Charlotte Street

by Danny Wallace

  It’s a great place to be. You can network. You have access. And I could use this. Thinking beyond London Now, to GQ or Esquire, or ShortList, or any number of other mags or papers keen to employ someone more on their level.

  Being on Forest Laskin’s list meant I’d soon be on other lists too.

  ‘We should head down Hustle&Jive next,’ Dev had said, on the bus home. ‘See if we can bump into him again. And also, work out what a speakeasy jazz diner thing is.’

  I explained we wouldn’t have to. Being on the list more or less guaranteed hanging out with Damien more. So I could get to know him. And through him, find out more about The Girl. And when Dev realised he’d more than likely be my plus one he found it hard to sleep.

  ‘We’ll be invited to the Grand Prix!’ he said, the next morning, back at the flat. He was playing Nazi Zombies and grinning. ‘Or Wimbledon! And they’ve probably bought up a load of Olympics tickets! There’ll be a private box and canapés! I’m your plus one, yeah? You promise me now!’

  ‘You’re my plus one,’ I said, and he reloaded his Carbine and blew away another Nazi Zombie in celebration.

  Suddenly he looked at his watch.

  ‘Shouldn’t you be gone already?’

  I know it seems ridiculous, thinking being on a list might change anything at all. But like I say, it was a sign of acceptance – of having been recognised. Sure, you might say it was really just another unknown name on a mailout for whichever blank-eyed and underappreciated intern was going to have to type it in, but I was weirdly grateful to Dev for pushing me into that situation.

  He’d been doing that a lot, lately. That was the good thing about him. He was impulsive; he always had a plan. Even when that plan was a terrible plan, it was a plan fuelled by optimism.

  He likes to get involved, and there’s something incredibly life-enhancing about being around someone who just wants to get involved. The fact that he was doing this to help me get past everything that had happened with Sarah meant a lot. The fact that together we were using the moment – as we’d always said we should and could and would – was great, too. After all, it wasn’t us that had started this. Not really. It was The Girl, forgetting her camera, in that moment I hoped was a moment we’d shared.

  So what was she to Damien? I wondered. He was in a relationship; he’d said so. Was it with her? Was she the girlfriend? Was he married and she the mistress? Did she know, if she was? Was it a brief fling? Ongoing? Or did she not have anything to do with him at all?

  Maybe she was a colleague, I reasoned. One of his PR team. They work closely, those PR teams. They go to events. Eat out in restaurants. Work hard, play hard, swap sexually-charged banter over sushi on the company AmEx. You see them sometimes, these teams of people, work suits on, united under one letterhead, all bawdy backslapping, then back to Foxtons. Be easy to mistake them for more than colleagues. Maybe that explained the seemingly-intimate pictures of a happy girl. Or maybe Damien had only appeared in the first few shots because they were the only ones he was involved in … maybe someone else had taken the others. Maybe The Girl meant nothing to him whatsoever; perhaps he had only a fleeting memory of this girl he’d met at a party, once – a girl he thinks he might have had his photo taken with but wouldn’t ever be able to tell you for sure. ‘You know what these events are like,’ he’d probably say. ‘Everyone wants a photo of everything.’

  Or what if …

  What if she was on The List, too? What if she was a journalist, or an editor, or a sub, maybe for Grazia or T2? Invited out to restaurant soft-launches or premieres, taking her beloved camera to record her memories in the way others would use their Nokia? What if those photos were just taken at jollies, hence, well, why she looked so jolly?

  There was a chance she was just like me and that Damien just represented the same to her as to me.

  Hey, is that hope, there? Is that excitement – that little bubble of something rising through me – as I stride from the underground to the office?

  And then, just outside Pret, I remembered the car.

  Of course. The car.

  She’d been in a photo with that car, outside the Alaska Building.

  I didn’t know much about Damien, but I did know that out of everyone I’d ever met in my life so far, absolutely no one was more likely to drive a limited-edition car or keep a parquet-floored penthouse in a building marked Alaska than him.

  Wedding photo first, Alaska Building second. A story of a relationship in two seconds and a flat.

  And that, of course, meant there was more to it than just a chance encounter at somebody else’s wedding. It meant there was history. Meet-ups by day and by night. Maybe professional, but more than likely personal. It also meant that these photos were probably as much Damien’s as they were The Girl’s.

  Still, though, I thought. The List can’t hurt.

  ‘Hey, so I met Damien Laskin last night,’ I said, casually, and Zoe looked up from her screen, eyebrows raised.

  ‘Did you?’ she said. ‘Where?’

  ‘Oh, you know … Abrizzi’s.’

  ‘Abrizzi’s? You know they’re starting a radio campaign using your quote? What were you doing there? What was Laskin doing there?’

  ‘I think they’re starting some kind of PR account for that place. Anyway, he said he’d sort me out with some invites to things. Put me on his list.’

  I shrugged, like this was nothing.

  ‘Yeah, I’m on that list,’ said Zoe.

  ‘Yes, but you’re in charge, so that makes sense. I’m just saying.’

  ‘I’m on that list, too,’ said Clem.

  ‘You?’ I said. ‘You’re on the list? I’m talking about the special list, not the general list.’

  ‘I’m on all the lists. Hate it. “Oh, come down to the Trocadero and meet Flippy, the new face of Fiat.” Then they give you a plastic bag with a Flippy keyring in it and a calendar that’s already half-useless because it’s July.’

  ‘I don’t know who Flippy is,’ I said. ‘And Forest Laskin don’t do that kind of stuff, anyway, do they? They handle big accounts, big name deals. Mercedes, Sony, that sort of thing.’

  ‘Yeah. Big names. And tell me: how was your Abrizzi’s?’ asked Clem.

  The only reason I’d raised Damien was to somehow work out what his story was. Not his business story, not the story of his successes and failures, but the story of who he actually was, when he was at home, reclining on his Eames chair peering out over South London from Alaska. I knew Zoe was bound to know. She’d been around long enough, she’d done her time. She had contacts, and contacts eventually become work friends, and work friends soon swap work-talk for gossip.

  ‘Do you know anyone at Forest Laskin?’ I asked, again very casually.

  ‘Yeah, loads,’ said Zoe, barely casting me a glance.

  ‘Like who?’

  ‘Most of them are called Jo,’ she said. ‘There are lots of Hannahs, too, but mainly there are Jos.’

  ‘What about Damien? Do you know him?’

  ‘Hmm?’

  ‘I was just asking if you know Damien particularly well. He seems like a nice guy. Quite grounded and settled. Like a sort of family man, I guess?’

  ‘Ha!’ said Zoe.

  ‘What?’

  She just shook her head and kept typing.

  Just after midday, when I’d already liaised with some lesser, non-special-list-promising PRs and arranged delivery of various packages and various invites to various freelancers (it still felt good, being the sender, the arranger, the liaison), I was thrilled to see that things were already underway. Things Had Begun To Happen.

  From: Emily @ ForestLaskin

  To: UndisclosedRecipients

  Subject: Final Reminder: Special Event, VIP Entry, Thursday @ 8pm

  I didn’t even need to read it to know I’d be going.

  And that week, the invites came thick and fast.

  I suppose in a bigger operation, the responsibility for attending might have been sh
ared out. Please remember this was not a big operation.

  Events I attended solo: Late invite to lunchtime soft launch of fashion label Nabarro (I received one pair of soft leather gloves in return), Nando’s Very-Peri-Peri ‘hotsauce celebration’ (I received one case of Very-Peri-Peri in return, which I gave to Clem, who interestingly had not been invited, and I met a man named Martin whose job it is to drink hotsauce).

  Events I attended with Dev: New Zealand tourist board Marlborough Region wine tasting in Vinopolis with whisky bar afterparty at New Zealand House.

  Events I had agreed to attend but had not yet attended, with Dev or without: Silverstone track day, champagne and hot-air ballooning to celebrate new Pixar hot-air ballooning-based animation, Paul Weller intimate gig at the Buffalo Bar, Journalists Vs SAS paintballing day at ‘Pow Pow’, Southend-on-Sea.

  I felt like Boyd Hilton.

  Each time I’d looked around for Damien. Each time I’d looked around for The Girl. Each time I’d been disappointed.

  At one point, I’d taken a Jo or a Hannah to one side, and asked, ‘So where’s Damien? Does he not come to these things?’ and she’d said, conspiratorially, in case her clients could hear, all the while looking around her, ‘Oh, no, his office sends out his own invites. He tends to mainly show up at the big things, to do with people he knows …’

  All of which made my new soft leather gloves feel that little bit less attractive.

  Fine, though. I would just have to wait. For Damien.

  I knew going out Friday would be a bad idea.

  For a start, Saturday follows Friday, and if you’ve agreed to go to your ex-girlfriend’s engagement party on a Saturday, you’d best behave yourself the Friday before.

  When she’d slid that invite across the table to me at the café, I, of course, had said yes. She had just told me I was mature and grown-up, and the childish thing about being called mature or grown-up is that for a moment or two you actually believe it. So naturally I had made a mature face and read the invite in a grown-up way and nodded, in a way that was both mature and grown-up, to confirm my attendance.

  Which was stupid, because I really didn’t want to go.

  My feelings were thus: Fine. Go off and get married. I’m fed up of being embarrassed by my actions; fed up of looking to the past. I’m not going to stop you. I wish things could’ve been different but they’re not, so go, walk out the door, don’t turn around now, ‘cos I’m clearly not actually all that welcome any more. But I had to pretend I was mature.

  So yes. I knew going out Friday would be a bad idea. I knew it now more than ever because it was ten to ten on Friday night and Dev and I were still sitting indoors, with the telly flickering away against bare walls, waiting for Abbey to arrive.

  Ordinarily, we’d have been thinking about coming home about this time, maybe stopping by the Cally Food & Wine for a bad pizza we could burn if we weren’t feeling flush enough for a man on a Flying Lotus moped.

  ‘This is the problem with young, cool women,’ said Dev, shaking his head. ‘They’ve always got about nine stops to make on their way to meet you. “I’ve just got to stop by Marble Arch”; “I’ve just got to pick something up from a mate in Old Street”; “Hey, I can’t make it. I’ve ended up in Marseilles”. It makes going out with old, uncool women a very serviceable idea indeed. Has she got a boyfriend in Brighton?’

  ‘Not that I know of.’

  ‘Not that you know of?’

  ‘I thought she was single. That first night she was definitely single. She’d have mentioned it, if that had changed. And there’s no way of asking if she is or not without it looking like I want to be her boyfriend.’

  ‘Don’t you?’

  I showed him my watch. It was five to ten. Enough had been said.

  Ding-dong.

  ‘You sure you’re cool coming?’ said Abbey, all glitter and fringe. ‘We’re on the guestlist.’

  The Kicks were clearly going places. They’d been spotted, Abbey said, by a man who knew a man who knew the man who looked after Play&Record. And they were last year’s going-places band, who really had gone places. Cover of the NME, XFM sessions, a smaller stage at Latitude.

  ‘Scala, please,’ she said to the cabbie from Marvin’s, and he, being the deaf one with the bifocals, seemed to think she’d asked for Scarborough.

  ‘Scala’s a pretty big venue,’ I said, impressed.

  ‘Well, they’re going to be a pretty big band.’

  ‘Hey, maybe I should do an interview with the boys. You know, a follow-up to my review.’

  ‘They loved that review, by the way,’ she said, ‘Mikey said it was his favourite.’

  I felt flattered, which was worrying, because an easily-flattered reviewer is a reviewer who reviews easily.

  Ah, sod it. I was never going to be one of those hard-hitters. Far better to have a nice time, get on lists, enjoy vast cases of Very-Peri-Peri.

  ‘How’s your dad, Dev?’ asked Abbey, as we passed the garage by Orkney House. Scala was only a few minutes away, just opposite King’s Cross.

  ‘Dev’s dad? When did you meet Dev’s dad?’

  ‘Last time. Just after Sarah turned up at the shop,’ she said. ‘Seemed angry.’

  ‘Abbey,’ said Dev, suddenly. ‘We were wondering: do you have a boyfriend?’

  ‘I’m in a relationship,’ she said, quickly, but I still wanted to know why Dev’s dad had turned up that day.

  ‘What does that mean, when people say “in a relationship”?’ said Dev. ‘Why not just “I’m married” or “I have a boyfriend”?’

  ‘Sometimes I think it means they’re non-committal,’ she replied, eyes out the window.

  ‘Are you non-committal?’ asked Dev.

  ‘I’m committal. Committed. Though sometimes I should be committed.’

  A pause as we tried to work out whether she meant that. It sounded like a moment where people would laugh, but no one did.

  ‘So anyway, do you want to go out with me?’ asked Dev.

  ‘We’re here,’ said the cabbie, brakes down. ‘Scarborough.’

  Inside, it became very apparent very quickly that The Kicks weren’t really ‘supporting’ Play&Record. Or, they were, technically, but only technically. They were one of six bands chosen to warm up the crowd for a long evening building up to the big boys. And we’d missed them by about two hours.

  We’d made it to the upstairs bar, slack yellow wristbands on, while men who were clearly in bands or worked with bands or used to be in bands held plastic cups and played with their hats.

  ‘Hi!’ said Abbey, flinging her arms around one of them, and I nudged Dev to show him this was my moment to shine. It was important Dev realised I know how to hang out with rock and rollers like The Kicks.

  ‘How’ve you been, man?’ I said, hugging the same guy. ‘Not seen you since the Phoenix! Things are going well! Heard you on the radio!’

  ‘Jason,’ said Abbey. ‘This is Paul. He’s not in The Kicks.’

  ‘That’s right!’ I bluffed. ‘I thought that. That’s what I thought.’

  ‘He’s a puppeteer.’

  ‘Terrific,’ I said, and I caught Dev smiling at me, enjoying the moment I went from nearly cool to not-even-nearly cool. ‘I love puppets.’

  ‘What puppets do you love?’ asked Paul, a little coldly, which you don’t really expect from puppeteers.

  ‘I love all puppets. I used to have one, as a child. A fox.’

  Paul considered me. I have never been made to feel so small by someone who plays with puppets.

  ‘Paul is—’ a micropause, a split-second of something ‘—my boyfriend.’

  ‘Oh!’ I said, trying to look delighted for them both.

  ‘Oh,’ said Dev.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Paul. ‘On-again, off-again, on-again.’

  Delightful.

  ‘Jason’s a journalist,’ she said, with just a hint of dismissal in her voice. ‘Jason Priestley.’

  ‘Haha!’ said Paul. ‘Falle
n on hard times since 90210?’

  ‘Haha!’ I generously ha-ha’d.

  ‘He’s been covering the band. Wants to do an interview, I think?’

  She flashed me an apologetic smile and Paul matched it with one of boredom. There was something not right about Paul. Good-looking, yes. Stylish, too, I suppose. He looked like he fitted in, here, in his skinny jeans and Topman check-out trinkets. But he also looked like he could quite easily grow a goatee and a ponytail. He sounded like a goatee and ponytail man. That they were not there was perhaps the most unsettling thing about him.

  ‘Journos,’ he said. ‘You like flashy things. Shiny things with lights and mics. Not so big in my world. But then I’m not so big in yours.’

  ‘Aren’t you?’

  ‘When’ve you seen a puppeteer on the cover of Time Out?’ he said, and I realised his eyes were hooded and bored.

  ‘That’s a good point,’ I said, trying to be friendly.

  ‘Suppose it’s not a bad job actually, journalist,’ he said. ‘You get to look important at something like this and then you look important when you write it and it comes out but you’re not actually making anything, are you?’

  This puppeteer was starting to grate. I started to want to grate this puppeteer. He smiled, pleased with himself, probably proud of being one of those people who thinks they tell it like it is, that if you’re offended it’s your problem, that they’re ‘only being honest, that’s just me, I’d rather say it to your face’. Of course you would. Because that’s what makes you feel important.

  The amount of people he must’ve belittled, sitting crosslegged on ethnic throws at basement-squat dinner parties, who’d seen that very same, thin only-being-honest smile.

  ‘But you go ahead and do what you do,’ he said. ‘Sell us the next big thing so that they can then sell us Carlsberg and Pepsi.’

  I couldn’t help but notice he was drinking Carlsberg. I saw Abbey’s eyes flick to his pint glass too, but she bit her lip and looked back at me, apologetically.

  I am pretty sure my face gave away exactly what I was thinking. Which was, ‘Are you kidding me, Abbey? This is your boyfriend? His stage name better be Captain Dickhead.’