Charlotte Street (14 page)

‘Who are you?’

Who? Not ‘what’s your name’?

‘I’m Dev,’ said Dev. ‘And this … is my family.’

He cast me a panicked look. Maybe he thought the woman from the B&B had spies everywhere.

All three girls looked at Matt. Not one of them looked at me.

‘All right?’ said the main one.

‘All right,’ said Matt.

They still weren’t looking at me. I was slightly offended.

‘What’s your name?’ she said.

‘Matt,’ said Matt.

‘These your dad?’ she said.

Are these your dad?

‘My mates,’ he said, and I felt quite warm inside. Mates. Not ‘They’re my old teacher and his flatmate’.
Mates
.

‘Who’s this?’ said a man, suddenly there. He was wearing a Ben Sherman shirt and shoes with little silver buckles on, but then you’d probably guessed that.

‘No one,’ said the burly girl, seemingly quite pleased by the interest.

‘Paul’s got you a lager,’ he said, trying to guide her back to the dancefloor.

‘Don’t want a lager,’ she said.

Uh-oh.

‘Paul. Has. Got. You. A.
Lager
,’ he said, slowly and deliberately, staring straight at her.

‘Didn’t ask for a lager,’ she said, turning away from him. ‘Budge up.’

Oh God. She wanted to sit next to Matt.

I cast a frightened look at Dev, but he wasn’t looking at me. He just looked delighted. Matt stared into his drink. I didn’t know what to do. She’d asked me to budge up. Me. What are you supposed to do when a burly girl asks you to budge up? I
mean, Paul had bought her a lager, whoever Paul is. He was probably waiting for her. And this man – this man with his muscles and knuckles and buckles – he was still there, still towering over us. Who was he? Her boyfriend? Her brother? She inched towards me, waving at me to move up, and I caved.

Down she sat, momentarily puffing the small sofa up at my end, and raising me up by an inch, which, if I’m honest, made me feel a little less masculine than I’d like.

Her burly friends drifted off, taking the man with them, but not before he’d drilled deep into the back of my head with his eyes.

‘It’s not me!’ I wanted to shout. ‘I’m just a
budgee
!’

But shouting you’re a budgie in a nightclub in Whitby is just one of four ways I know to guarantee you’ll get beaten up.

‘Where you from?’ said the girl, and before Matt could even answer, Dev had shifted closer in his seat.

‘London,’ Dev said. ‘North London. Near Angel?’

She ignored him.

‘Just down for the night, are you?’

She took a swig of her blue whatever-it-was and Matt just nodded.

There was an awkward pause.

‘You know, if there’s one thing I just can’t get off my chest—’ Dev paused ‘—it’s my nipples!’

He beamed, delighted at this joke, his joke, the joke he’s been telling strangers for years, but the girl just looked at him, and then at where her nipples would be. I gave Dev an encouraging smile, which actually may have looked more like a grimace, and looked away.

On the other side of the club, the girl’s friends were sitting blank-faced and ignored, sipping at their drinks, while the man and two friends sat forward on their seats, staring at us.

We stayed maybe ten minutes longer, the girl eventually finding her way back to her lager and whoever Paul, her most generous benefactor, was.

‘So this girl in the photo, then,’ said Matt, eating his chips. ‘You gonna find her, or what?’

We were on a bench, the end of the night upon us, and I laughed.

‘Do you think I should find her?’

‘Tonight should be the night we decide on something!’ slurred Dev. ‘It’s in the air! We’ve already won a pound from a quiz machine and been to an exhibition about wool. It’s perfect timing!’

We stood, and began our walk to the B&B.

‘Decide about what?’ said Matt.

‘I dunno! Jase should find this girl! I will make Pamela my own! And you … you can, well, what do you want to do?’

‘I dunno,’ said Matt.

‘Well, we’ll find something for you. Something important and life-changing and good.’

‘I’d like to be happy,’ said Matt, and Dev and I stopped walking.

But Matt didn’t.

Matt just kept going.

‘Back in a sec,’ he said, jogging over to a shop doorway. Dev and I started to walk again.

‘He’s a top lad,’ said Dev.

‘He is. He is.’

‘What was he like at school?’

‘Not
exactly
like that.’

‘He likes you.’

‘This is not a blind date.’

‘No, I just mean, he looks up to you. Must be weird for him, hanging out with an old teacher.’

‘Little weird for me, too.’

We rounded a corner. A group of lads on a bench outside Millets started laughing between them. One of them kicked a can, and it skittered against a shopfront.

It is not good being another man in this situation. It is worse being two men. Two men is a group. A rival group. Even when one of them’s in slacks, and the other still smells of that fried chicken from earlier.

The group laughed again, and I immediately started to look anywhere but at them, but I know there are three of them at least, and I know they’re the type of men to kick cans at shops. But I allowed myself a glance, and – shit.

It’s
those
guys.

The guys from
earlier
.

I started to puff my chest up, and walk in a more deliberate and masculine manner, because that’s what men on documentaries tell you to do. Be big. Be brave. Be confident. Be beaten up five minutes later. It’s a walk I’ve perfected on countless nights down the Caledonian Road, as I scurry past Pentonville Prison, absolutely certain that every man I pass is about to strike me down with that baguette they’re eating, or stab me with their chips.

And then it happens.

‘
Oi
.’

Keep walking. Just keep walking.

‘
Oi
!’ said the voice, closer this time, and I turned, and the bigger one, the ringleader, is striding towards me.

‘You called my name,’ he said.

Breathe.

‘Eh? No, I didn’t.’

‘You called me a twat, then.’

What?! Oh, God, this is how it starts. This is how it starts in the playground, and this how it starts at night, in a strange town, near phoneboxes and scratched cashpoints and men who’ve run out of booze.

‘Honestly, mate, I didn’t say a word.’

‘Does your name sound like twat?’ asked Dev, half-smiling.

‘What did you say?’

‘I just mean maybe you misheard, or—’

‘Look,’ I said. ‘Honestly, there’s no problem here. We’re just on our way home, and—’

‘Where’s home?’

‘We’re at a B&B.’

‘No, where’s
home
?’

‘London,’ said Dev. Wrong answer.

‘Just
outside
London,’ I said. ‘Quite a way outside London, actually.’

Christ, why was this happening? Why, in Whitby, of all places?

‘Where’s your pal?’ said the fella at the back.

‘He’s—’ I turned, looked ‘—I dunno.’

The main guy was getting very close to me, now. I could smell his breath. Cider, definitely. Maybe a whisky on top? Fags, too.

No, that was the other one. The wiry one next to him, smiling, and bouncing on his heels, too excited to take a drag. Paul, maybe? He looked like a Paul. And there’s always one like him. Too small to fight, but so full of aggression, like a little dog feeding off the power of his mate, and dangerous, because he’ll do anything, absolutely
anything
for his master, his eyes bright and excited, his chest rising quickly.

‘Look,’ I tried. ‘Everything’s cool.’

But they didn’t seem to think everything was cool. They seemed to think everything was anything but cool, for whatever imagined slight they were so bruised by, and for a very real second I remembered Mr Waterhouse in Year Two telling us the best thing to do in a fight was to curl up in a little ball, but how was I going to tell Dev to curl up, too, and then what would happen, because we’d be two curled-up little balls of London, and what if …

Boom
.

From somewhere to our right, a boom, or not a boom, exactly, but something: a huge, buckling, shatter of a noise. I froze, and Dev flinched, and there it was again. The men raised their arms to their heads instinctively, and turned, and there he was.

Matt had found something – a short length of pipe, some kind of metal bar, who knows what – and he was smashing a phonebox to pieces.

Smashing. It. To.
Pieces
.

He’d pulled his hood over his head, and didn’t once look round, just kept smashing, and
smashing
, splinters of glass flicking through the air, and just that noise, again and again – something pained and guttural and frightening.

‘Fuck …’ said the little dog, backing off, but we remained quiet and in our places, not because we were brave, but because we were just as frightened.

And then Matt threw the metal bar to the ground, and it clattered about violently from the force, and he was panting, and walking straight towards us, and that was enough for the fellas – they were off.

And then, the strangest thing.

Matt stopped in his tracks, got the disposable camera out, took a picture of the men as they pounded down the street, then put it away again.

Dev and I kept our distance, not sure if he’d flipped for real, not sure if he wouldn’t now get us in headlocks, or push us through a window, or take a picture of us running away as he swung another metal bar about. I mean, what was I supposed to do? Revert to teacher mode? Shout, ‘Matthew Fowler, stop that at once?’ We were on our own, past midnight, in a strange place, and a boy who’d once nearly blinded a kid had just smashed up a phonebox at the merest sniff of a hint of violence.

I braced myself as he got closer, ready for whatever might be, ready to try and defend myself, but instead, he lowered his hood, and clapped his hands together, and said, ‘All right?’

‘That was
amazing
!’ said Dev, as we walked up the street. We were full of adrenaline and relief and life, lit every few seconds by another streetlight, like we were in a very slow disco. ‘That was like something out of
Grand Theft Auto
!’

‘You saved our arses tonight,’ I said, a little giddily.

‘Just barked at ‘em,’ said Matt. ‘Just scared ‘em.’

‘No, I mean on the quiz machine. No way we’d have won that quid.’

And I put my arms around them both as we walked, and gave them a little man hug, and then we heard a distant police siren and decided to jog.

We spent the night in the Nissan Cherry, outside our thirty quid B&B. Dev had managed to lose the key, of course, and the lady in the pink velour tracksuit seemed quite strict about the ten o’clock curfew.

‘Disgusting,’ Dev had said. ‘Kicking a family out on the street like this.’

But it didn’t matter. It was better, somehow. Because we laughed, and we swapped stories, and although I think you
could say we’d bonded already, there’s nothing like bonding in a Nissan Cherry.

And as we giggled like little women, I thought about what had happened to bring me here, in a small car, having fun. The break-up? Her engagement? The pregnancy? Yeah.

But no. Not really.

Not when you think about where we’d gone, and why that place particularly, and what Dev had planned.

I kind of sort of owed it to The Girl.

Maybe I’d been right earlier, when I’d thought I should stop being decided for. That I should start deciding.

‘Check it out,’ I said, as dawn broke, and Dev stirred.

There, in the distance, was the top of St Hilda’s, the sun catching its weathered stones, smudging them into soft amber.

‘Hungry,’ he yawned.

But I kept staring.

At the Little Chef, just outside Worksop, we clambered – hungover, messy-haired and aching – back into the car.

Matt had waited in the car. He’d been a little quiet this morning. Dev said he must just be hungover. I decided to agree.

I polished off the last of my horrible sausage as we entered the motorway.

‘That was a bloody great trip,’ said Dev. ‘Violence! Gambling! Girls! It was like Vegas, or something!’

‘We nearly got our heads kicked in, won a pound, and were
ignored
by girls. It was like
Whitby
.’

Dev laughed, but Matt didn’t.

I turned round, to make sure he was okay, but he was lost in something. In his lap were the photos; he’d only seen the abbey shot before, and so he’d been in the glovebox while we’d
fetched coffees and food, and now he had them all right in front of him.

‘Matt?’ I said.

He looked up, mouth open, and held out one shot in particular for us to see.

On the bus in, I picked up a discarded
Metro
.

I didn’t know what to buy so I bought a little of everything.

Croissants. Pain-au-chocolat. Pain-au-raisin. Six pretzels and a bag of nuts.

I felt like a worker for the first time in ages, and lowered Rob’s office chair to make it feel a little more like my own, before clearing a little space in his debris for me to work in.

Zoe would be in soon, and then the others: Clem, the features editor; Anthony, the art editor – all ready to piece together the next edition from the bulk Manchester send us and the scraps we find ourselves, each of us ignoring the metaphorical ticking clock we imagined above us. I didn’t want to imagine it. I was just happy to be here, a small piece of even the worst business plan, in a room so beige it looked like it’d been dipped in tea, with scuffed walls, Macs, ironic posters, and lonely, ignored PR gifts. A giant Guinness hat with
Happy St. Paddy’s Day!
scrawled across it lay by a bin under a desk, used and used once, next to a fat cotton cat with suckers for hands dropped off by courier to ‘Celebrate the much-anticipated release of
Garfield
on DVD and Blu-ray!’.