Islington, and I prayed that they hadn't moved on. I jogged back to the high street and flagged down a taxi. Because I didn't know the exact address although I knew the general area, I told the woman driver to take me to the Angel. I could walk from there. I kept glancing over my shoulder. I kept looking for a face I'd seen before. I saw nobody, but still the sickening sense remained that I didn't have much time left. I sat on the edge of my seat, impatient with traffic jams and red lights.
It was starting to get dark by the time we reached the Angel -or, at least, the colour was draining from the day. I had lost all track of time and I couldn't even think what day it was. It was a weekday, I knew that. Most people were at work, sitting in heated offices, drinking coffee from vending machines, having meetings that they liked to think were important. I paid the driver and got out, side-stepping a half-frozen puddle. Out of the low, dulling sky a few flakes of snow fell. I pulled up the collar of my jacket and started walking.
Some of the church had been painted in primary colours, and there was an asymmetrical rainbow over the large wooden-ribbed door. A rusty pink-sprayed bicycle leant against the wall, beside an , old pram full of wood and another full of tin cans. By the side of the church was a van decorated with swirls and flowers, and with blinds drawn down over all of its windows. A large, dun-coloured dog was nosing its tyres.
I lifted the knocker and let it fall with a heavy rap on to the door, which was already open a crack.
'Just push and come in,' shouted a female voice.
The interior of the church was dim and hazy with smoke from a fire burning on the floor, in a makeshift fireplace of bricks. Round it a group of people sat or squatted, wrapped in blankets or coiled in sleeping-bags. One was holding a guitar, although he was making no attempt to play it. I saw the shapes of other figures towards the back of the church, where there were still a few pews. There were mattresses and bags over the floor. A great crack ran down the stained-glass window.
'Hi,' I said uncertainly. 'Sorry to butt in.'
'You're welcome here,' said a woman with cropped hair and studs in her eyebrow, nose, lips and chin. She leant forward and thick copper bangles cascaded down her arm.
'I'm Abbie,' I said, and shook her mittened hand. 'I just wanted to ask .. .'
'Well, we know you're Abbie at least, I do. Some of us haven't been here for more than a few days. I'm Crystal remember? You've cut your hair, haven't you? Anyway, sit down,' said Crystal. 'Do you want tea? Boby's just made some. Boby! Another tea -we've got a visitor. You don't take sugar, do you? See, I always remember.'
Boby came over with mud-coloured tea in a pewter mug. He was small and skinny and had a white, nervous face. His combat trousers hung off him and his neck looked thin in the chunky knit of his sweater.
'Thanks,' I said. 'I've been here before, have I?'
'We've got some beans spare. Do you want some?'
'I'm fine,' I said. 'Thanks.'
The man with the guitar ran his fingers over the neck of the instrument to produce a few broken chords. He grinned at me and I saw that his mouth was full of black, broken teeth. 'I'm Ramsay,'
he said. 'Ram for short. I came yesterday from the bypass protest. My first night for weeks on the solid ground. Where've you come from?'
I realized I looked like a runaway. I'd become one of them. I didn't have to struggle to make sense here. I slid down by the fire and took a gulp of my tepid, bitter tea. The smoke from the fire stung my eyes.
'I don't know where I've come from, really,' I said. 'But Betty told me about you lot.'
'Betty?'
'The old woman with all the cats,' said Crystal. 'You told us about her last time.'
I nodded, feeling oddly peaceful. The fight had gone out of me. Perhaps it wouldn't matter, being dead. 'I probably did,' I said. 'I probably asked you about my friend Jo.'
'That's right. Jo.'
'I asked if she'd come here.'
'D'you want a roll-up?' said Boby.
'All right,' I said. I took the thin cigarette that he held out and Ram lit it for me. I inhaled and coughed. Nausea swept over me. I took another drag. 'Did she come here?'
'Yup,' said Crystal. She looked at me. 'Are you OK?'
'Yes.'
'Here. Have some beans.' She picked up one of the tins of baked beans that was by the fire, stuck in a plastic spoon and handed it over. I took a mouthful: disgusting. Then another. I sucked on the roll-up and pulled acrid smoke into my lungs.
'Great,' I said. 'Thanks. So Jo came here, did she?'
'Yeah. But I told you.'
'I can't remember things,' I said.
'I get like that too,' said Ram, and made another stab at a chord. A man opened the door of the church and came in pushing the pram. He tossed some more wood on the fire then bent over and kissed Crystal. They kissed for a long time.
'So she came here looking for a kitten?' I said finally.
'Because that crazy Betty thinks we keep cats here.'
'Don't you?'
'Can you see cats?'
'No.'
'I mean, we have had a few strays, because we give them milk and food. And some of us were in a raid that released cats from a laboratory the other month.'
'I dunno how she heard about us, though.'
'Nor do I,' I said. 'So did she just go away?'
'Jo?'
'Yes.'
'She gave us some money for our projects. A fiver, I think.'
'And that was it?'
Tup.'
'Oh, well,' I said. I looked around. Perhaps I could join them and become a traveller and eat baked beans and sleep on stone floors and up trees and make roll-ups until my fingers were stained yellow. That would be different from designing offices.
'Except I said she could always try Arnold Slater.'
'Arnold Slater?'
'He's the man we gave some of the strays to. When the dogs started chasing them. He's in a wheelchair but he looks after them anyway.'
'So did she go there?'
'She said she might. So did you last time, I mean. Weird, eh? Like deje vu. Do you believe in deje vm?'
'Of course. Round and round and round I go,' I said. I threw the end of the roll-up into the fire and drained my tea. 'Thanks,' I said. I turned suddenly to Boby. 'You have a big tattoo of a spider, don't you?'
He blushed violently then pulled up his thick jumper and on his flat white stomach was a tattooed web that stretched out of sight round his back. 'There,' he said.
'But where's the spider gone?' I asked.
'That's what you said before.'
'Clearly I'm a very consistent person,' I said.
It was really dark when I left the church, even though it wasn't evening yet. I could make out the ghost of a moon behind the clouds. Arnold Slater lived two minutes from here and he was old and in a wheelchair and Jo had thought she might go to see him and I had thought I might follow Jo and go to see him ... I stepped out into the road, and at that moment the mobile I'd grabbed as I left Ben's started to ring, making me jump violently. Backing on to the pavement, I put my hand in my pocket and pulled it out. Without thinking, I pressed the 'call' button.
'Hello?' I said.
'Abbie! Where the fuck are you, Abbie? What are you up to? I've been out of my mind worrying. I've been calling the house all day and you didn't reply so I came back and you weren't here
