Charlotte Street Read Online Free PDF Page A

dreams had said yes, the happiest picture he’d ever taken, and underneath it, my name and a picture of me with two thumbs up, next to the words:
HI! I GARY, STUPID MAN’D FACE WHO LIKE A BAD n BORING PIZZA
…
WILL YOU MARRY AND WE CAN ATE PIZZA BUT BAD ONE!!????
    Christ.
    Stupid Man’d Face?
    I shuddered, and took a sip of tea. Dev’s eyes lit up. Not because I was sipping tea – he’s seen me do that before and not even commented – but because the waitress was here. The same waitress he tries to impress
every
time we’re here. Because yes – as we’ve established – there’s
always
a girl.
    ‘
Dobranoc!
’ he shouted, suddenly. ‘Jak
si masz?
’
    The waitress gave him a half-smile and said something back, quietly, and waited for an answer, but Dev didn’t have one, so just stared at her.
    Unlikely as it seems, she wandered off again.
    ‘This is good,’ I said. ‘Eventually, you’ll build up to an actual exchange.’
    ‘Shouldn’t have worn this T-shirt,’ said Dev, kicking himself. ‘Should’ve worn the
Street Fighter
one.’
    He watched her walk away.
    ‘Whoops,’ I said.
    Here’s the thing.
    I’ve got absolutely nothing against Gary. He is a perfectly nice, perfectly ordinary man. And I can say that, having met him. An awkward and unexpected encounter at a mutual friend’s birthday, during which I’d behaved impeccably, even made a joke or two, but we could see in each other’s eyes we weren’t supposed to be talking; this wasn’t natural.
    If I was still a teacher, I guess I’d mark him like this:
    Appearance: Average
.
    Conversation: Average
.
    Overall: Gary is a very pleasant pupil not weighed down by ambition or thought. You will always know exactly where you are with him. And that is Stevenage
.
    You see? Nice guy. Perfectly nice, perfectly good.
    But that’s what annoyed me, I guess. This idea that, ‘He’s okay, he’s good enough, he’ll do’. There was no spark, no light. No stand-out trait. And as I stood there at that party, and looked at him, and at Sarah, over his shoulder, pretending she hadn’t noticed that we were talking and that this was a perfectly normal thing for twenty-first-century grown-ups to deal with, I thought: where’s the magic?
    The magic had been there when
we
met, Sarah.
    The bar neither of us had been to before. The walk down the South Bank under an almost-full moon. The old lady on the nightbus who asked how long we’d been married. The number you gave me on your doorstep, the call five minutes later from the phonebox at the end of your street, the cheese on toast and wine in your kitchen, the kiss, the next kiss, the promise we made that one day we’d track down that mad old woman and invite her to our wedding.
    Okay. Maybe not real magic. Maybe the moon could have been more full, and we could have found something other than cheese on toast, and maybe our teeth shouldn’t have clashed the second time we kissed, but magic enough for me, Sarah. And I thought magic enough for you. That’s a real start to a relationship. A story. What have you and Gary got?
    You met at a company away day. You were in the same teambuilding exercise. You got drunk in a Hilton near a motorway. Two months later, due to corporate restructuring, Gary was relocated from Stevenage. You met at seven, you were both on time, and you went to an All Bar One and then a Pizza Express. The next day, Gary helped you get a better deal on a second-hand Golf. Now you’re engaged.
    Well, good God, Sarah, I hope you sold the film rights.
    But no. That’s all fine. And yes. I’m being an idiot.
    But I wanted the beginning to be strong enough to get us to the end, Sarah, and you should have wanted that too. Neither of us should have to settle for a Margherita.
    And so, to work.
    London Now
is the freesheet I told you about earlier – a kind of
Metro
or
London Paper
, but this one packed to the brim with reviews of things you can do NOW! or TONIGHT! or TOMORROW! It’s aimed at