Authors: Jenni Fagan
‘No. Thanks.’
I put the ticket in my pocket.
It is what it is. Some people are blonde, some people are poor – some people get up and die on a day when they were gonnae go dancing. I’ve been playing the birthday game for years, and this is it: game over. There are no brothers, no sisters, no palazzo in Italy – no free perfume from Harvey Nichols. Just a plain ordinary life, the only one I will ever own.
I have to run for the train: the man’s putting his whistle into his mouth as I jump up onto the carriage. My heart is going pit-a-pat as I scan the platform, but there’s no-one there; no polis, no Angus, no experiment.
Weave down the aisle – this is it, just breathe, it’s all you have tae do.
I am in carriage F. My seat is 64B, opposite an elderly guy. I take my coat off and fold it neatly, place it down on the seat next to me and sit down. There are eighty-four seats in this carriage. The carpet has a swirly pattern, yellow on blue. The train is racing away from the city, out into the green. A hostess trolley rattles down our aisle; she stops at our table.
‘Can I get you anything, sir?’
‘Tea, please, no milk,’ he says.
The woman pours, and the man smiles – and I smile back, but just quickly. ’S alright. Sometimes you can just tell the goodness of a person by their face.
‘What’s your name?’ he asks me.
Tuck my hair behind my ear, look up.
‘Frances,’ I say.
‘That’s a nice name,’ he says.
And it is. It’s a nice name, if you look up its origins: it means freedom.
Paris.
Paris it is.
I am Frances Jones from Paris. I am not a face on a missing-person poster, I am not a number or a statistic in a file.
I have no-one watching me.
All I own is a lipstick I stole this morning, several hundred quid – and a lucky domino. This is it: no more experiment, no more meetings, no files, no straight to a secure unit, no giving up, no giving out, no beating up, no getting fucked, no looking over my shoulder, no locked cell, no broken vertebrae.
Paris – it is.
If you go there, you might see me working in a café, watching the people go by: smoking coloured cigarettes and patting my wee dog.
I’ll learn French and get a room on a back street – maybe I’ll walk my rescue-dog by the river four times a day. I’ll go to galleries, and read everything in their libraries, even the manuals, even the papers. I’ll eat chocolate croissants for breakfast. And I won’t take any lovers for ten years. I’ll wash my hair in lavender shampoo. I’ll browse couture shops, and junk bazaars. I’ll go to the Moulin Rouge. I’ll write poetry in the back of dark bars. I’ll watch live sex shows, and wank forty times in a row.
I’m just a girl with a shark’s heart – Frances Jones. You wouldnae know me from anyone else if I walked by you. This is it, I’m getting out. So, Vive freedom. Vive Paris. Vive le mad artists and drunken whores. Vive le girls with tits and hips and perfumes and perfumers. Vive absinthe and cobbled streets, vive le sea! Vive riots and old porn, and dragonflies; vive rooms with huge windows and unlockable doors. Vive flying cats and cigarillo-smoking Outcast Queens! Vive Le Revolution. Vive Le Dreamers. Vive Le Dream.
I – begin today.
Acknowledgements
Thanks, and appreciation (in no particular order) to:
Jason Arthur, Tracy Bohan, Ali Smith, Joseph Ridgwell, Cherry Smyth, Suzanne Dean, Freddy Chick, Kevin Williamson, Liz Hope, Darran Anderson, Laurie Ip Fung Chun, Michael Langan, Rosie Gailer, Adelle Stripe, Mark Burgess, Emma Finnigan, Dave Oprava, Arts Council England and Iona Davis.
I would also like to thank everyone at William Heinemann and the Wylie Agency.
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Copyright © Jenni Fagan 2012
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