Authors: Simon Brooke
It's funny, so many people
at my agency, I mean my old agency, want to be celebs. I remember a guy called Dave,
a complete tosser, had five pages of editorial in The Times magazine, beautiful
stuff - winter coats shot in Scotland, I think - but he spent almost the whole day,
it appeared, standing by the bar in a cafe in the King's Road, looking around waiting
for people to recognise him.
He was there at 10am when
Lauren and I were having a quick coffee before we tackled the shops and he was still
there at gone four o'clock in the afternoon when we went past on a bus on our way
home. Like anyone was going to recognise his face from the magazine.
"People just look
at the clothes, go 'Blimey! I wouldn't pay that', and turn the page," said
Lauren in a rare moment of cynicism.
I watch telly in the office a bit. The same quiz show that Zac
was watching the other day. I can do the abuse - 'you pea brain', 'you ding bat'
- but I can't always get the answers right like he can so I turn over and watch
a women telling another woman how much she hated her former, fat self. I flick over
again and another woman is telling yet another chat show hostess about how dieting
took over her life and how she is now, finally, happy with who she is - a size twenty.
The hostess, a stick thin blonde, smiles sweetly and invites the audience to give
the fat woman a round of applause.
The door buzzer goes.
The Police? Reporters? Creditors? Not again. I look at my watch, it's a quarter
to seven already. I let Nora in. She rushes upstairs, throws her arms around me
and gives me a passionate, slurping kiss, pulling me towards her. Then she pushes
me away.
"Has she rung yet?"
"No, it's only quarter
to seven."
"Good, good,"
says Nora taking off her coat. She sits down on Scarlett's desk, still breathing
heavily from the running up stairs and the kissing and leans back, her arms sliding
back behind her. "Isn't this exciting? Got anything to drink?"
"No and no,"
I tell her.
"Oh, Charlie, don't
be boring." She comes over to where I'm sitting behind my desk with a sultry
sashay.
"I'm not, I'm just...a
bit anxious that's all."
"Oh, so am I. I've
been thinking about it all day."
"I just hope we're
doing the right thing."
"I'm sure we are,"
she says, too quickly to sound convincing. I sigh deeply and start an aimless tour
of the office. "What have you been doing today?"
"Erm, just pissing
about here really. You?"
"Oh, I've had one
of those days - a lot of fire fighting, you know, crisis management, trying to sort
things out for people," she says, shaking her head.
"What? Where they've
cocked things up?"
"No, where I've cocked
things up," she says blandly.
"That figures."
Just then my mobile rings.
"Oh my God. That'll
be her," says Nora, leaping up off the desk and starts rooting around in her
bag. "Quick, take this. You stick it on to the back of the phone and it records
what she says. Oh, fuck where's the tape? I'm crap at technical things. Hang on,
here it is."
I wave Nora and her recording
gear away as I answer the phone.
"Hello?"
"Charlie? It's Anastasia."
"Hi, thanks for ringing
back."
"No, probs, I said
I would. Right, I've got this address..." I scatter papers around my desk as
I find a pen and something to write on then I swap hands to stop Nora trying to
listen in but she goes round to the other side of me.
"Sorry, Anastasia,
go on."
"Right, I've never
heard of it, I never go there myself, always get a mate to do it, or a bike from
one of Dad's companies, it's the absolute back of bloody beyond, you'll need passports
and injections to go there."
I laugh encouragingly.
"Oh, get on with
it," whispers Nora from beside me.
"It's number 79 Fairisle
Road, SE27. Where the hell's SE27? Never been very good on my SEs."
I repeat the address to
make sure I've got it.
"That's great Anastasia,
I really appreciate it."
"So, you're going
to go down there?"
"Well, we'll go and
have a look."
Nora is already feverishly
consulting an A to Z.
"Be careful, Charlie."
"Of course, don't
worry. I'll let you know how I get on. Thanks again, Anastasia. Bye."
"Bye. Oh, and Charlie,
try and get me some stuff while you're there will you, I'm running dangerously low."
I laugh.
"Will do."
I finish the call and
look round at Nora.
"Found it,"
she says, triumphantly. "It's near...near...absolutely fucking nowhere. Don't
worry, though, I've got a car."
"A car? That'll be
useful."
"Right. You can map
read, I'll drive." She is already half out of the door.
I'm wondering again whether
I should just ring the police and give them the address. It would make life easier.
But I can't bear to speak to Slapton again, let alone help the bastard in his stupid
enquiries so I pick up my stuff and follow Nora out. We'll talk to Piers and then
perhaps ring the police and tell them his whereabouts. It's already getting dark
and a large spot of rain lands on my face as we step outside.
She is illegally parked
- horribly, outrageously, illegally parked so that a couple of passers-by stop in
disbelief to look at the little blue Renault sitting next to, almost on, the zebra
crossing but, of course, she has managed to avoid getting a ticket.
She lets me in just as
the rain really gets going. We set off down Charing Cross Road ready to cross the
river. She is silent and intent. We haven't been going long before I realise that
she isn't going to pay much attention to traffic regulations and other drivers.
"Fucking hell, Nora,"
I say leaning back in my seat as we seem to be driving straight towards a bus. Traffic
lights are a minor hindrance and she seems to pass most as if they were at green.
She also seems to think that she has right of way, whatever the road markings and
the position of other vehicles. But her erratic performance is clearly not just
a result of her excitement and determination to get to Fairisle Road ASAP. As we
hurtle over a mini roundabout, causing a couple of other cars to screech to a halt
on my side, I find myself saying what has been dawning on me since our last near
miss but two: "Nora, you can't drive, can you?"
She laughs uncomfortably.
"Derr! Huh! What
do you think I'm doing now?"
"No, I mean you don't
have a licence. You haven't passed a test, have you?"
"Oh, honestly."
By sheer fluke we seem
to heading down the road without any obvious crises for a moment but I don't let
it go: "Nora, whose car is this?"
"A friend from work.
She does know."
"That you've got
it, yes, but she doesn't know that you haven't got a licence."
"Oh, Charlie, for
goodness sake. Who knows whether I've got a Goddamn licence or not?"
"Well, everybody
else near us on the road, I'd say. Look, just stop the car and we'll get a taxi
or something." Face set in grim determination, she carries on. "Nora,
I said stop the car. Look, you can park in one of these side streets and we'll get
a taxi."
"We're nearly there
now, aren't we?"
"No." We are
actually but I can't stand this. We must have used up our luck by now.
"It's at the end
of this street, isn't it?"
Outside it is dark and
wet. I look in vain for cabs but there are none.
"OK, but let's take
it slowly from now on."
"Of course,"
she says, putting her foot down.
We find Fairisle Road
soon afterwards and decide to leave the car at the beginning of it, just off the
main road. I do the parking since even Nora admits she's not too hot on parking.
Fairisle Road is a Victorian
terrace in which most houses are shabby but still inhabited. There are five that
are seriously dilapidated and number 29 is in the middle of them. There is no sign
of life from it whatsoever. My first thought is that Anastasia must have made a
mistake. Surely even a squat must have something to show that it's inhabited. I
walk up to the gate and open it. The downstairs windows have been boarded up with
corrugated iron and there is a pile of litter, Big Mac containers and rubbish around
the front door.
"This place looks
deserted," I say to Nora, willing this to be the case.
"What a perfect place
to hide, then," she says brightly, a drop of rain hanging off her nose. "Go
and try the door." I look at her for a moment, wondering whether there is still
time to call the police and get out of here. "Go on."
I walk up to the door
and knock gently, hoping that is there is anyone inside they won't hear me.
"Oh, for fuck's sake,"
she says, pulling me out of the way. She boots the door as hard as she can, staggering
backwards with the impact.
"Nora!"
"Well, what are you?
The Avon Lady?"
Unfortunately the door,
obviously rotten and with a knackered old lock, has given a bit. There really is
no excuse for not trying again. I have to admit to a touch of macho self-satisfaction
as it opens properly with a shove from my shoulder.
"Psst," hisses
Nora from the gate. I look round and see a couple walk by, giving us a surreptitious
glance as they pass. After a few moments I step back to give it another assault
but before I can make my move Nora has pushed me out of the way and kicked the door
hard again so that it flies open.
"I hope whoever's
in here is deaf," I whisper to her. We both peer in. I shudder involuntarily
at the thought of rats. The place smells of rotting wood, damp and urine. I nearly
gag. "We can't possibly go in without a...torch," I say, as Nora produces
one from her bag. Oh, shit.
"Luckily someone's
come prepared," she says.
In the light of the torch
the place itself doesn't look too bad. It's very grimy, with wallpaper and even
bits of plaster hanging off the walls in the hallway but the floor boards look sound.
Nora steps inside and I follow her.
"Close the door,"
she whispers. Reluctantly I push it closed behind us. We move further in, on the
right is a doorway to the living room. I'm so close to Nora that I'm almost pressing
up against her. She flashes the torch around. The room is empty except for a deck
chair and some old lager cans dotted around a filthy old rug. The hearth shows signs
of a small, incompetently constructed fire.
We move on along the corridor
further. In front of us are the stairs and behind them the way to the kitchen. We
choose the kitchen route, a tense, shambling, two person conga. I'm beginning to
think about a big drink after we get out of this. If we get out of this. There are
more old lager cans and wine and whiskey bottles in the kitchen plus some cardboard
boxes. Oh, shit, obviously full of giant rats. They say, you're never more than
ten feet away from a rat in London, we're probably inches away from them. Don't
they go for your jugular? Or your genitals? Or is that wild dogs?
"Go back," hisses
Nora.
"Why?" I gasp.
"Because there's
nothing here."
"Oh, OK." I
turn to head backwards and it's then that we hear a creak from above us.
I turn to look at Nora
and she holds the torch up to her scared face. Suddenly all the comparisons with
the Blair Witch Project which I've been suppressing, come flooding into my mind
and I'm ready to just sprint out of there - what the hell.
"Did you hear that?"
says the mask of terror in front of me.
"Yes, it came from
upstairs," I say, taking the torch from her and holding it in a way to give
her a more gentle, flattering light which is, of course, for my benefit, not hers.
"Let's get out of here." Even she seems to be contemplating a fast exit
for a moment.
"There must be someone
up there."
"Exactly! So let's
just get out of here."
She takes the torch off
me and moves back towards the hallway. I'm breathing more steadily already at the
thought of escape but she stops at the foot of the stairs.
"Come on," I
tell her.
"Just a quick look
upstairs."
"No, for fuck's sake.
I told you, this isn't Scooby Doo. Let's just go... Nora?" The step creaks
and by the light of the torch I can see her beginning to walk up. "Come back."