Charlotte Street (7 page)

‘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 Sarah 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.

‘And … have you seen Sarah lately?’ asked Mum, daringly, with just the faintest hint of hope in her eyes.

‘Yes!’ I wanted to say. ‘Yes, I forgot to say! We sorted everything out! We met up and had a milkshake and it turned out the whole thing was just a misunderstanding and we’re fine!’

I wanted to say that for her. I think I wanted to say that for me.

‘She’s engaged,’ I said, and I nodded, and under the table, my dad squeezed my mum’s hand, hard.

I had work to do.

These reviews. An 80s Best Of … (easy – name a few tracks, pretend we’re all so much cooler these days, make a lazy 80s reference or two). An American import by a folk band with beards (find a few quotes that sound like they know what they’re on about and re-word them). And a documentary that did well at Sundance about animals who can paint (and which I would actually have to watch).

But this, of course, was why I’d left teaching. Or at least, it was what I’d left teaching to do; dashing off articles and being welcomed and celebrated by London’s literati: the new golden boy with potential and opinions to boot.

I’d said my goodbyes and made my speech at the leaving do they threw for me at Chiquita’s on the high street. They gave me a miniature trophy, engraved with my name and ‘Most Likely To Succeed’ underneath, and I drank tequila and toasted seven happy years. And then Mrs Haman, head of humanities, had a dizzy spell and knocked over a potplant, and that felt like the right time to go. We’d been spotted leaving by Michael Shearing and his gang, hoods up, some of them on bikes, congregating around a can of lager someone had left near a bin.

‘Oi! Sir!’ he’d shouted. ‘You pissed?’

‘It’s not “sir” any more,’ I shouted back.

‘What is it then?’

I struggled with a comeback.

‘Lord!’ I tried. He didn’t get the joke. If it wasn’t on YouTube, and didn’t have a man falling over, Michael Shearing never got the joke.

‘Lord?’ he said, and then one of his mates – Dave Harford, maybe? – muttered ‘
Gay
lord’, and they all laughed. I let them have that one. Because I was finally free of them all.

Free. Free to sit here, in this room, enjoying my dream: a cup of milky coffee in a CodeMasters mug on a rickety table in a room above a videogame shop next door to a place that everyone thought was a brothel, but wasn’t, watching a film on a scuffed MacBook about animals that can paint.

Who’s laughing now, Michael Shearing?

Still, I know what you’re thinking. The money, right? The money makes it better? Well, no. The money’s appalling. I might as well take over Dave Harford’s paper round. It would
certainly be a firmer footing in the media. Certainly more likely to be welcomed and celebrated by London’s literati. But this was a start. Me and Sarah had always had big plans, and we’d saved accordingly and well. As things began to crumble, and though we’d deny it to each others’ faces, I think each of us had secretly had our eye on our half. Another good thing about living practically: hope fades, but at least savings get interest.

So I had a decent bank account, I paid no rent, and I was building towards something bigger. Features writing, maybe, or travel. Some kind of speciality.
London Now
for now,
Vanity Fair
or
Conde Naste Traveller
or
GQ
for later. Gone would be the days I was offering opinions I didn’t have to people who didn’t care.

Only the PRs really cared. And the artists, of course. They cared the most. But there were PRs between me and them, and editors between me and PRs, so I didn’t let it affect my journalistic integrity, of which, of course, it sometimes seemed I had little. Just enough to watch
Paw Prints: The Wilder Side of Art
.

I pressed play.

‘How was that film?’ said Dev.

It was the next morning and Dev had toothpaste round his mouth.

‘Brilliant,’ I said, leaning on the counter. ‘Did you know sea lions sometimes paint in orange when they’re having an off day?’

‘Serious?’ he said.

‘Apparently.’

I’d watched it from start to finish, as a cat sat at an easel slapping paint about the place with its paws. Then there was an impressionist elephant, carelessly slapping blue paint across a huge canvas with his fat trunk while a woman in a hat made astonished noises.

‘I could do better than that,’ I’d thought, but then realised that yes, of course I could, because I am not an elephant.

‘What’s happening today?’ I said.

‘There’s a bloke bringing in a limited edition Sega soundtrack. Blue vinyl. Theme tunes from
Golden Axe, Out Run
, the classics.’

‘You’ve not got a record player.’

‘Owning it is what matters. What about you? What you up to?’

‘I’m going to swing by the office. See if there’s anything going.’

‘Why don’t you just email them?’

He had a point. Most of our work was quite obviously done on email. But I liked the idea of the office. I liked the interplay. The tradition. It was as close to a staff room as I got these days, and it was nice to talk to my fellow journos. And also, it got me out of Power Up! and away from Caledonian Road.