Charlotte Street (33 page)

I drank my juice and looked around. This was what it was all about. This, right here. Forget Pulitzers, forget front-page splashes or toppling governments. Journalists who had never once in their lives written anything about – or even mentioned in casual conversation – their love of quality, healthful fruit juice, wandered around with press packs and T-shirts, ready to get the presentation out of the way, thrilled to have been given room and board for the night, already planning what from their goodie bags they could legitimately give to family members this Christmas.

And over there in the corner, talking to a couple of girls with headsets and clipboards, was the man who’d put it all together. Damien Anders Laskin.

The flights, the cars, the treatments, the DVD, I began to realise, all from clients of the mighty Forest Laskin.

I tried to catch his eye. To raise my eyebrow in a friendly manner, a thank you manner, a nice-to-see-you-again manner, but everyone else was trying to do that, too, and in the hierarchy of things, a
Grazia
nod is worth five from
London Now
.

And anyway, that wasn’t why I was here.

‘I don’t see her,’ said Dev. ‘She’s not one of the Tropicana girls.’

‘Stop looking at the Tropicana girls,’ I said.

‘Why
are
they wearing capes?’ he said.

Part of me had been sure The Girl would be a journalist, but more and more, looking at the people Damien surrounded himself with, the people he employed, I was starting to think she was part of his team.

Presentation is half of PR. You need to be presentable; you need a presentable team.

Damien had, let’s say, an eye for presentation.

And when I looked over once more, he had his arm round a very presentable wife, who was holding their very presentable son.

‘Hmm,’ said Dev.

‘So would you say you’d always had an interest in fruit juice?’

It was my turn interviewing the girl from
Wake Up Call
. I remembered her name, now: Estonia Marsh. There it was, in bright, gold, embossed letters across the top of her new DVD:
Fit Needn’t Be Harsh … With Estonia Marsh
. Dev seemed to be quietly tracing the shape of her leg with his finger. He’d seemed like a little lost lamb when the Forest Laskin girl had come to fetch me for my face-to-face with Estonia. He’s not good in crowds. Falls apart in busy places. I guess that’s why he’s so relaxed in Power Up!

‘Don’t leave me out here,’ he’d said, eyes pleading. ‘The men all look like they know about football. You know what happened last time you left me with men who know about football. I panicked. I said I had a season ticket for Arsenal versus Brazil. I wasn’t making sense on any level.’

The PRs hadn’t minded. I’d said he was our intern, and now Estonia Marsh was answering my questions with speed and professionalism as Dev sipped away on a fresh glass.

‘Eating healthily is important to me and I treat Tropicana like it’s one of my five-a-day!’

‘And … what is it about
this
fruit juice in particular that you like so much?’

‘It’s important to me to keep a well-stocked fridge, particularly when it comes to vitamins, and the new EasyPour system the guys at Tropicana have introduced has made it easier than ever for me to get a quick vitamin fix!’

I nodded, and pretended to take notes.

There was a pause. I wasn’t really sure where to take this next. I’d already asked her whether she liked fruit juice in two different ways and I wasn’t certain there was a third.

‘And … do you have any funny stories about fruit juice?’ I tried.

She looked flummoxed. Her eyes darted nervously to the PR in the corner.

‘Um …’

‘Or not
funny
, exactly. But true? Or even just stories?’

‘Stories about fruit juice …’ she said slowly, searching her back catalogue, but coming up blank.

And then Dev piped up.

‘My friend Jason is trying to find a girl whose camera he found. He thinks she might be The One.’

‘Okay, Dev …’ I said, quickly, eyes wide and moving to his empty glass.

‘Are you?’ she said, flashing me a smile, then sharing it with Dev. ‘What do you mean?’

‘He found a camera. Well, not found. She accidentally left it with him when they met for about three seconds on Charlotte Street one night. He developed the film, and—’

‘Um, well, you developed it, Dev, and—’

‘However it happened, the film ended up developed, and now he’s properly into her because she’s properly fit.’

‘Aw,’ said the PR in the corner, but I do think he could have put it more romantically.

‘So my question to you, as a lady, is: what would your advice be?’

It turns out Estonia Marsh wasn’t particularly big on advice, though she did say, ‘I think you should follow your heart!’ and nodded, encouragingly. ‘Grab life by the horns,’ she’d said, ‘and ride it like a bull!’

I hadn’t really planned on discussing all this with the entertainments reporter from
Wake Up Call
, so I just blushed and said I would.

Dev had then said, ‘Have you ever been truly in love, Estonia? Like, truly?’, and it was then that I decided he should absolutely stop drinking the special Tropicanas for a bit, because the special Tropicanas seemed to be making him wistful and romantic.

‘Oh, you know …’ she’d replied, raising her eyebrows and looking at the PR in the corner, who jolted into action, and said, ‘Maybe if we could keep the questions about how fruit juice is advantageous to a healthy lifestyle, especially when used as part of a sensible diet and fitness plan, that would be—’

‘Yes!’ I’d said. ‘Absolutely.’

‘But good luck finding her,’ said Estonia, smiling.

‘She was terrific,’ said Dev, outside, by the marquee, where a barbershop quartet were singing the theme tune from
Home & Away
. ‘Do you think if I relaunched Power Up!, she’d come and open the shop? Should I ask her? Because it would be really good to get a celebrity to reopen the shop.’

‘Why do you want to reopen the shop? The shop’s not closed. It’s open.’

‘I’m just saying, if a relaunch might raise awareness. You know. We could do canapés from Waitrose. Little sausages. Or maybe some of Abbey’s special cakes.’

‘I think you would definitely raise awareness then,’ I said. ‘Local paper, police force, that kind of thing.’

We fell silent as we looked around. New people had arrived, people too important to have travelled in the morning just for a Q&A with Estonia.

But not one of them was who I wanted them to be.

‘She’s not going to be here,’ I said, deflated. ‘She’s just not.’

‘She might. And then you can say hello.’

‘What then?’

‘Tell her your story.’

‘And claim this is just coincidence?’

‘You’ve already got coincidence on your side. You’re in one of the photos. Or you could not tell her about it, and one day tell your grandchildren you met at the launch of the new Tropicana Acai Berry range.’

‘There is … another thing I could do.’

Dev looked at me, quizzically.

I looked across the room, nodded my meaning.

Dev got it.

‘No, mate. No, that’s a bad idea.’

‘Why?’

‘What we did already is one thing. This is another thing entirely. Because what we’ve done so far has just been fun. A
fun thing to do. The boys! But that … that would make it serious.’

‘What’s the point if it’s not serious? You’ve always been trying to make this more serious!’

‘No, but … you don’t know what you could be doing. Just stumbling into someone’s life like that.’

The words hit home. I thought of Abbey. I thought of my stumbling. But that had been for her. This was for me. I could grab life by the horns.
Ride it like a bull
.

I looked again across the room, at Damien Anders Laskin, laughing with a girl in a headset, putting his arm around her and pulling her close, and I thought:

Why not just ask him?

‘Ladies and gents, the raffle will begin in five minutes,’ said a man with more pens in his pocket than any human could possibly need. ‘If you’d like to adjourn to the main hall, please?’

Dev had spent the last fifteen minutes actively discouraging me from what I intended to do. He outlined five or six possible scenarios, and each of them ended up with me getting a black eye, the sack, or another black eye.

‘He won’t see it the way we see it,’ he says. ‘You can tell strangers, like Estonia, but you can’t tell Damien. He’s something to do with it. He’ll care.’

‘I’m going to do it,’ I said, and Dev looked terrified.

‘He’s married, he’s got a family, and—’

‘Look, I’m not going to accuse him of anything. Remember, I know almost nothing, and I’ll tell him that. I’ll handle this.’

‘No, mate, wait,’ he said. ‘Wait—’

‘For what? This could end it right here. Then I’ll know. I’ll have an answer!’

‘This isn’t the way.’

‘This is the only way. That’s the point. We’re two degrees away. He knows her. I know him. I can ask.’

Dev paused. ‘
How
are you going to ask?’

Damien smiled at me.

‘Having fun?’ he said. ‘I see you brought your friend with you …’

‘Dev? Yeah! He’s doing some intern work with us, and—’

‘
Course
he is. No, why not. I’d do the same.’

‘And thank you again for inviting me. Us.’

There was one of those moments. One of those moments where you know you have to shift gears but just you don’t know how.

I moved an inch closer, dropped my voice.

‘Could I have a word, Damien? It’s about something personal.’

He looked at me.

‘Are you all right?’

‘Yes, but maybe we could just step out?’

He frowned, like I’d actually just told him I’d like to cradle his bottom.

Outside the coach house, we stood in the afternoon sun. The fields around us waved and shushed in the breeze, offering advice I ignored.

‘Raffle in a minute,’ said Damien, opening up a box of Marlboro, pulling one out, tapping it on the lid. ‘I’m supposed to hand out the flights.’

‘Ah, yes,’ I said. ‘New York.’

‘Do you go much?’

‘No. I … had plans to. In another life. But no.’

‘I’m taking Annie and James next weekend. All about the perks, isn’t it? They wouldn’t normally come to these things, but sod it, why not, a weekend at Mackenzie Hall. She’s a sucker for spas and they lay on a nanny for Jim.’

He took another drag on his fag and looked at me.

‘So what’s going on?’

‘Well,’ I started, in as friendly a way as I could. ‘This will sound very strange. I don’t quite know how to explain it.’

‘So just explain it.’

‘This thing happened …’

‘Great start.’

‘I bumped into a girl one night on the street. I didn’t know her. And then, I … well …’

And then what? I could see Damien was confused, wondering why I was telling him this, what it could possibly have to do with him. What do I say?

Do I say, ‘And then I realised I had her camera film so I developed it and then tried to follow her footsteps because there was something about her and everything lacking in my life, and I thought maybe this would lead somewhere, somewhere better, and then I saw you in a photo with her and I was weirdly jealous and when I saw you in that bar one night I decided to follow you into a restaurant where we got chatting and you put your trust in me and now here we are!’?

No.

So I reached into my pocket, and I pulled out the one photo I had with me.

The one where she was smiling at someone or something off-camera, her cheeks flushed, hair whipped by the wind, my
favourite
photo.

‘It was
this
girl.’

This was a risk. It was my big play. It had to work.

And Damien took it, glanced at it, looked back at me.

There was an awkward moment. I half-smiled.

And then Damien blew a plume of smoke to his right and said, very slowly, very purposefully, ‘Who the
fuck
are you?’

I blinked.

‘No, Damien, it’s—’ but he wasn’t listening; he was folding the photo, stuffing it into his pocket, looking around to see who could possibly have seen.

‘Who the fuck
are
you?’

‘I’m just me!’ I said, and then, unnecessarily: ‘Jason.’

‘What are you trying to do?’ he said, coldly. ‘What is this, a sting? Who the fuck are you?’

He glanced at the bushes, at the far wall, at the trees and I realised he was looking for photographers. He was proper PR.

‘I’m … no one’s taking your picture. This is not about your family.’

‘My family? Why are you talking about my family?’

He was getting close now, I could feel his breath, smell the nicotine, and his arms had tensed like he was preparing for something, a sudden surge of something.

‘Damien, this is just about the girl in the picture, I swear, and—’

‘Who the fuck
are
you? What do you want? You’re here as my guest. You
know
my family is here. Who sent you?’

‘No one sent us.’

‘Us?’

‘Me and Dev. We’re here for the Tropicana launch.’

It sounded absolutely ludicrous in this situation. The word Tropicana is not one often used in outdoor confrontations. I felt like pointing that out, like it might puncture the tension, might make this okay again.

‘You and your friend need to leave.’

‘Listen—’

‘You need to leave. Right fucking now.’

I grabbed Dev.

‘We need to leave,’ I said. ‘Right fucking now.’

‘Did it go okay?’

‘Not exactly.’

‘Surprising, that,’ he said. ‘Walking up to a man who’s here with his family, his friends and his colleagues and then showing him a picture of a girl he’s been having an affair with.’

‘We don’t know that’s the case.’

‘Did he react like it might be the case?’

‘Right fucking now,’ I said, and I forced his glass to the table, and we left.

Outside, we waited for the cab that’d take us to Bath Spa, the train, and our escape. I thought of Damien. He’d invited us here. Now I’d done this.