The Road to Zoe

by Alexander, Nick

  The girl, who I now realise is American, replies, ‘You’re so funny! This is a small-plate restaurant, yeah? So we generally advise that you order a few things to share. Say two or three each, tapas-style. I’ll leave you to make your choices, yeah?’

  ‘A small-plate restaurant,’ I repeat, once she has left. ‘Is that a thing?’

  ‘Apparently so,’ Jess says. ‘Not the most reassuring way to describe your restaurant, though, is it?’

  I order the grilled sardine and mushroom risotto, while Jess plumps for gnocchi with chestnuts and cauliflower pakora.

  Ten minutes later, when our food arrives, Jess comments, ‘It is a thing! Oh God. It’s definitely a thing!’

  ‘I’m sorry?’ the waitress asks.

  ‘Nothing, just an in-joke,’ Jess tells her. ‘I hope you’re not hungry,’ she adds, once we’re alone again.

  ‘Unfortunately, I am,’ I say. ‘I’m starving.’ I reach for the menu. ‘Oh,’ I say, once I find what I’m looking for. ‘Grilled sardine.’

  ‘Singular?’ Jess asks, grimacing at my tiny plate.

  ‘Yeah, I should have spotted that missing “s”.’

  ‘I actually noticed,’ Jess says. ‘I’m sorry, I should have said something. I just didn’t think anyone would dare serve a single sardine. Especially not for nine quid.’

  ‘No,’ I agree, stabbing at said sardine with my fork. ‘Do you remember a few years back when the plates got bigger and the portions got smaller? They were huge, the plates, everywhere. You could barely fit two of them on the table.’

  ‘Yeah, nouvelle cuisine, wasn’t it?’ Jess says, daintily forking one of her mini-gnocchi. ‘With a swirl of ketchup or whatever, to make it look pretty.’

  ‘That’s right,’ I say. ‘Anyway, it looks like the plates got smaller again.’

  ‘Yeah, I think they did,’ Jess says. ‘It reminds me of an episode of Absolutely Fabulous where she eats with dolly cutlery to convince her brain the portions are bigger. It’s a way of dieting, apparently.’

  ‘Let’s hope it convinces my stomach,’ I say.

  The bill, including drinks, comes to almost fifty quid, but by the time we leave I’m genuinely no less hungry than I was on arrival. But in true British style, we tell the waitress that everything was fine. I even chicken out from removing the ‘discretionary’ service charge that the waitress has helpfully added to our bill.

  ‘I’m still hungry,’ Jess says, almost as soon as we step back outside. ‘Can we stop at a chippy on the way home?’

  It’s exactly what I had been thinking.

  We drive back to Queen Ann Road. I’m a bit nervous about returning there after nightfall, but as the streets are entirely deserted on this arctic January evening, it ultimately feels no less menacing than by day.

  After a reminder from Jess, I remove my tie and stuff it into my coat pocket, and then I steel myself and knock on the door.

  The same young guy as before opens up, only this time he invites us indoors. This is a surprise. ‘Come up,’ he says. ‘You’re in luck.’

  At the top of the staircase, where the landing opens out into a lounge area, what greets us is almost surreal in nature.

  Other than in a junk shop, I have never seen so much furniture in such a small place. There are three tatty sofas, one of which is stacked upside down on top of another. There are five or six armchairs, three tables, one of those old sewing machines built into a table, a pinball machine, and against every wall, stacks of records or pictures or mirrors. It’s all astoundingly tatty, and so ugly that these can only really be items people have discarded.

  ‘Come, come!’ the guy is saying, as he weaves his way through the maze of furniture towards the far side, where a massive television is playing the intro to EastEnders. And so, after exchanging the briefest of knowing looks, Jess and I follow him.

  Only when we reach the far side of the room do I realise that a woman is sitting in the wing-backed armchair. She’s in her thirties, with patchy hair and heavily acned skin. She has a one-bar radiant electric fire pointed at her knees, but the rest of the room is icy.

  ‘Kira!’ our young friend says, and she half-heartedly glances in his direction without really turning her head enough to actually look at him, before returning her gaze to the television.

  I become aware of a smell; a stench, really, and I’m forced to breathe through my mouth to avoid gagging.

  ‘These are those people,’ the young man says enthusiastically. And then, even though all of the chairs are piled high with junk, he gestures, I think, for us to sit. ‘Please!’ he says. And then, suddenly embarrassed, he adds, ‘I’ll, um, leave you to it,’ and vanishes through a door in the far wall.

  Kira glances at me very briefly and then returns her attention to EastEnders, the theme tune of which has just ended.

  ‘Um, Kira?’ I say, and she gestures vaguely with one hand, though I’m not sure quite what, if anything, the gesture is meant to imply.

  ‘Kira?’ I say again.

  ‘S’me,’ she replies.

  I glance back at Jess, who is still standing behind Kira’s armchair. ‘Drunk?’ she mouths. ‘Stoned?’

  I shrug by way of reply.

  Jess grimaces, and then squeezes her way around the far side of Kira’s chair until she, too, is facing her.

  ‘Hello, Kira,’ she says, crouching down and sounding for all the world like a social worker taking control of a difficult situation. ‘I’m Jess and this is Jude. We’d like to chat to you about Zoe Fuller, if that’s possible?’

  I’m impressed. I’ve never heard her professional tone of voice before. She sounds like a different person. She sounds like someone I don’t yet know.

  ‘We’re trying to track Zoe down,’ she continues. ‘Do you know her? Do you remember her living here?’

  Kira nods vaguely. ‘’Course,’ she says. ‘’Course I know ’er.’ She reaches down the side of her seat cushion, and for an instant I think that she’s going to produce some piece of evidence: a photo or a letter, or an address book. A mobile phone, perhaps, to call her. But when her hand comes back into view, what she’s actually holding is a half-bottle of vodka. She takes a swig and then, bless her, offers the bottle to me.

  ‘No, thanks,’ I say. ‘You’re all right.’

  ‘So how long ago was Zoe here?’ Jessica asks. ‘Do you remember when it was?’

  ‘A while,’ Kira says. ‘Ages, prob’ly.’

  ‘Do you know where she went afterwards?’ I ask. ‘Do you have, maybe, a forwarding address or something?’

  ‘She owes me twenty quid,’ Kira slurs. ‘Thirty, actually. At least thirty. Never paid me for her skunk, did she?’

  ‘Oh,’ I say.

  ‘You her mates?’ Kira asks, glancing up at me, and then looking back at Jess. ‘Is that it?’

  ‘Her brother,’ I say again. ‘I’m her brother.’

  ‘Got any cash on you?’ Kira asks.

  I part my lips to reply, but Jess wiggles one finger at me discreetly, indicating that whatever I’m about to say, she thinks I shouldn’t say it. Which is amusing, really, as even I’m not sure what I was going to say.

  ‘If we could track her down,’ Jessica says, ‘then maybe we could get your money back for you.’

  Kira laughs at this. ‘You won’t get nothing out of ’er,’ she says. ‘Tight as a duck’s arse, that one.’

  ‘If we were sure we were going to find her, I might be able to help out,’ I say, and despite Jessica’s violent head-shake, I slide my wallet from my pocket and pull a crisp twenty-pound note out.

  Suddenly, I have Kira’s full attention. She makes a swipe for the banknote, but I raise it above my head, out of reach. ‘An address?’ I say. ‘Or a phone number.’

  Kira sighs deeply. She looks back and forth from the banknote to me, and her face crumples. I wonder for an instant if she’s actually going to cry.

  ‘I can tell you where she works,’ she offers, brightening.

  ‘Yeah?’
I say. ‘Yeah, that would do the trick.’

  ‘Give me that first,’ she says, nodding at the banknote. ‘She owes me.’

  ‘Tell me where she works first,’ I retort.

  ‘The Poseidon,’ Kira says. ‘Out in Knowle.’

  ‘The Poseidon?’ I repeat.

  ‘What is that?’ Jessica asks. ‘A bar? Is the Poseidon a bar, Kira?’

  Kira laughs at this as if it’s the stupidest suggestion Jessica could have made. ‘No!’ she says. ‘It’s a takeaway, innit.’ And then, in a shockingly fluid gesture that I would never have thought her capable of, she lurches from the chair, swipes the banknote from my hand and stuffs it down the front of her T-shirt.

  ‘The Poseidon,’ I say again. ‘And that’s where, did you say?’

  ‘S’in Knowle,’ she says.

  ‘Is that in Bristol?’ I ask.

  ‘It’s up by where we’re staying,’ Jessica replies. ‘I saw it on the map.’

  ‘And do you know what road it’s on?’

  But Jessica already has her phone out. ‘Found it,’ she says. ‘You wanted chips? Well, it’s a fish-and-chip shop.’

  ‘Is that the one?’ I ask. ‘Is it a chippy?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Kira says, swigging again at her bottle. ‘Yeah, she worked there. Maybe she still does.’

  ‘Well, that was weird,’ I say, once we’re back at street level.

  ‘Totally weird,’ Jess says. ‘And that smell! What was that?’

  ‘I don’t know. I was gagging. It was spaghetti Bolognese, I think. Mixed with . . . I don’t know . . . cat’s piss?’

  ‘You know, I wondered if someone hadn’t pissed in that chair she was in,’ Jessica says. ‘When I crouched down . . .’ In lieu of ending her sentence, she pulls a face.

  ‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘That crossed my mind, too. And skunk . . . that’s . . .’

  ‘Could be cannabis, could be heroin,’ Jess says.

  ‘Yes,’ I say, swallowing with difficulty. ‘Yes, that’s what I thought.’

  The Poseidon is an entirely traditional fish-and-chip shop: a high counter to lean on, a thousand watts of neon illuminating the place like a lighthouse, and pickled eggs next to the till.

  It’s empty when we get there, and the owners or employees, two women who are perhaps mother and daughter, are sitting at a plastic garden table at the rear, drinking mugs of tea. The younger of the women, who is in her forties, finishes at some length her inaudible conversation before finally coming to serve us.

  ‘What do we want?’ Jess asks, peering up at the overhead menu. ‘Just chips?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ I say. ‘Let’s get a big portion and share.’

  ‘Large chips, that’s two pounds,’ the woman says, ringing up our choice on the till.

  ‘And curry sauce,’ Jessica says. ‘Can we have curry sauce?’

  ‘Sure,’ I say. ‘Knock yourself out.’

  We argue briefly about who should pay, and I cave in and let Jess do it.

  ‘Does Zoe still work here?’ she asks, as the woman hands back her change.

  ‘Zoe?’ she repeats, looking genuinely confused. ‘Sorry, there’s no Zoe here. It’s just Mum and me.’

  ‘Oh,’ I say. ‘That’s weird. She definitely said she was working here. I’m her brother, by the way.’

  She shrugs and then wanders back to where her mother is agitating the chip basket. They have a discreet conversation during which her mother glances up at us repeatedly over the tops of the deep-fat fryers.

  Eventually, she returns to front of shop. ‘Mum knows who you mean,’ she informs us. ‘She was only here for a while. It was years ago, though. She stood in when I was . . . indisposed.’

  ‘Right,’ I say, stifling a smirk at her surprising use of the word ‘indisposed’, which she has pronounced, for some reason, in the voice of Queen Elizabeth II. ‘I don’t suppose you have an address for her, do you?’

  ‘Or a phone number?’ Jess asks. ‘Anything at all, really. We’ve been tramping all over, trying to find her.’

  ‘I doubt it,’ she says. ‘But I’ll ask Mum.’

  She retreats once again behind the fryers and has another mumbled conversation with her mother, who finally tips her batch of chips out into a tray, salts them and packages up our massive portion and a pot of curry sauce before crossing the shop to address us. As she walks, I see she has massive wing-like flaps hanging from her biceps, and I remember from somewhere the terms that describe them: bingo wings. Or chip-shop arms.

  ‘So what do you want with Zoe?’ she asks, as she hands me the carrier bag.

  ‘I’m her brother,’ I explain again.

  ‘Their mum’s ill,’ Jessica says, reusing the alibi that I’d promised myself never to use again. ‘We’ve been trying to track Zoe down, so we can tell her.’

  ‘Oh,’ the woman says, looking concerned. ‘Very ill, is she?’

  ‘I’m afraid so,’ Jessica says. ‘I’m afraid she’s not very well at all.’

  ‘Well, I’m sorry to hear that,’ she says, glancing back at her daughter, who is lingering beside the till. ‘She’s a nice kid, Zoe is.’

  ‘Yes,’ Jess says. ‘Yes, she’s lovely, isn’t she?’

  ‘Look, I might have something,’ she says. ‘I’d have to look. It was ages ago. But I think I sent her P45 on somewhere, so, maybe. It’d be at home, though, not here.’

  ‘Could you look?’ I ask. ‘That would be amazing if you could look.’

  ‘Of course, love,’ she says. ‘Come back later in the week, and if I’ve found anything . . .’

  ‘We’re checking out tomorrow,’ Jessica reminds me.

  ‘We live in London,’ I explain.

  ‘Oh,’ the woman says. ‘London, is it? Well, come back tomorrow then.’

  ‘Tomorrow lunchtime?’ I ask.

  ‘No, tomorrow evening, love. We don’t open till six.’

  ‘But we have to check out by eleven,’ Jess points out.

  ‘Then could I phone you?’ I ask. ‘Could I maybe get your number and call you?’

  ‘No,’ the woman says. ‘Give me yours and if I find anything, I’ll call you.’

  Ten minutes later, we’re back at our cabin with a bottle of South African Chardonnay from the corner shop and our sweaty packet of chips. When we unwrap these, they turn out to be almost inedible. The Poseidon have somehow managed to both undercook them and dry them out. We eat two or three each, and then dump the remains in the bin.

  ‘I hate throwing food out,’ Jess says.

  ‘Yeah, well . . . define food,’ I say, and she laughs.

  ‘Yes, you’re right there,’ she says. ‘Let’s hope that wine’s better.’

  She unbuttons her coat and pulls off her boots before throwing herself, quite suggestively, across the sofa. ‘Come here, little Mormon boy,’ she says, ‘and bring that bottle of wine with you.’

  ‘I think you need to stop calling me that,’ I say, as I unscrew and pour the wine. ‘I don’t think Mormon boys are allowed sex outside of marriage.’

  ‘I know,’ Jess says. ‘But I’m quite into the idea of perverting you.’

  ‘Now that,’ I say, as I pull off my own coat and jacket, ‘sounds more like it.’

  In the morning, I wake up first. Jessica is gently curved against my back, and almost as soon as I understand that I’m awake, I also realise that I’m feeling panicky. Though we’ve been dating for almost six months, I can count the number of times we’ve woken up together on my fingers. Which, of course, is why this trip is so risky.

  I wonder briefly if this panicky feeling, this inability to breathe, might be somehow linked to searching for Zoe. But though I’d love to be able to hang it on something else, the feeling is so familiar that I can’t deny, even to myself, where it springs from. My ‘issues’ are back, and if I don’t get my head sorted out before Jess wakes up, then this whole trip could go tits-up.

  I try to concentrate on my breath, yogi-style. Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. But my mind re
fuses to stay focused. I think about previous panic attacks and how I’ve dealt with them – essentially by walking away and hiding for a few days until it has passed. If that’s not possible, I’ve often shamelessly engineered an argument so that it’s Jess who walks away. That’s clearly not an option today.

  I try to analyse, for the umpteenth time, why going steady makes me feel so scared – where this sudden desire to break free comes from. Actually, the word ‘desire’ doesn’t really cover it. I feel pushed – driven, even – to escape. It can feel sometimes as if my life depends on it.

  These crises, which I’ll happily admit are entirely unreasonable, have been the death knell of most of my previous relationships.

  Jessica, unlike every other girl I’ve dated, seems able to cope. Perhaps it’s because she wants to be a psychologist one day. Maybe it’s because of all the shrinky-dinky books she reads. But whatever the reason, she somehow treats my weird moods as interesting case studies rather than considering them personal affronts.

  ‘Oh, I see,’ she’ll say. ‘It’s “Let’s argue with Jess” time, is it? You know, I think I’ll skip the whole thing and just go home and read a book, if it’s all the same to you.’ Then she’ll calmly pick up her stuff and leave. ‘Text me when you’re over it,’ she’ll say as she heads out the door. ‘And if you never are over it, that’s fine, too. No pressure. Love you!’

  Most of the time I feel better, physically at least, almost immediately she has gone. Within two days I’m actively missing her, and on the third or fourth, I’ll text her to say everything’s OK again. I generally go for something like, ‘Sorry about that. I’m a nob. I don’t mean to be, but I am. But I’m a nob who misses you.’ And she’ll reply, ‘Great! See you tomorrow.’

  She snuggles a little closer to my back now, and I struggle not to jump out of the bed. I tell myself to be reasonable. ‘Nothing’s happening here,’ I tell myself. ‘There is no danger, there is no reason to feel stressed here.’

  ‘Umh,’ Jessica murmurs, followed by a huge yawn. She shuffles even closer to me and lays one hand across my stomach.