CHAPTER FOUR
There’s no easy way of projecting a brand logo onto the sun, which meant that the light coming streaming into the bedroom the next morning was a roughly natural amber – albiet stained a couple of shades closer to piss by the tepid tone of the curtains. I sat up, rubbing my face, aware through my feeling of rested nausea that I’d slept in. Ever since I was a little boy, I’d never slept much, and in adulthood – or as close as I’d gotten to it – I still tended to get up early and do my own thing. It has its benefits. The roads aren’t filled with traffic; there aren’t bunches of irritating fucking people around; even the adBoards are generally quiet apart from a sort of low-key buzzing. Shit-all on the television to even pretend you want to watch. It almost felt like the world was unspoilt.
I pulled on a dressing gown and made my way downstairs, figuring it was about ten-thirty, or so. That was bad, in a way. My dream had made me feel empty and miserable enough as it was, and now I got to feel lazy as well.
I had a ritual.
Every morning, what I’d do was get up early, come downstairs and put a pot of coffee on. I’d slip bread into the toaster, get the butter and milk from the fridge, and maybe even put some music on quietly: something that would’t disturb her. And then I’d sit at the kitchen table and wait for breakfast to be ready, and for a few brief minutes I’d be able to pretend that Amy was still upstairs, half-asleep, ready to come down in a bit when she was properly awake. A few minutes of denial? Sure: guilty as charged. But it was too late to go through that today.
I made the coffee and toast and sat down to eat, but this morning I wasn’t thinking about Amy; I was thinking about Claire, and the phone call she’d made to me.
I finished off my toast, licked melted butter from the tips of my fingers and thought about it. Maybe she’d got the right number after all – I’d remembered the word, hadn’t I? And something
And…
And my fucking computer was smashed.
The kitchen suddenly seemed more real around me, and an awkward truth settled in: I already had one woman to worry about. I already had a woman to care for, search for and be responsible for and to, and the last thing I needed right now was another. Especially Claire. I mean, one unwanted phone call in the night from her, and here I was: cheating on Amy again.
I wanted to slap myself in the face.
Instead, I took my plate and knife over to the sink, where they could wait with all their friends until I was ready to attempt a wash. Then I took my coffee upstairs and began to gather together today’s selection of clothes from the more promising heaps on the bedroom floor.
It had stopped raining, but only just. Everything was freshly wet. The road looked like it was made from jet- black rubber, and the cars shining along it seemed bright and newly washed. People’s hair was in sodden tufts of disarray, and the sky was a blue-grey watercolour smear: misty and full of cloud, as though it might boil back into a rainstorm at any moment and soak us all again.
My trainers squeaked on the pavement as I walked, heading into the centre of Bracken. As you went from the suburbs to the centre, there was quite a transformation. The gentle noise – laughter; promotional jingles from the increasingly prevalent adBoards – grew louder and gradually more irritating as suburban streets segued into more industrial avenues. Houses became shops, and the shops became taller, until finally they morphed into these enormous, glass-fronted office blocks – the tenets of evolutionary capitalism. Within twenty minutes, I was truly among giants.
Actually, I didn’t know how Graham could bring himself to live this far into the centre, where everything was way too big, noisy and busy for me. The one thing I supposed he had going for him was that he lived quite far up, in one of the more prestigious apartment blocks, slightly west of dead centre. It was the kind of place where, if you opened the window, you were more likely to hear helicopters than cars, and they generally didn’t bother with adBoards that high up – most of the people who lived there invented either the campaigns or the products, and they wouldn’t want to take their work home with them. Can you imagine a twenty-four hour jingle? You’d go insane. Well, city centre life had never appealed to me anyway, but I figured I was in the minority. If they had money, it was where people naturally gravitated to: the best bars; the best theatres; the best restaurants. I mean, in some parts of the suburbs, city centre life was actively advertised, to keep you in line – keep you pointing in the right direction.
Graham had money, all right, and he was one of those vaguely unfocused people who, lacking any impetus of their own, tended to go with the crowd by default, and so it was natural he’d end up there eventually. But I looked at him sometimes, and I’d see this slight look of confusion on his face, as though he was nervous about going the whole hog and actually embracing the emotion he was feeling for what it really was: dissatisfaction. It’s a word you can hiss, and you should feel free to try. In their heart-of-hearts, everybody knows that the life-path is just another branded commodity these days, and that fact can bite you from time to time – when you’re looking around and thinking
A sad fact: nothing ever looks as good on you as it does in the catalogue. For a pound, you don’t get the juicy steak that’s beaming out of the adBoard at you like some kind of meaty ambrosia. You get a flat fucking burger in a miserable fucking bun. In life, as in fast-food chains.
I had to pass through one of the main shopping precincts to get to Graham’s building, and it was heaving with people. It always was on a Saturday. All those weekday-workers came out window-shopping. Couples went strolling. Kids hung out in baggy, coloured posses, with nothing to do and nowhere to go. And there was this genuinely unpleasant, slightly threatening undertone to everything. It was as though, despite the smiles and hum of conversation, at any moment somebody might buy something.
A few minutes’ walk took me to a quieter section of the city, where the canal snakes through at the edge. Graham’s building backed onto the canal, which is why the three lower floors remained entirely unoccupied. When the industrial skies open over winter, the abandoned canal overflows, filling nearby buildings to an admirable height and washing away any derelicts that have managed to squeeze in through the cracks. Of course, it doesn’t make any difference to the high-flyers on the floors above: for them, the canal is just this picaresque thing from another era; it’s no different to having an old, golden barometer on the wall, or a three-hundred-year-old wooden chest to put their dirty laundry in. When the banks flood, it just gets a few metres closer and they can see it better. That’s all.
The intercom on the front of the building looked like something you’d put a cigarette out on – and, if you did, it probably wouldn’t have left a mark. Cars shot past behind me as I tapped in seventeen-twelve and in the pause that followed, I turned and looked around. Busy road. Perfectly-styled park over the other side. A deli further up, painstakingly recreated. There was probably even a nice little church around here somewhere: a church without a door. When we were teenagers, Graham had told me:
I heard the voice come out of the intercom and turned back.
‘Hello?’
His voice, and yet not. All the intercoms in the city centre sound exactly the same: it’s a lightly amplified, disguised male voice. Imagine a vaguely pissed off robot. For all I knew, it was Helen answering the door, but I took
