water, and she took a sip of hers.
He put his glass down gently.
They sighed.
Bad news? Fresh argument? Or just misery in sync? A tactic to avoid conversation, based on years of experience? Neither looked up as I crept past, trying not to catch whatever they had. She stared at him. He now stared at the window. No one ate the eggs.
I found a seat near the back, on a low, stiff sofa where I could see the whole room. Just me, skinny jeans and the egg man so far. And then, on a wallpapered pillar, just below an ineffective lampshade, I saw a small and laminated sign.
CC
I sat a moment more.
Got up.
Followed the arrow.
The thing that Laura mentioned. The times that Hayley got me through.
Let me just clear that up.
Let’s say Hayley, for the sake of it, is a mild depressive. Let’s just say that, and let’s just say it’s mild. But strong enough to affect.
Because mild is what Dr Moon calls it, and I suppose compared to the depths to which others slip, it is, but to the person involved at the times you feel it most, it’s not mild. It’s no more possible to call it mild than it is to call a murder mild, or for someone to suffer mild death. It’s not mild. It just is.
Think dank, at first. Foggy. Blurred. Think the moss on an otherwise normal tree, think the oil that coats the water. A growth, a barrier, think of it however’s easiest. It’s not glass-half-empty, either, before you confuse it with pessimism. It’s a total and consuming bel
ief in one’s own worthlessness, hopelessness, helplessness, which affects everything the moment you notice what I know some have called that black dog … it’s in your peripheral vision, now. You don’t have to look at it to know it’s there, you hear it panting, you hear it settling, and immediately whatever sense of well-being or self-worth was there rises like a spirit from your body and like in a dream where you can’t find your footing there is nothing you can do but watch it go and allow despair and fatigue and emptiness their place at the table. Watch the water rise, watch the fog glide in, watch the dog strain at his leash.
So let’s say Hayley, for the sake of it, is a mild depressive.
She isn’t.
But if she were, then she’d be just like me.
And now you know why I need clarity about Hayley. Now you know why I need purpose. My days are foggy enough when it hits. Actually, ‘hits’ is the wrong word. Creeps – that’s better. And when it creeps – just as it’s crept every day since I was sixteen, stretching this gauze across my life – I need to push through it; break the surface for breath. I wanted to know what was going on here. And I needed to stop my spirit rising from my body.
I’d had it under control these days. I could laugh instead of cry. Sometimes I’d do both.
But I had to know.
Because times were changing. And I felt like I was going mad.
You’ll find that the meeting room at the Holiday Inn Express, Wandsworth, has access to a coffee machine and benefits from full air conditioning. It also has ten seats around a lacquered pine table, eye-straining carpets and tartan curtains.
When I approached, and hovered by the door, four of the seats were taken.
What was this? Where was Andy? Was this … a support group? Swingers?
‘Pia may or may not come,’ said a woman, middle-aged, small cheap glasses. The kind of woman who’s always happy to have information others don’t. ‘And Jeremy’s not coming, of course.’
I cleared my throat and a huge maroon jumper with a man in it looked up at me. He was mid-forties – salt and pepper hair, huge anticipatory grin, big badge saying ‘I’m Tim!’
This, I thought, was not Andy.
‘I’m Tim!’ he said, apparently delighted to see me, one pale hand reaching for mine.
‘Hi Tim,’ I said, low-energy. ‘I’m …’
‘You here for …?’
He stopped short of saying it loud, instead opening one palm for me to deliver the answer …
Clever. What was I supposed to say?
‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m just … I was looking for someone, and …’
‘Uh-huh,’ said Tim, and I noticed he was still holding my hand. This handshake should have ended by now.
‘Yeah, I was looking for my mate, and …’
He wasn’t letting go, and now the woman had got up – a slip of a woman, just bones and oats, and she looked at me hopefully, and I noticed her badge.
CC ME.
‘CC?’ I said, changing tack.
‘Oh, Italian, are you?’ said Tim, now smiling, now finally letting my hand drop. ‘Si! Si!’
He laughed a lot at this, his eyes searching the room for someone to enjoy it with. But he was clearly letting me stay.
‘It’s £5, then, just to cover coffees and biscuits and the like,’ he said, and I scrabbled about in my pocket for change. This really didn’t seem like Hayley’s scene at all. Not even what I thought had been her new scene. £5 for coffee and biscuits does not equal a Chinawhite crowd.
‘You just ignore Tim!’ said the lady, sitting back down at the table. ‘He’s always doing his Italian joke to newbies!’
‘Guilty,’ said Tim. ‘Guilty as charged!’
‘I’m Jackie and you’re very welcome,’ said the woman, who looked like she was probably a knitter and goes to sci-fi conventions for little-watched eighties cartoons held in grim Derbyshire boxing halls. ‘What’s your name, poppet?’
‘… Serge,’ I said.
Serge? Where the hell had Serge come from?
A thick-set orange teenager looked round from the coffee machine.
‘Where’s Andy?’ he said. ‘Andy should be here by now.’
The hell was that? Fake tan? Jet black hair, too, the kind of pure black nature can’t compete with.
The fourth of four stood by the window, fiddling with one tartan curtain, staring out at the road.
‘That’s Victor,’ said Jackie. ‘It’s his first time too.’
Victor did not turn round.
But Andy was coming. Andy.
Because this was the place.
And then Andy walked into the place and he was not what I was expecting at all.
‘First off,’ said Andy, who was a hundred and fifty pounds if he was ten. ‘Let’s meet the new folks and assess their expectations.’
He was late thirties. Khaki combat trousers. A huge checked shirt. Bifocals under a thinning mop of long, curly hair and red clipboard in hand.
He did not seem a natural nemesis.
‘So Victor – you first! What first drew you to us?’
Victor shrugged.
‘Okay, that’s fine,’ said Andy. ‘But what do you hope to get out of it?’
Victor shrugged again.
‘Dunno, not sure.’
‘Uh-huh, uh-huh,’ said Andy, nodding. ‘And how did you hear about us please? Because as I always say: the first rule of CC is no one talks about CC!’
Tim started to laugh so hard at this that he slapped his thigh. Victor just shrugged.
How the hell did Hayley fit into this? This bunch of … dweebs.
‘How about you, Serge?’ said Andy, and the room turned to me. ‘How did you hear about us?’
I hadn’t expected this. I didn’t know what to say. I could make something up, I suppose. Or I could just play it straight. Get the upper hand early on.
‘My girlfriend told me about you,’ I said.
‘I see,’ said Andy. ‘Ordinarily people don’t … I mean, is she a member of this chapter, or another, or …?’
‘When you say “this chapter”, you mean …?’
‘I mean, does she use this CC? Or does she attend another CC, perhaps—’
‘Her name’s Hayley,’ I said, and the only person who did not react when I said that name was Victor.
‘Hayley Anderson?’ said Jackie.
‘We don’t use full names here,’ said Andy, eyebrows down, face darker.
He turned to me.
‘The Hayley?’
I’d expected to be angry. I’d thought I might knock things over. Yell. But instead, I sat, eyes fixed on my shoes.
‘Hayley takes it very seriously, Tom,’ said Andy, nodding, the room in rapt silence around him.
Jackie had been pretty quiet since realising. Tim wasn’t finding much funny any more. The orange kid – whose name I now knew was Felix – just stared at his thumbs. Victor had left when he worked out this wasn’t a swingers thing.
‘And we were there for her,’ he said. ‘Always there for her.’
‘There for her how?’ I said, not looking up, not yet able to.
‘She’d only recently joined Wandsworth,’ he said. ‘She’d been with … Highgate before that, was it, Jackie?’
‘Highgate, yes.’
‘And Stockwell before that?’
‘Stockwell, yes.’
‘But she didn’t find them particularly … inspiring.’
‘How long?’ I said. ‘How long has she been coming here?’
‘I don’t have that on record.’
‘Did she say why she started?’
Andy shook his head.
‘Or why? No offence to any of you, you all seem perfectly … but why would she need this in her life? Because I’m sitting in a Holiday Inn Express in Wandsworth and I don’t know why.’
‘We help people,’ said Andy, and that stopped me.
‘What people?’
‘Lost people. People who don’t quite know who th
ey are any more.’
I stared at him.
‘I don’t understand.’
‘People can run into trouble,’ said Tim, gently. ‘It’s like a car. Sometimes the battery runs down. And you need another car to help jumpstart it. We sort of provide the leads.’
‘You help people who are lost or whose batteries are flat. So far you sound like the RAC. So I’m going to ask you again: what do you do?’
Andy shifted in his chair, leaned in, spoke with care.
‘Sometimes someone might be in an unfamiliar city.’
‘Hayley knew London.’
‘They might not know what they’re doing with themselves.’
‘She had a job. She liked it.’
‘Maybe they moved here and they left their friends behind, or their family, and they look around and they’re alone.’
But Hayley had me.
‘Or something might happen in their life which catches them off guard and throws them off balance and they suddenly think, “Who am I?” You know? “What am I doing?” They might have a history of something. They might feel completely uninspired. And we are all about re-inspiring them. Recharging their batteries. Showing them who they could be again.’
I looked around the room. Felix with his leather bracelets. Tim eating coleslaw from a tub. Jackie’s cheeks, rhubarb red and with faint silver hints of glints of hair.
‘So it’s self-help? It’s a self-help group? You sit around and read mottos out to each other?’
‘Not exactly,’ said Andy, with patience, and perhaps a little drama. ‘That’s not exactly how we help.’
‘How, then?’ I said, embarrassed, because maybe only I knew this, but at some point – around the time we started talking about inspiration, about someone losing sight of themselves – it seemed like we weren’t just talking about Hayley any more.
‘We copy,’ said Jackie, breaking the deadlock.
‘You copy,’ I said, but the words made no sense.
‘We copy others,’ she said. ‘We follow, we copy. We copy others.’
Andy nodded, gently.
‘Why?’ I said. ‘What?’
‘You go to bed,’ said Andy. ‘You get up, you go to work, you go home, you go to bed. You eat the same dinner every night and shop in the same supermarket. You buy the same things and you eat them in the same place.’