In some ways, I’d transitioned to a new life, a new world, and most of the time it felt like my previous life didn’t exist. There was a lot of that in this city. Maybe that’s why I continued to live in the Dam Central Hotel, even though the girls from the club thought I was insane, because in a funny way I’d grown to love it. The owner was an eccentric Frenchman called René, who, after he had established that I wasn’t a drug dealing hooker, became almost fatherly in his affection for me. Or at least, what I thought fatherly affection would be like if it wasn’t drowning in bourbon. He would wait up for me in the evenings and bring me coffee each morning whilst I regaled him with stories about the previous night’s customers. The businessmen who dropped more money than I earned in a month on their bar bills. The models who looked like they could do with a pie. The fashionistas, the glitterati, the celebrities, the bizarre characters in their outlandish costumes. The pimps and dealers that made the mistake of trying to do business and were rapidly ejected by the security guys.
As for Joe, he always made time to have a quick chat in the evenings and he’d often join us for a dawn breakfast at the end of a shift, or for coffee in the afternoons. Watching him work had been an education. He ran the club like clockwork, with a fine balance of toughness and decency, and despite our age difference, we always seemed to have loads to talk about. He made me feel safe, protected, but it was more than that. We were friends. Not close enough that I could give him my opinion of the stunning women he occasionally dated – all gorgeous, glamorous socialites on the Amsterdam scene, and all of them brief flings that he never seemed to take too seriously – but close enough that we would watch an afternoon movie at the cinema and spend hours debating the merits of Miami Vice versus Hill Street Blues.
I was settled. I was happy. Until the universe decided to toss a grenade in my direction.
On a chilly afternoon in March, I was sitting in the coffee bar on the ground floor of the hotel, watching the world go by through the large window that faced on to the street, when suddenly my mother passed before my eyes. I closed them quickly, thinking that someone must have slipped a hallucinogen into my croissant, but when I reopened them, she was still there. And so was my dad. And my gran. My GRAN, for God’s sake! She’d never been further than Skegness in her life. This might only be a sea away from Scotland but I lived on the cusp of a different world and not one that my granny should ever have to see.
My heart started racing and I didn’t know whether to make a dash for the back door or hide under a table. I opted for the nearest table. Shit, shit, shit. Maybe they would pass by. Maybe they were just on a weekend break and it was just coincidence that they were here. Or maybe Callum had told them where I was and they’d come to drag me back, kicking and screaming. I’d written to them when I got a job and told them I was living in Amsterdam, but I hadn’t said where exactly, just that I was safe and well, and having an adventure. I’m fairly sure my mother’s head would have exploded on reading it. Only Callum knew my actual address, courtesy of weekly letters I sent to his best friend’s house, and I’d sworn him to secrecy.
Shit, shit, shit. I felt a draught as the door opened and then the footsteps of people entering. Don’t let it be them. Don’t let it be them. Don’t let it be them.
‘Excuse me,’ said the unmistakable voice of my mother to a stunned René, who was still reeling from the fact that one minute I’d been chatting to him and the next I was camouflaged as a table leg. ‘I’m looking for my daughter. Her name is Carly Cooper.’
Silence.
‘Does she live here?’ my mother persisted in her posh ‘telephone or talking to the priest’ voice. I knew what she was doing. She was looking around thinking that the hotel was a dosshouse and all the people in it were obviously fugitives who’d broken their bail conditions.
More silence. Now I knew how criminals feel when they’re cornered by the police. There was nowhere to go, nothing to do except surrender with my hands in the air.
I slowly rose from under the table, banging my head on the way up. I smiled ruefully.
‘Hi, Mum,’ I stammered. ‘What brings you here?’
As reunions go, it wasn’t the warmest. My mum had come on a mission to take me home and had brought my dad and gran in the hope that they’d back her up. That was the first flaw in the plan. My dad was already eyeing the bar and
