I couldn’t believe this.
‘Do you have any idea how this looks? You can’t just mess about with someone’s life like this. You can’t just come in here and use my computer and make me look like a moron. I was just making things okay with her again, and now this.’
I’m a polite man, even when riled, and it’s horrible to make someone feel horrible, but right now Abbey needed to know she was out of line. What, so we have a couple of nice meet-ups, and now she feels she can meddle? Now she feels she can fucking meddle?
‘You need to be told, Abbey, and—’
‘Jason. You don’t need this.’
I stopped in my tracks. She stared at me.
You don’t need this. Four such easy words, for her.
‘You need to let go. You messed it up, but if you don’t let go, you’ll never be able to do anything good again. You’re a catch, in your own way, Jason, but you’re damaged goods. And you can’t let that one thing define you. You can’t have these constant reminders. “Sarah is married, Sarah’s having fun, Sarah doesn’t need you any more.” You need to reset, and recharge, and then you can have her in your life again maybe, but you’ll have changed to what you need to be.’
I don’t know if it was what she was saying, or just the way she was saying it, but she was making sense, and though my eyes revealed nothing, I was calming. Maybe I just needed someone else to make this decision for me. It’s possible sometimes you just do.
And then, the strangest thing: Abbey leaned close to me. So close I felt her breath on my face and could smell her shampoo and feel her hand graze my leg and it was the single sexiest thing in the world, this girl right next to me, in my T-shirt, so close and so lovely and so here.
And she kissed me. Tenderly and quietly, she kissed me.
She leaned back, brushed her fringe away, smiled at the window, then back at me.
‘I just want to be friends,’ she said.
I blinked.
‘Eh?’
‘I’m not what you need.’
‘But you kissed me. Or, we kissed. But you kissed me.’
‘I just wanted to get that out of the way because otherwise we’d both have been thinking about it and it’s not the way ahead for either of us.’
I blinked again.
‘Eh?’
‘It’s muuuch better this way,’ she said, grabbing a pillow and cuddling it, creating a barrier. ‘And anyway, I didn’t actually delete her.’ She smiled.
‘Sorry, what?’
‘I didn’t actually delete her. That’d be mental. You can’t just go round people’s houses deleting stuff for them.’
‘That’s what I said!’
‘Well, it’s a bit insulting that you’d think I would. But now you’ve realised that you can, that it’s allowed, that it’s actually possible, well, you should.’ I looked at the laptop.
‘So!’ said Dev, at the café down the road. ‘I’ve cracked it!’
We’d taken Abbey out for Saturday morning breakfast. I was still confused. I’d never met someone whose mind could move so quickly from one thing to the other. People I knew dwelt on things. They sat on them and nurtured their thoughts, and thought ‘impulsive’ was a deodorant. But it was invigorating, somehow.
Matt was on his way over on his bike. Dev wanted to offer him some part-time work at the shop, partly, he’d said, getting ready to go out, ‘because I feel I can inspire Matt into fulfilling his potential’. I was impressed. I hadn’t realised the shop was in a position to take people on. Or that Dev was a man who could inspire, considering I knew for a fact he was wearing his Pokemon pants today.
‘You’ve cracked what?’ said Abbey, and we all fell silent as Pamela the waitress brought our food out. I caught Dev’s eye as he studiously avoided looking at her, but what was that I caught? Had she looked at him for just a second longer than she needed to? Did she have a smile ready, just in case he said another stock Polish phrase to try out? Dev pretended to wipe a difficult mark off the table, while Pamela placed our cutlery on the table and glided off.
‘I’m playing the long game,’ said Dev, conspiratorially. ‘Make her miss me.’
‘It will definitely work,’ said Abbey. ‘So what’s this thing? What’ve you cracked?’
‘The code. The theme. We’re looking for a theme within the chaos of those photos.’
‘I’m not,’ I said. ‘I’m just looking for The Girl. So I can give her her photos back and have achieved something with my year.’
‘Is that what this is about?’ said Abbey, smiling. ‘Some men climb mountains to make their mark, others swim the seas, but Jason Priestley hands in lost property.’
‘So what’s the theme?’ I asked. ‘What unites this woman’s photos? And remember, this better lead me straight to her. I imagine, like your Pamela strategy, this proposal will be foolproof.’
Dev took a deep breath, then looked to Abbey.
‘Can this odd woman be trusted?’ he said, pointing at her.
‘No,’ I said.
‘Then I shall tell you anyway. The girl in the photos is a vampire.’
He sat back in his chair, in a there-I-said-it-way. I stuck my bottom lip out and nodded, as if yes, I’d had my suspicions, too.
‘Or not a vampire, exactly, but an obsessive. Some kind of gothic obsessive. They’re dangerous, the gothic obsessives.’
I held one of the pictures up. Dev had brought them out with us for his big announcement.
‘She doesn’t look like that much of a gothic obsessive,’ I said, pointing out her happy smile and blonde hair and summery dress and total lack of gothic obsession.
‘Well, that’s the typical reaction she’s probably used to from a “Daywalker”.’
‘Why do you think she’s a vampire, Dev?’ said Abbey, very seriously.
‘The theme that’s developing. Think about it. She goes to graveyards.’
‘She goes to graveyards?’
‘Highgate cemetery,’ I said, defensively, as if I knew her. ‘It’s a tourist destination.’
‘Yes, but a tourist destination known for its vampires. The Vampire King himself lives there – you told me! Plus, they reckon Bram Stoker wrote Dracula after a visit to Highgate.’
‘Yeah, but I’m not sure we can take that as—’
‘Whitby. Then there’s Whitby.’
‘What about Whitby?’
‘That’s where Bram Stoker set Dracula! Don’t you see? She’s a Dracula nut! A Dracunut!’
‘So how do you explain the scallops?’ I said. ‘Did Dracula eat scallops?’
‘Scallop sounds a bit like “scalp”?’ offered Abbey.
‘Dracula didn’t scalp people. And he didn’t club seals, either, before you mention that factory.’
‘I dunno, Jase,’ said Dev. ‘Vampires are obsessed with death, whether human or aquatic.’
‘Look,’ I said, quite sternly now, because I was pretty sure this girl, my girl, The Girl, was not a vampire, ‘these are just random photos, taken at random times. They’re not going to lead me right to The Girl, just as they’re not going to give us some deep insight into her life. And I’ve done what I can with them. But Abbey taught me something good today. About fresh starts, and wiping the slate clean. And maybe that’s what I need to do here. Just forget about it. Concentrate on my work.’
But no one was listening, because Abbey looked lost in concentration. She held up a photo.
‘Hey,’ she said. ‘Hey!’
We were outside the Rio Grand cinema in Dalston.
‘I bet you it’s bloody Dracula season!’ Dev had kept saying, as the three of us rode the bus.
In actual fact, it was Algerian Cinema season, so the tall red letters slotted into the sign said, and outside, a roadsweeper clattered a tin can down the street with his brush, oblivious, as we stood and stared.
‘You know,’ said Abbey, a light wind whipping her fringe, ‘the only thing saving you from being a couple of oddball loons illegally stalking
a girl is the fact that one of you is in one of the photos. If you weren’t, I wouldn’t be here. Even though I insisted we came.’
‘It’s fate,’ said Dev, trying to look all mysterious, like a poet.
‘It is fate, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘Except that of course, fate doesn’t exist. Reasons exist. And reasons are what move us to act. You’ve got reasons to find this girl. But there’s nothing to say you will.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘You like her. You had that moment. You thought there was something there. You found yourself in one of her snaps. All good reasons to find her. And you’ve got an excuse, too, because you’re just being a good Samaritan. On the other hand, you’ve got reasons not to find her.’
‘And they are?’
‘You’re a mess. You lost the girl you hoped would be The One because you suspected she might not be The One, then she turned out to be someone else’s one. He snagged her, knocked her up, and you’re now living next to a brothel with Dev, totally Oneless. No offence, Dev.’
‘It’s not a brothel,’ said Dev, quietly.
‘So which reasons do you follow up? Because fate doesn’t exist; not pre-determined fate, anyway. Though I suppose if you do nothing, your fate will be just to sit in your little brothel-flat, in your pants, for ever and ever amen, and that’ll be your fault. You choose which reasons to follow.’
‘At least you don’t think it’s weird.’
‘Oh, it’s totally weird. No, I mean it’s borderline stalking, and also, developing someone’s else’s camera film must be illegal somehow, mustn’t it? But these are your choices, and I reserve judgement until I find out what happens.’
I looked at Dev, gave him a told-you-so. He wandered up to one of the posters to have a look.
There had been an auctioneer’s shop here on Kingsland Road in the old days. In the seventies or eighties the Art Deco cinema that took its place became the Rio, in the way that I suppose a lot of places became known as the Rio around then, when Rio was at the height of its cool, dancing on the Seine. It stuck with the fad, though, as others don’t. Millennium Cabs down the road was already changing its name to Hackney Comfort Cabs now that the buzz of partying like it wasn’t 1999 any more had faded slightly. Millennium Fried Chicken stood derelict and ashamed to its right, like an ugly friend on a night out with a WAG. My heart had sunk when I saw it – the cinema, not the chicken shop – because this, well, this was undeniably a date venue.
Where had I taken Sarah, when I’d last taken her to the cinema? What had we seen? I think it was Iron Man 2. We’d had an argument on the way there, and I’d annoyed her by complaining about the popcorn being nearly as much as the tickets, and we’d sat, barely speaking, in a Nando’s afterwards, hardly able to muster up the enthusiasm to comment when a drunk outside kicked a police van and was wrestled to the ground.
It wouldn’t have been like that for The Girl. This was the glorious Rio, for a start – not the one-size-fits-all Vue in the N1 Centre just above HMV. This was classy. Classic. He – the man, Chunk, or whatever his name is – probably picked her up in that car of his – what was it again? A Vegas? – and brought elaborate cocktails with him in an antique silver hipflask, and arranged a special screening of his favourite Algerian film, and had the whole place just for them, and laid out a picnic blanket in the rich blue family tartan so they could lie down and watch it together, lit by neon. He’d have taken her out afterwards, to a laid-back underground bar, probably French, probably members-only, where the good-looking barstaff would have cheered when he walked in, and the jazz trio in the corner started up a song in his honour. Bright, attractive women would have waved at him, in a way that was impressive but non-threatening to her, and he would have explained that they ran the New York gallery that’s trying to get him to showcase his work there, or that they were merely tenants in his portfolio of Thames-side loft apartments with views of Big Ben, or that he met them during his time in Haiti treating children with Médecins Sans Frontières. And after telling her any one of those three specific things, he would have stared off into the middle distance looking tortured and intense and unreachable, his finger circling the rim of his beautifully chosen devil-red Romanée Conte, and The Girl would have fallen even more deeply in love with him.
Click.
I turned to see Abbey with my disposable.
‘Good shot,’ she said, wrinkling her nose. ‘You looked moody.’
She wound the film forward. How many was that we’d taken now? Four? Five?
‘Did I look intense? Tortured?’
‘Just a bit bad-tempered.’
‘Yeah, but girls love that.’
She laughed, then frowned.
‘Hey,’ she said. ‘I tried to match the shot, yeah? Make yours look like hers. And I got that poster in the background.’
I looked over.
‘So?’
‘So where’s her photo?’
I got it out, handed it over. Abbey smiled.
‘See there? Over her shoulder? That film poster? If we can find out when that poster was up, we can find out when she was here …’
Before I knew what was happening, she’d dashed off, through the blue double-doors of the Rio. Dev sidled up to me.
‘Witch.’
‘What?’
‘She’s a witch. Been checking the posters. One of them’s about a witch. Witches and vampires probably mix. The woman’s obsessed. Where’s Abbey?’
‘Just checking something,’ I said.
Dev’s phoned beeped.
Where the hell are you two? read the text.
We looked at each other.
‘Probably should’ve told Matt we were here,’ said Dev.
‘A month!’ said Abbey, sizing up the pins. ‘You’re only a month behind. You’re close enough to touch her.’
She scuttled forward, the bowling ball swinging wildly in her hand, and dropped it heavily in front of her.
‘Unlucky!’ said Dev, watching it thunk into the gutter.
‘Just one month,’ she said, again. ‘It’s as if these photos are like a vapour trail. She’s left these memories behind and you’re finding them just in time, just as they fade. You know? She thinks they’re gone, these memories, but you found the camera. You’re keeping them alive!’
‘Fate!’ said Dev, picking up his ball. ‘Fate.’
It was quite tiring hanging out with Abbey. We were at Bloomsbury Bowl, in the basement of the Tavistock Hotel, a stone’s throw from the museums that Abbey had decided she wanted to go and see but, once there, decided she didn’t. The same museums we’d travelled across town to see after she’d taken us to Spitalfields to buy a dress from an up-and-coming designer that, once she’d actually seen it, she decided was ‘too waxy’ and didn’t want.
‘And that’s just the cinema one that was a month ago. Any of the pictures taken after that were more recent. It’s like they were all leading up to the picture you’re in.’
I tried to make an unimpressed face, like I just wasn’t that bothered, but the way Abbey talked about it excited me. This was a girl’s point of view. More crucially, it wasn’t Dev’s.
‘Plus,’ she said, quickly, ‘that was not a date movie he took her to. It was about Vietnamese death camps. Why would he take her on a date to learn about Vietnamese death camps?’
To our left, a hen party gearing up for a big night spilled, giggling, from a karaoke booth, pushing each other’s shoulders, flushed from Pinot and laughter.
‘Maybe they were seeing another film,’ I said, though why I wanted this to be the case I’m not sure.
‘If indeed it was him that took her there!’ said Abbey. ‘You can only see her in the picture.’
‘It was him,’ I said. ‘Someone had to have taken it. And the only other person who ever features in the photos is him.’
‘No,’ said Abbey. ‘You feature. The only other people who feature are him … and you.’
She held up her hands.
&nbs
p; ‘The past … and the future.’
Dev sat down sheepishly. We looked up to see his ball moving very slowly down the gutter.
‘Unlucky,’ said Abbey.
Dev’s phone beeped again.
‘Shit,’ he said. ‘Forgot to tell Matt we’d moved on.’
‘Well, cheers, boys,’ said Matt, ‘for a cracking tour of London. I saw the café, the market, the outside of some bloody great museum and now this place, fifty bloody feet from the café.’
He pointed around. We were back in Power Up! Dev had left Pawel in charge of the shop that morning, and fully expected to come back to find packs of Saturday afternoon traffic.
‘Nobody!’ said Pawel. ‘Nobody want your little games.’
‘They’re not little games, Pawel. The last Call of Duty had a multimillion dollar budget and Kiefer Sutherland attached as voice talent, so – lesson learned, I think.’
‘Whatevs,’ said Pawel, which I can only assume he’d learnt from the 4 p.m. school crowd that filled up his shop for ten minutes every day and cost him hundreds a year in nicked Twixes and lifted Lilts. Dev opened his paper and bit into a Krokiety bap.
‘So what’s the story with that girl?’ asked Matt.
Abbey had run off, down the road, in search of a cigar.
‘Abbey?’
‘Why’s she getting a cigar for a start?’
‘She just said she fancied a cigar and that we should all have a cigar. She’s – you know – an art student.’
Matt nodded a nod of understanding and rolled the words ‘art student’ around in his mouth.
‘Yeah, I see them sometimes, art students. Wearing big glasses. Saw a bunch of them recently down the Wimpy all wearing false moustaches. Dunno why. So why’s she hanging around with you two?’
‘Why wouldn’t she?’ I said, a little defensively, but then: ‘Aside from the fact that she’s ten years younger than us and infinitely cooler. I mean, you’re both those things, too, apart from the second one.’
Matt laughed. It was good when Matt laughed. We were on the way to becoming proper friends. There was still that slight frost between us whenever we’d first meet; things needed to thaw before he forgot I wasn’t his teacher and he’d stopped being my pupil. But laughing was good.
Charlotte Street Page 18
