‘He’s a vampire,’ said Pia. ‘He’s totally a vampire.’
Making up stories about the people we followed didn’t seem necessary. They were showing us their stories. Little slices of their lives, small moments, bite-sized chunks.
And at five to one in the morning, a smile now aching across my face, we followed a couple into Chinatown, and we winced as they chose Mr Fu’s, we eavesdropped as they talked about the show they’d just seen.
She was Jane. He was Steve. They were down from Middlesbrough for the night, these two, and it had been disappointing, because one of the actors that was supposed to be in it wasn’t in it. Some guy they’d voted for on X Factor. Never mind, said the man, all Burton slacks and top. In a few months they could probably see him for free in Nando’s.
Pia and I burst out laughing at that, and he’d turned and looked at us, three tables away, in this otherwise silent restaurant.
We moved tables when someone more interesting walked in.
‘Half a crispy duck to start,’ he said, this man, with his copy of a theatre programme and his wife in her sparkly dress. ‘Then one kung-po chicken, one beef chow mein, one sweet and sour pork, two special fried rice, and … the special tea, please.’
He winked. The waiter noted it all down.
‘We’ll have half a crispy duck to start,’ Pia called out, not missing a beat. ‘Then one kung-po chicken, one beef chow mein, one sweet and sour pork, two special fried rice, and the special tea, please. Whatever that is.’
The man looked at his wife. They sat there in silence.
Pia winked.
‘I can’t do this forever,’ I told her, later that night. ‘But it’s fun for now.’
She cocked her head, and poured me another covert shot of post-licence beer from the teapot.
‘Why can’t you do it forever?’
‘Because eventually you have to live your own life.’
And she put her fork down.
Minutes later it occurred to me how much we’d laughed that night. More than I could remember laughing since I was a kid. I forgot.
All this made me forget.
seventeen
Two days later, Pia texted me after the show to say she would meet me outside the newsagents on the corner.
I mooched towards it, and saw a girl standing by the lamppost.
‘Yo,’ she said, as I got nearer.
She was blondish. Black-framed glasses. Bright red lips. Well-cut black dress.
But Pia’s face.
‘Oh … you’ve … did you …?’
‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘New look.’
‘Based on …’
‘Remember Alice from the Randolph?’
‘I do remember Alice from the Randolph,’ I said, cautiously. ‘Do you remember the film Single White Female?’
‘I just thought she looked interesting,’ she said.
‘If I were a brain doctor, I’d say you looked interesting.’
‘I’m gonna dye it back tonight.’
I stared at her for a second.
‘Actually, genuinely: do you ever wonder whether this might be a sign of some kind of illness?’
She slapped my arm, not taking me as seriously as I’d hoped, which I took to be almost certainly a sign.
‘I got you this,’ I said, and handed over my gift.
She stared at it.
‘International Week of the Red Panda,’ she said. ‘I was just wondering when that was.’
‘I think a baseball cap with panda eyes is what your look has been missing,’ I said.
‘Did you know there are less than 10,000 of these in the world and often they are acutely affected by inbreeding depression?’
I blinked.
‘I did not,’ I said.
Where the hell did she pull that from? Or was she messing with me?
‘So – any good?’
She indicated the guy I’d left behind. He was nose deep in the Daily Express, a pain au chocolat sitting uneaten on his plate, just as on the table to his left my pain au chocolat sat still uneaten next to my copy of the Daily Express.
‘Nah,’ I said. ‘We just sat by that café not eating.’
She smiled.
‘I was early,’ I said.
‘You’re getting into this,’ she said, putting her cap on. ‘I knew you would.’
‘I’m stopping soon,’ I said.
Pia thought I was just escaping. Trying something new. But the reality was – she was that rare thing for me. A new friend. Someone I could talk to like I’d talked to Calum. Yes, she was damaged, and God knows she could be annoying, but I’m not arrogant enough to say I wasn’t damaged, too. For now, this felt good, because it had lifted me, and it had lifted me because, I think, it made me think of other people. It meant I could talk about Hayley with someone who might understand. Who might help me understand.
‘So what do you want to do?’ I said, happy to welcome distraction. ‘The world’s our oyster.’
She span around.
‘I was thinking … that guy,’ she said, choosing randomly, and we fell in behind a guy in his twenties wearing scuffed brogues and brown corduroys and carrying a cycling helmet.
It was half past twelve on a beautiful day – the kind you see in adverts. The kind that sell the place to tourists.
‘What’s new?’
‘I’ve pretty much just been working,’ she said, and we slowed as the guy fiddled around in his pocket by the Barclays bikes on Clerkenwell Green.
People were already outside the Crown Tavern, under Union Jack bunting left over from something or other, twin red telephone boxes standing guard with the trees.
‘Yeah, it’s a busy time,’ she said, and I found my credit card, put it into the reader on the corner of the street.
‘I never asked you where you worked,’ I said. ‘I wasn’t sure if you’d let me. I wasn’t sure if you did.’
‘Did what?’
‘Did work.’
‘What is it about me that seems unprofessional?’ she said, digging me in the ribs.
‘You like hitting me, don’t you?’
At the bikes, the man was having trouble releasing one from its rail.
‘For Christ’s sake,’ he muttered.
‘Jesus H Christ!’ bellowed Pia, and by the time he looked round she had her hands on her hips and was shaking her head. ‘Man alive!’
I got my code, found a bike at the end of the stand.
‘I’ve not ridden in forever,’ said Pia, smiling, clunkily bumping out a bike. ‘You see? This is fun!’
The brogues guy had his helmet on now, bony fingers finding the strap. He looked like he could probably play guitar, this guy. Probably spends his Sunday mornings looking for old vinyl at car boot sales and then listening to them all afternoon on some vintage record player he bought at a Dalston junkyard sale, as he reads the papers and noodles around on his mandolin and makes hand-pressed espressos. He looked like all his girlfriends had probably been French.
He kept glancing at Pia. I think he liked her.
‘You’ve managed not to tell me again,’ I said, testing my saddle. ‘You’re unemployed, aren’t you? That would make sense in this scenario.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘The unemployed are always out and about on rental bikes. We’re just absolutely carefree.’
She clambered onto her bike and we started off down Clerkenwell Road. Brogues guy put his hand out to signal left, and we followed suit.
‘So do you avoid questions because you don’t like the answers?’ I asked. ‘Do you hate your job?’
‘I like my job,’ she said, quickly. ‘Sometimes I think it’s the only thing that keeps me going. That, and this.’
‘This?’ I said.
This? Us?
‘This,’ she said, clarifying, pointing in all directions.
Oh. This.
Down Farringdon Road we rode, down the wide street with proud buildings, banks, bankers and bluster.
‘Do you think he’s hungry?’ I said, after another minute or so, a bus tearing up the lane alongside us. ‘Because I’m hungry.’
‘Who?’
‘The guy we’re following.’
‘Oh, we’re not following him any more,’ she said.
‘What? Who are we following then?’
‘That guy,’ she said, nodding at an older man, also on a bike, now slowing by a florist’s. We hung back as he leaned his bike against a lamppost, gave it a second, followed him in and found him at the counter, bright red and purple flowers in his hand.
Pia picked up a bunch of white lilacs – stroked their heads almost tenderly – then said, ‘We’ll take these, please,’ as the man stepped around us, smiled at us, made sure the tissue paper was just so.
Five minutes later, we crossed Blackfriars Bridge, the three of us – a train rumbling past the bridge on our left – Pia holding the flowers in one hand, just like the man in front.
But then an arm slung to the right and we bumped onto River View.
We slowed, ditched the bikes, followed him and his flowers a little further, up Milroy Walk and beyond, to a sweeping reception area at the base of a tall building.
‘Good call,’ I said. ‘Lunch.’
Eight floors up, at the top of the Oxo Tower – London on its back before us – the older man had taken off his cycling helmet and found his companion.
‘Follow me, please,’ said the maître d’.
‘We would be happy to follow you,’ said Pia. ‘Do you like my hat?’
Another glance told us the woman the older man was with was delighted to see him. Kiss on the cheek and a long hug, hands on shoulders and meaningful stares as it ended. Not colleagues, then, nor in the first throes of something romantic. They were married, and it seemed they were married to each other. Anniversary?
We took advantage of a late cancellation and were led to the balcony, Pia’s lilacs between us on the table. Nearby, tourists with cameras stood on the viewing platform gazing out over London. The view was too good only to allow paying customers – anyone could walk in and ask to see it, a fact the restaurant perhaps understandably prefers is discovered, not advertised.
Inside, the couple had started with a bellini.
Ours arrived.
‘So a man at work might be trying to kill me,’ I said.
‘Cool,’ she said. ‘Who?’
‘The Jam Nazi man,’ and she nodded her understanding.
‘Yes, I can see that.’
‘Talking of which’ – man, I’d been clever here – ‘let me try again. What is your job? What do you do?’
I figured asking straight out left little room to wriggle.
‘We’re here to talk about you,’ she said. ‘And by the way you appear to be the talk of London. I heard it this morning – that new thing you do …’
Cass had insisted. A new feature called What Did Tom Get Up To Last Night? She’d ask me, and then I’d be honest. It started after the mugging, but since all this following, it had been easy to find things to say. Tomorrow, for example …
I rented a bike!
I bought some flowers!
I ate up the Oxo Tower!
I had a bellini with a girl in a panda hat!
But this was Pia’s trick … to guide the conversation away from her …
‘Please, Pia, give me something. Where do you work?’
‘I work at London Zoo.’
I sighed.
‘Yeah, okay …’
‘I do.’
‘No you don’t. You own a panda baseball cap from a safari adventure park near Chigwell and you’re now pretending you’re an expert.’
‘I refer you to my panda fact of earlier on,’ she said. ‘Anyway, I work with the marmosets.’
‘Sure you do. You work with the marmosets.’
‘Have worked with marmosets.’
‘You have nothing to do with marmosets. You work in an office or something. What are marmosets?’
‘Primates.’
‘Monkeys?’
She was taking the mick. I made a face that showed I wasn’t going to be taken for a ride. I waved her on. Indulged her. She sighed, then smiled.
‘Marmosets are primates from Brazil.’
Sure. That sounded convincing.
‘We should go there one night,’ she said, sipping at her bellini, the glass peach-orange and lit and glowing in the golden hour – that hour of sunshine where the world looks the way it looks in your dreams.
‘I’m not going there at night. You can’t go there at night. Look at you, pretending to be all kooky. I bet you think you’re kooky. There’s a difference between being kooky and being weird. Being kooky is charming. You’re just weird.’
‘Piss off.’
‘You see? No one kooky uses words like that. But weirdos do. All the time. They leap out of bushes and shout things like that. I gave you a panda hat and you’ve made it kooky. I’m just your enabler.’
I tried again.
‘Tell me something about yourself. What’s your favourite colour? How old are you? Twenty-six? Twenty-seven?’
‘Let me ask you something,’ she said, leaning forwards, and I prepared myself. I decided I’d be happy to tell her anything. ‘And this might sound a bit weird, but you’ve reminded me …’
‘Go on.’
‘What do you think happens when you die?’
I frowned.
‘Wow. I reminded you to think about what happens when you die? That’s what you’re saying? How am I supposed to take that?’
‘Because I read this article in, like, the Reader’s Digest or something,’ she said. ‘Because this quite stylish woman was ahead of me in the queue at WH Smith, and she bought—’
‘I’m way ahead of you.’
‘Anyway, it said you go to this place and you meet everyone you’re related to – everyone – but here’s the thing: they’re all in their prime.’
‘In their prime?’
‘They’re all in their prime, yeah. Like you and me are now. Well, like I am. And it doesn’t matter how old they were when they bit the bullet or bought the farm or joined the choir invisible. You meet them in their prime.’
Her eyes were huge, now, like this was the greatest thing she’d ever heard. I considered it.
‘It sounds disastrous,’ I said, and she looked at me, quizzically. ‘So you meet your grandma and she looks about thirty. Then you meet your uncle and he looks about thirty too. Where’s the hierarchy? Who’s in charge? The whole of Heaven will just look like an episode of Friends.’
She smiled, looked away.
‘But … you know, if you believe it …’
‘I didn’t say I believe it,’ she said. ‘I just wondered if it was believable.’
‘I’m not sure I’m in my prime,’ I said. ‘How are you supposed to know?’
Inside, the older man ordered a bottle of champagne. His wife had given him a card and whatever she’d written in it had made him stop in his tracks.
‘Well, are you happy?’ asked Pia, staring at him.
‘What do you mean?’ I said. ‘At this moment?’
Her eyes moved to me, now.
‘I mean, are you a happy person?’
‘I’d … like to be.’
‘We’d all like to be. There’s no one walking around thinking, what I’d really like is to be not quite happy. But do you think happy people are born or made?’
‘I think you can make yourself happier.’
‘I don’t mean, like, buying a cheeseburger. I mean, do you find happiness? If you look hard enough? If you follow enough people? Because sometimes it feels like I see it, and it’s in reach, but if I try for it, it pushes against me.’
‘I don’t think it’s a “thing”. I don’t think … I don’t know what I think.’
‘Your problem is you think about being unhappy. You don’t think about how to be happier. Remember when you were at school and you learned about magnets—’
‘I’ll be interested to see where this is going …’
‘—and you knew magnets stuck together because you had some on your fridge or whatever, but then you saw how the wrong sides push against each other? Like they don’t get on? That’s what my life feels like sometimes. Like, happiness doesn’t want me. And no matter how hard I push for it, it pushes back at me with just the same effort. Enough so I can still see it. Enough so I keep trying. But just enough to stop me. Whatever I give, it gives back.’
We sat in silence for a moment or two.
I looked at the older couple.
‘Are we supposed to order champagne now?’ I said.
‘Can I dye my hair back at your place?’
On the bus, a tubby lad in sneakers was on the phone doing his weekly shop.
‘Yeah mate, one medium Meat Mayhem,’ he said, staring at the legs of a woman outside. ‘One bucket of chicken … bottle of Fanta.’
Pia nudged me, pulled her cap back.
‘Sorry about getting a bit weird back there,’ she said.
‘I’d prefer it if you saved that kind of talk for your monkeys,’ I said. ‘Look, I don’t pretend to understand your whole … thing. But if I can help …’
‘Thing is, you want to know all these facts. Favourite colour. How many A Levels I got. Mother’s maiden name. Who cares about that stuff? Identity thieves and the people who write those security questions for online banking. Knowing those things is just knowing facts. I’m right here. Why isn’t that enough?’
‘It’s just … what people do. I’m thirty-four and my favourite colour is blue,’ I said. ‘And now you know more about me than I do about you.’
‘You’re still so hung up on Hayley,’ she said.
‘Would it kill her to call me? To pick up the phone? How hard is that? Where are you from? I’m guessing Yorkshire.’
‘Are you listening to me? You’re hung up on Hayley and you’ve got to let that go. She detached from you.’
She what?
‘It’s a thing. People who follow detach. They either detach from the people they were with or they detach from the people they follow. Detachment. That’s the technical term for what Hayley did to you.’
Who is Tom Ditto? Page 14