When I got to the pub – which we called the Hairy Pub, because it used to be covered in ivy to the point where you couldn’t actually see the building underneath – it wasn’t too crowded, and I was able to score one of the big new leather armchairs in the window, right by a fucking great fern. The pub never used to be like this. It used to be an old-fashioned, unreconstituted boozer, and – as such – a bit shit. I like old-fashioned pubs as much as the next man, but this one just wasn’t very good. Now they’ve got posh chairs and a cappuccino machine and polite staff and frankly, I’m not complaining. They cut off all the ivy and painted it black and it looks alright. Whatever. The pub’s not really relevant. I sat there for an hour or so, having a couple of coffees and smoking a couple of my small packet of cigarettes. Each one caused me a manageable slap of guilt, as did the chocolate powder sprinkled on the cappuccinos. I’ve been on the frigging Atkins diet for a month, to cap it all, which means, as you doubtless know, no carbohydrates. None. “Thou shalt not carb,” the great Doctor proclaimed, and then died. Chocolate is carbs, as – more importantly – are pizza, pasta and special fried rice, the three food groups which make human life worth living, the triumvirate of grubstuffs which make crawling out of the swamp seem worth it. That month has seen me lose a big six pounds, or, put another way, one point something pounds a week, while not being able to eat anything I like. It’s crap. Anyway.
I tried to read, but couldn’t really get into my book. Couldn’t get into a newspaper either. My attention kept drifting, lighting on people sitting in clumps around the pub, wondering what they were doing there on a Saturday afternoon. Some looked hungover already, others were in the foothills of starting one for Sunday. They were all wearing their own clothes and had their hair arranged in certain ways, which they were happy with, or not; some had loud laughs, others sat pretty quietly. The staff swished to and fro – most of them seem to be rather gay, in that pub: not something that exercises me in the least, merely making a factual observation. I’ve often wondered what it’s like, being gay. Different, certainly. The music was just loud enough to be distracting, and I only recognised about one song in three. I could see other people tapping their feet, though, bobbing their heads. The songs meant something in their lives. Not in mine. I wondered when they’d first heard it, how come it had come to be a part of them and not me. I looked at my coffee cup and my book and my little pack of cigarettes and I got bored with them and myself, and bored with my trousers and thoughts and everything else I knew and understood. Custom had staled their infinity variety. Custom was making my hands twitch.
In the end I got up and left. I stomped back out onto the street, caught between wistful and depressed and pissed off. Then I did something I wasn’t altogether expecting. Instead of walking straight past the newsagent, I swerved and went back in. I went straight up to the desk and asked for a pack of Marlboro Lites. The guy got it, and I paid for them. Emerged back onto the street, looking at what I held in my hands. Been a long, long time since I’d bought a pack of twenty cigarettes. It’s like that with everyone these days – you check, in the pubs and bars, everyone’s smoking tens now, just to prove they’re giving up.
But you can give up giving up, you know. You can choose to say one thing instead of the other, to say the word “twenty” instead often”. That’s all it takes. You’re not as trapped as you think you are. There are other roads, other options, other doors. Always.
I crossed the street at the lights and then, instead of walking back the way I’d come (along the main road, past the station), I took a turning which led to a shortcut through some quiet residential streets. It’s pretty hilly around where I live now, though if you’re on the way back from the pub then you’re walking down for most of the way. My first right took me into Addison Road, which is short and has a school on one side. Then I turned left into a street whose name I’m not even sure of, a short little road with some two storey brick Victorian houses on either side. At the bottom of it is Brenneck Road, at which point I’d be rejoining the route I would have taken had I gone the other way.
I was walking along that stretch of pavement, halfway between here and there, halfway between one thing and the other, when I did it.
I turned left suddenly, pushed open the black wooden gate I happened to be passing, and walked up to the house beyond it. Don’t know what number it was. Don’t know anything about the house. Never noticed it before. But I went up to the door and saw that it was one house, not divided up into flats. I pressed the buzzer. It rang loudly inside.
While I was waiting I glanced back, taking a better look at the front garden. Nothing to see, really – standard stuff. Tiny bit of grass, place for the bins, a small tree. Manageable.
I turned when I heard the sound of the door being opened.
A young woman, mid-twenties, was standing there. She had shoulder length brown hair and a mild tan and white teeth. She looked nice, and pretty, and I thought okay – I’m going to do it.
“Hello?” she said, ready to be helpful.
“Hi,” I replied, and pushed past her into the house. Not hard, not violent, just enough to get past her.
I strode down the hallway, took a quick peek in the front room (stripped pine floors, creamy-white sofa, decent new widescreen television) and went straight through to the kitchen, which was out the back. They’d had it done, got some architect or builder to knock out most of the wall and replace it with glass, and it looked good. I wanted to do something like that at home, but the wife thought it would be too modern and “notin keepingwith aVictorian residence”. Bollocks. Itlooked great.
“Just a bloody minute . . .” said a voice, and I saw the woman had followed me in. She looked very wary, understandably. “What the hell are you doing?”
I glanced over her shoulder and saw the front door was still open, but first things first. I went over to the fridge – nice big Bosch, matt silver. We’ve got a Neff. One of those retro ones, in pale green. Looks nice but holds fuck all. This Bosch was full to the brim. Nice food, too. Good cheese. Pre-cut fruit salad. A pair of salmon en croute, tasty, very nice with some new potatoes, which I saw were also there ready to go. Cold meats, pasta salads, da da da. From Waitrose, supermarket of choice. Wife always shops at Tescos, and it’s not bad but it’s not half as good.
“Nice,” I said. “Okay. Did you buy all this? Or was it your fella?”
She just stared at me, goggle-eyed, didn’t answer. But I knew it was her, just from the way she looked at it. She blinked, trying to work out what to do. I smiled, trying to reassure her it was all okay.
“I’m going to call the police.”
“No you’re not,” I said, and smacked her one.
It wasn’t hard, but she wasn’t expecting it. She staggered back, caught her leg on one of the chairs around the table (nice-looking chairs, kind of ethnic, oak) and fell back on her arse. Head clunked against the fridge. Again, not hard, but enough to take the wind out of her sails for a second.
I checked the back door – shut, locked – and then stepped over her down the hallway and to the front. A woman with a pram was passing by on the pavement. I gave her a big smile and said good afternoon and she smiled back (what a nice man) and then I shut the door. Went to the little table, grubbed around a second, and came up with a set of keys, and a spare. Locked the front door. Went into the front room to check: all windows shut and secured, and here’s a couple who stumped up for double glazing. Good for keeping the heat in. Good for keeping the noise in too, I’m afraid.