‘So?’ I said. ‘Loads of people do.’
‘I don’t mean you specifically. I mean people generally. And what we do is help combat that. It’s so easy to fall into routine. To think that your way is the only way.’
He smiled, took a Sharpie from his top pocket and pointed it at the window.
‘But if you pick someone out there—’
‘Someone you think is the way you should be—’ said Felix, out of nowhere.
‘Then maybe you’ll learn to be you,’ said Jackie, and I blinked a couple of times, took in the whole scene.
‘This is insane,’ I said.
‘Something you should know is, you will never know our full names. We protect our members’ identities.’
‘And who’s protecting the identities they’re nicking?’ I said. ‘Hang on – is this even legal? You’re stealing identities—’
‘Yes, Christ yes,’ said Andy, flustered, wagging his finger.
‘There’s no law against it,’ said Jackie.
‘What I mean is, you’ll never know my surname. You’ll simply know me as Andy Double. Everyone here does.’
I shook my head. This was insane.
‘That’s Felix Echo over there.’
Felix raised a hand. I noticed he was wearing an ironic ’N Sync t-shirt.
‘They call me Jackie Ape,’ said Jackie, smiling. ‘I thought that was quite fun.’
‘You’ll like this,’ said Tim. ‘I’m Timitate.’
This was the most uncool conversation I had ever had. This was so uncool.
‘So some people start with simply following,’ said Andy, still with that gentle tone, still with those kind eyes. ‘A new route home, a different park. Some do it jogging, because it’s less suspicious that way. Maybe they’ll go to a different shop, try a different meal. It’s about broadening horizons. Finding the best options. Ones that excite you.’
‘Or being someone else entirely,’ I said. ‘Why would you do that?’
Andy leaned forward, put his hand on mine.
‘We like to say, “We’re Replicans, not Replican’ts”.’
A gentle titter from Timitate.
And I stood.
And I said, ‘Well, it was lovely to meet you all.’
Their faces fell. Andy, it seemed, had thought he was getting somewhere.
‘And it’s great to see that Hayley used to spend her time sitting in a hotel meeting room in Wandsworth with a bunch of weirdos to talk about copying people.’
‘Oh dear,’ sighed Tim. ‘Uh-oh.’
‘There’s actually no law against it,’ said Jackie, again. ‘It’s honestly not weird. It’s just a tool. We just say it’s just a different way of subscribing to life.’
‘Where’s Hayley gone?’ I said, now as forthright as I could manage. ‘Someone here knows and you need to tell me right now.’
Andy held his hands up.
‘I can’t.’
‘Yes you can. Yes you will, or I’ll phone the police right now and have this whole thing shut down.’
‘There’s actually no law against it, actually,’ said Jackie again, and it worried me that she’d had to check.
‘I can’t tell you because I don’t know,’ said Andy. ‘Her story is her story. What she’s decided to do is something I personally advised her against but all I could do was advise.’
‘You knew she was going. You knew because you left a message on my phone and that’s how I found you. You did nothing about it. You knew she’d do this to me and you did nothing!’
And calmly, Andy stood, and looked me dead in the eye.
‘Tom, look …’ he said. ‘The thing you have to understand, the thing that’ll help you to know, is that Hayley didn’t do this to you, Tom.’
He lay two fat pink hands on my shoulders.
‘She did this for her.’
Out of the Holiday Inn Express, Wandsworth I stormed.
Left at the roundabout, and over the bridge, my head down, my pace fast, never looking up as cars and vans and bikes shot by.
How was I going to explain this to people?
‘How’s it going with Hayley? Oh, not bad. She decided to meet up with a bunch of oddballs in a hotel to copy strangers and then went to France. But don’t worry, she did it for her. Have we still got the flat? Oh yes. And me? Yes, I’m fine. I get up in the dead of night every day to read out loud and my name’s a footnote in a story about a man complaining about jam on the radio.’
On I blazed, because I just needed to move, to get away, to pound the streets like I had a purpose, because I was now redundant, just a purposeless chimp a girl would rather run away from than be anywhere near. And so I turned right on the King’s Road and walked up, past the turning for the World’s End estate, and on, up to Green Park, down Pall Mall, the Strand, never looking up, never looking around, and when my feet could take no more I veered onto Waterloo Bridge, leaned against its triplet of white railings, legs aching, and stared with a face full of accusation at the city that had done this.
I’d almost have preferred it if Hayley had gone out of spite. Or left me for another man. But the fact that she left ‘for her’ made it impossible to get it out of my head. Her life was lacking.
Well, you know what? So was mine.
So what should I do?
Move back to Bristol, that’s what.
Sack this whole thing off.
Tell Mohammed he can stick his flat.
Tell Talk London they can stick their job.
Just get home, home to familiar things, familiar people.
God I missed Bristol. The bridge, the cathedral. The butcher’s in Southville. The floating harbour, the Tobacco Factory, the gorge. Once it had seemed boring. Now it seemed manageable. Safe. Unsurprising. Perfect.
So that’s what I’d do. Forget progress, forget London. Forget my career. Go back to where people don’t do as many strange things in as many strange ways. Embrace Bristol, good people, spend my days in the pub by the canal, maybe get a job on a farm, anything.
And as I felt for a pill in my pocket, chased it from corner to corner, I could feel the shadows of the city – the phallic Gherkin, the arrogant Shard, the Eye, Big Ben so proud and so full of itself – all of it so big, all of it towering over me, mocking me for having the temerity to stand here, mocking that brief window of genuine optimism I’d somehow allowed myself, and I cast a glance to the right and I caught someone’s eye.
I was being followed.
[4]
‘Come,’ he says, one arm over my shoulder, paternal, nurturing. ‘Let’s try it.’
‘Try what?’ I say.
‘You want to be immersive,’ he says. ‘Then immerse. Channel your inner Salinger. Go Gonzo. Choose someone.’
I smile, then laugh.
‘I’m serious,’ he says. ‘Pick a toy.’
‘They’re toys to you?’ I say. ‘These are people.’
‘You must think of them as toys. You cannot be subservient. Make no mistake: you are the master. They are your subjects. If you bow down to them, you will never rise up; never be anyone but a pale imitation of everyone else. They are the toys, you are the child.’
I look around. We are back in Greenwich Village, on West 3rd Street, next to Golden Swan Park.
‘Him?’ I say.
A man leaves Café Reggio, and skips across a road, holding a briefcase.
‘No,’ he says. ‘You’ve chosen someone just like you.’
I look at the man. He’s not like me.
‘You chose a white man, similar age, similar build, similar clothes, probably a similar mother, probably a similar guy. You chose something you know, you chose familiarity and familiarity is not what discovery is about.’
He knows what I’m thinking.
‘Yes, okay, Berlin, you’re right. I was drawn to the familiar. But remember – it was also alien to me. Because my choices had taken me down a very different path. That man was living a life that was absolutely not like mine. It w
as like a shadow of what could have been. Put simply, I knew what I was missing. You on the other hand think you have it all worked out. Ergo, you don’t know what you’re missing.’
He pushes me forward, and we fall in behind a Chinese man furiously barreling through the crowds.
eleven
There was a Tesco Express on the corner.
I could lose her in the crowd.
She’d tailed me right across the bridge, and that was fair enough, because your options are fairly limited on a bridge, but she’d crossed the road when I did, paused when I did, doubled-back when I did. She’d put a jacket on since the first time I’d seen her. Big blue parka. Army boots over black jeans. Grey beanie pulled back over hair. She looked like a little Eskimo.
I kept my head down as I went in, eyes flicking up to the CCTV screen in the corner, circling the newspapers for a second, and picking up The Times. I flapped it open and let my eyes rest on the automatic doors.
I shouldn’t have come in here. I should’ve just got a cab home. But I was intrigued. People don’t follow you in real life. This was just a series of extraordinary coincidences. Must be. Had to be. All I had to do was break the cycle. Get some distance.
The doors opened and in she came – Christ! – eyes darting around, searching, hungry. I closed the paper, shoved it back and turned.
My neck prickled.
She saw me, followed.
I slowed at the jams to allow her to pass. She didn’t want to talk. What, then? I stared at some small packets of jelly until she went by. I turned and went the other way.
I darted down an aisle to the milk, picked up a small red-top of skimmed, checked my sightlines, moved on, grabbed some sausages. I wanted something in my hands, I hated looking suspicious.
She was nowhere to be seen.
Part of me wanted to laugh. This was ludicrous. But I was too certain I wanted to be annoyed to let the absurdity show. I’d been like that with Hayley when we fought – too determined to be angry to smile when she said something funny, when the tension could have been broken. How much time had I spent choosing to be angry rather than letting something go?
I padded on, thought I saw her, then kneeled at the booze aisle, picking up a half-bottle of rum and flipping it round as if I needed to study the label. A young lad in a Tesco tabard swaggered by holding tall green bottles of elderflower cordial, laughing at something a distant colleague was shouting, a vapour trail of hair gel and Lynx in his wake.
Then she rounded the corner, raised her eyebrows at me, half-smiled and continued on.
Black hair, skinny jeans. Small badge on her lapel: ‘I LOVE VEGANS’. She hadn’t been in the meeting, this little Bjork. But I’d seen her. Sitting in silence with the big fella at the hotel, not eating his eggs, trying to look like he was ignoring her.
She sauntered past, all wide eyes and innocent, freckled face, and as she did I looked down, and in her basket she had a small bottle of red-top milk and some sausages.
I scanned my sausages in the self-service aisle, then scanned my milk. Then the jelly. Peanuts.
Maybe it was my medication. Maybe it was the lack of sleep, the early mornings, the confusion of Hayley and all that she’d done.
Each be-bloop of the till was joined by another a half-second later from directly behind me.
The rum.
‘Age restricted item,’ said the voice from the machine.
Then, a second later, from behind me, the other machine: ‘Age restricted item.’
On the screen: ‘Please wait for a member of staff.’
Jesus.
I turned and scowled at the girl.
Her screen: ‘Please wait for a member of staff.’
She avoided my eye now, looking for whichever member of staff was going to get us out of this one.
We stood four feet apart in complete silence.
She knows I know, I thought to myself. She knows I know and she knows I know she knows I know.
Her eyes rested on mine.
‘What are you staring at?’ she said, with enough attitude to make me feel I was the weirdo.
‘Why are you following me?’
‘I’m not. I’m shopping.’
‘You were.’
‘What?’
‘Following me.’
‘I know.’
‘Why?’
‘You seem interesting.’
I stared at her. She stared at me.
‘SANDRA!’ – wow, that was loud. ‘SANDRA!’
A Tesco woman under a cloud of thin orange hair was waving at someone I could only assume was Sandra. Let’s call her Tesco Sandra.
‘I’ll do it!’ she shouted, waving at Tesco Sandra to remain where she was, then looked at the rum, looked at me. ‘Sorry, I need my fob.’
She strode off. We were stuck.
‘Where’s your mate?’ I said.
‘What mate?’ said the girl.
‘The big black guy with the eggs.’
‘What big black guy with the … oh, the big black guy with the eggs at the hotel?’
‘Yes, that’s the big black guy with the eggs I meant. Where’s that big black guy with the eggs?’
‘Where I left him, I s’pose. He’s a senior manager at Foxtons.’
I shrugged.
‘I just thought that was an interesting detail. No, I don’t know where he is. I don’t know him. I read the Foxtons thing on one of his bits of paper he kept putting up to his face.’
She was pretty. In a sort of damaged goods way. Pale, with that constellation of light brown freckles and two green eyes.
I’m not sure why I said ‘two’ there.
But what did she want?
‘We never talked, me and that guy,’ she said.
‘You were eating with him.’
‘No I wasn’t. I was sitting opposite him. We never talked.’
‘The place was empty.’
‘And?’
‘Did you sit with him or did he sit with you?’
‘I sat with him.’
‘You just sat down, in an otherwise empty room, at someone else’s table?’
‘He seemed interesting.’
A micro-shrug, a tilt of the head, the implication being: what’s your problem?
‘Look, I know you’re one of them. One of those … from that thing.’
‘I know. It’s pretty obvious. And I also knew you’d know that.’
‘Right!’ said the woman with the orange hair, and we fell silent as she took the bottle from my basket. ‘Rum, is it? Ooh, very nice.’
She swiped or tapped or did whatever it was this great gatekeeper of goods had to do, using her vast power to allow me to buy a half-bottle of something I’d never drink, while I struggled with how to be. This girl, was she friend? Was she foe? Did she know Hayley? Had she encouraged her?
‘And now, you, m’love …’ said Tesco woman, turning to the girl, and then, noticing her stuff: ‘Oh, you’re shopping twins!’
She pointed at the items, her excitement growing.
‘Milk, skimmed – sausages, same brand – the exact same bottle of rum!’
We both just stared at her.
‘Peanuts – jelly …!’
She made a huge open-mouthed ‘surprised’ face.
‘Sandra!’ she shouted. ‘You’re never going to believe this!’
Outside, I hovered by the doors. Mad Girl stepped outside and magicked out a roll-up from a deep blue pocket, limp plastic bag hooked over one thin wrist.
The orange-haired woman had tried to get us to agree to get married one day. All the guests at the wedding would have to eat sausages, jelly and peanuts, she said. And drink milk and rum. The Mad Girl said that sounded like the worst wedding ever and accused me of copying her shopping. That was when the orange-haired woman had started glancing around, looking for security.
I moved off, glowering.
She lit her fag and started after me.
‘You’re still following me,’
I said.
‘I live this way,’ she said. ‘Deal with it.’
‘Your whole life?’
‘What?’
‘You live your whole life this way?’
‘No,’ she said, scrunching up her nose, and pointing down the road. ‘I live, this way.’
I stopped in my tracks, frowned at her.
‘Well, I’m walking this way.’
‘So?’
‘So follow someone else.’
‘Nutter,’ she said, overtaking me, slipping an earphone into one ear and hitting Play on an unseen iPod, and turning round once – and only once – to quickly flick me the V, then smile.
twelve
I’d been called in for a meeting at work. I knew what it meant. I was being shelved. Taken off London Calling to make way for Mike Brundell and his sidekick, Sharon News. She’d been called Travel Sharon for ages, but it was felt that made her sound like something you’d buy from Halfords, after you’d popped into the supermarket to get yourself a Tesco Sandra.
Radio does that. Compartmentalises. Pigeon-holes. It’s understandable. You need simple, identifiable figures, with simple, identifiable jobs. I’d escaped it so far. I think Adoyo as a name helped make the station sound more multicultural. I think it made it sound like they’d bussed me in from Kenya, rather than asked me to get the 17:30 from Bristol Temple Meads.
Halfway down Great Portland Street a jogger buzzed past me and padded on. Moments later, so did another.
Since CC and the girl on the bridge, I’d been keeping an eye out. I saw followings and followers everywhere. Who’s to say it wasn’t going on all around me? Or that it hadn’t been happening for years? What if everyone was at it?
The girl, there, leaving the newsagents, now walking behind the old lady weighed down by bags. What if that was something? Why couldn’t it be?
Or the man running to catch the bus. What if it wasn’t the bus he was after? I mean – these people meet up, for God’s sake. They hire rooms at the Holiday Inn. Where had Andy mentioned? Stockwell? Highgate? Where else were Tims and Jackies and Felixes meeting up? They said it was like a support group. Who else had left, the day Hayley left? Who else had jacked it all in and for what?
Who is Tom Ditto? Page 8