‘Rob the reviews editor.’
‘So … you want me to be reviews editor?’
‘No, I want you to fill in for the reviews editor.’
‘So I’d—’
‘You wouldn’t even have to go anywhere. Just tell other people to. It’d mean office work.’
‘I don’t mind! I mean, I’d love to!’
There was a pause.
‘Zoe, you’re not doing this because …’
‘What?’
‘I want you to know you don’t owe me anything.’
‘I’m doing this because I need someone to fill in and Jennifer’s booked her holiday, Sam’s away Monday and Lauren said no. So Monday, yeah? We get in for ten, but I reckon you should probably pick up some croissants and put the coffee on and be there for nine.’
And that was that.
Jason Priestley. Reviews editor. London Now.
It was on a napkin, but if I squinted a bit it looked like it could nearly be a business card.
Dev had bought me a celebratory pint and set it down on the table.
‘I’ve noticed that the mainstream press tends to sideline videogames,’ he said. ‘But in “Game On”, London Now would have a window into this brave new world. I would review fearlessly, and from the heart, combining—’
‘I’ll check with Zoe,’ I said. ‘I’m not sure how many decisions I can make.’
He seemed satisfied with that.
‘Will it be weird, though, working with Zoe?’
I shrugged. Then so did he. I guess neither of us knew.
I let the silence hang in the air. Tried to turn a pause into a notable one. And then …
‘What do you know about Whitby, Dev?’
‘Whitby?’
‘Whitby.’
‘I know almost nothing about Whitby, other than its name. Why?’
‘The Girl. The photos. Turns out one of them was taken in Whitby.’
‘Aha!’ he said, clicking his fingers then pointing one of them at me. ‘I knew it!’
‘Knew what?’
‘I knew it! You! You love her!’
‘I don’t love her! I just know she was in Whitby once. I know you were in Asda earlier – doesn’t mean I love you.’
‘How do you know one of them was taken in Whitby?’
‘Gary.’
‘So Gary knows?’
‘He knows about Whitby, not about The Girl. He used to go there on holiday.’
‘Hey, check it out,’ he said, suddenly, and pointed across the street. ‘Pamela.’
He started humming that weird song again.
‘When are you doing it?’
‘The wooing? Dunno. Tomorrow, maybe.’
We watched in silence as Pamela jogged to the bus stop, and continued to watch as she jogged on, towards a car that was pulling up on the side of the road. It was a blue Viva, dented and chipped, but that didn’t seem to matter, because she looked delighted to see it. There was a man driving, and he looked delighted too, and I was way ahead of Dev here, so made sure I was in the middle of a large gulp of lager as Pamela got in, leaned over, and kissed the man, her hand stroking the back of his head.
‘Oh, come on!’ said Dev, and I winced, and nodded my sympathies. ‘Oh, come on!’
And then I got a call. And I was asked how I was, and I moved away from Dev and I told her, and I mentioned Gary had been by, and she said she knew, and she said sorry about that, and I said it was fine, no problem, and then she said we needed to talk, and could we meet up, because this would be better face-to-face, and just to show how busy I am these days I churlishly said no let’s just talk now, and so we talked, and I listened, and she told me why she’d rung today.
And the clouds may as well have darkened and the rain begun to fall, because the sky came crashing to the ground.
SEVEN
Or ‘A Lot of Changes Coming’
Look, it was good news.
Technically, it was good news.
‘I’m pregnant,’ she’d said.
She hadn’t known how to tell me, apparently, especially after what had happened, but it was true, and she was delighted.
She’d had her twelve-week scan. They’d gone away to celebrate. He’d proposed. They’d told their friends. It was terrifically grown-up.
‘I’d rather have told you face-to-face,’ she’d said, and I’d said something back, which was positive, and encouraging, but which I can’t for the life of me remember, because all of I could think of was, What do I do now?
And now I knew what Gary’s pause had meant.
‘I suppose you could say it was a pregnant pause!’ said Dev, and then I stared at him, and he stopped laughing and sipped at his pint.
Because it wasn’t just a pause about Sarah. It was a pause that summed up me and him. A pause in which he’d managed to convey the fact he had special knowledge, knowledge he could choose to hit me with if he wanted, but that he wouldn’t, because he’s too decent, too trustworthy, too honest, but that he still wins.
We were back in the Den, next to the van rental place, and we were sombre.
So that’s it, then. That’s that period of my life over. Properly over. Sarah’s going to be a mum. And I’ll always just be the ex-boyfriend. Then one day just ‘an’ ex-boyfriend. Then one day, sooner than you’d think, I’d be nothing at all.
And yeah, I know it sounds like I’m hung up on her, and yeah, I know you’ve amassed enough evidence to prove it – for Christ’s sake I’ve even written it down for you – but this is something else, this. This isn’t about her. It’s not my past. It’s about my future. Because when one person moves on so quickly, and all the other one really has is what was, thinking about what will be is difficult.
Maybe I should feel relieved. I’m out of limbo. I’m somewhere, rather than who-knows-where. The decision has been made for me: ‘Jason & Sarah’ can never work again; they’ll absolutely, undeniably never share a letterhead – and now I don’t have to worry anymore.
But that’s just it, isn’t it? The fact that my happiness is so reliant on other people’s whims and fancies.
I need to stop being decided for. I need to start deciding.
‘We need to do something,’ said Dev, tapping his finger on the bar to show he was serious. ‘Get away. We are men disturbed by women. You, with your now engaged-and-pregnant ex-girlfriend that you’re totally over, and me with my Polish wife-to-be kissing another man in London’s only-remaining Vauxhall Viva.’
He looked me in the eye, very seriously.
‘What are your thoughts on EuroDisney?’ he said.
‘I am not going to EuroDisney with you.’
‘Come on. We could go to EuroDisney. You and me.’
‘I am not going to EuroDisney with you.’
‘We could treat it like some kind of perverse stag weekend.’
‘You’re asking me to go on a perverse weekend to EuroDisney with you?’
‘I just mean we could treat it like a lads’ adventure. Show the women of the world we have no need of their ways and means. We could drink lager and burp in public.’
‘At EuroDisney?’
‘Fine. Bruges, then. Amsterdam.’
‘I’ve a job to start on Monday.’
‘Dublin.’
‘I need to be fresh.’
‘Okay, let’s sit about in our pants watching Phillip Schofield and his magic cube. We could just watch Come Dine with Me all of Sunday and not even speak.’
I bloody love Come Dine with Me.
‘Let’s eat bad food and mope about and pop cans of awful lager!’ he said, more passionate with each word. ‘Or … let’s use the moment. Turn something bad into something good! A trip! An experience! You and me!’
And with each pint, it actually sounded a little bit better.
It was early – far too early – and I was struggling to stay asleep. There was a whine outside. A high, throaty whine, like a man strangling a van.
I stumbled out o
f bed and winced as I pulled up the blind. I recognised the noise already. It was Dev’s Nissan Cherry. It was the noise it made every time he tried to use it, after which he’d inevitably give up the second he saw a bus coming, and slam down the hood to leg it across the road instead. It was eight o’clock. What the hell was Dev doing attacking his car at eight o’clock on a Saturday morning?
Maybe he’d seen Pamela coming and wanted to look manly. He’d probably made sure he was carrying a wrench, and had agonised over exactly how much oil to smear on his face. This is the best thing about being manly: it’s so easy to fake. Smear some oil on your face, or nod and say ‘Aaah’ near mechanics.
I was about to close the blind again, but then… then I noticed something. The man under the bonnet was wearing baggy jeans. Dev doesn’t wear baggy jeans. He wears jeans either slightly too tight and far too short or slacks with elasticated waists he gets for nine quid out of a catalogue. And was that a hoodie? The car whined again and I suddenly realised … I was witnessing a theft! There was a robbery in progress! Someone was trying to nick Dev’s car! Well, fix it first, but then nick it.
‘Dev!’ I yelled, falling backwards onto the bed with the sheer shock and excitement of it all. ‘Dev!’
But there was no answer. I needed a weapon, and I needed one urgently. The odd thing is, I own very little weaponry. I have no nun-chuks, all our knives are blunt, and a badminton racquet lacks that certain menace. So I grabbed a hairbrush from the little table in the hall and was surprised for a moment because I didn’t know we had a hairbrush, and I banged on Dev’s door as I ran past.
‘Someone’s nicking your car!’ I shouted, bounding down the stairs, my grip tight on my hairbrush, my mind racing as I tried to decide which end of it looked the most threatening.
I heard the whine again as I reached the door and I panicked. Where the hell was Dev? I needed back-up! The Nissan was screaming for help, and it needed that help in a hurry! The thief was surely just a few short hours from making it work!
‘Dev!’ I shouted. ‘Bring more weapons!’
I pulled the door open, and was suddenly there, right in front of the Cherry, blinking in the morning sun, a man in his pants with a hairbrush he obviously hadn’t used yet.
And there – there he was. The thief. My enemy. Still under the hood, still fiddling about, still completely oblivious of the terrible danger he was in. I couldn’t work out if I should just strike him with the brush, or shout some kind of warning. But what’s a good warning? And what should I say afterwards? ‘Why are you fixing this terrible car?’ was the only thing that seemed to make sense, so instead, I raised my hairbrush and just said, ‘Hey!’
The whining stopped. I tightened my grip on the brush.
‘Morning, sir,’ said the man.
Oh.
It was Matthew Fowler.
What was Matthew Fowler doing fixing Dev’s car?
‘Matt?’ I said. And then I realised I was still in my pants, brandishing a hairbrush. A bus went by, giving me enough time to think up a brilliant excuse.
‘I was just brushing my hair.’
Well, an excuse, anyway.
‘Oi, oi!’ said a voice to my left. It was Dev, striding towards us, carrying coffees and small brown bags. He threw one at me and I crushed it to my chest. It was warm, and oily, and wet.
‘Oz did us some bacon sarnies,’ he said. ‘You wanted a Fanta, yeah, Matt?’
Matt gave him a thumbs-up, then pointed at the car.
‘Chipped flywheel,’ he said.
Dev and I both nodded and said, ‘Aaah.’
‘I can sort it.’
‘How come Matt’s fixing the car?’ I said, pulling some jeans on.
‘Well, we couldn’t go in a broken one.’
‘No, I mean, how come Matt? And what do you mean “go”? Go where?’
‘We’re going on our trip! Our trip to send a message to the women of the world! We planned it last night!’
I was pretty sure we hadn’t. But what if we had?
‘I tried to get the thing going, and Matt was passing, and he asked if I knew you, and at first I said no in case it was some kind of contract killing, and then he mentioned he worked in a garage, and that was that.’
I walked to the window. Well, well. Matt Fowler coming in handy.
I took another bite of my bacon sandwich as the whine outside turned to a low growl.
‘Wheels rolling in ten,’ said Dev, delighted.
‘But where are we going?’
‘We discussed this!’ he said, clapping his hands together, and he jogged down the stairs.
I shoved a spare T-shirt in a Tesco bag and grabbed my wallet. Well, why not? A trip might be fun. But I had an uneasy feeling that I already knew what Dev had planned.
I made my way downstairs, and saw something odd.
‘Oh, are you coming, Matt?’
He was in the back seat, swigging his Fanta. Maybe we were dropping him somewhere.
‘I invited Matt along for the trip,’ said Dev, finishing his sandwich. ‘He fixed the car. He’s already done more to earn it than we have.’
I baulked slightly. This was weird. We can’t do this. There’s hardly a day goes by you don’t see a story in the Daily Mail about some teacher who’s gone on the run with a former pupil. They’re usually blonde, though, and hardly ever slightly thuggish looking men with access to a pipe wrench.
‘And, does Matt know where we’re going?’
‘Yeah,’ said Matt. ‘Whitby.’
‘Whitby?’ I said, surprised. Dev smiled. Of course he smiled. We hadn’t talked about going to Whitby last night. I’d mentioned Whitby, and he’d talked of a trip, but at no point had anyone said, ‘Let’s get up really early and go on a trip to Whitby.’ This was Dev’s plan, not ours.
‘So Whitby’s in Yorkshire or something?’ said Matt. ‘Never been.’
‘But you’re happy to go? I mean, don’t you have things to be—’
‘Not really been out of London,’ he said. ‘Got an auntie moved to Swindon so seen that. And Bosworth.’
‘Bosworth?’
‘Yeah. With you, sir.’
God, yeah. We’d been to Bosworth. A school trip I’d tried to blank out. Matt had stolen twelve rubbers from the gift shop, and Neil Collins had peed in a bin. This, though, this was different. This was recreational. And it was Whitby. I didn’t want to go to Whitby.
‘Thing is, today’s quite a bad day for this,’ I tried. ‘I just got an email, saying—’
‘Your computer was off. I saw it.’
‘Much earlier, I mean—’
‘You were asleep.’
‘Look,’ I sighed. ‘Are we sure we want to go to Whitby? What about Alton Towers? Or … Snaresbrook? There’s a big hill in Snaresbrook.’
‘A big hill!’ said Dev. ‘Would you like to see a big hill, Matt?’
Matt shrugged.
I stared at Dev. I couldn’t go into it much further, not into the whole Whitby thing, not in front of Matt. I couldn’t face explaining. Plus, it’d be approximately fifteen minutes before every single kid I’d ever taught and every single kid they’d ever met knew about it. I tried a different tack.
‘It’s … quite a long way to Whitby.’
He shrugged, and nodded. This was all a little odd.
The car was running and Dev scrunched up his brown paper bag.
‘Right!’ he said. ‘It’s a five-hour drive! Let’s see what this baby can do!’
I looked at the car. I didn’t have to get in. I could go back inside, wait for Phillip Schofield and his talking cube, maybe grab a kebab from Oz’s, or pop down to the Den.
I thought about it.
We roared off through Caledonian Road at very nearly four miles an hour.
‘No matter how thoroughly
a crow may wash, it
remains ever black.’
Traditional Shona Tribe proverb, Zimbabwe
I love the Internet almost as much as I
love London.
I’m not sure London loves me in quite the same way, but it’s a relationship we’re working on.
There are six people following this blog now, even though so far all I’ve written are three embarrassingly whiny boo-hoo entries, including one terrifically self-pitying thing about listening to my friends in the future, which of course I won’t, because I’m not that type of girl. Also, I shall try not to drink and blog in the future. Sorry about that.
So I suppose I’d better welcome all six of you, however you found me, to whatever you think this is.
Hello, Martin in Malaysia.
Hello, Captain Stinkjet.
Hello, Maureen.
Hello, FrrrrrrrrrrrBeep.
Hello, DownAndOutInPowysAndLuton.
And hello to the sixth person, whoever you are, because somehow you’ve managed to remain anonymous.
As shall I, for now, unless Captain Stinkjet can come up with a name to rival his?
You’re probably wondering about the last entry. I wrote it on a bad day. It was a day I lost something. Two things, actually, neither of which I’ve found again. One was love, and that’s probably the main one, I suppose, because not many poets write wonderful poems about the loss of a disposable camera, which was the other thing. No great paintings or operas feature a bright yellow Kodak that I’m aware of. But then I don’t know much about art. I went to a gallery once, but everything looked like those paintings you see elephants doing on the news, so I went to Café Roma instead.
Strangely, I’m not sure what to miss more: the relationship, or the camera.
See, a relationship you can deal with. It hurts, and for a while it hurts so badly it’s like your lungs collapse and your heart contracts every time you realise it’s gone. But in the long term, for me at the very least, it’s what’s left in a heap on the floor that helps get you through. That little heap of evidence helps you to heal, is the idea I’ve got.
For me it was the photos, which I’d taken with me in my bag to Fitzrovia. I wasn’t sure if I would and I wasn’t sure if I wouldn’t, but I had to sit in that café again then walk past that bright yellow photo place about three hundred times while I decided.
If I was strong enough, I would develop them.
If I was stronger still, I would not.
But now I never can and I feel robbed of the chance to move on. To see those moments once more, to tell myself the story all over again, to decide how I should move forward and when. Maybe that’s what this is.
Charlotte Street Page 9
