Charlotte Street (9 page)

No. It’s out of the question. I’m a professional. I’m working.

I looked again at the flyer for the gallery opening.

Enigmash-up: A Journey through the Ego to the Id via You, Me & They
.

Jesus and a Chicken & Mushroom Pot Noodle.

I tapped my lip.

‘Bollocks!’ said Dev. ‘She’s married.’

I looked at the photo in front of me.

There were others, of course, but this was the only one I really needed to see.

‘She’s married!’ he said.

I don’t know what I’d been expecting. I don’t even know what I’d been hoping for.

We’d done it, of course. Picked up the photos. It had only taken the one we’d came for, and we were in Snappy Snaps like a flash.

And now, here she was.
The Girl
. There was a glow on her face, and that smile.

I kicked myself. Of
course
she was married.

‘Mind you,’ said Dev, pointing at The Girl. ‘Doesn’t look like a wedding dress. Who gets married in something like that?’

‘Yeah, what
is
that?’

Whatever it was, and despite what she brought to it, it was hideous. Pretty much the only word applicable, though not one I’d use in her presence, obviously. It was a very odd green, and looked like it’d been designed by someone who’d never seen a girl. Or a dress.

‘But that’s definitely her boyfriend. Check the body language.’

The man – handsome, urbane, probably good at skiing, owns a number of powerful motorcycles, can doubtless tell you the difference between red and white wine – had his arm around her, and she looked pleased. Really pleased. He looked pleased too, and why not. She’s stunning. Despite the dress. I found myself cursing his chunky watch and tan.

‘Nice looking, isn’t he?’ said Dev. ‘Probably quite cultured, too. Probably calls them “bosoms”. Still. I imagine it’s for the best. You wouldn’t want her turning up at the pub dressed like that.’

‘You’re wearing a
Street Fighter
T-shirt.’

‘Just wearing it in. Planning on seeing Pamela soon.’

‘Who’s Pamela?’

‘That waitress. Pam
-eh
-la. That’s how you say it in Poland.’

I flicked through the photos, taking in each for a second or two, but what was the point? The Girl had a man with a chunky watch and powerful motorcycles putting his big tanned arm round her.

‘Oh, that’s a good one,’ said Dev.

She’d taken a photo of her shoes by accident. And one of the pavement. But the others … the others seemed to tell a story. A wedding, an old car, a cinema.

‘We should leave the photos back at Snappy Snaps,’ he said. ‘Say there was a mistake. She probably bought the camera there, or maybe she meant to develop them. She might come back.’

Yes. He was right. He was quite right.

I flicked through the last few, almost like a goodbye.

‘You never know, if you leave your number, she might get in touch, and—’

But suddenly …

… Suddenly, I wasn’t listening.

I was hearing, but not listening.

Because something about this photo – this last photo – had caught my eye.

‘Where now?’ said Dev, draining his pint. ‘What shall we do?’

But I was still staring, still struggling to comprehend.

This photo … it was a photo taken in a café. There was a table in front of whoever took it, with a half-finished coffee and the remains of a slice of something, and a spoon to one side. The café looked warm, and welcoming, and through the window the bright yellow light of a black cab was just about visible. A waiter was clearing up, and there were checkered tablecloths and monochrome photos on the wall of minor celebrity diners, like Andy Crane and Suggs, and over to one side, cut in half by the framing and reading a copy of
London Now
was a man.

In fact, over to one side and cut in half by the framing and reading a copy of
London Now
was
me
.

‘One who refused advice was later seen bleeding.’

Traditional Shona Tribe proverb, Zimbabwe

Hello?

I hope there’s someone out there. Is there a button I can push that will tell me?

Hello?

I will listen to my friends in future. If you’re my friend, maybe you’ll help me work through this. I will listen to your advice. So if you’ve got something to say to me, you just go right ahead and say it to me and I will listen, and it sounds as if that means I will not bleed, which is a good thing all round, isn’t it? Especially if I’m at your house and you don’t want me bleeding everywhere.

But I can see, listening is important.

Because the problem is – or at least it has been – sometimes you go deaf when what you can see is so overwhelming.

So yes. I’ll listen.

Thank you in advance.

Thank you!

‘That is mental,’ said Dev, as we walked towards the tube.

‘I know,’ I said, and that’s all I could say. My mind was racing.

I patted my pocket. The photos were still in there. They’d suddenly become precious, somehow, and I couldn’t help but keep checking them.

‘No, I mean that is mental. Absolutely
mental
. Do you have any idea how mental that is?’

‘I know exactly how mental that is. It’s mental.’

‘No, mate – it’s
properly
mental. That’s you. You, in the photo. In the photo she took just before you ended up with that photo in your hand. What if you’d never developed the film? Then you’d never know that—’

‘What?’

‘Well, it’s fate, isn’t it? It’s got to be. It’s destiny!’

I tried to ignore what Dev was saying, but it was difficult. It was me in that photo. Half of me, and not a particularly flattering half, either, but me all the same. Sitting there, paper flattened down on the table, shovelling a sausage into my mouth. And it’s not like this was a regular haunt of mine, Café Roma. It’s not like anyone taking a photo in there at just before six on a weeknight would be statistically likely to catch me wolfing
down a Roman sausage. I’d been there maybe twice before, both times after a lonely visit to the cinema on Tottenham Court Road, and this time I’d only popped in because it was kind of familiar, and I was nearby, and I was hungry.

And yet there I was.

‘You’ve got a connection now,’ said Dev, eyes ablaze. ‘If she’s a hippy, you might be able to trick her into thinking it’s the universe guiding you together. If she’s not, you might be able to appeal to her anecdotal side. It’d be a great “how we met” story for dinner parties. She looks like she goes to dinner parties. I wonder what it must be like to go to dinner parties.’

‘Are you still talking?’ I said, but we both knew I was trying to be casual. Thing is, I was kind of excited. I had no reason to be, rationally speaking. I’m probably in lots of strangers’ photos. Right now, there’s probably a family in Osaka doing an extended slide show of their trip to London, and there I am, squeezing a Calippo and blinking in the background near the traffic at Trafalgar Square. I’m probably in the background of a thousand others, too, late for work, hungover or harassed, drinking cans of Coke near Westminster or looking at girls on the Heath, captured and immortalised forever in someone else’s memories, over someone else’s shoulders.

The only strange thing is that I should ever see one.

I wondered if The Girl had noticed me in there. I hadn’t seen her. I’d been too preoccupied with reading my latest stuff in
London Now
, seething as I asked myself why the subs had insisted on changing almost everything I did so that it was no longer as pithy or perfect as I’d wanted. I’d had mash with my sausage, and a cup of sugary tea, and I’d studied the listings to see what was on telly that night. But at no point had I noticed The Girl, and at no point had I heard a click or seen a flash. If she’d noticed me, if I’d been promoted from a mere
extra in her life to a dayplayer, she hadn’t let on when I’d helped her with her packages. Maybe that was a bad sign. I’d never even entered her radar. But then, she’s got a boyfriend. One with a chunky watch. Why should I have entered her radar? I wear a Swatch.

But what if ….? What if there
was
a connection?

The next morning, I tried to convince myself that, hey, as weird as it is, these things happen. So what? She’d been finishing off her film before taking it to be processed, I’d happened to be nearby when it happened. After all, it was only because I was nearby in the first place that I’d even seen her that night. What seemed like a huge coincidence was now just a conversation-starter. An icebreaker at best. A ‘hey-here’s-the-funniest-thing’.

But Dev wasn’t fooled. And he was still hugely impressed by what he saw as the startling global ramifications of it all.

‘Dude, people have
kids
for less of a reason!’

‘When did you start saying “dude”? And is that what you think I should tell her if I see her again? “Hi, you don’t know me, but I was in the background of a picture you once took. Hey, let’s have a child!”’

‘Jase, you’re forgetting everything else. The fact you ended up with the camera in your hand.’

‘That’s down to my ineptitude,’ I tried.

‘You saw her again in the same place!’

‘Yeah, probably looking for her camera.’

‘Mate! Come on! This is a moment! Yeah? Use it!’

Truth was, I wanted to. I’d stayed up late last night, flicking through the photos, looking for I’m-not-sure-what. You and I both know I knew nothing about this girl, and yet more and more, somehow I felt I knew
something
.

Here’s what I thought I knew.

Her favourite season was spring, because yellow was her favourite colour, and daffodils are yellow. She liked daffodils, because maybe she’d grown up on a farm somewhere, and as little as I know about farms I imagine sometimes they’re quite near daffodils. She liked animals, of course, because of the whole farm thing, and also it’s hard to like a girl who hates animals; it messes with the order of things. But her small flat in London with the shabby chic furniture she’d bought from a weekend fleamarket and painstakingly painted and restored herself when she’d moved down to London from – where? Wales, maybe, where she’d also left her childhood sweetheart, the only boy she’d ever kissed? Well, it was just too small for a dog or a cat and so she’d just pet them when she passed them in the street, and engage their owners in long, sweet conversations. Cats! It was cats she loved most! And she rode a bike for sure, even though both times I’d seen her she’d been in a taxi, and the blue coat she wore was her favourite, and she wore it everywhere, whatever the weather.

I knew it was stupid. I knew the picture I was painting was just of a girl I
wanted
to know, no matter how clichéd the love of animals or the battered old bike or the blue coat she took everywhere or the fresh daffodils from the stallholder she greeted every day on her way to work were.

And then there was work. What did she do? Again, the ideas were probably better than the reality. In my mind, she was maybe a book publicist, working on quiet but important texts and making sure professors got their sandwiches before the lady from
New Scientist
turned up, or the fella from the World Service dropped by to record an interview on an ancient, scuffed Marantz. Or maybe an art student, with a free, cartwheeling mind and painted rainbow toenails and a rabbit called Renoir.

Or just French. I honestly wouldn’t mind if she was just French.

The truth, of course, was that she was probably in sales. For a window fitting company that broke several EU environmental safety guidelines in the late 1990s and was on
Watchdog
. That blue jacket was all she could find that day. She didn’t care about animals. She couldn’t spell ‘daffodils’. She smoked Marlboro Reds and couldn’t stand kids and had never been to Waterstones. And if she
did
have a bike, it wouldn’t be an old battered one with a basket on the front and plastic flowers on the wheel, it’d be a slick and soulless titanium one she’d bought off her wastrel brother and never really used and made her flat look awful, all propped up against the hallway wall and unused and ignored.

Because it doesn’t matter how someone seems inside a photo; it’s what’s on the outside that counts.

And that was what kept my mind from flying out the window, my heart and my hope exactly where they were, and my feet in a videogame shop on the Caledonian Road.

I put the kettle on, and Dev flicked the
closed
sign to
open.
An instant later the door swung open.

‘Hello, Dev. Hello, Jason.’

‘Hey, Pawel.’

‘Dev, you owe me four pound. And also, six for
Jezynowka
.’

‘Absolutely!’ said Dev. ‘But first, I need your advice.’

‘Why?’

‘I aim to woo one of your kind.’ Pawel looked a little blank.

‘A girl called Pamela. Pam
-eh
-la. I need some dialogue. Interesting things to say. Pointers.’

Pawel nodded gravely.

‘From café?’

‘That’s her!’ said Dev. ‘Pretty. Brown hair with big yellow streaks.’

‘Yes. You will need much help. She is maybe the most boring woman in world.’

Dev looked confused.

‘She seems enigmatic.’

‘No, no. Very boring. A very boring woman.’

I decided to leave Pawel and a stunned Dev to it, and wandered upstairs.

Work. No, coffee. First coffee, then work. Real coffee, though. None of Dev’s instant. Not because I don’t like instant. I just don’t like Dev’s instant. It was Sarah that got me onto real coffee. I think it was mostly showing off. Look at me, with my cafetière, and my proper coffee cups and my fair trade beans. I had a mental image of her and Gary, suddenly, sipping homemade lattes, sitting crosslegged and barefoot on polished floorboards in white linen trousers in rooms with fresh flowers and breaking croissants in two and listening to Coldplay and smugly quoting Charlie Brooker’s column at each other and laughing about how rubbish everything is.

I took the photos out of my pocket and threw them down on the table, the green and yellow Snappy Snaps packet now creased and crumpled. I thought about opening them up again, just to have another quick look at someone else’s life, but shoved them in a drawer instead.