I’d done my job, so after an impressive amount of grovelling, he finally agreed to give me three weeks off. I didn’t want a package tour surrounded by loved-up couples, so I decided that America was beckoning me. I knew no one there, I had no American baggage, so I could just go, mind my own business and stay out of trouble.
A few days before I was due to leave, we were having a ‘Psychic Night’ in the club. It was my new idea for a Wednesday evening, the only night of the week that we’d previously been closed. Now, nearly two hundred people, 90 per cent of them women, scrambled for tickets every week to see the floor show. It was completely manufactured and more theatrical than spiritual, but everyone loved it.
First up every night was The Mighty Romano, who would summon spirits from the other side and would pass on messages to the audience. ‘Dave says the money is under the floorboards’ (obviously a drug dealer when he was alive) or ‘Edward says he still loves you and is waiting for you’ (despite the fact that he died of a heart attack whilst shagging his secretary).
It was all nonsense to me. The only spirits I believed in were gin, vodka and Bacardi and we sold those to the mystic followers by the bucket.
On this particular night, I was standing at the back of the audience, picking off my nail varnish to relieve the boredom of Mighty’s performance, when a comment triggered my attention.
Mighty repeated it. ‘I have an old lady called Catherine here. She’s looking for her great-granddaughter.’
My great-grandmother was called Catherine. Coincidence, I told myself, so were half of the Irish Catholic great-grandmothers in Scotland.
Mighty Ridiculous continued, ‘She says her great-granddaughter is about to take a trip.’
I looked around the entranced sea of faces to see if anyone was claiming the message.
‘She says to tell you that you’ve lost your way recently, but not to worry. The reason for everything that’s happened will become clear on the trip. It concerns a man, a tall, dark man. She says that he’s the one you’ve been looking for.’
I was rooted to the spot. Why didn’t I get one of the ones concerning oodles of cash hidden in the rafters? No, I had to get a prophecy that I was about to have an altercation with an age old fictional cliché.
It’s a load of bollocks, I told myself. Mighty Full of Crap was probably Joe Bloggs, a plumber from Bradford, during the day.
I saved the whole evening on a mental floppy disc labelled ‘Bullshit’ and stored it at the back of my mind with the other assorted junk. I didn’t have time to dwell on it anyway. The next psychic sent messages from a man on the other side to ‘his Maggie’, and two Margarets in the audience came to blows over who it was meant for. The next medium predicted a woman would meet Tom Jones and she promptly fainted. Ten minutes later, we had a fire alarm and had to clear the room. My point was proven. It was obviously all a load of old tosh, because not one of the psychic stars had seen that coming.
New York was everything I’d dreamt of and more. I’d seen `When Harry Met Sally’ at least a dozen times and now I was here, in their world, although absolutely resolute that there would be no orgasms, either real or fake. The hotel was opposite Madison Square Garden and had definitely seen better days, but the peeling paint and the dusty rooms gave it a comfortable lived-in feeling, like ten year old slippers.
I soon settled into a routine, rising at seven every morning and wandering up to Central Park. I’d spend an hour walking briskly round the park, watching the early-morning masochists jogging, cycling and roller-skating, before heading to a coffee house on 57th Street for a coffee, a croissant and a gab with the French owner, Pierre. He reminded me of René and caused frequent pangs of longing for Amsterdam and Joe. It was hard to believe that it was almost three years since I’d left there. After breakfast, I’d return to the hotel and change before continuing my on-foot exploration of the city. I systematically worked my way up and down every area – SoHo, Little Italy, Chinatown, Tribeca, Greenwich Village, taking in the sights, the sounds and trying not to look like a tourist who had everything she owned in the bum bag that was strapped around her waist. I’d read a newspaper story about thefts from hotel safes and I wasn’t taking chances with my travellers cheques.
At six o’clock every evening, I queued at the discount theatre ticket booth in Times Square to buy a cheap ticket for one of the performances that evening. The Phantom Of The Opera, Miss Saigon, Les Misérables, Cats – I saw them all with just a Diet Coke and a hot-dog for company. Scotland, work, Doug and Mark could have been a million miles away as I slurped the ketchup from my bread roll, but I realised, with a sinking feeling, they were getting closer every day.
One evening, gloomed by the fact that it was only two days until I went home, I took the latest Sydney Sheldon down to the bar and proceeded to launch an all-out assault on the hotel vodka stocks. After an hour or so, the novel was abandoned as the Smirnoff struck up a conversation with the other sad characters sitting alone at the bar. Sometimes my dad’s genes kicked in with a vengeance.
By midnight, I was leading a rousing chorus of ‘Flower of Scotland’, shouting the words before each line so that the multitude of nationalities could join in. I sounded like a Scottish Television Hogmanay broadcast. I moved on to
