Kiss Me First (4 page)

The message read:

Leila, I’ve been watching your progress on the site with great interest. Fancy a F2F?

A face-to-face meeting. He named a place near Hampstead Heath to meet, and a time, which happened to be the following morning.

I remember my fingers going limp on the keyboard. My first thought was that I had done something wrong, but I soon rationalized that. Adrian was an important man; why would he bother to meet up just to tell me I was to be banished when he could do it online? Besides, I hadn’t, to my knowledge, done anything to displease him. On the contrary, he regularly congratulated me on my posts and had only the day before told the forum that I had a ‘first-class mind’.

The only other options were, in a way, more daunting. Either he was considering making me a forum moderator, and the meeting was an interview; or he wanted something else from me. The question was – what?

That’s enough for tonight. It’s 4.40 a.m., and my eyes have started to sting. The skin of the tent is growing lighter and after the lovely coolness of the night I can feel the temperature starting to rise.

Thursday, 18th August 2011

This morning I woke violently after only a few hours’ sleep, feeling like I was being baked alive inside my tent. My body was leached of water, my skin covered in a greasy film. I unzipped the tent flaps and stuck my head outside, but the stagnant air offered little relief, so I dragged my inflatable mattress out into the shade of a nearby tree and tried to get back to sleep.

However, it felt odd being so exposed and I couldn’t settle. After an hour I decided to get up and start my enquiries.

First, I went to the toilet, and as I was coming back out of the bushes a tiny old woman with very short grey hair approached me, gesticulating. She had a thick foreign accent and it took me a moment to realize she was cross because I wasn’t using the same place as everyone else. ‘You stay here, you follow the rules,’ she said, in a harsh tone. I decided it was best not to respond, and then asked her whether she had been at the commune the previous summer.

‘Yes I was,’ she said, frowning. ‘I have been coming here for the past fourteen years. I helped make this wonderful place, and that’s why—’

‘Do you recognize this woman?’ I said, showing her Tess’s picture.

She barely glanced at the photo. ‘I don’t know,’ she snapped, before walking briskly away.

Making a mental note to ask her again when she had calmed down, I began at the north end of the site and approached every camp, showing Tess’s photo to each adult I encountered and asking whether they remembered her from the previous summer. The response was disappointing. One man with five rings in his lip thought he might recognize her from ‘somewhere’, but was unable to provide any further information. Another was adamant that Tess was a Spanish girl called Lulu who had been running a bar in Ibiza for the past seven years.

What struck me was the lack of curiosity. I didn’t have to use my prepared story at all. No one asked me why I was looking for her. It’s as if a missing person is a totally normal event in this world. People seemed much more interested in how I had got to the commune from the airport. When I said I had taken a taxi, one man asked how much it had cost, and when I told him his eyes widened and he shook his hands and exhaled loudly. ‘A hundred and forty euros!’ He repeated it to the woman who was next to him, plaiting her hair. ‘A hundred and forty euros!’

That’s another thing about this place. I had braced myself for ‘hippy talk’, ready to bite my tongue during discussions about ‘spirituality’ and ‘star signs’ and ‘massages’ and so on, but the conversations I’ve overheard have not been like that at all. They just seem to talk about how much things cost, or where they’ve come from, or where they’re going to next.

I suppose this lack of interest in each other makes sense in terms of Tess. She knew she could come here and not be quizzed, that no one would ask awkward questions.

As I was heading back to my tent, I again heard that lovely generator hum that I had noticed yesterday evening, and followed the sound to a van parked on its own, away from the others. The door was open and inside was a woman breast-feeding a baby and a little boy attacking a melon with a knife. There was a fan whirring, positioned near the baby. The woman had her bosoms exposed, so I averted my eyes and asked her about the specifications of her generator. She seemed surprised, and said, ‘I don’t know,’ so I went outside and had a look. It was only 1200 watts, and I guessed that if we were to plug both the fan and my laptop into it, the fan would suffer a slight reduction in power. I thought the effect of this would not be felt so much at night, when the temperature was cooler and they were asleep, and perhaps I could use it to charge my laptop then.

I explained all this to the woman, and asked her if I could attach my converter.

‘As long as we won’t boil, I don’t see why not,’ she said.

‘Were you here last summer?’ I asked, thinking of Tess.

‘No, this is our first time,’ she said, and gave a little laugh. ‘Yours too, I’m guessing. My name’s Annie, by the way.’

Compared to the rest of them Annie looks quite normal. She’s large and pink, and although her blonde hair is messy, it’s neither matted nor shaved. Her clothes are almost respectable, except the armholes of her vest are so baggy they show the sides of her bra.

I thought I might as well move my tent to be near the generator immediately. Rather than dismantle it, I just removed the outside pegs and dragged the whole structure, my things still inside, the hundred or so yards to a spot beside Annie’s van. She and the children were now outside, under a makeshift canopy.

‘Oh, you’re going to camp right here?’ Annie said.

It seemed the obvious thing to do if I was going to connect to her generator, I don’t know why she asked. I nodded, and set to work re-pegging the tent whilst Annie and the boy watched.

‘Do you want Milo to help?’ she said. ‘He loves putting up tents.’

Before I could say anything the little boy had skirted over and started jamming in the tent pegs, using both hands and muttering to himself. He has the same colour hair as Annie, and I noticed when he knelt down that the soles of his feet were black.

After my early start and all the morning’s activity, I fancied a lie-down. Inside the tent the air was hot and horrible, so I asked Annie if I could place my mattress under the shade of her canopy and lie there.

‘You’re not shy, are you?’ she said, but made a sweeping gesture, which I took as a ‘yes’. I pulled over my mattress, lay on my back with my arms folded across my chest and closed my eyes. I didn’t feel so self-conscious now that it was only Annie and Milo around, and soon drifted into an odd half-sleep. The noises around me – the birdsong, the dog barks, the drumming, even the voices of Annie and Milo a few feet away – were muted by the heat, and merged to form a sort of ambient soundtrack to my thoughts.

I don’t normally remember my dreams, and certainly don’t attach any meaning to them. But this one was more a series of disconnected images. Some of the scenes had an obvious source: the flight over to Spain yesterday, my first-ever air journey; the plane the same orange as a Doritos packet; the hellish throng at Luton departures hall, at the sight of which I nearly turned around and went back to Rotherhithe. But then there were also random scenes from elsewhere: walking through Marks and Spencer on Camden High Street with mum slightly ahead, a familiar shape in her beige jacket; Tess’s body twirling from a tree somewhere deep in the forest.

The sound of crying pierced my sleep and I woke to find Annie feeding the baby and Milo stirring something on a little stove. She said it was 6 p.m., and asked if I wanted some dinner. I’ve brought a week’s supply of bread and biscuits, so I don’t strictly need anything else, but I accepted her offer.

‘It’s just a veggie chilli,’ she said, ‘not very impressive.’ She was right.

We sat on rounds of tree trunk that had been sanded and varnished to become rudimentary seats. Annie explained that she made them to sell to tourists at markets. I said that if tourists were flying home, the stools might cause a problem with their luggage allowance: I noticed at the airport yesterday that there is a maximum weight limit. ‘Oh, I suppose the people will just have to stay in Spain, then,’ said Annie, not sounding at all bothered about the potential loss of a large section of her customer base.

Milo wolfed down his food and started playing with a wooden toy on a string, throwing it into the air and attempting to catch it again, so I was left trying to make more conversation with Annie. Luckily, she did most of the talking. She volunteered the information that she was from Connecticut in America and had decided to come to Spain as a fortieth birthday present to herself.

I was surprised to hear she was forty; only a year older than Tess would be now. She seems so much more mature. When she smiles there are at least ten wrinkles around each eye, whereas Tess only had four, and on her reddened chest there are a number of circular lines, like rings on a tree.

She asked me what I needed a laptop for, and I told her I was writing a film script. Then Milo started babbling some nonsense and I pretended to listen to him instead, which was a relief because I didn’t want to say much more.

So, that has been my day. Now, it’s dark and quiet outside, and I’m in the tent. Here continues the official account.

Adrian asked to meet at South End Green in Hampstead, which was, by great coincidence, a place I knew well. It’s a little square in the shadow of the Royal Free Hospital, which had been one of mum’s treatment centres. I had spent hours looking down at the square from windows high up in the hospital, whilst mum was undergoing tests, and sitting in the nearby Starbucks, which had acted as an unofficial waiting room for relatives of patients, full of pale people not drinking their coffees.

I arrived thirteen minutes before our meeting time and sat on a bench, relieved to take the pressure off my feet. I was wearing a pair of mum’s shoes, high heels, and they were a size too small for me. It was a warm day and the other benches were occupied by a mixture of tramps and hospital patients out for some fresh air, although the buses that circled the square gave little hope of that. Some of the patients were by themselves, others accompanied by helpers or nurses. One man, I remember, was dragging a drip after him, his skin was yellow as margarine, and there was an ancient old woman being pushed around in a wheelchair, her head lolling as if her neck had been de-boned.

At the other end of my bench, a tramp was swigging out of a can. As I sat there, sweating, another man came and sat beside me. He was quite young, but looked grey and hollow-eyed. He lit a cigarette and smoked it very quickly, staring straight ahead as he did so. Then he stood up, dropped the butt on the ground and walked away, leaving his cigarette packet on the arm of the bench. I leant over and picked it up and called after him, ‘You left these!’ He didn’t turn round, so I stood and walked after him with the packet, presuming he hadn’t heard. When I caught up with him, he turned round and gave me a funny look.

‘It’s empty,’ he said.

He carried on walking.

I put the cigarette packet in a bin and sat back down on the bench. Then, behind me, came a familiar voice.

‘You are a good person, Leila.’

I turned and there he was, smiling down at me.

I had seen pictures of Adrian before, of course, on video links on the site. I even recognized the shirt he was wearing; one of my favourites, blue corduroy the same colour as his eyes, with a crescent of white T-shirt at the neck. I remember thinking that he looked out of place in the deathly little square, too healthy and wholesome, with his plump, rosy cheeks.

On seeing him, I automatically stood up. He continued, ‘I saw what you did with that guy’s fags just then.’ The word ‘fags’ sounded odd in his warm, American voice. ‘Most people wouldn’t have done that, you know.’

‘Wouldn’t they?’ I said.

‘No,’ he said, and then he walked round the bench so he was next to me, looked into my eyes and held out his hand. I shook it, and he said, ‘Extremely pleased to meet you, Leila.’

The tramp sitting beside us let out a wail and hurled his can to the ground for no apparent reason. Adrian raised his eyebrows and said, ‘Shall we find a more salubrious spot? Do you mind walking?’ and then, ‘What lovely shoes – they won’t hurt your feet, will they?’

Adrian led the way, weaving through the buses on the road and onto the pavement. We walked in silence for a few minutes, past a line of shops, until we reached the edge of a large expanse of green.

‘Ah, Hampstead Heath,’ said Adrian. ‘London’s lung.’

We continued onto the grass, past squatting dogs and office workers sitting with sandwiches, their faces tilted up to the sun. Adrian asked whether I had come far, and in reply I asked whether he lived here.

‘Ha! If only. Do you know Brixton?’

I didn’t of course, but I thought it was some distance away and wondered why he had suggested meeting here, so far from both of our houses. I opened my mouth to ask but he jumped in with another question, about my views on the upcoming London 2012 Olympics: ‘Are you pro or anti?’

I hadn’t really considered the subject and didn’t have an opinion to hand, so was relieved when, in the next breath, he continued, ‘That’s if the world still exists by then, of course. What do you think of these 2012 Armageddonists, convinced that mankind’s number is up?’

This area I felt more confident about. Enthusiasts of these doomsday scenarios were prevalent in chat rooms and I was aware of their nonsense arguments. I felt pretty certain of what Adrian’s opinion on them would be, too – after all, their beliefs could hardly be described as rational – so I took a chance and answered in no uncertain terms.

‘I think they’re mad.’

Adrian hooted with laughter.

‘Indeed, indeed. In fact’ – he lowered his voice – ‘I’ve always wanted to invent my own conspiracy theory, just to prove that these morons will swallow anything. I could make one up right now: say, Obama caused the banking crisis. Give me the morning to build a website, throw together a video and tweak Wikipedia, and by 5 p.m. I bet you I’d have a thousand true believers under my belt.’