The Clock

She wants to do this tonight, obviously. It's just that, right now, she has so much on. The course, the extra stuff at work, Christmas only a few weeks off. She looks up at the fake antique clock hanging over the pavement, self-conscious civic reminder of life and death and commerce, of years passing, of Nothing. Ever. Changes. She smiles, gazes down the steep, cobbled street, feels her senses blur and begins to hear, faintly and deep, deep within, the clatter of cartwheels, the harsh winter-breath of a horse, the urging of a coachman’s whip. Fog and fear and thrills, candlelight and sex and shadows. So real. A world when things were right.

She's pulled abruptly back to the present, flattened for a second by a jab of loss, as a group of schoolkids walk by, shouting, pushing, scuffling. It's getting dark, getting cold, and she takes a few steps up, a few steps down, wonders if he’ll smell the cider on her breath when he arrives. If he arrives. A plane grazes overhead, soft, burring, separate. There are fewer and fewer people about. It was the bank up here he meant, wasn’t it? A taxi cruises, slowly, past, a spiky-haired bloke driving, glancing at her in the way they always do.

Yeah- she wants him to come tonight, of course she does, not just for . . . that, but she needs a laugh, as Becky said, needs something to get herself out of herself, needs something other than the desk and the phone and the smiling at clients and the essays and the lectures and the pizzas in front of Friends. And he's really nice, Becky said - quite funny, dresses smartly, quiet, clever but not a snob. And no, he wouldn’t mind her accent, wouldn’t try and imitate it, wouldn’t repeat things she’d said. Course not.

Strange town. The school opposite is imposing, clearly pleased with itself, grey/brown-bricked, old. ‘1678 A.D’. Odd place for a school, she thinks, in a high street. Hers had been all ‘60’s rectangles and plastics and whites and joyless function, ramshackle prefab sheds in the playground, the whole sprawling mess dumped carelessly in the middle of an estate of uniform, square houses. A middle-aged couple, the man extraordinarily tall, six-seven, six-eight, the woman elegant, surefooted, erect, walk up the hill towards her. They're talking in German or Dutch or something, intent, enclosed, arms round each other. As they pass, the man smiles at something the woman's said and they both giggle. She feels, suddenly, like she's about to cry. The old images and feelings and sounds are there, she knows, waiting, ready. She's thinking about it all the time these days. Anything could trigger it all- something on telly, something she's overheard, someone who looked like one of them, a song on the radio, a picture in her mind of the baby. Anything. Which is why she needs to meet someone, have a few drinks, take it from there.

Her mobile goes off. She jumps, unzips her handbag. The phone's stopped ringing. It says ‘Blocked’ on the screen, but it must have been him. He hasn’t given her his number, said his phone never seemed to work anyway, he’d definitely be there, though, don’t worry.

A damp touch of her cheek. Sleet. She sees the taxi drive past again- same one, same driver, looking more intently at her this time, smiling. She shivers- it's getting colder- and she wishes she’d worn the other jacket. It's really dark now- over there, past the cathedral, she can see the lights of the University flats where she’d first met this one. Some nurse's’s party: red wine, reggae and three blokes to every girl. It was the first party she’d been to since she came here, the first time she’d really ever drunk red wine- Bull’s Blood- and the first time she’d felt really, really alone. She’d left early, walked home alone, past block after ‘70’s block, past a black guy dancing to some Oasis song that was booming from an old ghetto-blaster, past a man wearing a top hat and sideburns, past a girl with hair like Siouxsie who told her she loved her, past a huddle of arguing students. She’d collapsed into her room, too apart from everything to cry. And too out of it to remember, until a couple of days later, that she’d agreed to meet him tonight.

He's half-an-hour late, now, and she decides she’ll give him five more minutes before heading off. A police car drives past, slowly, WPC in the passenger seat staring ahead, expressionless, like all coppers. Like everyone in this place. She waits another minute or so, turns down the hill and crosses the road. She hears a car behind her, feels it pull past her, watches it stop. A taxi. The same taxi. The driver's leaning over the passenger-seat, winding the window down.

‘Excuse me, love,’ he said, ‘Do you know where the Odeon is?’

She ignores him, walks faster, her heart beating a little quicker. A few shops down is the chippy. She goes inside. A counter, a chair with yesterday’s Mirror on it, a clock with Chinese (Japanese?) characters, a calendar from a computer firm. A big blonde woman in her forties:

‘What do you want, darling?’

‘Just chips, please,’ she says, noticing the woman shift her gaze beyond her. She turns, sees the taxi-driver. Blue eyes, black jacket, earring.

‘Alright?’ he says.

She turns back round to face the blonde. ‘How come a taxi-driver doesn’t know where the Odeon is?’ she hears herself asking the back of the woman’s head as it disappears through a door into the kitchen.

‘Worth a try, though, isn’t it?’ he says, smiling, staring into her as she turns again towards him. Definitely Nottingham, she thinks.

‘What you doing down here?’ she says.

‘Same as you, getting by. You like it here?’

‘Hate it,’ she says, ‘full of Southerners and weird taxi drivers who follow innocent young girls.’

He smiles. His eyes are blank, give nothing, seem to see nothing. Her mobile rings. She opens her bag, again, hands trembling, pressing and pressing buttons until it stops. The knife is still there, at the bottom of the bag, cleaned again and again this morning and wrapped in the tea-towel she’d bought in Robert Dyas.

‘Fancy a drink?’ she says.