Death & the City Book Two (29 page)

I follow the assistant to the pay point and find I can easily face the changing-room, waiting for Alice to emerge, while Sasha deals with my transaction personally.

"Yes, we have 75% off in sale today online, plus you use your gift voucher in store, so we give you free sports bag and keychain digital camera," she beams at me. "You have some money left on your voucher, if you use today I can give you discount on accessories, buy one get one free? Includes all jewellery, sunglasses and gloves…"

She angles the screen to show me what I can afford, and I pick some black leather gloves with decorative bows on the backs, very Audrey Hepburn in
Breakfast At Tiffany's
,
and some wraparound black Jackie O sunglasses as my freebie - not as racy as the Versace ones I have from work, but more practical, without too much reflective bling on them. My inner teen angst has stopped grumbling entirely now. I think it feels heard, now that I'm shopping for it with practicality in mind. It doesn't matter if I never wear it. Just to know that I have it should it ever be necessary again.

Sasha fills my enormous paper-and-cord 'Kitty, Kitty' shopper, and flourishes the receipt.

"On back of here is voucher for Kissaten coffee and Tanoshii Meals," she says, tucking it down the side securely. "Good shopping with you. You have a very nice day."

"Thank you," I grin back, accepting my unexpected Easter bonus, as she passes the bag over the counter. Just then, Alice emerges to be greeted by the black shop assistant, and it seems she wants to buy everything she's just tried on except the optional trousers, so I dawdle by the jewellery stand while she bustles over to the checkout behind me.

"How are you paying today?" Alice's shop assistant asks her.

"Cash," says Alice, unexpectedly. "Been told to treat myself today as I've got a new job."

"Cool," says the black girl. "If you want the hangers they're free, if you want some hanging dust-covers for the dress, suit and jumpsuit I'll do you three for two as you're paying in cash?"

Alice is also tempted by the 'Kitty, Kitty' perfume by the display tester at the checkout, and when the girl points out the offer of a half-price red lipstick if she buys the full-size bottle, those are quickly added to the bill as well. Alice peels one off a wad of notes, pockets it and hands over the wad as payment.

"There's a voucher for Kissaten Sensei coffee and Tanoshii Meals on your receipt," the shop assistant smiles, giving her some small coinage in change. "Can go and enjoy yourself on us. Have a nice day."

"Definitely. I love their Ginger Latte," Alice agrees. "Bye for now."

We're not alone in the conga-line of loosely-linked 'Kitty, Kitty' shoppers heading for Kissaten's with our receipts, so it's easy to follow her on this route through the mall quite innocently. It's only a voucher for a free coffee with any cake, cookie or sandwich purchase, so the Kissaten chain is barely losing out, and probably get some sort of minimum staff discount at the fashion outlet in exchange. Perhaps their coffee-wrangler uniforms are made in the same factory.

As we approach I recall, strangely, the last time I was here was on my first appointment with Connor, and as I look past Alice's trailing pashmina towards the doors in recollection, I'm almost not surprised to see him waiting outside now.

I feel more of a relief as I get closer and he grins at me, because suddenly I've got another reason to be there legitimately. Not just a coffee voucher, not just idly stalking a loose cannon with a gossip habit, on my own.

"Hey," he greets me. "I left the boys to it, thought I'd grab a lunch break and catch up with you."

He gives me a kiss hello and puts his arm around me. Suddenly all my previous
'
Z
_n
'
s seem to scatter into meaninglessness, as I link my arm around him gratefully in return. For once this is what feels normal, not isolation.

"Everything all right?" he asks me. "You look tired. Like you've been thinking too much. As usual."

"Yeah," I agree. "That, and shopping. I'm not used to it. I'm sure I adopted a zebra as well in that shop. They could sell ice to Eskimos."

Connor laughs.

"Tell me about it. Let's get a coffee. We'll see if your friend over there is on any special diet."

Chapter 31:
A Rice By Any Other Name

Alice heads upstairs with her Ginger Latte and a cream Bath bun, and Connor and I follow presently, after a fight over the last chocolate brownie. He wins by rock-paper-scissors, meaning I get carrot cake instead with my Maple Syrup Latte. As we sit down in the window sofa as before, side-by-side, he splits both in half so we share equally anyway - and I realise he just enjoys winning a fight, over just about anything.

Alice is curled up in a huge armchair in the opposite corner like a
Jackanory
storyteller, the 'Kitty, Kitty' free Spring catalogue open on her lap. She's texting behind it, obviously adding to her own story with her latest inspiration.

"What did you get?" Connor asks, nodding towards my shopping bag. "And when do I get to see you in it?"

"Never mind," I say indignantly, not sure I can handle this level of conversation in public, under the circumstances. "Something they recommended."

Connor just grins, not in the least bothered. I think he likes seeing me squirm as well.

"You could wear it on our next proper date," he suggests, catching me out.

"When?"

"Sunday," he reminds me. "I did ask already."

I nod, vaguely remembering something to that effect. I feel as though it was someone else having that conversation at the time. Connor watches as I peel off the biker jacket, and after I put it down, he picks it up and finds my wallet in the inside pocket, flipping it open and sliding out my cards and I.D.

"What are you looking for?" I ask, not in the least fazed by his curiosity.

"You," he says, finding my photo I.D. "Here you are. Recognise yourself?"

I glance at my driver's licence in his hand. My hair used to be dark, but it's still me. I have a weird feeling, sort of a settling sensation, as if I've been in an out-of-body experience all morning. Seeing the photograph of myself is the necessary grounding force to bring me back down to Earth.

"That's what I thought." Connor puts it away again. "Transference. Spend too much time focusing on someone else, you lose your own sense of self. Remote influencing acting on the observer, not on the subject. Like Flynn said, you're a psychological sponge. To be honest, I don't think this is the work direction they should be pushing you in, for your own sake."

I shrug.

"They think I'm good at it."

"Yeah, you are, because you forget yourself in the process. I think you should be doing something that reinforces who you are, instead of steals you from yourself."

"Maybe I don't want constant reminders of who I am," I remark.

"Too late," Connor smirks. "Because you've got me backing you up now."

As I look at him, with no idea of what to say, he leans over and gives me a kiss.

"I don't know who I am in this situation," I confide, before he moves away. "Only what I read in other people."

"Nobody knows who they really are," he whispers in return. "You just have to wait and see how you deal with your own reality, not try and predict it, by projecting how you'd cope in someone else's."

He sits back and rests his arm around my waist as he sips his black coffee, glancing out of the window. Now I find myself wondering how he does it. Apart from admitting to his own self-control issues. Even without that, he still has a stronger sense of his own identity than I do.

Also, I don't know how he seems to have all the answers to mine as well. It's as if I've been studied under a microscope. He seems to know fairly certainly what's me and what isn't, and how to keep what is me on the right track. And without all the peer counselling techno-jargon of the sort I'd get from either group therapy, or someone like Warren. Connor just cuts out all the social niceness and politically-correct preliminaries, and gets straight to the point.

"What do you suggest I should be doing instead, then?" I ask, more as a challenge than a concession. Connor smiles to himself and doesn't quite make eye contact.

"I've got a pretty good idea," he admits. "Been trying to talk you into it for a while already."

"Now I reckon you really are just brainwashing me," I tell him, and he chuckles and shakes his head.

"More than you were getting brainwashed before I turned up just now?" he says, looking at me. There's still a slight smirk on his face, but his eyes are saying something else I'm not familiar with. Before I can start trying to break it down into logical conclusions, my phone reminds me what I'm doing here with another update.

Out of the corner of my eye, Alice is now settled with her soup-tureen-sized coffee, gazing out of the window in a Hollywood starlet faraway-thoughts photo-opportunity pose. Probably at least half real, the other half part of her developing current secret life fantasy, acting how she wants to appear to others. Mysterious and thoughtful and aloof. Not empty-headed, gullible and suggestible. That would be me, if I put on any act. The dumb blonde reality would show me up every time. I can't even do cute and scatty, the generally accepted face of internalised self-denial. It's like Martha, adhering to her cultural background in the modern world - watching Alice hang onto her fantasy life in spite of the evidence to the contrary. I don't seem to have any tenacity in comparison. Too willing to let go of ideas, and self, and reality.

I pass my phone to Connor and let him read the incoming update first, in case he considers anything in it hazardous to my allegedly ongoing identity crisis, or at least to allow him to pre-empt anything in it that is. He scrolls through, before handing it back.

"Reminds me of a documentary monologue by someone not otherwise known for their introspection," he remarks. "Reaching around for something deep and meaningful to say when you know they get their groceries delivered by Harrods and unpacked by their house staff, and all their laundry done by a hotel service. The most they see of a kitchen is when they go to look for a corkscrew."

I nod, familiar with that type of entertainment in the Media. Give a celebrity a camera and send them off to survive for a week in a Council flat, or working in a fast-food joint. Suddenly they come over all philosophical and philanthropist, not realising they're going to be showing themselves up as having thought nothing much about anything for the last decade or more. Other than their pole-position ranking on the red carpet, and their page number in the tabloids. But then the broadcasters probably don't see it either, being part of the same bubble. It's hard to say what is intentionally ironic in the Media nowadays. With so many people wanting to challenge the public perception of themselves, and ending up reinforcing it, it's no wonder there's an endless supply of it about. Running vicious circles around themselves as they try to stay in the public eye, and yet be more to the public eye than just eye candy. Exploiting anything of any humanitarian value within their own comfort zone, as if the rest of the world isn't aware of humanitarian issues, in order to somehow become more human themselves. There is something vampiric about it, eternal life by the suffering of others. I can't remember a time celebrity pressure ever changed the licensing laws at The Plaza, so why they think it should change laws and policies in foreign countries is a mystery. Probably easier to get public support for, than carrying no formal I.D, coked out of their heads, and drunkenly trying to bluff their way past a nightclub door supervisor (who's already having a crap night) into a gay strip bar.

Probably the reason they do it, I muse to myself, re-opening the file Connor has just browsed on my phone. Proving they're more than those sweaty alcoholics falling off kerbs and out of taxis in London's West End, where they're mostly known for wasting police time, and that getting on TV in places like The Gambia is better than being seen in Groucho's. As if central Africa is a posh yob's club outside of SIA and the licensing law's jurisdiction, where they don't have to adhere to a dress code and not swear. A combination of edgy open-air rock festival celebrity dive, and minimalist detox holiday for the rich. The opposites of
Robin Hood
, feeding their self-image and ego off the poor locals.

Connor was bang on the money in his response to her internet blog post. There's a lot of
I feel that…
opening sentences, fairly typical of someone with nothing real to say and a lot to speculate about. Speculating about the risks of underestimating the dangers that could be ahead, and keeping her identity secret, the thrill of a new challenge in uncharted waters, and the responsibility of such a task being given to her. And about what levels in society she must now be expected to mingle and familiarize herself with, whether her acting skills are up to standard in order to fit in, and not arouse suspicion. All acutely contrived clichés that could be applied to any new job, from Benefits Fraud Investigator, to Mystery Shopper, to Government Advisor On Education. She's got the skill of weaving stereotyped statements together vaguely enough to attract unqualified attention, not quite Mills & Boon standard, but definitely bored online bingo chat-room fodder, or Miss Haversham's Raffia Mafia audience. But still with nothing substantial or detailed or concrete enough to be termed a work of serious insight. More a fashion-victim of her own storylines, following whichever path she notes gains her the most attention. Maybe increasing her blog followers today by me and a couple of idle police monitors is spurring her on to write more about anything that comes into her head, fulfilling what she perceives is her public's demand.