Staying Alive

nine: i said run!

thursday 20 november / 11.04 p.m.

What am I doing here?

It’s barely an hour since I gave the taxi a spray job. Here is nowhere near South Woodford. Here is Barnsbury Square, Islington. I have no idea which house they live in, but it’s surely close. I start in the northeast corner and set off. Halfway round I spot the Bentley. I can’t be far away. Resisting the urge to give the car a good kicking, I look at the houses. They’re only terraces—albeit nice, big terraces—but each one must be worth over a million. I walk along the iron railings that separate them from the pavement and peer down into the basement wells. Most of the windows are shuttered, but light pours out of one—shining like an irresistible come on. I stop and look inside. A couple sits at a rustic pine table. In front of them are half-empty glasses and dirty plates decorated with scraps of rocket, Parmesan shavings and smears of glossy, dark brown sauce.

I look at the couple. He’s thirty-ish, deliberately unshaven. A chunk of surgical steel glints in his eyebrow, paint splatters his jeans. A decorator? Eating rocket in Barnsbury Square? More likely he spends his working days in a barn-like studio off Old Street roundabout which he shares with canvases and objets trouvés—AKA shit from skips according to Brett, who’s something of an art critic. She’s long and angular in a way that a scout from Storm would describe as momentous before booking her on the next flight to Milan. Her hand is on his leg and they’re laughing.

I remember that. Laughing. With Megan. Her hand resting casually on my thigh.

Jesus, what the hell am I doing here?

Did I really think I’d see her and him through an un-curtained window? And even if I did, what was I proposing to do? Ring on the doorbell and invite myself in for coffee? Slip a burning, petrol-soaked rag through the letterbox? I should have known that the journey would leave me feeling embittered, not to mention bitterly cold—it’s mid-November and all I’m wearing is a flimsy suit.

I half turn to walk back the way I came, but before I can take a step, a second woman comes into view. I only catch her as a blur out of the corner of my eye, but in our five years, eight months, one week and three days together her every molecule was processed and stored in my head so that—however brief the glimpse and obscure the angle—she’s instantly recognisable.

I turn back and look at Megan. She’s putting a fresh bottle of wine on the dining table. She’s laughing, too, sharing in the hilarity with the artist and the model. He isn’t far behind her. His arms reach around her waist as she refills the wineglasses.

Sandy sodding Morrison.

Queen’s bastard Counsel.

I try desperately to recall the last time that Megan and I had friends round for dinner. Did we rustle up something with Parmesan and wilted rocket? Was there wine, marinated olives and lashings of laughter? Did we ever invite anyone to dinner at all? Because right now I honestly can’t remember doing so. Not once.

My tears make her appear in soft-focus and, therefore, more perfectly beautiful than ever. Silently I plead with her to look up and see me. She doesn’t, though, and as my hysteria subsides I’m glad. She surely thinks little enough of me as it is. I don’t need her to add pathetic stalker to my list of failings. I turn again and this time I stride purposefully away.

But I stop when I reach the Bentley. I don’t know why, but I peer inside. He’s a scruffy git. One hundred and seventy grand spent on the car and he treats it like a dustbin. The ashtray is overflowing and belongings cover the seats and floor. My car is spotless. OK, it doesn’t happen to…you know…go, but you won’t find so much as a sweet wrapper in the ashtray. How can Megan live with such a slob? I know my…er…orderly nature irritated her towards the end, but did she really have to rush so madly to the other extreme? It’s like…I don’t know…Brad Pitt, for example, dumping Jennifer Aniston and going out with a really fat girl with dull, lifeless hair. Like he’s got a point to make and he wants to rub it in his skinny, glossy-maned ex’s face. I bet Jen would be cut to the quick and, well, I’d be totally with her.

My eyes tour the car’s interior. I can see old newspapers (the Guardian of course), exhausted fag packets, a bag of Murray Mints ( Murray Mints—way too Freudian), a fat, dog-eared law book and…a white, lacy bra. It’s there on the back seat next to a crumpled pair of 501s, three soppy compilation CDs and a few snaps of Megan and me frolicking on a beach in Kos.

She made such a fuss about coming to pick up the last of her things—‘ You know how I’ve got to have all my stuff around me’—yet now it’s obvious that she didn’t really want them; she simply didn’t want them to be anywhere near me. The realisation hurts me almost as much as ‘Murray, I’ve…I’ve met someone.’

I can’t take this. I’m about to walk away for good, but something else catches my eye—a small rectangular box in the rear foot-well. Though most of it is hidden beneath the driver’s seat, I can make out the glint of the elegant gold lettering stamped into its lid. I can’t actually read it in this light, but I know what it says: J.P. STEIN OF HATTON GARDEN.

So she never found the ring. It must have jostled out of the carton along with her other things and it has lain on the floor ever since. This new knowledge takes some of the edge off my hurt—at least she and Sandy haven’t been holding the sparkler up to the light, admiring its exquisite ( J.P. Stein’s adjective) cut and laughing at the sad, clingy mug that bought it.

But I need the ring back. I’ve had two letters from Barclaycard threatening to turf me into the bottomless pit of credit-card hell if I don’t cough up. The summons can’t be far away. Jesus, yes, I need it. I stand back from the car and consider my options. They’re limited. I could return to the house, knock on the door and say something like, ‘Hi there, Sandy. Look, I know it’s a bit late and I live several miles from here, but I just happened to be passing and—loved you on Question Time, by the way. Terrific point you made about electoral reform. Anyway, as I was saying, I was just passing and I remembered that thing in the Guardian about the asylum seekers’ centre. Really good that you’re taking a stand. You haven’t got a petition to sign or something?’ Then, when he disappears to find it, I nip into the hall and grab the car keys that just happen to be lying on the table…

I don’t think so.

Which leaves only one course of action and I feel my heart race at the prospect.

Come on, you can do this. How many times have you watched those Police, Camera, You’re Nicked You Recidivist Twat shows and seen cocky little twelve-year-olds do it on CCTV? Piece of piss.

I glance up and down the street for late-night dog walkers or—far less likely these days—coppers. No one. I’m alone.

But I can’t do this. I’m the bloke who breaks into a cold sweat when he pads his expenses. I don’t have a criminal bone in my body. I so cannot do this.

Course you can, because if you don’t it’s CCJ time. And eviction—have you any idea at all how you’re going to make the rent this month? You’ll be lucky to borrow the price of a cup of tea after your creditors have finished stripping the flesh off your bones.

Shaking, I take my jacket off and wrap it around my right forearm, making sure that one of the shoulder pads covers my fist. It offers scant protection, though. I rue the day that fashion designers tired of the shoulder-pads-of-an-American-footballer aesthetic—what I really require is a pad big and broad enough to land a helicopter on…as worn by Dex Dexter in Dynasty.

Jesus, this is no time for a delve into the history of men’s fashion, 1980 to the present.

I suppose I’ll just have to make do, then. I pull my arm back behind my shoulder and hold it there.

Go on, pussy, do it.

I close my eyes and swing. Though I can’t actually see it, I’m sure my arm is cutting a menacingly sweeping arc on its descent towards the car. One worthy of Lennox. Or Brad in Fight Club—

Fist connects with car. There is no give, though—no implosion of glass.

Just a sharp, burning pain that shoots through my hand and up my arm before coming close to blowing the top of my head off.

Who told you to close your eyes when you punch, you wanker? That was the door pillar you hit.

I cry out in agony, but luckily the blaring of an alarm drowns me out.

You are such a pillock. It’s the alarm on the fucking Bentley. Run!

I stagger back from the car, which has sprung into hi-tech life. Its indicators are flashing wildly and its muscular red body is shaking visibly with the vibrations of its banshee security system. I look down at my fist. The jacket is still wrapped around it, but I can make out a dark patch of blood spreading through the fabric. I hear a front door open and I turn to see Sandy Morrison QC illuminated by brass coach lights. His dinner guest—the artist—is at his shoulder and between them I can make out…I think…Megan.

I said run!

I set off as if my life depends on it.

Which I suppose it does.

11.20 p.m.

By the time I reach Highbury amp; Islington station I’m wheezing audibly and my lungs are burning with pain. It’s nothing compared to the excruciating torture going on in my thighs, which haven’t had to pump so hard since some dim and distant school sports day. This agony, in turn, fades into insignificance next to the paroxysms of pain firing off in my hand. I look down at it. It’s so red and sticky with blood that I can’t make out where it’s cut. I try to flex it, but nearly pass out with the effort. I’d throw up again if it weren’t for the fact that Kate Moss is already wearing my guts on her cleavage.

As the pain recedes slightly it strikes me that there is virtually no movement in my ring and little fingers.

Something else hits me—where the hell is my jacket?

ten: trance is the bollocks

friday 21 november / 2.03 a.m.

I arrive at Saint Matthew’s only eight hours early for my appointment.

But I’m not here to see Doctor Morrissey.

This is Aamp;E.

I walked, of course.

All the way from N1 to E11.

My wallet and my tube pass were in my jacket.

It was a slow, freezing walk, every step jarring fresh pain into my fingers. Despite the agony I didn’t want to come to the hospital. No, I wanted to crawl home to bed in the hope that half a night’s sleep would somehow set things right. Bed is where I’d be now if halfway across Hackney Marshes I hadn’t realised that my front door keys had been in—where else?—my jacket.

I read in the Standard that this is Britain’s busiest casualty department. Apparently it boasts the longest waiting times and the most assaults on staff, and the doctors here know nearly as much about tweezering bullets from crack-crazed gangstas as the guys on ER. Seems I’ve caught the place on a quiet night though—not a single lurching drunk with a pint glass embedded in his head at a jaunty angle. Even so, I’m told that I’ll have to wait at least an hour.

I sit down on a chilly perforated steel bench and watch a girl drop some coins into a vending machine. She waits a moment before pulling out a Styrofoam cup of steaming liquid. She cradles it in her hands and walks it to the bench facing mine. I watch the vapour rise from the cup and—even though it’s almost certainly whatever the NHS passes off as coffee, and by definition undrinkable—I want it.

I’ve never felt so cold in my life. The ambient temperature in Aamp;E would be comfortable enough in normal circumstances, but my body is so iced up that I’d need to sit in an industrial bread-oven to have any hope of bringing warmth to my bones. Right now a cup of whatever passes for coffee represents my only chance of raising my temperature. I stare at the girl. She’s vaguely familiar. But she has long purple hair and the grime-encrusted look of homelessness. All my acquaintances have addresses and hair colour that passes as natural—even when it isn’t. But she does look familiar. I dismiss it—probably gave her a quid once outside the station. She takes a tentative sip from her cup. Her caution isn’t surprising—she has a ring through her bottom lip, which must make drinking hot beverages an ongoing hazard. I’ve always wondered about body piercing. Doesn’t it compromise everyday activities? Things like eating, peeing, sex, breast-feeding, navel de-fluffing and walking unhindered through airport metal detectors. Or, for that matter, getting work. All those rivets would surely hinder her prospects of a job in…say…account management at…for example…Blower Mann/DBA. She peers back at me through the gaps in the lank curtain of fringe, and…Is that a sneer? She must be reading my mind. And if she’s thinking, God, not long past thirty and already he’s thinking like his mother, well, I wouldn’t blame her.

She takes another sip of her steaming coffee-style beverage.

I so want some of that.

Hang on. Not everything was in my jacket. Haven’t I got some money in my trousers? I shake my legs gently and experience a wonderful sensation. Chinking change. I stand up and reach my left arm across my body in an attempt to feed my hand into my right pocket. Left hand to right pocket is a manoeuvre that I suspect even a bendy Mongolian contortionist would have to think about—a knackered and stiff-with-cold me doesn’t have a prayer. I look at my bloody right hand and wonder if it’s up to it. I have no choice but to try so I gingerly feed it in. I’ve got no further than an inch when I feel a jolt of pain as my little finger catches the lip of the pocket. I try to strangle the Aagh!, but I’m too late. The admissions clerk doesn’t look up from his computer, but the girl does and she calls out, ‘You OK?’ I nod my head, but I guess I don’t look too happy because she adds, ‘Wanna hand?’ I shake my head and look down at my pocket—there must be a way of getting in there.

This is like a rubbish ‘based on a true story’ TV movie; Luke Perry and the bloke who used to be Pa Walton as rescue workers standing at a cave entrance, post-landslide.

Luke: There must be a way of getting in there.

Pa Walton: We gotta find it, son. If we don’t rescue the change from Murray’s pocket there’s no tellin’ how long the guy will hold out.

Luke: I got it! You can get the chopper to drop me on his waistband and I can abseil down from a belt loop.

Pa Walton: That’s pure crazy. No one’s ever made a climb like that…and lived.

‘Whatever it is, you ain’t gonna get it with that hand.’

I look up. It isn’t Luke or Pa Walton. The studded girl is in front of me.

‘It doesn’t matter—it’s only some change,’ I mumble.

‘Let me,’ she says and she thrusts her hand where no girl has been since…I was going to say Megan, but, actually, Doctor Morrissey was fumbling around my groin only eight days ago. Her hand, though, wasn’t decorated with weeping scabs and a tattoo of what looks like a cod.

Moments later it re-emerges from my pocket clutching nine or ten one pound coins, a fifty-pence piece, two tens and assorted coppers. ‘If you were gonna get a coffee with this, don’t bother,’ she says. ‘It tastes like a rat pissed it out.’

‘As long as it’s hot I don’t care too much.’

I reach out for the money.

‘It’s OK, I’ll get it. Milk? Sugar?’

2.56 a.m.

She’s eighteen. She has ambitions. She wants to be a tattooist. Or a psychiatric nurse. Or an environmental terrorist. Or a model. Or a contestant on Big Brother. Or a bus driver. Or—truly fanciful, this one—a long-haul flight attendant (‘ Chicken or Beef? Nah, don’t bother, mate—they both taste like a rat shat it out.’) But she’s between jobs at the moment. She loves dogs but not cats, ecstasy but not acid and The Matrix though not the sequels. And she stinks. BO, KFC, Bamp;H, Woodpecker and—ever so faintly—piss all jostle for my nose’s attention. She smells because she hasn’t had a bath or, I suspect, a change of clothes for some time. This is because she lives in a squat in a condemned tower block on the Cathall estate in Leytonstone.

I study her as she talks—and she hasn’t stopped for over half an hour. A thin film of dirt lies over the skin on her face, and her pores are clogged with enough black grease to lubricate the drive shaft on a sixteen-wheeler. Her teeth are chipped and stained the colour of the ‘before’ set of dentures in a Denclens ad. She has a cold sore on her top lip—roughly the shape of Cuba, though obviously not as big. She’s wearing the world’s baggiest jeans so I can’t tell, but I’ll bet she hasn’t waxed lately. I wonder what she’d look like if she scrubbed up, but not for long—she’s way past scrubbing up.

‘What are you doing here?’ I say, getting a word in edgeways at last. I’ve been curious because she has no discernible signs of injury or illness. Perhaps she’s come about the cold sore—but at nearly three in the morning?

‘It’s the only place round here you can get a coffee this late,’ she explains. ‘And it’s quiet—tonight it is, anyway. These three Dutch guys moved into the squat and they play trance all night.’

‘I hate trance,’ I murmur sympathetically.

‘Trance is the bollocks, man—but the arseholes’ve only got one CD.’