‘Oh … he’s just … I met him and we got on.’
‘He’s the new Mister Darcy!’
‘Yeah, well. He doesn’t like to be labelled. He was just very flattered that Scarlett asked him. He’s worried that might be an albatross round his neck.’
‘On his back.’
‘Anywhere near him, really.’
‘Why’s he got you in a headlock?’
‘Oh, you know,’ I said, shrugging. ‘Bants.’
‘Amazeballs?’ she said, like a question. Fact: there is no answer to a question like ‘Amazeballs’.
‘Hashtag: think-you-know-someone …’
I smiled, as I sat in the tiny box near the kitchenette, sourcing audio for the next bulletin. That was pretty cool. Matthew Channing. Imagine if Hayley saw that. Maybe she’d see it on some celebrity site. That’d teach her. She’d be desperate to know why I suddenly kept such glamorous company. Desperate. I checked what else had come through to the news team. Oh, look, Blackwall Tunnel’s clear. Updated statement from the Vatican about those cardinals. Another Manchester City player in a fight in some try-hard champagne bar. And—
‘Tom! Get in! Quick!’
The door was open. Pippy again. Wild-eyed. Manic.
‘Get in what?’
‘Studio! Cass needs you!’
‘What?’
I panicked, dropped my papers, started to pad towards 4K. I slapped my ID on the lock, opened the first heavy doors, heard the muffle of her voice, saw the sober red On Air light, peered through the glass wall. Cass saw me, beckoned me in, eyes wide.
I pushed through the next door, as quietly as I could, found my chair, heard Cass saying, ‘But surely, Mister Mayor, the problem is not what you are doing, it’s what you haven’t done?’
Jesus. The Mayor? Why was I here? Leslie wanted a clear studio for his cosy chats with the Mayor.
I grabbed my cans, pulled them over my head, heard the tail end of his reply.
‘Mister Mayor,’ said Cass. ‘The next voice you’ll hear will be that of Tom Adoyo …’
She nodded at me.
‘Hello?’ I said, and immediately wished I hadn’t said it as a question. I sounded like someone trying the first telephone.
‘Hello Tom,’ came the response, and you could tell he was wary, because he was using my name, and why was he suddenly speaking to me, what trap was this, what might this be? A muffled moment, a question to an aide, a hand over the receiver, then clarity again.
‘… and just this weekend, Tom was pushed into an alleyway and robbed – at knifepoint – by a criminal who is still very much at large on the streets of this city …’
Well, yeah. I hadn’t reported him. And hang on – knifepoint?
I did the best mime I could to show there’d been no knife, pointed or not. She frowned and waved it away.
‘Well, obviously, Tom,’ said the voice I knew so well, from TV, from radio, from press conference after press conference, ‘let me first say this – I’m obviously appalled by what happened to you and in any—’
‘What are you going to do about crimes like this, Mister Mayor?’ said Cass, interrupting.
‘Well, the question is not what we—’
‘That’s precisely the question, with respect sir, which is precisely why I asked it.’
‘Let me be absolutely clear—’
‘I want you to be absolutely clear, Mister Mayor – what are you going to do about crimes like those suffered by Tom?’
‘In any—’
‘And what’s more – as our elected representative – the Mayor of the greatest city on Earth – are you going to apologise to Tom, because I’m looking at his poor broken face right now, sir, and breathing in the very faint whiff of TCP, and whatever you’re doing … it ain’t working.’
She had him on the run. I knew this would be on all over the building.
She gave me a little thumbs-up, like I’d done anything to make this happen at all.
‘Absolutely brilliant, guys,’ said Bron, straight after the show. ‘Topnotch. Honestly. We’ve clipped that Mayor interview and sent it out already. We’re running promos throughout the day. I mean – an apology—’
‘It wasn’t really an apology, it was—’
‘An admission, though – from the Mayor! That something isn’t working! On your first show! Well done. Both of you, well done.’
Cass put her arm in mine, and squeezed.
My phone buzzed as I stood in Frank’s where a fat man was arguing with another fat man. I answered.
‘Yo, Tom Ditto,’ she yelled. ‘Wanna go out later?’
‘Yeah,’ I said, automatically. ‘Yeah, okay.’
‘Great, because I’m right behind you. I’ve been following you for the last forty minutes.’
I span around.
Nothing but fat men in a café.
‘Only joking,’ she said.
We were starting to get a shorthand, me and her. She’d crashed on the sofa at mine after we got back from Chinawhite, sometime around 5am Saturday morning … the guy we’d followed turned out to be a low-level TV star from that Welsh dance studio reality show. Last Tango in Powys, or something. Late Saturday morning turned into a moment-by-moment deconstruction of what had happened over Co-op cheese and onion sandwiches. How the man had led us where he’d led us, the whole Matthew Channing incident, the clinging to the tail-end of the Powys group to sneak into the club … then microwave beans on toast, a snooze in front of E!, and then miraculously it had been Saturday night and we’d headed out for food.
I took her to the vegan place on the corner of Albion Road.
She took one look at the menu and scrunched her nose up.
‘Is this not good?’ I asked.
‘Avocado quinoa and kale?’
‘I thought you were vegan,’ I said, pointing at the badge on her lapel.
‘What? No, I just took one because someone else did. Followed him to a conference of some kind. He had some pace on him. A remarkable energy. Made me rethink my whole diet.’
So we got up and headed down the road, and wandered aimlessly, and mock-bickered about what to do, until she spotted a couple who looked like they knew exactly where they were going.
We sat at the next table. He looked to be a banker, and from what she was saying, she was taking a year off to redecorate the house. She couldn’t decide whether to paint the hallway in London Clay or Cornforth White and it was really getting her down.
We all ordered the fish.
‘Did something happen?’ I said, gently. ‘To make you do things like this?’
‘I felt sort of born into it,’ she replied. ‘And look! It worked out! Fish instead of kale nuts and asparagus balls or whatever.’
‘Yeah, but … come on. You can’t have just got up one day and thought this seemed like a good idea.’
‘No, that’s true.’
‘So …?’
She shrugged. Moved her knife and fork around.
‘You only ever wear black, don’t you?’ she said.
‘What?’
‘You only ever wear black. It’s like your whole life is a funeral.’
‘Don’t change the subject. And I find black flattering. How did you start? Who did you follow first?’
‘Some girl,’ she said. ‘She looked … sorted. Happy.’
‘Where did you go?’
‘Walthamstow. She was going to a house party. I stood outside for half an hour and then went home.’
If I’d been expecting inspiration, I was sorely let down.
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘But you continued.’
‘It was better than being at home.’
She looked fragile, now. Small.
‘Meaning?’
‘What do you mean, meaning?’
‘Why was it better than being at home?’
‘Look, there was a guy,’ she said. ‘It was serious. It didn’t work out.’
‘It was serious?’ I said. ‘You look about nin
e.’
What I meant was, this girl didn’t seem the commitment type. She didn’t seem the type to commit to anything – a restaurant, veganism, anything, let alone something serious.
‘And you split up?’
‘Mm-hmm.’
‘Whose fault?’ I asked, sensing I was pushing it.
She shrugged, bit her lip.
‘It’s not as simple as that.’
‘Do you still see him?’
Again, Are you over him? is what I wanted to say. Is that why you do it? Is that why you follow people?
‘Yeah, sort of. We talk. It didn’t end badly. Well, it did end badly, but you know what I mean.’
‘What does he do?’
‘Do you mind if we don’t, actually?’ she said. ‘I’m tired. And I’m not very hungry. And I’d prefer to just keep things …’
‘You ask me questions,’ I said. ‘Questions about my life.’
‘You need me to, is the difference. I need you not to.’
I wanted to know more, of course. What do you do? Where do you work? How old are you? Where do you live? What’s your favourite colour? Despite myself, I liked her. I found her fascinating. She didn’t make sense to me. I didn’t get her. All my life I thought I’d been able to work people out. Get the gist of them the second I saw them. So much for that. Hayley proved me wrong. So now maybe I shouldn’t try and do that. I should just go with the flow, and discover people as they develop in front of me, like film in a dark room, the way Pia let a story unfurl in front of her. But there was something about the way we’d met – the strangest way I’d ever met anybody – that made her like my secret. Something in my life, maybe the only thing, that Hayley didn’t know about, and therefore a victory in some way. I wasn’t going to pretend to be anyone else for Pia. I’ve never seen the sense in reinventing yourself for the sake of a new friendship. Seems to me if you do that, the only thing you’re inventing is the friendship. And it seemed weird thinking all this about someone I’d just met. Because as far as I could tell, as we nibbled at our fish, I would never, ever see her again.
‘I heard the show this morning,’ she said, and I snapped back to the phone call, still standing outside Frank’s. I guess I might see her again, then. ‘I thought it was very nice of the Mayor to apologise to you personally for the mugging.’
One of the fat men next to me had called the other a wanker and walked off. I caught sight of my reflection in the window. I was wearing all black again. It just seems to happen without thinking these days.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Though it wasn’t really an apology, so much as—’
‘You forgot to mention you’d been saved by a girl much shorter than you.’
‘It didn’t seem the right time.’
‘So where are you right now?’ she said. ‘What do you want to do?’
‘Great Titchfield Street,’ I said. ‘We could get a coffee?’
A pause. This had not filled her with excitement.
‘Yeah, maybe,’ she said.
‘Or … cinema?’ I tried, but I knew what she wanted to do, I knew she wanted me to do it too, and as I waited for her response, my eyes came to rest on a guy on the other side of the window – fifties, jaunty, German phrasebook, excellent pipe. He opened his jacket – Harris tweed, waistcoat underneath – and brought out a silver pocketwatch.
‘Actually,’ I said, ‘I’ve just spotted an interesting man …’
‘Yeah?’ she said, her voice rising, a trill of thrill now there. ‘Shall I come to you?’
How had this happened?
‘No,’ I said, now out of the café and halfway down the street, getting ready to cross when he did, a flash of pink lining exposed as he tucked his pocketwatch away. ‘I’ll let you know where to meet us …’
sixteen
As often happens to a Monday, two days later it was Wednesday.
I arrived at SoundHaus to be greeted by three six-foot pandas and a woman called Eileen.
‘Hi, do you work at SoundHaus?’ she said, flanked by the giant bears. ‘Only they wouldn’t let us into reception.’
She made a pleading face.
‘Well, three of you are dressed as pandas,’ I said.
This was always happening. PRs and marketers trying to create a buzz around completely invented ‘national conversations’ like National Bread Week (in association with Warburtons bread) or British Pie Day (in association with Jus Rol pastry) or maybe Egg Week (The Egg Council) or Shed of the Year (Cuprinol wood stain) or British Sausage Week’s Global National Day of the Sausage Month (when Simon Rimmer might turn up outside the studio with a small plate of Plockwurst and a smile).
‘Yes, but it’s just that it’s International Week of the Red Panda,’ she said.
‘In association with?’
‘Why does it have to be associated with anyone?’
‘Who’s it associated with?’
‘Epping Forest Safari Adventure Park and Zoo,’ she said. ‘Just off the M11 near Chigwell. I’ve got your Panda Packs to drop off.’
I knew the deal. There’d be a stuffed red panda. Maybe a red panda baseball cap. A press release talking about the plight of the red panda and the latest two-for-one family-friendly deals at Epping Forest Safari Adventure Park and Zoo, just off the M11 near Chigwell, complete with suggested hashtags and interesting on-air talking points. Leslie used to rail against this stuff. ‘We’re here to report! Not to help! You can shove your bloody hashtag!’
‘Do you think it’s something you might talk about on-air?’ she said. ‘Do you work with Bark and Lyricis on Vibe?’
‘No,’ I said, and her face fell.
‘Well, you can take one anyway,’ she said, holding out a bag, sulking.
One of the panda men took his head off.
I sat down at my desk and turned my computer on.
Ding.
* * *
FROM: MAUREEN THOMAS
TO: ALL STAFF
Oweing to recent events, PLEASE DO NOT ALLOW UNAFFILIATED STAFF onto the BUILDING PREMISES even if they USED TO WORK HERE.
An incident yesterday evening in which a FORMER member of staff attempted to gain entry to the STUDIO’S means ALL STAFF must now attend a SECURITY AWARENESS briefing run by Adawale on the third floor THIS AFTERNOON. NO EXCUSE’S.
* * *
‘It was Leslie,’ said Pippy, eyes alight with the joy of it. ‘He was after you!’
‘What?’ I said, closing the fridge door when I realised absolutely everything inside it had someone else’s name on. Who puts their name on a cling-filmed carrot?
‘Gary the engineer let him in,’ she said. ‘He said he’d forgotten about the whole Jam Nazi thing.’
‘Oh, yeah, that little thing,’ I said.
Leslie had been in town, recording a voiceover for Denbigh’s Rally Kart and Paintball Centre. He’d usually use the ISDN line in his house for such small jobs, but fancied a trip to the city, and while he was round the corner, rage brewing over a balti in Shikara’s, his ears being filled with the injustice of it all by Len Barker who now covered overnights on Radio 2 of all places (‘He used to make me tea!’ Leslie used to rage, pointing at his tiny name in the ever-smaller radio section of Time Out. ‘I bloody taught that little oik!’), he decided to pay SoundHaus a little visit. Gary had let him in just after five, and he’d come looking for me on the news floor, gold pack of fags bent and wet in one tense fist.
‘What hours does he think I work?’ I said. ‘Does he just think I’m here all day and night?’
But that’s exactly what he thought. He had no idea because he just associated me with the place. He didn’t know what time I got in, he’d never asked about my home life, either, save for that one day he took such pleasure in ridiculing me.
He couldn’t find me, of course. He’d hovered by my desk for a while and then made his way up to the studios, rattling the doors of 4K until Jess ‘Drivetime in My’ Carr alerted security and had him removed.
‘You wan
na watch out,’ said Pippy, importantly. ‘You wanna watch he doesn’t start following you …’
‘He’s about sixty!’ I said.
‘That’s the problem,’ said Pippy. ‘Who’s hiring guys like him?’
Later, I resisted the urge to text Pia. But here’s the thing.
The forty-eight hours I’d spent with her were all it had taken to make London look brighter, make life look a little better.
The interesting man I’d seen in Frank’s had led us first to a meeting with an interesting woman in an interesting hat in an interesting building which turned out to be an open council planning application meeting, and that had been less interesting, so we’d left.
Outside, and almost at once – a group of jolly older men dragged us in their wake with the pull of a planet as they headed towards Wardour Street wearing t-shirts that said ‘Ale Trail’ …
‘What’s an ale trail?’ I said, and Pia laughed, and said, ‘Does it matter?’
And so we’d spent an hour in the midst of these real ale freaks – Roger, Michael, Roger and Stan – moving from the Dog & Duck to the Three Greyhounds to the Pontefract Castle, laughing with these sixty-five-year-old men, friends from university on their annual pub crawl, making up names for unusual beers and brews and Indian Pale Ales with them.
‘The Beast!’ I tried.
‘The Rat Bastard!’ yelled Pia, a little too loudly.
‘Oh – Pia is an anagram of IPA!’ said a Roger, at one point, spitting as he talked but pretending he wasn’t. ‘That’s interesting!’
That was when we decided to leave them.
We tramped through Soho until Pia nudged me and we matched an eccentric couple step for step as they headed to Old Compton Street, all silver PVC ponchos and silver hair and gold sunglasses and black cigarette holders, and we held our breath as they led us into an erotic bookshop, which turned out to have a man standing at the top of some stairs with a clipboard, taking reservations for whatever hidden bar lay deep within. We skipped down the stairs, lit red by neon, and sat by a mirrored bar and ordered whatever the people next to us ordered, then skipped out again as a gaunt, interesting, slick-haired gent in a waistcoat unwittingly led us to Frith Street, and Garlic & Shots, where he ordered a Bloodshot, an All Black and a Sweet Death all within the space of ten minutes.
Who is Tom Ditto? Page 13