Charlotte Street (35 page)

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 didn’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.’

‘So that’s it? It’s all signed off?’

‘It’s his place. His money. There was never a question. But look, someone might not take this place for months, or years. That old pet shop round the corner’s been on the market
for ever
, so there’s still the flat! I didn’t want to worry you. You’re my best mate, Jase. We could be here ages.’

I had little savings, I had little prospects, and now I had even less hope. It was one thing me believing something good could come out of that night on Charlotte Street. But it was quite
another knowing that even Dev had thought it was stupid all along. I felt ridiculous, tricked, hopeless.

I looked around the flat, knowing we
wouldn’t
be here ages. I wouldn’t, at any rate. So I went out, angry, and I drank, angrily, and when I didn’t want to go home but I didn’t know where else to go I made a phone call and she answered and she said, ‘Come round. Now.’

And The Girl?

The Girl was just a dream, and in the words of my great friend Devdatta Patel, dreams are unrealistic.

‘What can be expected to be dropped is held in the hands, but what is in the heart I shall die with.’

Traditional Shona Tribe proverb, Zimbabwe

Hello. Seventeen of you, eh? That’s enough for a party. We could get drunk and not speak to each other, then go home and blog about it.

Martin in Malaysia: I know you’ll like this. On the tube this morning, at Goodge Street, I remembered an advert I saw in one of the free papers recently where a man professed his love for a stranger.

I don’t usually look, because I get far too embarrassed. And I worry one day I’ll see one that I convince myself is for me and that will be it; I will have to marry whoever it is out of sheer gratefulness.

Mind you, you can make anything sound like it’s for you. Girl in a red top. I saw you from the window of the VD clinic. I’d been given bad news but you brightened my day. You’d be so thrilled all day, you’d be asking your friends, ‘What do you wear if you’re meeting someone with VD?’

Anyway, the one I saw said this:

I saw you. You don’t use overhead handles on the train.

Hoped it would jolt and you would fall to me. But no.

At first I smiled and turned the page because you do get quite used to things like this in those papers. Like reading about people who meet in weird ways whose write-ups always end with the sentence ‘the pair recently announced their engagement’, or words along those lines.

But I wonder if that man felt he was taking a risk, the day he wrote about the girl with no overhead handles. I wonder if his heart beat faster at the possibilities he was hoping to open up.

Because isn’t to be pursued, to be thought of as special, to be needed by someone somewhere, whether we know them yet or not, all any of us actually wants? To have our story end in a sentence exactly like ‘the pair recently announced their engagement’?

Maybe I’m having a weak moment. I’m pretty sure we’re all going to end up having to get cats to keep us company anyway.

And I fucking hate cats.

Sx

One month and one day passed by with little incident.

I’d done nothing, really. Nothing except find myself a little flat on Blackstock Road. It had been easy enough to move out. Nine boxes, a telly, a laptop and a rolled-up duvet. Not much to show for a life lived, but you don’t really mind when it all fits into the back of an Addison Lee.

My savings had dwindled, of course. They’d always been good dwindlers, my savings. Naturally adept at dwindling. Seems the less you’re paid the more proactive your savings become, dwindle-wise.

But I’m procrastinating. Because like I say, a month had passed with only a few events to distinguish it or set it apart. Though I suppose, if pressed, there were two in particular.

The first was the phone call.

‘Jason?’ it began, the voice familiar. ‘It’s Estonia Marsh.’

‘Oh,’ I’d said, and that was the best I could do.

‘I’m so sorry to call you like this. I got your number from
London Now
. Are you not there any more?’

‘I’ve … I still freelance, but no, not really.’

‘Listen,’ she said.

Turns out Estonia had been having dinner with her producers, and they’d started talking about how they met their partners, and Estonia said, ‘Oh, I met this guy recently …’ and now her producers on
Wake Up Call
wanted to get me in to the studios on the South Bank to help me with the search.

‘It’d be fantastic!’ she said. ‘A million viewers, you’ve got a photo, someone will know her, and we’ll get you together on the show!’

‘Oh!’ I said, stalling. ‘Well, that’s an interesting—’

‘Because your friend had said you’d already put an ad in the paper, and tried to find her by different means, so this would just be stepping it up a level, wouldn’t it? It’d be great fun!’

‘Yeah. Yeah. I’m not sure, though.’

‘There’d probably be a few quid in it, too – sometimes we hook up with the papers or the weekly mags and they get the contributor to write their story up. I’m sure we could fix you a commission with the
Mail
, or someone?’

‘I … can I think about it?’ I’d said.

‘Sure! Yes. Of course,’ she said, clearly disappointed I hadn’t been as effusive as they’d clearly been after three bottles of Pinot Noir. ‘I mean, personally speaking, I really think you should do it. Because here’s the thing: you don’t know how your story ends yet!’

And though I toyed with the idea – though I thought maybe my life might yet end up as one of those stories you read in the tabloids that end with a wonderfully cheesy final line – I knew toying was all I was doing.

Because just hours later, as the day wound down and just minding my own business at the bottom of Poland Street, the universe had sent me a warning shot. A
no-you-don’t
.

There, up ahead, leaving the NCP … the unmistakable rear lights of a light green Facel Vega, exhaust humming away,
condensation clouding the back window, hiding me from Damien, and Damien from me.

I kept my head down nevertheless, nipped down D’Arblay, and quickly made my way to the tube.

Back to this morning.

There was another one in the tabloids today.

Love those last lines. I wonder if people actually say them.

I took a mug from the cupboard and realised it was one of Dev’s.

I hadn’t seen him since I moved out, partly because I had so much to sort out, but partly because I was embarrassed. Embarrassed at how I’d behaved, embarrassed because in all the time he was going through that stuff with his dad I’d never once thought to ask how things were going, was he okay, how was the shop? Embarrassed too, because I’d been tricked, and only tricked because I’d been starting to mildly obsess over a
girl I’d never met and now never would and how stupid that made me feel.