Kismet

by Luke Tredget

  ‘What the fuck are you doing?’ he shouts.

  Anna startles, and turns and hurries along the pavement away from him, her face tucked down into the collar of her jacket, and doesn’t look back.

  She follows signs to the Millennium Footbridge, which feels wet and rickety and hazardous, and on the South Bank turns left. Bad weather is coming up off the river; powerful icy gusts that mess with her fringe and sting her cheeks. She puts her head down and walks quickly, but each step jangles the feeling in her abdomen, which has crossed from discomfort to something even worse: a bottomless feeling like a trapdoor has been opened. Being shouted at by the tramp has rattled her, and the image of his face is locked in her mind’s eye. What the fuck are you doing?

  She climbs up to London Bridge – the heavy bag feeling like it contains a guilty cargo, a severed head – and then threads through the long queues of buses and taxis to the station. Automatic doors part for her and she steps through to the giant refurbished forecourt the size of a football pitch, the ceiling as high as a cathedral. People blur past in all directions. She worms her way through the crowd, surrounded by the din of thousands of footsteps blended into an echoing hum, above which the Tannoy announcement sounds disembodied and holy, like the voice of God. Once in the centre of the space, beneath the giant hanging information boards, she turns in a circle. Geoff is nowhere to be seen. Surprisingly, this fills her with relief. Maybe he was never meant to be here, it has all been in her imagination, and she can now go back to Pete and continue life as normal. The prospect feels extremely cosy and inviting, but then she remembers that Geoff said the Tooley Street entrance, and she retraces her steps out to the taxi rank and bus stops. She goes down the soot-blackened external staircase and lingers on the landing between two flights of stairs, which serves as a balcony overlooking the smaller forecourt for platforms 4, 5 and 6.

  This time she sees him immediately, the size of a pocket lighter from her elevated vantage point. He is wearing a dark green jacket with the collar up, and it is remarkable how closely he resembles the bankers and office workers around him. For a while he remains as still as a statue, his head tilted up towards the information board, then he puts his hand in his pocket and lifts a little white something to his mouth. His square jaw works a couple of times, crushing the mint or chewing gum, and instead of freshness Anna has a proxy taste of whatever guttural flavour he is trying to conceal. Her hands are gripping the metal railing, and the sudden sense that she is on a raised platform with nothing but empty air between her and the ground causes the trapdoor within her to open again; her insides lurch.

  At that moment, as if alerted by something, Geoff turns and looks up towards Anna. She backs away from the handrail and takes two steps down the stairs, her view of him blocked by the upper stairway she just came down. From her new position she can only see Geoff’s feet, which continue turning a circle until they are facing the information board again; she concludes he did not see her. She edges out from behind the stairs, just far enough to see the full extent of his body and the names of the destinations as they flash onto the screens. New Cross, Lewisham, Greenwich, Charlton, Woolwich, Dartford, Gillingham, Canterbury. She imagines alighting at any of these places, and walking with Geoff along a cold wet high street, and the prospect feels too real and uncertain and dangerous. The board refreshes and she sees Margate is the next train’s final destination, and she thinks of Pete throwing the book from the window and with that she is walking up the stairs and hurrying past the waiting buses and taxis, without looking back.

  A moment later she is on the street and winding through commuters towards the bridge, the horrible ominous feeling diminishing with each step. At the centre of the bridge she pauses, and finds that now the cool wind coming off the water is refreshing; likewise, even though she is on a higher platform than within the station, the flagstones and balustrade feel robust and infallible. She sinks further into this relief, until she realises there is still a live connection between her and Geoff. She pulls her phone from her bag and the thought of the imminent call makes it feel as potent as a grenade; her hands shake in her haste to turn it off, and for a moment she is tempted to fling it into the grey-green water below.

  Safely north of the river, Anna turns left and walks along Cheapside and past St Paul’s, loosely retracing the route of the bus that brought her east. A light rain begins to fall, and she ducks into the doorway of a pub in Aldwych, at first just for cover, but when the rain becomes heavier she goes inside. She buys a pint of lager and takes it to a round corner table, where she holds her hand out and watches it shake. A sort of adrenalised relief courses through her, as if she has had a near-death experience, a juggernaut that missed her by a few feet. It is almost difficult to believe she came so close to doing something that now, only a few minutes later, feels utterly senseless. Where did she think he was going to take her? What time would she have got back? What would she have told Pete if it was late? Would she have been able to get to work early tomorrow? Would she have been able to get to work at all? She turns her dormant phone around in her hand, as if looking for the answers to these questions in its glinting black screen and dusted silver casing. Towards the end of her pint she concludes that she has been in some kind of destructive trance, that the stress of work and her birthday and Pete’s proposal and the excitement of getting an 81 and maybe her pills – or a combination of the above – have subdued her normal prudence and made her think she could somehow get away with all things at once, without anything having to give. It seems like good fortune that she has regained her clarity of mind, but she realises there was nothing lucky about it; the creeping bottomless feeling that gathered as she neared the station was her natural good sense kicking in, as it always would have done; she was never going to meet him.

  The rain has stopped so she walks up Kingsway and then to Covent Garden. Two men pass her with bags of chips and she can smell the salt and vinegar; the resultant hunger pangs remind her she is alive. She decides to take herself for dinner, especially as this is what she is supposed to be doing anyway, with her mother. She walks past the windows of dozens of restaurants before seeing a fancy place called Green Rooms on Shaftesbury Avenue, that Zahra and Pete and maybe even Ingrid have all raved about. It definitely seems like somewhere you need to book, but it is still early and she is able to get a seat at the end of a long bench near the kitchen, beside a group of young people, two guys and a girl – all creative Soho types with haircuts and tattoos and high scores flashing above their heads.

  Anna feels self-conscious initially, but she forces herself through this and orders the spatchcock chicken and, since a glass is scarcely cheaper and she deserves to treat herself, a carafe of white wine. She feels the fashionable people register her order and the fact that she’s alone, and makes peace with this. So what if some strangers think less of her for sitting on her own? She should stop letting these things get to her. Or comparing her life to the imagined lives of others. So what if her relationship is not the most exciting and high-scoring in the world, she thinks, starting on her first glass. Or if her social life has slowed down somewhat in recent years. At least she used to go out, to excess, during uni and in her early twenties when she lived with Zahra in east London. They seemed to drink most nights, took drugs most weekends, and more often than not everyone would pile back to theirs for the Minuscule of Sound. Yes, she had her fill then, she thinks, pouring herself another glass. In fact, she had more than her fill, and it probably wasn’t as great as she remembers. Sundays through Wednesdays she used to be good for little else than smoking roll-ups and drinking cups of tea. Her relationship at the time, with a guy called Ed, was subject to the usual complications and bullshit. There would be times of deep depression, and others when she would get carried away in the same manner as she has these past weeks. Back then, her mania was more often centred on ideas or inventions; in contrast to her uni colleagues – who, despite their privileged backgrounds, had en masse panicked at the prospect
of not being on some kind of professional or educational advancement scheme – she had made no effort to establish a career and was still powered by the notion, instilled in her by her dad, that she should be doing something enterprising or altruistic or creative, or preferably a combination of all three. She had it all mapped out. Supported by temp work and the occasional cheque and messages of encouragement from her dad, she worked on ideas, and the plan was simple: she would keep churning them out until one was good enough to launch, which she would do using crowdfunding. The business would start slowly, but after a few years would flourish and she would sell it on, and then start another business, or buy a property somewhere – in Greece, she hoped – or write a book, and by the time she was thirty she would be a standalone success story, someone who had branched off at right angles from her peers and yet somehow made it all make sense. Her best idea, by far, was the Community Shed. One day she bought a crap hammer for £3 so she could hang a picture, and was overwhelmed by the idea of every flat in their council block having its own crap, barely used hammer, and the notion for the Community Shed popped into her mind, complete at the moment of inception. It would be a wonderfully stocked, communal tool shed that could be accessed by members, who would pay a small monthly fee. She was so jazzed with the idea that she spoke about it constantly, even at parties and clubs, to the mixed amusement and embarrassment of her friends. She got as far as drafting an application for crowdfunding, but then she took off to San Francisco. Before she has a chance to dwell on the reasons for not having picked it up again, a plate floats down from over her shoulder and her chicken is laid before her.

  It is a whole small chicken pulled out to a butterfly shape and flattened, sprinkled with pomegranate seeds; it looks alarmingly like roadkill, the grill marks reminiscent of tyre tread. But it tastes good and goes perfectly with the crisp cold wine. Zahra and Pete were right about this place, and if she were indeed having dinner with her mum this is where she would bring her. She feels guilty for using her as a false alibi, and decides to call her. She cannot turn her phone back on, so she dials her mum’s old landline number into her work phone.

  ‘Darling?’ says her mum. ‘How are you? What is it? What’s wrong?’

  Anna puts her on speakerphone and says that nothing is wrong, that everything is great, that she just wanted to say hi. The waiter asks if everything is okay and she says it’s great.

  ‘Are you in a restaurant?’ asks her mother.

  ‘A very nice one.’

  ‘On your own?’

  ‘No, you’re here with me.’

  There is a pause as her mother processes this. The fashionable young people really are now looking, but Anna doesn’t care. She tells her that she has to work early in the morning, that she is having a dinner party in the evening to celebrate her birthday, but that she isn’t making a big deal out of it. There is another pause at her mother’s end of the line.

  ‘Is everything okay?’

  ‘Why wouldn’t it be?’

  ‘You sound a little … funny. You used to be so excitable on your birthdays.’

  ‘I’m being responsible. I thought you’d be pleased.’

  ‘I am. I just want to know you’re happy.’

  ‘Happy,’ repeats Anna, with a scoff. She makes a speech about how happiness is an overrated concept, and at the very best a fleeting emotional state, and that being content is much more important. ‘Am I wrong?’

  Her mother changes the subject, asks if she’s called her brother recently, and Anna says she’s called him the precise same number of times that he’s called her. Then there is a pause. She can see her mother clearly in her living room in Bedfordshire, the television on mute, a programme lined up for 9 p.m. Eventually her mum tells her that she loves her, that she should call Josh if she has a chance, and that she’ll see her over the weekend. Her final comment is that she is sure Anna will have a great day tomorrow – a really great day – and Anna wonders if maybe she is in cahoots with Pete about the ring, if everyone in her life has been plotting and scheming behind her back for months.

  It is dark by the time she pays up but doesn’t feel so cold, and she decides to carry on walking. She goes up Shaftesbury Avenue and onto Dean Street, the Soho lanes transformed into their garish night-time mood, the taxis and rickshaws now sharing the roads with staggering groups of drinkers and tourists. She passes a cocktail bar that looks strangely familiar, even though she’s never been there, and curiosity takes her inside. At the bar is a ginger, bearded guy covered in tattoos, and when he greets her in an American accent she realises he is one of Ingrid’s friends, that she’s seen him in dozens of pictures in this place and at pubs and parties and festivals and wherever. Anna keeps her amusement to herself and sits on a stool and orders a Bourbon Sour. When it arrives she raises a silent toast to her mother, who means well and in fact does well and has always been lovely. Then she raises a toast to her brother Josh, living in Australia, and decides she will try to call him, despite it being her birthday, her thirtieth at that. Does he even know? She forgives him for being so distant and self-centred, and orders a second cocktail, which she raises for Pete and Zahra, for always being there. Why is it they always come together in her mind like that? A thought of one is usually followed by the other; it has been this way since her very first meeting with Pete, in a pub, when they were both shy and tongue-tied and Zahra did the speaking for them. They’ve been linked in her mind ever since, but this is a good thing; she loves them both, and she’s been stupid to let jealousy get in the way in the past. Then she drinks to everyone else who has been with her throughout her twenties, including her colleagues at work – they’re a good bunch, really – and to the owner of the suitcase, wherever and whoever they are. So what if she never actually finds them? She’s proud of the Twitter feed, regardless of it only having three hundred followers; it is cute and fun and – who knows? – maybe the spirited little band of investigators will somehow find him. Her final sips are dedicated to all the other inventions and project ideas that once filled her heart and, for a time at least, made her think she really was going to be some kind of freelance entrepreneur: the Cycle Line, her idea of ripping out the Circle Line – since it is useless anyway – and having a subterranean cycle tunnel instead; the rental service that would allow people to have a sheep for the weekend, to cut the grass and entertain the kids; the Slinghy, her two-person hammock; the hollow chopsticks that would double up as straws when eating ramen; the app that would replace business cards by providing a one-button means of exchanging contact details; the karaoke machine that would teach people languages through translations of their favourite songs; those two inventions that went off the scale of her sense of the possible: a device that would home in on the source of a bad smell, and another that would somehow list the contents of her fridge while she paced indecisively around the supermarket. And of course to the theme park of human consumption, an idea that isn’t even a week old. She hasn’t thought of it since the moment of inspiration, and it is already on its way to being forgotten. Even after a week it feels like a ridiculous notion – who would want to pay money to walk around amid stinking mounds of beef and butter and cheese? But she dedicates her final sip to the idea, silly though it was, and drains the glass while thinking of all the other ideas that she has forgotten over the years simply because they were forgettable.

  Anna leaves the bar, her mood now lifted to something approaching elation. She drifts into Chinatown, and on a nostalgic whim she buys a pack of ten Embassy No. 1 and a box of matches. She stands in the doorway recess of a closed shop to smoke one, and the process is as nostalgic as she’d hoped; the sensation of peeling the cellophane wrapper and then pulling off the gold foil to reveal the rows of orange teeth short-circuits her mind back to being a teenager, to standing in the bus shelter in the Market Square. The smoking itself isn’t as pleasant – the smoke feels too real and overwhelming, like having straw stuffed up her nose – but then something nice happens. From along the r
oad she can hear banging drums and whistles, and these are followed by dozens of people with coloured masks and paper lanterns. The procession undulates up the road and past Anna, teams of masked dancers holding up a long dragon with sticks that itself appears to be dancing. This world, she thinks.

  Where to go next? She considers going to Soho Square to perform a ceremony of cancelling Kismet for good, but she supposes it will be locked up by now. Instead she heads south along Wardour Street, and it isn’t until she reaches the gaudy expanse of Piccadilly Circus that she realises where she should go. She walks the length of Regent Street and then on to Great Portland Street, before pausing by the turning to Little Titchfield Street. It is a narrow and dark street, the only activity being a bar called, simply enough, Social. Anna hasn’t been here in years, and as she approaches she is almost surprised to see it is still doing lively business. A handful of people are smoking behind a velvet-roped area, and flashing lights and pumping music are pressing up against the steamed front window. Anna plants herself in the road directly in front of the entrance, and remembers standing in the exact same spot four years ago, while watching the gangly figure of Ed, her ex, approaching her along the street. They hugged for a long time – it had been six months since she’d ended things and taken off to San Francisco – and then awkwardly shuffled into the bar.