Charlotte Street (20 page)

I walked through the gates of the cemetery and studied my map. Sam from Wealdstone had been quite adamant that he was correct on this one. I wandered through, past a giggling couple who stopped giggling when they saw me, and carried on together, hands clasped together, eyes fixed to the ground.

It’s creepy, Highgate Cemetery, and for a second I wished that couple was going my way. Trees crowd the sun, and in the afternoon light the mausoleums, catacombs and vaults seem uneasy, like they’re waiting for the coming night, like they’re tolerating you for now, as you thread your way through. The East Cemetery is fine by me. I like the shade of the oaks, and the beaten-down paths, and pretty clearings. It’s the West Cemetery I’m not so keen on. The ivy’s taken over, wrapping itself around whatever it can, strangling the graves and hiding the Gothic monuments and statues, sometimes leaving just a bare stone hand or set of eyes clear, as if they’re grasping for the light, as if they’re fighting the death all around them.

I strode on, down a small hill, past ramshackle graves at all angles, like badly-hit nails, and on towards Sam from Wealdstone’s very confident guess.

Sam from Wealdstone was right to be confident.

There it was. The strange archway, the leaves tickling its top lip. The same place The Girl had been standing, healthy, and glowing, and happy, smiling broadly at the camera, smiling, for now, at me.

The entrance to Egyptian Avenue.

I stood there a second and took it in.

‘So what did you do?’ asked Dev, later. ‘Ask around? Put up a poster?’

‘I’m not sure the poster campaign was such a good idea,’ I said, stirring my tea and thinking of the other two messages I’d received that afternoon from teenage boys in the Bermondsey area. ‘And no, I didn’t ask around. I didn’t know who to ask. Or what.’

‘So you just stood there?’

‘I took a picture,’ I said, holding up my disposable. ‘And I had a think.’

‘Oh,’ said Dev. ‘Well, I’m sure that’ll all come in handy. What did you think about?’

‘I wondered what she was doing at Highgate Cemetery. Why she took the picture. One day she’s outside a fur factory, next day she’s eating scallops in a restaurant. Date three: a gothic cemetery! It’s just random.’

‘Of course it’s not random. There has to be a link. It’s a disposable. One photo leads to another, I’m telling you.’

‘I don’t buy it. Not everything is linked!’

Dev threw his hands up and gave me an I-told-you-all-this-already face.

‘Those. Photos. Are.
Linked
. If this was a videogame, you’d be on, like, level six, “The Graveyard”, and things would be starting to make sense. Although you’d probably have met an old professor in the woods and he would’ve given you some clues.’

He stared at me.

‘You didn’t—’

‘No, I didn’t meet an old professor in the woods who gave me some clues. Just the Vampire King and a giggly couple.’

Dev looked at me, strangely.

‘Listen,’ I said. ‘Sometimes life is just life. Things happen, then some other things happen, and often there are no extra things in the middle connecting them. She went to a restaurant, she went to a graveyard—’

‘A specific
part
of a graveyard.’

‘—and that’s all we know.’

I said that last part finally, so that whatever else was going on in Dev’s head just stayed there. It seemed to work.

‘Do you want some
Kolacz
?’ he sighed.

‘What’s that?’ I said. ‘Beer?’

‘Cheese.’

‘No thanks.’

And an hour later my phone beep-beeped. And I blinked at it, surprised, and carried it into the living room for Dev to see.

‘It is mysterious if a
baboon falls from a tree.’

Traditional Shona Tribe proverb, Zimbabwe

I don’t know what this baboon thing means. It was on a website with the others, my vague attempt to theme these blogs and keep all eight of you interested.

Having said that, it’s probably pointless me trying to somehow relate to you a story from my recent life that involves a baboon falling out of a tree because if I’d met a baboon and it had fallen out of a tree I’d definitely have told you already by now. I’d have been straight on Twitter, too. Just seen baboon fall from tree. It was so mysterious! So I’ll tell you something else instead: today I wondered if he’d tried to get in touch. I changed my number when it all crashed and burned. I actually ended up with a better calling plan, so maybe everything happens for a reason.

The strange thing is, I knew all along that it would end that way, because really, what was I expecting? For him to do anything else at all? Or for him to do what he’s always done? I guess it’s not mysterious if a baboon stays in a tree. Because people are predictable.

I feel quite clever now.

So there are eight of you reading these things these days. Eight! I wonder if we’ve ever passed each other on the street. I wonder if you’d know me if you saw me? My dad
used to say he thought people could know each other with just a glance.

There are seven million strangers in this city, and I’ll smile at some of them today, just in case one of them is looking for me.

It would be an embarrassing thing indeed if none of them were.

Sx

Well, this was embarrassing.

I hadn’t known where to suggest to meet Abbey when she texted. I’d been thrown. She wasn’t supposed to call. Dev had convinced me. He’d said it had all been about the review, and I’d reluctantly, and in the sober light of day, conceded that, yes, it probably was. She was younger than me – cooler than me. And yet she’d texted, not once mentioning anything about The Kicks, and said she’d be in town at the end of the week for a friend’s birthday and did I fancy grabbing a bite, or something.

I’d replied quickly, worried the offer was somehow as permanent as dust on a window ledge, here one second, swirling and moving and gone the next.

How about Charlotte Street?
I’d said.

Yeah, so there were reasons I favoured Charlotte Street. But I figured Charlotte Street gave the right impression, too. It was adaptable. You can go either way with Charlotte Street. You can impress someone. Buy them a double-figure cocktail from the Charlotte Street Hotel if they’re that way inclined. Buy them a pie from the boozer round the back if they’re not. But you need to start somewhere in the middle, so you know which way to
head once you get the lay of the land. Something halfway between a pie and a cocktail.

Something mid-range.

‘Welcome to Abrizzi’s!’ said the lady on reception. ‘A magical slice of pizza heaven!’

I was a little early, and mildly distracted by this, but even so, her words seemed very familiar, though I struggled to place them.

‘Have you booked?’ she said.

‘Um, yeah,’ I said. ‘Table for two. Priestley.’

She started to scan her list, but then paused, and for the briefest of moments I thought I saw something explode behind her eyes. Her eyes flicked towards me.

‘
Jason
Priestley?’

‘Just so pleased you’re here,’ said Gino, the manager, a wiry man with a watch too big for him. ‘Really –
welcome
back.’

He had one hand on my shoulder and he kept trying to shake my hand with his other.

‘Not at all,’ I said, staring straight ahead.

‘Just, please, enjoy your meal, and let me arrange something special for you, too.’

‘Okay …’ I said, willing him away, and it worked, because he went.

This was horrible.

‘A magical slice of pizza heaven’ had, of course, been my official opinion on Abrizzi’s, in my dashed-out and only-out-of-guilt review. But it looked like they’d taken it seriously. Really very seriously indeed. Because ‘a magical slice of pizza heaven’ now seemed to be their official slogan. It was on napkins. It was on menus. It was on the T-shirts and shirts of each and every member of staff.

And not just that. But underneath every single one of them: my name.

‘Jason Priestley – London Now!’

They’d even added an exclamation mark, so deeply excited and inspired were they by my talk of magic.

Again: this was
horrible
.

When Abbey came in – all ripped Bowie T-shirt and skinny jeans and electric blue eyeliner – she would see me, Jason Priestley, surrounded by dozens of people carrying bits of paper or wearing bits of cloth with my name on. She would see a menu full of pizzas, with my name on every page, assuring her that whatever she chose, she was guaranteed a magical slice of pizza heaven. She would see balloons and notepads and one woman in a baseball cap – all proclaiming she was about to have the night of her life in what was – and this is what the quote
should
have been – one of London’s most average restaurants.

And worse, it would look like I was proud of this. I could hardly claim it as a mistake, or a weird coincidence. I could hardly say, ‘Actually, I’m not much of a fan of this place.’ I am clearly a massive fan of this place. And denying it would not only harm my journalistic credibility, but make her wonder why I’d brought her here if it’s so dreadful. It’s not like I could say, ‘I didn’t know if you were a pie girl or a cocktail girl, so I split the difference and thought I’d just lob pizzas at you.’

So I’d just have to sit here and wait for her to walk in and pray she didn’t notice. Because maybe she wouldn’t notice. That was possible. That was possible, right?

That was not at all possible.

‘Well, this is unusual,’ she said, sitting down and placing on the table the flyer she’d been given outside, which had my name in eighteen-point Palatino right across the top.

I’d hoped maybe she was talking about the fact that two people, strangers just a week before, could meet up and share a magical slice of pizza heaven, but no: now she was pointing at a waiter in what I will now refer to as a matching Jason Priestley T-shirt and baseball cap set and she was looking concerned.

‘I suppose it is a bit unusual,’ I said, before, adding quite urgently: ‘I didn’t bring you here to impress you. I’m not trying to impress you.’

‘Well, that’s nice to know.’

‘No, I mean, if I wanted to impress you, this isn’t the way I would impress you.’

‘Your name is
everywhere
,’ she said, looking at the menu.

‘I know,’ I said. ‘I know.’

‘Look. They’ve taken other quotes and put them under the relevant dishes. The Margherita is “a delight!”’

I grabbed the menu and looked at it.

‘I guess it
must
be,’ I said, shaking my head, ‘which is strange, because I’m not usually a fan. Look, do you want to get out of here? Maybe you’d prefer a cocktail, or a pie?’

She wrinkled her nose at me. People don’t do that much.

‘Hello, sir. Hello, madam!’

It was the manager. He was back. And he was bearing gifts.

‘With our compliments!’ he said, packed with pride and full of goodwill.

Two giant glasses, filled with prawns and lettuce, slathered in a bright pink sauce, and surrounded by little cocktail-stick Abrizzi flags with tiny Jason Priestley quotes on them.

Why? Why hadn’t I put more effort into that quote? Hemingway had hundreds, all brilliant. Wilde spat them out like pips. What if this is the only thing people remember me for when I’m gone? What if this is my legacy?

‘Oh, thank you, that’s …’ I began, and as I looked up, I could see the manager willing me to say something else, something
nice, something they could get printed up on a flyer, or perhaps attach to the back of a plane and have flown around central London. ‘That’s a
lovely
big glass of prawns.’

The manager semi-smiled, going through the quote in his head, rolling it over and over, but knowing he probably couldn’t use ‘that’s a lovely big glass of prawns’ very effectively in his next marketing blitz. He backed away, never once taking his eyes off our prawns, just to make sure they were just right, still
perfect
, and we waited for him to disappear.

‘I think pie,’ said Abbey.

We were over the road from Percy Passage and I was secretly pleased Abbey was a pie girl and not a cocktail one. You find me a pie girl and I’ll show you a girl who knows about life. Find me a cocktail one, and I’ll compliment her shoes, because all I know is, they get very funny with you if you don’t.

‘So what’s the official verdict on this place?’ she said, looking around the pub, fork in hand. ‘Is someone going to come out wearing a full Jason Priestley body suit, and then start singing the Jason Priestley song, all about quality pies at low, low prices?’

I laughed, embarrassed.

‘What kind of quote did you give
these
guys?’ she said.

‘I swear to God, I had no idea Abrizzi’s were launching some kind of elaborate Jason Priestley campaign. If I had, it would literally have been the last place in London I would’ve taken you.’

‘Sure,’ she said. ‘Sure sure.’

And she smiled.

I liked the fact that she’d called me. Out of the blue. I was flattered she’d want to hang out. And pleased that there’d been no mention of The Kicks or their review. It was refreshing to meet someone and be free of subtext or implications. Yeah, so
now, in the cold light of day, our differences were clearer. She was young and cool and hot and I was a man who’d lent his name to bad baseball caps in an average restaurant. But this was just a meeting of two people who liked each other, pure and simple.

‘So I wanted to ask you a favour.’

Forget everything I just said.

‘Shoot,’ I said, nodding vigorously, to show that yes, of course she did, I never thought this was just about hanging out with someone who seemed to like me, but she must’ve seen my face fall.

‘Oh, God, that’s not why I wanted to meet up,’ she said. ‘I didn’t arrange this so that I could ask you a favour. Is that what you think?’

‘Well, I mean, I didn’t expect to hear from you at all, really. Or if I did, maybe not until the review came out.’

She looked at me very seriously.

‘Jason, I’m not after you for your reviews. I’m not even after
you
.’