Who is Tom Ditto?

by Danny Wallace

  I didn’t know what to say next. I settled for ‘bye’.

  I thought about what Ash had told me again.

  Married?

  Pia was married?

  Or she’d been married?

  It all made more sense now. Her reluctance to talk about her life, about Jeremy, the frostiness in that Wandsworth hotel meeting room at the first mention of his name …

  Do I talk to her about this? She seemed to be ignoring me. Unless this was just her way of giving me space. If it was, it made me uncomfortable. I’d grown used to her. I liked having someone to talk to. Maybe the only person who understood.

  My phone vibrated.

  ‘Okay, I’m just going to come straight out with it,’ said Pia, as secretly I tried to picture her as a bride. She’d met me off the bus and we walked down the high street as she started to gabble. ‘I know you might soften because as hurt as you are you just want something to take away the hurt and the easiest thing would be to take her back. But you shouldn’t be with Hayley. You should ditch her and move on because if you’re in a bad relationship, you get out, believe me on this.’

  I understood now. But to mention I did might seem indelicate. And logically, she was right. But the truth was – and I hated myself for this – I was relieved Hayley was back. It gave me back some control. I could decide what to do, not be decided for – I just needed time. Energy.

  ‘I know that part of you doesn’t want to end it properly but that’s because she weakened you. She tore down your resolve. She beat you up and now you just want to be wanted again.’

  ‘That’s not true.’

  ‘It’s classic battered wife syndrome,’ she said, nodding, pleading with her eyes. ‘Happens all the time. Think of what she put you through, Tom.’

  ‘She went away. And she left me in the lurch and she didn’t contact me and I’m angry about all that. I also think maybe it was a kind of breakdown, Pia. Maybe it wasn’t technically “cruel”. Not compared to what some people go through.’

  ‘It was cruel, Tom. She knew what she was doing.’

  Maybe she was saying this out of friendship, I reasoned. Or maybe because her own marriage hadn’t worked out, because of whatever this guy had done. I studied her face for clues but all I saw was hope.

  ‘Look, maybe I need to be sympathetic for a while and then take a view.’

  ‘Don’t put it off, Tom – this is your life.’

  ‘I know,’ I said, nodding. ‘You’re right. I know.’

  ‘Come out with me tonight.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Wherever. We don’t have to follow anyone. We can just … be.’

  I was so tired. I’d barely slept, gone to work and then had to talk about marmosets for ages. I smiled, weakly, shook my head.

  She punched my arm.

  ‘Come on. We don’t have to go mad. We can be ourselves.’

  Ach.

  ‘I’d have to go home first.’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘I’ll call you.’

  ‘I’ll wait. But you’ll call?’

  ‘I’ll call.’

  I went home, I slept. All I wanted to do was sleep, lately.

  When I woke, Hayley made me some soup. She leaned closer to me, tried to nestle in as I stared blankly at an All Star Family Fortunes repeat. I wanted to pull away, but I didn’t. I was too tired, too exhausted to not let her.

  And I didn’t call Pia.

  [9]

  ‘You see,’ says Cockroft, nudging my ribs. ‘This kind of thing happens all too often for my liking.’

  He shakes his head, pulls his hat a little further down his forehead. He had been keen to get out there again, to show me the light once more.

  We ride the subway from Wall Street to Bleecker.

  We had followed a man there and now we were following him back. We decided he may have forgotten his wallet at home.

  Cockroft sighs a heavy sigh. I can hear his breathing.

  Opposite us, a girl in a t-shirt applies her eye make-up and fiddles with her curls. Her t-shirt says ‘Holiday’. There is a picture of another girl on there, with eyeliner and curls of her own.

  ‘You see it more and more these days – that it is easier to live through someone else than to complete yourself,’ he whispers, conspiratorially, cheekily, a grin playing around his face, though here, in the light of the subway, he looks older than I’ve seen him look before.

  ‘That’s a quote, right?’ I say.

  ‘Betty Friedan,’ he says. ‘You’re catching on, Mister Kosinski.’

  He coughs. A long, slow, languorous cough. The winter has been hard for him.

  Twenty minutes later and a few steps down from Christopher Street, we sit by the window of the Lion’s Head. He’s been coming here for years, he tells me, he’s seen them all here: Norman Mailer, Frank McCourt, all of them.

  ‘Way I see it, Friedan’s right. Living is freedom. An empty highway. There are other cars, sure, and they’re all headed in the same direction as you. But where do you turn off? Most of us just keep going, just keep following the herd, sticking to the highway, foot on the pedal, until one day you just get where you were just going.’

  I find myself confused.

  ‘Question is,’ he says, ‘is it better to just go where the road leads, or find your own way there?’

  ‘Surely it’s better to find your own way there? Not just follow?’

  He shrugs.

  ‘That’s what you say in your book. In Carbon Copy, you say—’

  ‘You know there are groups now?’ he says, and his eyes are a little distant. ‘They meet up all over the State. I’d love to go to one of those.’

  ‘In Carbon Copy—’

  ‘I know what I said in my book but truth is I’m still finding out, kid,’ he says, another cough brewing within. ‘Shakespeare said, “We know what we are, but not what we may be.”’

  ‘Isn’t it strange that you talk of originality, yet you always quote the words of others?’ I say, and immediately I wonder if I have said too much.

  ‘No, kid,’ he says, shaking his head, putting his hand on mine. ‘It is exactly the point.’

  We arrive at his apartment and Cockroft struggled with the stairs.

  ‘What was your mistake?’ I ask, now that we’ve spent more time together, and now that I feel I’m able. ‘The mistake with your first follow?’

  He considers his response, and I see in him the academic.

  ‘My mistake,’ he says, pushing his door open, ‘was that I should have moved on. I stayed on the one guy. I should have taken what I could and gone.’

  He moves to the kitchen in the corner and finds his battered coffee pot.

  ‘You know there are these clubs now all over the world? These “CC Clubs”? Where people get together and they talk about my paper and my book on all this?’

  ‘I do,’ I say, and I frown. ‘That’s why I’m here.’

  ‘That’s right,’ he says. ‘Of course, that’s right. Well, I think that’s funny. Whole groups dedicated to it. They say it could become a movement. How wonderful that would be.’

  He smiles his huge broad smile, and I smile back, but this I do simply to mask my worries.

  twenty-five

  At home, something was different. There was music.

  Editors. An End Has a Start.

  That’s what had been missing from this place. Not just Hayley.

  Music.

  The windows were open, the place was fresh, tidy, brighter somehow.

  Hayley was in the kitchen making Bolognese and singing along.

  Since she’d been back, she’d been acting like she’d never been away. She was acting like she was auditioning for the part of Girlfriend of the Year in some kind of lighthearted romcom. We didn’t talk about it as much as I’d assumed we would; both of us getting used to each other again, circling each other, walking on eggshells. We were polite to one another. Isn’t that weird? Like some breakdown in etiquette might lead
to all of it pouring out, like lava from a volcano, hot and angry and eating through the earth. For now, we both needed peace, calm. To get used to each other again.

  Every now and again a fury would rise in me. But I’d quell it. Dispel it. I needed to think straight. I needed calm. But I knew that every day of calm put me further away from Pia’s advice.

  There was a small pile of letters on the table, ready to go.

  ‘What are these?’ I said, and she popped her head round the corner.

  ‘CVs. I just woke up this morning and realised I need to get started. Can’t hang around. There’s nothing going at Zara but that feels like an opportunity to me. Why go back to the old life?’

  ‘Some of these are in Bristol,’ I said, confused.

  She came to me.

  ‘I know you’ve wanted to go back for ages,’ she said. ‘And maybe we can.’

  I half-smiled. This was too soon, too weird. But part of me wanted it. Her making changes for me.

  ‘I have a job here.’

  ‘That you don’t enjoy.’

  ‘That’s not true. Things have been changing.’

  ‘But just think how much more they could change. What if we did go to Bristol? I could start fresh there, you could go back to City Sound. Change shift. Get off breakfast.’

  I stared at her. She was saying all the right things; all the things I wished she’d said before she went.

  ‘It could be amazing,’ she said. ‘Going away gave me this fresh perspective. I feel lucky to have you again.’

  Again.

  ‘I just needed the space to appreciate what I have. What I hope we can still have.’

  I’d been sleeping on the sofa these past few nights. I’d insisted, though she offered me the bed. She’d begged me to tell her if I’d met someone else, if it was Pia, that Iona had told her of their strange night at ours, that Pia had been half naked, freshly showered, acting like she owned the place.

  I noticed she’d folded up my duvet, put my pillow away. There were flowers in a bright new vase. She’d put my DVDs back in their cases.

  ‘And this Bristol idea …’

  ‘We could just see what happens. It’s what you used to want.’

  I didn’t have the words. I should be so angry, still. But what if I repressed it? Let it go? Just went with this? What if it had all been some messed up blip? What if she was right and it needed to happen? To make us stronger?

  ‘I’d follow you there, Tom. I’d follow you.’

  Pia had texted once or twice after I blew her out.

  She’d said it was fine, initially, but there was a tension there now. I knew why she wanted to talk to me. She wanted to make sure I’d ended things. But I was tired. So tired. For right now, I just wanted to be. No more high emotion. No more drama. No more upset or anger. Let me have the calm.

  I didn’t know if I loved Hayley any more, I thought. Maybe? Not in the same way. But so many couples go through bad times. And this Bristol thing … I mean, that could sort a lot out, couldn’t it? I’d be back on my old turf, my old friends … I’d have that control I wanted.

  ‘We can find our way out of this,’ Hayley said, over avocado, quinoa and kale at that vegan place on the corner, and she kissed my cheek, took my hand.

  I still couldn’t quite take that.

  I pulled away, she bit her lip.

  If Pia hadn’t followed me that night, then maybe this would be easier. But to have confided in someone, to have had their ear for so long and to have them care about your next move … because if I hadn’t met Pia, I was sure that Hayley coming back would have been the greatest night of my life, so weak, so pathetically grateful would I have been.

  Pia had made me stronger.

  ‘Oh!’ said Hayley, putting her fork down, remembering something. ‘Look.’

  She brought a magazine out of her bag.

  FASHION. STYLE. FOOD. GLAMOUR. TRAVEL.

  For the woman who wants it all – and usually gets it!

  ‘This page here …’

  She flicked through, found a mass of Post-it notes, found the one she was looking for.

  ‘What?’ I said.

  This was brave. She’d avoided the issue of the Post-its, generally. Said she must have done it absent-mindedly, or blamed me. Maybe she’d remembered, or found an excuse. She pointed, still, looked at me, eyebrows raised.

  ‘Well … look at them.’

  Shoes.

  ‘Yeah?’ she said. ‘Come on.’

  ‘What?’ I said, again, and she looked surprised.

  ‘Do you really think I’d do that?’

  I looked again. Closer.

  They were the worst shoes I’d ever seen.

  ‘You would if you were copying …’ – I studied the caption – ‘“Lindsay Lohan enjoying a rare night off at Spago of Beverly Hills.”’

  She smiled, took a bite of her food.

  ‘What?’ I said.

  ‘Nothing,’ she said.

  ‘Come on.’

  This whole time she’d been building up to something.

  ‘I was just thinking,’ she said, clapping the magazine shut and tossing it down on the table. ‘Unless Lindsay Lohan’s been round … if you had to guess, who else could have done this? Put these Post-it notes in there?’

  ‘You,’ I said. ‘You, you, you.’

  ‘But who else?’ she said.

  I shook my head, unsure of what she was trying to say.

  twenty-six

  So is this just how the world is? You can’t trust anyone, is that it?

  She’d been all too happy to agree to meet up. I’d texted her. She’d been waiting, she said. She was pleased things didn’t have to change just because Hayley was back. I knew if I called her, actually spoke to her, it would all just come spilling out. I wanted to look into her eyes to try and understand why she’d done this to me.

  She said she’d meet me in Trafalgar Square at 6pm.

  I got there early, standing by the great lions, when I got her text.

  Should be there in five minutes. We’re just walking up from Downing Street.

  I turned to look down Whitehall. All I could see was maybe forty South Korean students in matching tabards and bright white backpacks with little flags on them, all getting ready to cross the road.

  And there, in amongst them, right in the middle of the throng – Pia.

  She waved, beaming.

  ‘You forget what an amazing city this is until you see it through someone else’s eyes,’ she said, when she got to me. ‘Did you know the Victoria Line was originally going to be called the Viking Line?’

  ‘I didn’t.’

  ‘Also on the subject of the tube network, did you know that in 2001 the London Underground introduced its own scent called Madeleine into stations, and that they stopped doing it the very next day because a lot of people said they wanted to vomit?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did you know that London’s smallest house is three-and-a-half-feet wide and a bunch of nuns live next door?’

  ‘I know what you did, Pia.’

  She blinked, confused, took a step back, and I held her gaze.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘You know about the murders in the eighties?’

  ‘It’s not funny. I know that you put the Post-its in the magazine. It was so mental, so ridiculous, but I couldn’t see because I’d been blinded by how mental everything else was too.’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ she said, and she looked little, now, like I’d blindsided her, or tricked her somehow.

  ‘You recognised the song lyrics. And you were just sitting there in that chair and you worked out how to take it further. You made it look like Hayley was some obsessed fan of crappy pop culture because that’s all you had time to do. You drew my attention to it and you led me to believe that she’d done something insane.’

  ‘But she did do something insane. She left you. I wouldn’t leave you.’

  ‘You played games with me.�
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  ‘I was protecting you!’

  ‘See, the problem is, I don’t think you know what you want, Pia,’ I said, trying to be as gentle as possible now, to use these hard words carefully. ‘I think you’re just as messed up as Hayley in some ways.’

  That came out wrong. What I meant was – why can’t we all just be cool? Why does everyone have to be involved in everything?

  ‘Piss off,’ she said, searching around in those pockets for her tobacco.

  But I was angry with her – a kind of flat, dulled anger, my pills a wet towel over my rage. And I was tired. I wanted an easy life again. I wanted things to be straightforward. I wanted everyone to be straightforward. Pia was always trying to help me with home truths. Maybe I could help her.

  ‘I think you think if you just keep looking for whatever it is you’ll find it. But how can you find it if you don’t know what it is?’

  She furrowed her brow, narrowed her eyes.

  ‘That’s not how life works,’ she said. ‘That’s a life without surprise. You’re saying you can only be happy if you identify happiness. That’s saying you know it all already. You’re thinking about things you know. Money or a house or normality or whatever.’

  ‘Isn’t that what you want? Isn’t that really what you’re looking for? You said it yourself once – “don’t you want to be normal?”’

  ‘You’re talking like that’s all there is. What about all the experiences you’d never dreamed of having?’

  ‘What – some new restaurant? Some new coffee you’ve never tried?’

  ‘No,’ she said, forcefully. ‘Not just things you can see. Things you can feel.’

  ‘You keep talking about protecting me,’ I said, and she shrugged.

  ‘I felt like you needed it.’

  ‘You think I’m a failure that needs cosseting. Well, maybe I just lost control and I needed it back.’

  ‘Why do you think Hayley went?’ she said.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Why do you think she came back? It’s because she realised she made a mistake.’