I watched him leave, then looked at Zoe. She didn’t seem overly happy.
‘How do you mean?’
‘I had an email from Andrea Sparrow. Not sure if you know who that is?’
‘I know who that is.’
I didn’t know who that was.
‘She says that due to your behaviour at the launch, you are no longer welcome at any future Forest Laskin events.’
Oh, God. That was quick. Even for a number two or three at a big PR outfit, that was quick.
‘Fine.’
‘No, not fine, Jason. Bad. Bad for us. What did you do?’
‘Come on. It’s one company. They need us more than we need them.’
‘Oh, is that right? Do you have any idea what we’re doing here? Running a tinpot freesheet, miles behind our competition, scrabbling stuff together, and not because we love it, but because we have to because we need jobs?’
‘I’m sorry!’ I said. ‘Were we at all likely to run an exclusive story about the new Tropicana Acai Berry range? Are our readers expecting more Tropicana-based insights? Was there a focus group I missed?’
‘I let you go because it was a jolly. But it’s also good PR for us. It’s good PR with the PRs. You just pissed off quite a big name. God knows how. What did you do? Were you drunk?’
‘No. Look, I’m sorry, but there are a ton of PRs out there. Ones that are more relevant to what we do. I’ll be back on it now, I promise, I’ve got some good stuff lined up that is totally without mention of fruit juice.’
She sighed, put her hand on her hip.
‘I can’t let you.’
What?
‘I can’t let you. You can still write for us. But you can’t be reviews ed. I’m sorry, Jase. It was never official; you were only filling in anyway. Rob’s feeling better, he’ll be back in soon, and we’ll make do in the meantime.’
‘You … you’ve been waiting for this.’
‘Oh. Yeah. Course. The world’s against you.’
‘Seems that way today.’
‘Sure. Even though I gave you a chance.’
‘This is because of us.’
‘Oh, come on, grow up. Really? That was a lifetime ago. I moved on. And this is about work. You had a chance to do something with that little section, you know? We have no money. I dunno if you noticed, but we’re on a sinking ship. Do you read the trades? I gave you that section and you could’ve made it your own while it lasted. When all that stuff happened between us, you told me that was your aim in life: to have something and shape it as your own; that Sarah didn’t understand, but it was what you wanted. Well, maybe it was guilt, but I helped, didn’t I? Not because I still liked you, not because I wanted to be with you, but because I was guilty.’
You know when people tell you you need to hear a few home truths? It’s terrific when that happens.
‘But instead, what do you do? You review your mate’s songs and give them five stars.’
She threw down the page with Abbey’s review on it.
Abbey’s Songs – Abbey Grant. Soulful, powerful, light. Let Abbey show you the way.
‘Who is she? Because she’s not signed to anyone. She’s not on the Internet. There’s no MySpace page. No one here’s heard of her. The album’s not available. You know how I know? Because I wanted to listen to it. That’s the sad thing. You made me want to listen to her.’
‘You’d like her, and it’s undiscovered talent. That’s valid—’
‘You idiot. You can’t do that. You can’t use the paper to plug your unsigned mates. Five stars, for God’s sake. What if someone found out?’
‘She’s really bloody good, Zo.’
‘Let’s talk about what else you’ve done while you were here. You copied press releases and pretended you went to see exhibitions you did not go and see.’
‘I went to gigs! I discovered that band!’
‘Everything you’ve written has been blandly positive. That’s not reviewing. That’s not being a critic.’
‘I’m in a good place. And criticism can be—’
‘You made sure our name was all over London’s most average pizzas.’
‘They’re nice!’
‘Did they pay you?’
‘What? No!’
‘There is an Internet forum currently dedicated to your Abrizzi’s review, did you know that? Thirty-one posts. Someone asking who they need to pay to get good reviews.’
‘Probably rival chains,’ I said, smally. ‘It’s good buzz—’
‘You suggested terrible features for elsewhere. Hidden London? Did you ever even reveal where it was?’
‘Highgate Cemetery.’
‘Well, you should go there again,’ she said. ‘Visit your career.’
That hurt. She could see that. I thought of Dev – what I’d said to him.
‘Oh, and the I Saw You thing?’ she continued. ‘“Get in touch if you want me to give it to you?” Just a bit sad.’
Clem. Bloody Clem. His revenge. He’d found out that day, hadn’t he? Seen what I’d done on his computer. And he’d told the whole office. The final humiliation. How often had that been an in-joke behind my back? What nickname had they come up with for me? Something suitably funny, if Clem was involved, methinks.
‘Look, I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘You know I’m in an impossible situation here. But pissing Laskin off was just a step too far. Go home, have a drink. We’ll go back to how we were. I’ll mail you some stuff later in the week. Or if you have any feature ideas, we can look at perhaps—’
But I was already out the door.
Dev was nowhere to be seen when I got in. How things change. I needed him now. If there was one thing Dev was normally fantastic at, it was taking your side. Friendship means the world to Dev. If he’d been at uni with Hitler he’d have probably made him look on the bright side as the seconds ticked away in the bunker.
He hadn’t done that today, of course, with the whole Damien thing, but I reasoned that was a blip. He’d take my side now. He had to. I needed him to. He spent his life as an underdog – with girls, with his family. I’d always thought that was maybe why he’d disappear into games. You were always an underdog in a videogame, but always guaranteed to win if you just kept plugging away, learned the moves, knew when to Save and when to Quit. That’s what he’d done with Pamela the waitress, wasn’t it? Saved his progress. Quit the game. Ready to play another day.
I got my mobile out and tried him. It went straight to answerphone.
‘Dev, it’s Jase. I think I’ve been fired. Or not fired exactly. But demoted. Even though it was never official. They’ll still let me freelance, but … give me a call, yeah?’
I hung up and stared out of the window. You could almost see the evening smell of chips on the Caledonian Road, hanging there like an invisible fog, coating people as they shuffled by, processed meats and Variety packs weighing down their Iceland bags. A man stood in the doorway of the Ethiopian restaurant, hopping from foot to foot, shaking a worn lighter, trying to coax one last, low flame.
I tried to switch the TV on, but it was pointless because I knew I needed a drink, but I didn’t want to drink alone, here on the Cally. Some streets you can do that fine. Charlotte Street, for example. But drinking alone on the Cally would never lead to anything good.
I opened the fridge but that was pointless, too, because the beers we put in there were always that night’s beers, just momentary houseguests, always gone the next morning without even a note. I slammed it shut again and out of instinct flicked on the kettle, but lost interest the second I did because I remembered the Jezynowka Dev kept buying from Pawel. There was always Jezynowka. Even when you’d had as much of it as you could take, there was always just a little bit left at the bottom.
I flipped open cupboards, moved chipped and cracked porcelain around, even checked behind the Breville in that cupboard at the bottom I don’t think I’d ever opened before.
No Jezynowka.
Dev’s room.
&n
bsp; I knocked, even though I knew he wasn’t in there, because that’s what I hoped other people might do if ever they walked into my room, and I waited just a second in case anyone replied.
Inside, Dev had left his radio quietly burbling away and his blind half-down. I padded through a minefield of games carts and trainers, over to the bedside table where the bottle sat on a pile of papers, guarded by mugs.
‘Hello,’ I said, because I think I’ve seen people on TV do that to inanimate objects they’re pleased to see, and I picked it up by its sticky neck. The bottom clung to a beermat Dev had picked up somewhere, and I prised it off and dropped it back on the table, but not before something had caught my eye.
Maybe it was the big purple ring that caught it, maybe it was the keywords highlighted by dried blackberry liqueur, or perhaps I’m just a bargain hunter and these words will always mean the world to me.
But there, right at the top of the stapled pack of paper, above pictures of my room, with my stuff in it, and Dev’s room, with his stuff in it, and next to pictures of the shop under the flat that was next to that place that everybody thought was a brothel but wasn’t … the words For Sale. Offers Invited. No Chain.
I couldn’t take my eyes off them.
For Sale.
Well, this was an unusual end to my day.
I went and drank on the Cally on my own.
NINETEEN
Or ‘At Tension’
Dev and I had met the day we both arrived at the University of Leicester.
You know the type of friend you make where you just think, it’s you and me! We’ll be friends for ever! We should get a flat together in our second year! And then move in together when we leave university! And you want to introduce them to all your old schoolpals – this new, exciting, vibrant character in the screenplay of your new, exciting, vibrant life?
It was nothing like that for me and Dev.
I’d thought he was an oddball. He was wearing a Sega Power T-shirt, for a start, and he had a wispy moustache and a mullet. He introduced himself as Alexander, until his mum rounded a corner carrying a pot plant and told him he wasn’t called Alexander, he was called Devdatta, and I smiled, because here was a boy trying to reinvent himself before his mum had even left. He said he was a big fan of the Manic Street Preachers and when I asked him what his favourite album was, he looked pale and uncertain and mumbled something about not learning all the names. He said he was working on his first videogame idea – Basteroids! – and while he was doing his BSc in Computing with Management it was going to make him rich. And then he unpacked his N64 and we sat in his halls room and played GoldenEye, just as we would do for years to come. Like we’d have done tonight, if all had been well.
So, no – I never, in those early days, thought here is a friend I will have for life. But slowly, surely, he became part of it anyway. And if you’d asked me an hour before I found those papers, I never thought it could be any other way.
Because we had history now. The history that close friends write so quickly. We’d been through break-ups, and stared mournfully at the wallpaper of whatever pub we happened to be in that time, until the don’t-want-to-talk-about-its became here’s-another-reason-why-you’re-better-offs. I’d been to his brother’s wedding, I’d advised him on life, jobs and girls, and on one long, sad Sunday morning, I’d spoken at his mother’s funeral, as he’d clenched his teeth and stared at the ground and tried not to let his dad see him cry.
He’d been there for me, too, through Sarah … and if ever I’d told him about the miscarriage, he’d have been there for me then, too.
But in all that time, as far as I knew, he’d never done anything like this to me. And maybe, as I look back on it, it’s not important. Maybe I should have been cool. I mean, he must’ve had his reasons, and so what, it was just one secret. But right then, with everything surrounding it, with the year I’d had, and as I sat in the Den and I gripped my glass, I felt betrayed.
I closed the door a little too heavily and found Dev in the living room.
‘Hello maaaate,’ he said, not looking up. He was chasing a smuggler in Brotherhood.
‘Sorry about today,’ I said, affecting a matey tone. Oh, yeah, I thought, I know just how to handle this.
‘It’s okay. Me, too,’ he said, and put the controller down. ‘Where you been? I got your message. What happened?’
‘Damien had his people inform the paper I was no longer welcome at events.’
Dev didn’t say I-told-you-so, but he thought it.
‘So one thing led to another and Zoe told me all about the other misdemeanours I’d done too.’
‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Well, she’d probably been waiting to do that, eh?’
There was the support.
‘You a bit drunk?’ he asked, which he didn’t need to, seeing as I’d slurred my way through words like ‘misdemeanours’.
‘A little,’ I said, and then, as sincerely as I could: ‘And maybe it’s the booze, but I just want to thank you.’
‘Thank me?’
‘You were honest with me today.’
What was that I saw? A flash of guilt?
‘I shouldn’t have gone up to Damien like that. If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have been at the Den tonight drowning my sorrows with that old man with the blue bag who used to work in drainage. How about you? Where were you this evening?’
He turned back to the screen, picked up his controller.
‘Had to see Dad about something, down on Brick Lane.’
‘You’re there a lot lately.’
‘Yeah, well, you know. Family.’
I sat down on the sofa, facing him.
‘How is your dad?’
‘Fine.’
‘How are his businesse—’
‘All fine.’
A pause. He pretended there was a problem with his control pad.
‘Also,’ I said, like a cat about to bat a mouse, ‘I want to thank you for letting me live here.’
‘Whatever. You pay rent when you can. You help out in the shop. It’s no bother.’
‘Yes, but it’s my one constant. And I’m grateful for that. It’s great living here with you.’
He turned to face me. I could see him wondering if I knew something. He decided I didn’t and turned back. I was annoyed. That had been his in. I’d given him an in. He could’ve come clean. He chose not to.
‘Do you fancy a nightcap?’ he said. ‘There’s a bottle of Jezynowka in my—’
‘I finished that. Unless you mean another bottle? The bottle I’m talking about was next to your bed, on some papers.’
‘You went in my room?’
‘I went in your room, yes.’
‘So …’
‘The papers.’
‘You looked at the papers?’ He was trying his best to quickly build to outrage, but I was there first.
‘How come you didn’t tell me?’ I asked, straining for calm. ‘You’re selling up, Dev! I know it’s your place, but the least you could’ve done was tell me! What, it’s not important to you, this whole homelessness thing?’
‘Don’t be so dramatic,’ he said, and I laughed. ‘What? You’re right! This is my place! Or Dad’s anyway! There was never a good time to tell you! I tried once or twice but there was the Sarah stuff, or there was your work, or—’
‘Well, Sarah’s done. My work is laughable. So what else? And when did you try?’
‘I tried, dude, I tried to bring it up once or tw—’
‘When did you get the pictures of the flat done? How long’s this been going on?’
‘Not long.’
‘Since before the night we said we’d go to Whitby?’
Dev took a moment. I’d already worked it out. But I wanted his confirmation.
‘We never said we’d go to Whitby,’ he said. ‘I just said you had and said we had to go.’
I’d gone over it already in my head tonight. It explained his hurry to leave, his enthusiasm for something I now knew he di
dn’t care about. He didn’t give a damn about the girl in the photo, or me, or any of it. He was just covering his tracks because he didn’t want to face up to things. His dad. The shop. Anything.
‘You tricked me,’ I said, and even as I said the words they shocked me as I heard them. ‘You used The Girl to trick me?’
‘I thought it might help you, as well, and—’
‘You said you wanted me to do this because it got me out of the flat,’ I said, furious. ‘You weren’t kidding. So all those times you wanted to do something? Like afternoon pints or developing shots or hey-let’s-all-go-to-Whitby? That was just to distract me so you could get away with this? So your dad could come round and take measurements or show the premises or take photos or—’
‘You’re saying it like I wanted this to happen! And Whitby was for me, too. I needed it. A break. Dad had called, said he was on his way round, I needed to go somewhere and I needed a mate. This is a lot worse for me, Jason. This is my dream, this place.’
‘And you’re letting it go so easily?’
‘You try growing up with an IQ you can’t live up to. You try proving your dad right every time you try to prove him wrong. He already thinks I’m a fuck-up. You think I wanted my best mate to know it, too?’
‘What did you keep telling me? That I should develop the pictures, follow this girl, use the moment?’
‘I wanted you to have hope, Jason.’
Hope. That word again.
‘And what about you?’ I said. ‘Where’s your hope?’
‘Oh, come on. I said this was my dream. Dad gave me a chance and he proved it: dreams are unrealistic and that’s why they’re dreams. This place had about as much chance of working as … well …’
‘As me finding that girl.’
‘Yeah!’ he said, suddenly more angry now. ‘Yeah, if you like. But that doesn’t mean you don’t try, does it? But this dream is over, Jase, because I did try. Dad gave me a year to give it a go. Yesterday, do you know how much I brought in? £1.50 for a used Sonic 2. People want new games. They don’t come to me; they go to GAME or HMV or somewhere they think has a good chance of still being there next week. I had a niche, I thought, but as Dad has taken great pleasure in telling me time and bloody time again, niches don’t work too well in a recession. His stuff’s been going well on Brick Lane, he wants to concentrate on that, and there’s not an accountant in the country who wouldn’t agree.’
Charlotte Street Page 27
