‘I’ll pay her fare.’ I hear the lazy, warm drawl of an American accent. ‘She sounds kinda desperate.’ I daren’t believe someone is being kind to me. The recent, constant volley of abuse has left me bereft of hope. I can only assume this guy has just arrived in England or that he doesn’t read any newspapers. My Good Samaritan kneels down next to me and the crushed cans and cigarette stubs. This isn’t easy for him, because he’s obviously a man who enjoys a good breakfast, and lunch and dinner too by the look of it.
‘Hey, ain’t you that girl on the TV?’ he whispers as he hands me the ticket.
‘It wasn’t how it looked,’ I defend through my tears.
‘Nothing ever is.’ He staggers to his feet and offers me his hand. I let him pull me up.
‘You’re not a journalist, are you?’ I ask nervously. He shakes his head and then melts back into the throng of people busy sightseeing.
I consider it. I look up and see a security camera. It is just possible that this is another set-up. That guy could be a plant.
Get a grip. Only Linda knows I’m coming here. She would never be part of a set-up.
But I could have been followed. I’m still breathing shallowly and quickly. The guy looked honest. Unlikely though it seems, I think he was just doing a good thing. I don’t waste any more time thinking about it. I push my ticket through the machine and dash to the platform.
The sand and grey building creates a swell in my heart and I allow myself to hope, because, maybe, just maybe, he’s in there, the Natural History Museum. I realize I have the money problem to face again. At the desk I lie and say I’ve had my bag stolen. The staff are far too polite to laugh outright at my claims.
‘Have you reported the theft, miss?’ asks the huge, sauf London bird.
‘No,’ I admit. ‘I am planning to.’
‘What, after you’ve visited the Tyrannosaurus rex?’
‘Yes.’
‘Naturally.’
I’m very short on patience, a life trait exasperated by recent events, but somehow I hold it together long enough to persuade the staff at the museum to let me ring Issie. She gives them a credit card number and they give me a ticket.
I burst through the turnstiles and then run directly to the galleries. I charge up and down the three flights of stairs, constantly looking to my left and right. I can’t see him. I rush through the huge corridors, popping my head into all the exhibitions and restaurants as I pass by. I see innumerable creepy crawlies with their wings fettered; I see fossils, stuffed eagles and tigers. A taxidermist’s dream. But no Darren. I check the exhibitions on crystals, mammals and dinosaurs. I see every animal, vegetable and mineral in every state of growth, maturity and decay, except for Darren. I do all this twice. After an hour and a half of frenetic and futile searching I find myself back in the main lobby. Other than attracting numerous odd looks and lots of unwanted attention, my wild goose chase hasn’t achieved anything.
Of course it hasn’t.
I sit under skeletons of dinosaurs, surrounded by Gothic arches and earnest foreign voices reading to each other from the guidebooks. It’s pretty spooky. I’ve searched the entire building; he’s not here. It was ridiculously far-fetched to hope he would be. Why didn’t I ask Linda some more searching questions? Like what time had he planned to visit? Was it a definite plan? I’d been so delighted to get even a sniff of a lead that I hadn’t followed it properly. I can’t call Linda back. She’ll get into trouble if her mother knows she’s been in touch with me. I feel dumb and hopeless. The gargoyles obviously knew this all along because they look as though they are laughing at me.
I need to get some perspective.
I go to the cloakrooms. As usual there is a massive queue of women with bladders the size of peanuts. I stand listlessly, too exhausted to fidget impatiently or terrify anyone into peeing more rapidly. I catch sight of myself in a mirror and I’m shocked. I look like a down and out. My new crop requires minimum attention, a quick comb through, some gloss and then a ruffle to erase the effects of the combing. However, I haven’t thought to carry out this simple operation, so my hair is tangled and snarled at the back of my head. Nor have I thought to change my clothes, apply any make-up or eat since the show. Normally slim, I know I look emaciated. Up until now, I’ve been with Wallis Simpson, but now I see – a woman can be too thin. I’ve smoked to abate hunger, to distract and comfort myself. The smell of stale fags lingers in my hair and clothes. My skin is grey and my eyes have sunk to the back of my head. I am a human ashtray. I splash cold water on my face and then decide to revisit the dinosaur collection; at least they look rougher than I do.
For three hours I slowly amble around the galleries and whilst I admit that fishes, amphibians and reptiles are interesting in their own way, they can’t compete with Darren for mind share. Whilst I learn that dinosaurs lived between 230 million and 65 million years ago, I can’t imagine it. I’ve been without Darren for a week and it seems like an eternity. I also learn that they lived on land and could not fly but walked on straight legs tucked beneath their bodies. I consider writing to the consistency editor in charge of film at the studio, because I’m sure I’ve seen blockbusters with flying dinosaurs, but I don’t have the energy. I visit the human biology gallery and watch a film on reproduction and the growth of babies, which makes me feel squeamish. Not just because of the blood but because it’s proof, if I needed it, that love and life and living that life are special and miraculous. I sigh and check my watch. Four thirty. I’m hungry. I decide to visit the Life Galleries one more time and then, reluctantly, I’ll call it a day. Go home, have some pasta.
The Life Galleries are really spectacular. A series of exhibits demonstrating that each individual animal, plant and person is just one component in a complex system. There are some cool special-effects holograms of the atmosphere, hydrosphere and lithosphere. There’s a reproduction of a bit of the rainforest, with sound effects of pouring rain and screeching birds. There’s a bit about oceans and coastlines. The sound effects change to crashing waves and seagulls.
Whitby.
Him.
It could be my imagination but I think I can smell the sea.
Less romantically there is a stuffed rattlesnake and a decomposing rabbit.
I walk through howling gales and head towards the funky bell music, which puts me in mind of the stuff that’s played in Camden market or in flotation tanks. I head along a dark corridor towards a series of mirrors that are arranged to reflect and refract light to create the impression that you are standing outside the earth and you are watching the hydrosphere. Water recycles endlessly, in all its many guises, water, steam, ice. I don’t quite understand it. But the scale and silver holograms are awesome.
Darren.
Suddenly there are hundreds of him. I can see Darren. He’s right next to me. He’s left, next to me. I reach to touch him but my hand plummets through space. I can see him. He’s in front of me, and he’s behind me too. I look up, he’s above me. Then he’s gone.
My breath surges out of my body, creating a vacuum. I can’t breathe. It gushes back in again, nearly knocking me over.
He was here. It was him. I try to work out where he must have been standing, and which were mere shadows and visions of him created by the mirrors. I can’t calculate it. But he can only have gone one of two ways: back through the rainforest to the Waterhouse Way corridor or forward towards the Visions of Earth exhibitions.
Creepy crawlies or lost in space?
I pelt towards the Visions of Earth exhibitions. A series of six statues, representing different aspects of life on earth, are dominated by a dramatic sculpture of earth, which revolves between two giant walls. The walls depict the solar system and the night sky. I collide with a party of overseas schoolkids, universally noisy, happy and overexcited. They’re all dressed in blue and merge into one homogenous mass of rucksacks, acne and ponytails.