Charlotte Street (6 page)

Because for the second time in two days, this felt like a beginning. And for the second time in two days, it had not begun.

‘Why?’ said Dev. ‘Why oh why oh why?’

He’d drained his
Polo-Cockta
and tossed it in the bin. He opened another one.

‘What
is
that, anyway?’ I said.

‘You never had a
Polo-Cockta
? Oh, they’re brilliant. Bit like Coke, but a little more metallic.’

He took a swig and winced. I considered his question.

Why?

Why hadn’t I done something, said something? Because here’s the killer bit. As she climbed into the cab – unassisted this time – she’d seen me. I knew it. It was subtle, but it was there. The briefest of reactions, a tiny sliver of something, but something nonetheless. A quizzical glance, a tiny nose scrunch, something that told me she sort of thought she knew me. A pause of a millisecond, nothing more, and then into the cab, door shut, gone.

‘Or maybe,’ said Dev. ‘She was looking at you because you were a man, at night, standing perfectly still, staring straight at her, with one hand inside your jacket pocket.’

Maybe.

Still. At least I finally looked like an assassin.

‘And this thing, this—’

‘Single Use 35mm Disposable Camera,’ I said, turning it round in my hands.

‘Yeah. What are you going to do with that? Just hang around Charlotte Street, hoping she’ll turn up again so you can hand it to her?’

‘Twice in two days I’ve seen her on Charlotte Street. Both times near Snappy Snaps – once
in
it. She’s clearly into photography.’

‘Or maybe someone keeps nicking her cameras. And who uses disposables, anyway? She sounds like an oddball. So what are you going to do?’

I shrugged.

‘Nothing.’

‘
Nothing
? Come on.’

‘What can I do? And anyway, what do you mean, “What are you going to do?” Do about what?’

Dev took another swig, and just looked at me for a few seconds.

‘There are some good pubs around Charlotte Street,’ he said.

I dashed off my Abrizzi’s review that afternoon.

A magical slice of pizza heaven
, I wrote, and then some other things that were complimentary, like how I’d been given
just
enough bread, and how the waiting staff were really
excellent
. Well, they knew my name now. That’s the problem with sharing your name with an early 90s icon. People remember you. It’s something to talk about on a dull day. Imagine if you worked in a shoe shop and you sold some Birkenstocks to a Shaquille O’Neal. You’d tell everyone. You’d text your friends and say,
I’ve just served a bloke called Shaquille O’Neal!
And they’d text back with stories of namesakes they went to school with: Rip Van Winkle and Toby Anstis and that kid in 4B who went to medical school and became Dr Dre.

Plus, Herman would remember I’d run off without paying for my Appletizer, and that I’d never even come
near
one of their pizzas. I’d been too embarrassed to go back in, too
distracted to sit there and eat. They’d be sure to ring the office and tell them – unless the review was good.

Zoe had written a short email back.

Er, thanks for that. Must have been bloody incredible to get that kind of praise from you. Strange, I’d been told it was terrible. Is everything okay?’

How sad, I thought. People asking if you’re okay when you’re nice about something. Still. Imagine Herman’s happy face when he reads that.

I like pizza, is all
, I replied, and closed my laptop.

It was just before six, and we were standing outside number 16 Charlotte Street. The Fitzroy Tavern. Corner of Windmill Street.

‘This is stupid,’ I said.

‘Dylan Thomas used to drink here!’ said Dev. ‘I wonder why he stopped.’

‘This is stupid,’ I said, again. ‘Let’s go somewhere else.’

‘Didn’t you hear me? Dylan Thomas used to drink here! Where do you want to go? A Wetherspoons? Great – we might see Natalie Pinkham from
The Wright Stuff
.’

‘You’re not going to see Dylan Thomas! And since when did this become about “seeing” someone?’

‘You know who we’re here to see,’ said Dev.

Both times I’d seen this girl it’d been around six. Maybe she worked around Fitzrovia, I thought. Fitzrovia, named after this pub, in turn named after a man named Fitzroy. I admire any area that takes its name from a pub. There were others in London, of course. Angel. Manor House. Royal Oak. Swiss Cottage. Plus Elephant & Castle, which only ever made sense to me as a name when I realised that … let’s just say it remains incredibly fortunate that the pub wasn’t called the Vicar & Boobs or something, seeing as that’s the kind of thing that’s often been known to affect house prices.

And Dev was right about Dylan Thomas. The first time we came here, a toothy man in tweed down from Bristol for the day had told us it’d been a hub for artists and intellectuals and bohemians in the 20s and 30s and 40s. They’d crowd each corner, he’d said, swapping ideas, arguing drunkenly, fighting and loving, until the pub came to define the whole area. George Orwell drank here. Augustus John. Now it was people like me and Dev. You couldn’t help but think that if a pub could look disappointed, it would be looking just a little disappointed right now.

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, blond
ish
.’

‘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.

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.

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.