Charlotte Street (16 page)

And then one day, it hit him. He hadn’t been focusing properly. His priorities were out. He didn’t know what to look for. He didn’t know how to see. And the second he did – the very
second
he saw that first fish – the ground lit up for miles around with the glint of fossils in the morning sun. I’m paraphrasing, slightly, maybe even romanticising it a bit, but that’s how it sounded to me. Suddenly, as soon as he realised, as soon as he opened up those eyes, those fossils were everywhere, winking at him, waving at him, congratulating him for finally being able to
see, and sparkling like diamonds in the ground. That’s what it felt like. These photos were packed with diamonds in the ground.

Maybe I had found my inner fish.

I was impressed. It had taken that other bloke nine years and hundreds of pages.

Whenever I’d looked at the photos, I’d only really looked at The Girl. Not even when I was standing in the place one of them was taken had it truly hit me that all these photos must have actually been taken somewhere. It sounds crazy, but because they weren’t mine, the places didn’t seem
real
places. Real places I could go to, or might have walked past, or – in the case of Café Roma – might even have been in.

‘What we need to do,’ said Dev, trying to take the photos from me, ‘is establish a link. A common theme.’

I scrunched my nose up.

‘That’s not how photos work, is it?’ I said. ‘You don’t take them by theme. You just take them.’

‘Yes,’ said Dev. ‘Agreed. But that’s with digital stuff. We are talking about the psychology of the disposable.’

‘Why can’t it just be chaos?’ said Matt, and I felt proud, like a teacher again.

‘Because disposable pictures are actually anything but,’ said Dev, sounding like he’d rehearsed this.

He made a wise face and sat back in his chair. Me and Matt leant towards him, but then realised our faces were a bit close, so sat back again.

‘The thing about disposables is, they’re special pictures. You delete pictures normally, because you know you can, so you fire them off with no thought or regard to quality or timing. You take one look, and you decide you look too drunk or puffy or tired and you take another, using your special picture face. But these—’

He picked them up, and waved the packet in the air.

‘
These
are proper snapshots. Snapshots of life. Happy moments, or special ones, and you have to
decide
to take them. You have to
plan
them. Because you’re running out of moments. You’re
always
running out of moments.’

‘What’re you on about?’ said Matt, but now I
did
lean in, because I
got
what Dev was saying.

Lately, that’s just how I’d felt. Like I was running out of moments.

‘You have twelve exposures,’ he said. ‘Twelve moments to capture. It’s finite. So every time you capture one in that little box, you’ve got one less to spare. By the time you get to that last one, you better be sure that moment is special, because what if the next one comes along and you’ve got to let it go?’

What a terrible thing, I thought, to let a moment go.

‘With a disposable, you want to complete your little story. End on an ending. Or a new beginning. A dot-dot-dot to take you into the next roll.’

This is where Dev’s theory started to falter a little for me.

‘Hang on. That last shot was of me.’

And Dev just smiled.

‘That’s just the thing,’ he said. ‘You’re already part of her story. Now you get to make her part of yours.’

And he reached into his pocket, and he slid the new, blue disposable across the table.

I looked at it.

I picked it up, and put it in a pocket of my own.

And as we sat there, and drank some more, and the excitement built as we pointed out new clues from previously unseen backgrounds or foregrounds or bent and ripped corners, I started to wonder if I should tell them. Tell them what I’d
already done today. That no matter how inspiring this moment was for me, I’d already created a little moment of my own.

After the crayfish wrap, after the
Castle Defence
and the Twix, the thing I’d done that I’d tried to avoid telling you by blaming boring work and assuring you it held no interest.

Because I’d already done one thing today to bring me and The Girl one step closer.

Thursday, 8 a.m
. I sat on the number 91 to King’s Cross with something approaching nervous excitement in my stomach.

Since I’d decided to do this – to crawl out of the water, try and catch that moment before it faded entirely, become my inner fish – I’d begun to feel eerily comfortable with it. That I deserved this. That you never know, it might lead me somewhere. Dev mentioned destiny. I used to believe in destiny. Until destiny tripped me up and pushed me into a flat with Dev. That my destiny could be living in a flat with a man who talks a lot about destiny seems too cruel to be feasible as a concept.

I looked up and saw the yellow-jacketed men and women, standing outside the station, stamping their feet to keep warm, trying to shift as many complimentary copies of
London Now
as they could before the rush was over.

‘Complimentary’ is what they’re trained to call them, by the way, not ‘free’; same way some men are trained to call themselves ‘sharp shooters’, not ‘snipers’. They both mean the same, of course, but I know which one I’d rather sit next to at a dinner party.

So I grabbed my complimentary copy of
London Now
and made a point of thanking the man who gave it to me, thinking
this might make his day, but he was onto the next person already and so I kept my head down and walked into the ticket hall, then down into the depths of London, below everyone and everything and everywhere else, and where I could read my paper without anyone knowing.

On the back carriage of a shuddering, jolting Northern Liner, I opened it, and flicked to page thirty-eight. The page you read as you approach the end of your very average twenty minutes.

The I Saw You section.

Clem had been out of the office for a couple of days with a chest infection so I’d used his computer. I’d had to be quick, had to make it happen while Sam was out having a fag, but I’d made it work. My own little moment of effort. Something to make me feel that, well, I’d tried, and even if the story ended here, today, then hey, I’d given it a go.

I’d been subtle and sensible in my approach. Nothing too full-on. That was the mistake some of these people made. Many’s the time Dev and I have sat around in the flat, reading them aloud and wondering what the other person must be thinking, as they realise the bloke who’d been staring at them on the train platform probably wasn’t just smitten, but also has a selection of sharp knives and a copy of
The Catcher in the Rye
.

So I’d learnt the right way to do things. Picked them up, as others tumbled around me. There’d be no
I think I love you!
(June 18), and no
You’re the most beautiful thing I ever saw!
(June 23), and absolutely no
I must see you again we must meet I like to TOUCH YOUR FACE
(Sept 4–9).

Nope. Just a good, honest, matter-of-fact thirty-word wonder.

I Saw You was popular, though mostly secretly. A third-of-a-page of love gained and lost in a second, of moments gone
untaken, of dread and angst and most of all … hope. Thirty words is all you’ve got to plead your case. To tell the girl or boy you’ve never met that you’d love to meet them. To assure them you’re not a murderer or a thug or a born-again Christian. To suggest a coffee or a meal or a walk on the Heath. To convince them that the moment you shared must mean as much to them as it did to you.

And then you have to hope they see it. And that’s some hope. Thirty printed words on page thirty-eight of one edition of a freesheet in a city of seven million. It feels like speaking thirty words out loud in the Arctic, and praying the wind might take them to the one person in the world you wanted to hear them. From the Arctic to the second carriage of a Central Line train. And all because you saw them, once.

And yet it works. Sometimes, it works. You hear about it all the time, usually in things like
London Now
. Stories that begin with sentences like,
Commuter Darren Howe, 32, knew at once he’d seen the love of his life in Julie Draper, 33, as he boarded his train home to Tottenham one night. Problem was, Julie was getting off!
, and end up with details of their wedding and what their colleagues thought.

And these small successes, these tiny triumphs, give every other single person being buffeted about a carriage on another Groundhog Day something more to hope about.

I hope she reads it. I hope she feels the same
.

I hope someone saw
me.
I hope
we’ll
meet again
.

My eyes scanned down the page.

I saw you. On the 182 past Neasden Shopping Centre this Monday. I looked at you but you were looking out the window. Coffee sometime?

Yeah, good luck with that one, mate.

I saw you. Fetish party, Covent Garden. You were the giant nun slapping a small Asian boy. I was appalled
.

As was I.

I read on, now no longer just scanning, but actually taking them in, understanding their hope, but hoping equally that I wasn’t like them. Because surely
my
moment was
special
. Unique. Deserving of resolution.

London Now
gets sixty appeals a day. As many from men as from women. And each appeal gets maybe twelve replies. People desperate to be seen. To be chosen. To be The One.
Anyone’s
One.

As I read, I realised, with sickening excitement, that part of me was hoping – expecting – to find myself in there. The mysterious man on Charlotte Street.
You held my bags, you kept my heart
, that kind of thing. That would be right. Romantic. Maybe I was the kind of guy who’d get noticed. Maybe I didn’t have to dress as a nun and slap little Asian boys to be worth a second glance.

I kept reading, quicker now.

I saw you and I see you every day. I greet you every day. Can you read my eyes? I miss you every day. I love you every day
.

What was this guy’s story? Doorman? Bus driver? Receptionist? Who’s the girl? Has she noticed him? Is he anyone to her, or just the fella behind the counter at Benji’s?

Why doesn’t he
say
something to her?

But I knew why. Because there’s the creeping fear that these moments don’t actually exist outside your own head. No eyes meet across a crowded room, no two people think precisely the same thing, and if only one person actually has that moment, is it even really a moment at all?

We know this, so we say nothing. We avert our eyes, or pretend to be looking for change, we hope the other person will take the initiative, because we don’t want to risk losing this feeling of excitement and possibilities and lust. It’s too
perfect. That little second of hope is
worth
something, possibly for ever, as we lie on our deathbeds, surrounded by our children, and our grandchildren, and our great-grandchildren, and we can’t help but quickly give one last selfish, dying thought to what could have happened if we’d actually said hello to that girl in the Uggs selling CDs outside Nando’s seventy-four years earlier.

It’s the what if? The what then? And we know that if we go for it, if we risk it, we immediately stand to lose it. But weirdly, some part of us believes the feeling is two-way, because it
must
be; it’s too special not to be. We believe that something’s been shared, even if the evidence we have is … what? A look that lasted a breath longer than we’re used to? A second glance, when the glance could easily have been to check whether there are any cabs coming, or whether the jacket we’re wearing that’s caught their eye would look good on their boyfriend, or why it is we seem to be staring at them.

I saw you. You don’t use overhead handles on the train. Hoped it would jolt and you would fall to me. But no
.

I smiled. These small moments, never said out loud, as formed and perfect as sweet little haikus, romance and longing carved out in the dust of a grubby city.

And finally, there was mine.

I read it.

I saw you. Charlotte Street. You were climbing into a cab. Think I still have something of yours. Get in touch if you want me to give it back to you
.

There.

Practical. Not astonishing, not mind-blowing, probably not something we’d read out at our wedding, but
fine
.

It was my stop.

I read one more I Saw You …

I saw and kissed you near Chelsea Bridge. It felt like a moment forever. I had to run but left you my number. Maybe you lost it?

… and then folded the paper.

I stood, leaving someone else’s hope on the seat next to me, but taking with me a little of my own.

As I arrived at the office weighed down by coffees and croissants (a little more streamlined now … Clem’s on a diet and Sam makes her own crumbly muffins), I felt my phone vibrate in my jacket.

A text from Sarah.

Thanks, Jase … a lovely gesture. Drink soon? (non-alcoholic of course) x

I smiled a small smile. The other thing I’d done yesterday, while pootling around on the Internet pretending to research, was send Sarah some flowers. Nothing too fancy. Just a standard bouquet with a tiny card congratulating her and – of course – Gary on their news. There was no point feeling slighted by a pregnancy. The minute babies start getting the better of you it’s time to give up the fight.

I’m not suggesting you should fight babies.

I replied.

No prob. Congrats again. Sorry about … everything. Coffee would be nice
.

I pressed send and stared at the screen for a second. It had been the right thing to do. But I still didn’t think I could meet her. Not yet. Maybe when her baby was … what? Eighteen? Starting university? Still too soon.