by Jane Hill
I deliberately ignored the giant departures board at the mainline station. I headed straight for the stairs down to the Tube station, my head down, looking like my usual preoccupied self. But as I reached the top of the stairs I swerved suddenly and darted into the ticket office as quickly and as unobtrusively as possible. I had my credit card in my hand and I found an available ticket machine. I tapped the screen quickly, selected my destination, hesitated slightly between open return and single, chose single, then thrust my credit card into the slot and tapped my fingers impatiently. The ticket spewed out and I remembered to wait for the receipt. As I did, I thought that maybe I should have paid cash, untraceable cash. But that would have been beyond paranoid.
Finally I allowed myself to look up at the departures board, but casually, as if I was simply looking around me, taking care not to fix my stare on any particular destination. My train was due to leave in fifteen minutes but there was no platform number announced yet. I stood there for a moment to catch my breath but I felt very exposed. I kept getting bumped and jostled. A station employee with a cart walked past, collecting litter. He narrowly avoided rolling the cart over my feet.
I threaded my way back across the concourse towards the branch of W.H. Smith. People were browsing the bookshelves, killing time. I picked up a couple of paperbacks more or less at random from the 'Buy one, get another half-price' display. No one was watching me, as far as I could tell. I added a glossy magazine to my haul, and then a chicken-salad sandwich and a bottle of water from the chiller cabinet. I joined the queue to the till. Everyone around me seemed intent on their own business. I started to breathe more easily. Soon I would be on the train bound for Edinburgh and I was pretty sure I hadn't been followed. I was nearly home and dry. Until suddenly I felt a hand on my shoulder and I jolted so violently that I dropped all my shopping.
It was a man in a suit, standing behind me. Just a man in a suit: a middle-aged businessman, slightly fat, slightly sweaty, nice smile. He got down on his knees to help me to pick up my stuff. 'Sorry, love,' he said. 'I was trying to tell you there was a till free.'
People pushed past us, tutting, as we gathered up my purchases. I wanted to leave them there, to run off, but that would have looked suspicious. I was flustered, nervous. I thanked the man in the suit. As I got up from the floor with my hands full, I thought I could sense someone staring at me. I looked up, across at the book section. There was a young guy there. T-shirt, combats, dark curly hair. He was grinning at me, and when I met his eye he winked at me. I went cold for a moment. The cashier cleared his throat, waiting for me to pay for my goods. Still flustered, I dug in my shoulder bag for my purse. As I left the shop I looked around me, but the young guy was nowhere in sight. As far as I could tell, he hadn't followed me.
The train pulled out of the station. I settled into my corner seat, surrounded by three elderly women, and I told myself off for my stupidity. Why did I go into W.H. Smith? Why did I buy two books and a magazine? I might as well have stuck a Post-It note on my forehead saying 'I am going on a long train journey in just a few minutes.'
Past York the train started to get less crowded. I was trying to lose myself in the books I'd bought but without success. One of them featured three old school friends, all beautiful and successful in their own way, falling in and out of love with various inappropriate men. It annoyed me. The other one seemed to be a period thriller set in a number of European cities. People kept writing letters to each other to tell them things that they should already have known. My head was aching from the strain of working out who all the people were, and my mind kept wandering back to San Francisco. The characters in the book that I was reading kept turning into faces that I vaguely remembered from that summer, and they started jostling me and looming up in front of me and calling to me and trying to get me to acknowledge them . . .
. . . And I woke with a start and the train had stopped at Newcastle. The old women had gone and there was a young man, ginger hair, a rucksack, asking me if the seats were taken.
He wouldn't shut up. He told me he was a student and that he was studying in Newcastle, but he was clearly not from there because his accent was pure Home Counties.
He was staying there – Newcastle – for the summer because 'It's a cool town,' but now he was on his way to Edinburgh for the Fringe because some friends of his from Oxford were putting on a play and he was just going to 'hang . . . you know, chill.'
He seemed like a nice enough guy but he had obviously never learned to read body language. He seemed unable to interpret my polite little nods and shrugs and convert them into 'Please go away because I don't want to talk to anyone.'
I needed to ring Zoey, but I didn't want to make a phone call that my ginger friend could hear. I didn't want anyone to hear me make arrangements. I didn't want any stranger to know where I was going or who I would be staying with. I made my way down the aisle with my bag, squeezed into the smelly toilet, locked the door and put the loo seat down. I perched on it and dialled Zoey's number. She answered straight away. 'Beth!' It was almost a scream. She sounded like she was somewhere noisy, with a whole bunch of noisy people. 'Where are you, hon?'
'I'm on a train. I'm on my way to Edinburgh. Short notice, I know. Sorry. Listen, you said I could kip at your flat. Did you mean it?'
'Oh my God, yes. This is so cool.' There was a pause. I started to say something. Zoey butted in. 'So, when are you arriving?'
I told her.
'Cool. I'll give you the address. Just pick up a cab at the station. Can't wait to see you.'
When I got back to my seat I saw that the ginger kid had picked up my historical thriller and was reading it. 'Keep it,' I said, and curled up into the corner and closed my eyes.
The Edinburgh Fringe hit me like a punch in the stomach the minute I arrived. I walked up to Princes Street from Waverley Station and was immediately accosted by people who wanted to thrust their leaflets into my hands. I had never seen such a mass of people on the street just hanging around. Not moving, not heading anywhere, just standing and watching what was going on. I needed to fight my way through them to get anywhere. There was the obligatory bagpipe player on one corner, a bunch of pan-pipers across the road and a group of youngsters in togas wandering along the street handing out leaflets and bunches of grapes. I pushed through the crowds, clutching my bag and the map I had bought at the station. The queue at the taxi rank had stretched back for hundreds of yards so I'd decided to walk. It didn't look that far on the map.
The crowds started to thin as I trudged uphill eastwards from Waverley Station, across a busy road, past the entrance to a cemetery, past what looked like a ruined Greek temple, and past a colossal 1930s edifice – local government offices, by the look of it, perched high on a hill overlooking the city. I was on a broad crescent with Regency houses to my left, and a long row of empty parked coaches. I stopped for a while to get my breath back. It was much cooler than in London but still, even late afternoon, very humid. The sky was off-white. I leaned on some railings and looked at the view beyond. Grey streets and railway lines, tiny, far below me. Steps winding down the side of the hill. A green expanse of open land over to my left, a rugged, stepped hill emerging from it.
'Arthur's Seat.' It was a man's voice, behind me. I stood where I was and for a split second my heart sank. I hadn't heard any footsteps behind me. Then my mind managed to process the information. The voice was Scottish. I turned and saw one of the coach drivers, cigarette in hand. He stepped closer to me and pointed at the hill. 'It's an extinct volcano. Magnificent, isn't it? This your first time in Edinburgh?'
I nodded. 'What's that?' I pointed at a building crouched near the foot of the hill. From where I stood, the outline looked like a doodle on a phone pad, as if the architect had taken a shape, like the outline of a leaf or a petal or a boat – and crammed as many of them together as the space would allow, all different sizes. 'That is four hundred million pounds of our money,' the coach driver said.
'The S
cottish Parliament?'
'Aye.' He stubbed out his cigarette on the pavement. 'You can tell it wasn't built by a Scotsman.'
At the end of the crescent there was a main road and it was bustling with buses and chippies and kebab shops. I checked the map, crossed over, looked behind me to check that the coast was clear, and started counting the streets on the left. The one I wanted was a narrow cul-de-sac crammed with parked cars, blocked at the end to traffic but accessible via a steep flight of stone steps. Either side of the street, tall terraced grey houses and tenements nestled together. But for all that, it was cheery – window frames were painted in bright blues and greens, and every house had a front garden blooming with summer flowers.
I found the house I wanted and I rang the bell. There was no answer from the entry phone system, but I noticed the street door was open. I pushed it and went inside. The hallway was dark, the walls painted a dark glossy institutional green. Up three flights of stairs, round to the right, and there was the right door. Stuck to the door was a white envelope.
All this way, I thought. All this way, for this. How the hell did he find me?
And then I looked again and realised that the envelope was a different size and shape – smaller and squarer than the ones I'd learned to fear. My name was written on it in right-slanting loopy handwriting that had the indefinably foreign look that I associated with letters from childhood penfriends. Beth, it said; not The murdering bitch. I pulled the envelope from the door and it felt heavy. Inside there was a note and key. 'I had to go check out the venue,' it said. 'Make yourself at home. Zoey XOX.'
The flat was tiny: even smaller than my place in London. There was one bedroom, almost filled with a double bed. Zoey's suitcase sat on the bed, some of the clothes half-unpacked. Just off the hallway I found the world's smallest bathroom – well, shower room – like a cupboard, or the toilet on the Sausalito houseboat. And the only other room was the kitchen-living room. A big sash window filled the room with light. There was a sofabed, a small TV, a chair, a table and a tiny kitchen area. I found some pizza in the fridge – what looked like the remains of Zoey's lunch – and I ate it while watching television. I made a mug of herbal tea. And then I found a blanket in the wardrobe in Zoey's room, curled up on the sofa and fell sound asleep.
Thirty-one
'So this is the room,' said Zoey. 'What do you think?'
She was bouncing around on a small wooden stage at one end of a low dark cellar that was seemingly dug out of the foundations of a tall old building. The walls and the low curved ceiling were painted black and there were rows of low benches facing the stage. I figured that forty or fifty people would fit in, as long as they didn't mind bunching up together and losing their personal space.
I touched one finger to the wall to see if it was as damp as it looked. It was. I wiped the finger on my jeans and tried to think of a suitable way to tell Zoey what I thought of the room. It was her venue for the Fringe. She was planning to be standing on that stage at twenty past ten every night until almost the end of August, the end of the Fringe, trying to make people laugh.
Zoey was excited. It was a good venue, she told me; and twenty past ten was a fantastic slot. 'Well, a little earlier would have been better, or maybe lunchtime or early evening. But ten-twenty is great, especially if we can spread the word. Maybe you could help me out with the flyering?'
I nodded, although I had only a dim idea of what she meant by flyering. I was tired and confused. Was it only yesterday that I'd caught the train up here? It felt like a lifetime ago. I wasn't even sure how we'd got to this room. We'd crossed a bridge near Waverley Station, the kind of bridge that in any other European capital city would cross a great river – the Danube, the Seine, the Thames. I had looked down on to a jumble of railway lines far below us. We'd walked up a busy road full of dawdling tourists, and then there was the Royal Mile. It was pretty much a solid mass of people, trying to hand us bits of paper. A s we crossed, we nearly got knocked down by a cyclist pedalling a rickshaw. Then there was another street, and then we were on a bridge looking down at yet another street far below us, as if it was another city entirely. I couldn't work out how the two streets could be connected. There was a tall grey institutional-looking building, and noticeboards outside covered with posters for comedy shows – faces smiling or gurning or looking straight at the camera, photos of people holding umbrellas or leaping in the air or pretending to eat bunches of flowers. There were newspaper clippings stapled to the posters, with printouts of reviews and star ratings.
Zoey had steered me through an open door and instantly I could smell damp. We walked along a corridor, down a flight of stairs and another, and another. It felt like we were descending into the bowels of the Earth. Every wall, every ceiling, was covered with posters for comedy shows. There were people on every floor, forming queues outside doors, tickets in hand, even at this early time of the day. Three or four floors down, a bar. No windows. Same musty smell. Zoey had pushed me towards a saggy sofa and I slumped onto it. She went off somewhere, in a huddle with someone. It was midday. Groups of people were eating nachos from paper plates. There were lots of young people in T-shirts and baggy combat trousers. There were boys with feathery 1970s Rod Stewart haircuts. Older people, forties, fifties, reading The Guardians Fringe supplement. I saw a guy I thought I recognised as one of the team captains on a Channel Four comedy panel show. I didn't see Rivers Carillo or anyone who looked like him. It was crowded and claustrophobic and confusing, but it also felt safe. No one knew who I was.
Zoey had returned with a key and we'd continued downstairs until we eventually emerged onto the pavement of a dark, narrow street where we'd found ourselves surrounded by tall grey buildings. I looked up to where we'd come from. Way up high there was a bridge across the street. I felt dizzy, as if I was in an Escher engraving.
Zoey had led me along the street and up a cobbled alley under a tunnel. T o our right, another tall grey building; to our left, another wall completely covered with comedy posters. At the far right-hand end of the alleyway, as it widened out into a kind of tenement courtyard, Zoey unlocked a door. We ducked into the doorway, through a tunnel with dust and dirt and uneven paving stones underfoot – like some kind of archaeological dig in the foundations of a castle. And finally, just as I wondered where on Earth she could possibly be taking me, just as I started to feel scared, the passageway opened out into this dark, dank cave of a room.
Zoey was still waiting for me to say something about the space. It was a dump, I wanted to say; or a dungeon or a prison cell or a crypt. I shivered, feeling the damp coldness go down my spine and raise goose pimples on my arms. 'It's really cool,' I said, meaning it literally; meaning, what a relief after the hot summer we'd had; choosing the one positive I could think of to describe the place. But Zoey assumed I meant 'cool' as in, well, cool, in the figurative sense. Her face cracked into a huge smile. 'It is, isn't it? It's so cool.'
She jumped up and down on the stage like Tigger. 'Oh my God, Beth!' she shouted, in a voice that echoed and bounced off the walls. 'The Edinburgh Fringe. I'm playing the Edinburgh Fringe! This is it. I've made it. I'm here. And no one can stop me.'
She bounced over to where I was standing, grabbed hold of me and we bounced around the room together until we tripped over one of the benches. Her joy was infectious. I loved her at that moment. I felt full of love for Zoey and her enthusiasm and her wild curly hair and her refusal to be afraid of anything. And as we jumped up and down, and hugged each other, and grinned at each other, and I allowed myself a crazy smile, I realised something: I could get lost here. Well and truly lost. I could hide in the crowd and mingle and have fun and be a normal person, and no one would be able to find me. No one knew I was here.
Except . . . there were six missed calls on my mobile. One was from my mum, just her weekly check-up; wanting to know that I was still alive. Two more were from my sisters, both of them 'just checking' that I was okay; I wondered what Jem had told Sarah to make her
phone me. The other three missed calls were from Danny. Danny, my only just ex-boyfriend; Danny, the guy I'd said I'd still be friends with; Danny, the sweet, kind person who still wanted to hang out with me. I thought that I at least owed him the courtesy of returning his phone call.
'Where on earth are you?' Danny's voice sounded puzzled, rattled maybe, but not quite cross.
I was sitting at an outside table at a tiny hole-in-the-wall hummus-and-falafel place in a side street just off the Royal Mile. I was with Zoey, and with Laura and Suze, two other comedians who were doing a show together at the same venue. There was some showbizzy talk about sharing publicity, doing 'joint flyering', 'crosspromoting' their shows, which I didn't quite follow. Laura was late twenties, blonde, skinny and very pretty; she was very 'on' – a little shrill and shrieky. I got the sense that she liked to be noticed. Suze was older, calm, a large but rather beautiful woman with creamy skin. She didn't seem like a comedian – not like the ones I'd met so far, anyway. She was very quiet, almost dull; but she had a serenity that was quite peaceful. Neither of them seemed to know Zoey very well, but they were all trying to get along, falling over themselves to offer to pay for lunch. I wondered what it would be like by the time the Fringe was over at the end of August. Would they be best buddies? Would Zoey cast her spell on them?
I stood up and walked away from them to concentrate on my phone call. I perched on a low concrete bollard. 'I'm in Edinburgh,' I said, trying to put a laugh in my voice; to indicate that it was just a quirky, last-minute decision.
'Edinburgh? Why? How come?'
I was watching – being watched by – a silver-painted living statue who seemed to have decided to start a staring match with me. 'For the Festival. You know, the Fringe?' I still hadn't grasped what the difference was, if there was one. There was a Festival and a Fringe, and I didn't know if they were officially part of each other or separate. 'There's all this stuff on. Like comedy and plays and art and stuff.'