The Outrun Read Online Free PDF Page A

time with the bass. Although the sea was a hundred miles away, and some kids in the area had never seen it, there were seagulls hustling around. I once saw one carrying a segment of Terry’s Chocolate Orange.
    My bedroom, at the back of the house, overlooked the beer garden of one of the most notorious pubs in Hackney, which gained its fame by being open late at night after the clubs had closed, sheltering gangsters and alcoholics. Its reputation made it popular with the new waves of twenty-somethings who had moved into the area, into flats – ex-council, above shops – which, first, the Cockney families had left and now some of the Bengalis, too, looking for better things further east where London turns into Essex.
    That night the pub held its weekly karaoke, the full-hearted, badly tuned versions of ‘Mustang Sally’ and ‘My Way’ infesting my sleep. Some were doing it mockingly, some seriously, but they were all so drunk that the difference did not matter. The wails drifted up into my room and mixed with the laughter and arguments from the beer garden, which lacked any soil or plant life and offered only ashtrays and umbrellas advertising lager.
    The sky blended downwards from black to blue to orange. The neighbours’ fridge must have been broken: they were storing their tonic water and meat on the windowsill. The new offices across the road were fully lit, yet empty. A factory, with a chimney of forgotten purpose, now housed art students, turning out their bedroom lamps and closing their laptops – one hundred wireless networks password protected, one thousand humans in an acre holding their wallets close to their genitals.
    In the morning I could tell what time it was by the traffic noise. I could hear the call to prayer from the mosque. When my alarm clock rang for a few seconds I was rootless, without body or mind, but I didn’t panic in those moments before realisation.
    The residents of my rented flat kept changing and it was hard to remember who was living there and what jobs they had, if any. Lately, there seemed to be more people around in the daytime, and envelopes from Hackney Revenues & Benefits Service were pushed through the letterbox along with the unpaid bills. London is where you come to meet your match. People who were the coolest at their provincial disco or the cleverest in their school class are out-styled and outsmarted. Given a few titbits, like an internship or a good party weekend, they decide to make the move. We chose uncertainty and overcrowding with a possibility of success and excitement.
    One flatmate was a musician who worked in a bar and, on the rare times I bumped into him in the kitchen, shared morselsof good news, like an email from a potential manager, but it was hard to tell the fairy godmothers from the sharks. The goddess on the dance-floor in a Cleopatra wig and a bikini put on her glasses the next morning and sat in Reception at an insurance company, browsing the internet. A stripper ran a techno club on her night off. I was temping in the parking department of a borough council on the other side of the city, writing record reviews on documents hidden under my spreadsheets.
    The Afghan shopkeeper downstairs was the only person who had anywhere near an idea how much I drank. As evenings and months progressed, my trips grew more frequent into the shop where the light through the window was blocked out by fluorescent stars advertising special offers. Outside the door of the flat, the same man asked me for money, or a cigarette, or a cuddle, each day: ‘Love, love, spare us some change, love.’ The next day his eyes were swimming and he did not recognise me.
    Back in Orkney, my friend Helga had told me that there is a mysterious, vanishing island called Hether Blether to the west of the island of Rousay. Although some Orcadians claim to have seen it, no one has ever been there.
    The legend goes that a girl disappeared from Rousay and, after some time, was given up for dead.