‘Oh yeah, the claustrophobia. How do you even catch that?’ He made it sound like syphilis or something, the result of promiscuity.
‘Could be a post-traumatic thing, could be inherited. The therapist I saw told me it’s people with a keen need to defend their personal space who are more likely to develop it.’
He rolled his shoulders, gestured to the generous seating and wide aisles. ‘Not sure there’s gonna be any problem with that here.’
We were tourists that first day, Kit and I. Naming the neighbourhoods and buildings we’d only ever seen before from land, willingly disorientated by the curves in the river you forget exist when you’re travelling by road or underground; ticking off the bridges, one by one.
‘Did you ever go on the Millennium Bridge when it was still the Wobbly Bridge?’ I asked him, before remembering he would have been a kid back then. The raw, unsophisticated London I remembered from my twenties meant nothing to a man who’d spent his with on-board Wi-Fi. I’d met them by the truckload in my old line of work, grown-up kids who had no experience of self-sacrifice, of paying your dues, and who, understandably, viewed me as an old fart. ‘God, I sound like I’m your father, droning on about the old days.’
‘You sound nothing like him,’ Kit said, darkly. ‘He’s a deadbeat loser.’
‘Really? In what way?’
‘Oh, loads of ways. Like, when my mum died, he sold the house and spent the whole lot at the bookies. We had to move in with my gran.’
‘Wow. I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t be. I have nothing to do with him now. Melia hardly sees her parents either, we always joke we’re orphans.’
Rather a bleak joke, I thought.
‘Yours still alive?’ he asked.
‘My dad is. We get on pretty well. He’s closer with my sister, Debs, they live in the same town and she’s supplied the grandkids, which suits me fine. And Clare’s folks are great. We just saw them over Christmas – we always spend it at their place in Edinburgh.’
‘Lucky for some. Just move back a bit, old man, will you?’ He used his arm to ease me back a fraction. ‘You’re messing with my view of St Paul’s.’
‘You got it, son.’
Was there something paternal there? Even a trace of the vicarious? Or was it straightforward rivalry, right from the get-go?
God knows. Back then, I was just elated to not be battling compressive asphyxia on the commuter train.
*
At my place of work, Kit would have been the old-timer. Though the staff used Waterloo Station daily, not one of them knew what I was talking about when I quoted ‘Waterloo Sunset’. ‘Terry and Julie, Friday night? You don’t know the Kinks? Tell me you’ve heard of the Beatles, at least?’
(They’d heard of the Beatles.)
My manager, Regan, was twenty-four and from the Midlands. She was an exponent of that weird contouring young women do to their faces, like stage makeup, so I can’t say in all honesty what she looked like, other than she was chestnut-haired, brown-eyed, and stocky of build. A resident of the Smoke for not quite eighteen months, she had an obsession – in the mornings, at least, fresh from a browse of the news – with ‘lawless’ London’s murder count: the recent stabbing of a teenage pizza delivery driver had occupied her for days. Thankfully, she considered our stretch of Belvedere Road, SE1, civilized, even cool, what with the proliferation of hipsters among the tourists and commuters, the local students and residents of the sleek new apartment blocks. The café occupied the ground floor of a neglected building of the same vintage as Prospect Square, with a large window at the front made of nine panes (once, overnight, someone sprayed a game of noughts and crosses on the glass. The noughts won). The decorating budget must have been about a fiver, bits of old mirror and objects made of shell that you’d find in skips, and cushions everywhere – that was the comfort element of the zone (in all my months of service, I’d never known them to have been cleaned). People came for our artisanal coffee, but we also served pastries and ‘hand cut’ a limited menu of sandwiches. Regan Instagrammed latte art in her down time.
I don’t mean to sneer. My point is just that we weren’t surgeons. Indeed, our utensils had IKEA stamped on them and I’d brought our only decent knife from home, the ones provided being too blunt for slicing the prosciutto we layered in our bestselling prosciutto and fig on sourdough. We handled hiccups like the contactless handset playing up or the Wi-Fi going down with aplomb, safe in the knowledge that none of it mattered and that at the end of our shift we would stroll away, free of all responsibility. Our only frictions involved battles over music and I seem to remember that Regan had prevailed with Billie Eilish when, mid-morning, Clare called.
‘How was the river commute?’
‘Amazing. A business-class experience. I feel like a new man.’
‘Oh, good. Just so long as you don’t feel like a new woman.’
‘Ha.’ Though my gaze was on Regan, consolidating two half-empty baskets of pastries into one full one, I thought unexpectedly of Melia on Saturday night, the way her legs emerged from her shorts on the sofa opposite, pale under sheer tights.
‘While I’m on the phone . . . I just had an email from Vicky Jenkinson.’
‘Vicky who?’
‘Your career coach.’ An edge of exasperation entered Clare’s voice. ‘She says you haven’t scheduled the sessions and she wanted to warn you that she books up over a month in advance.’
‘Okay, I’ll get on to it.’
‘Actually, I don’t mean to be controlling, but . . .’
In my experience, when people said they didn’t mean to be something, it was usually in the spirit of apology, not denial. ‘But?’
‘I’ve already put some dates in her diary for you, just provisionally. I hope that’s all right.’
‘Fine.’ It hardly mattered, since I already had my suspicions that the only career guaranteed to benefit from this transaction was Ms Jenkinson’s own.
As I hung up, I reached out a hand to stop a leaning tower of takeout cups from toppling to the floor.
*
On the trip home, everything slid by in reverse, as commutes have a habit of doing. I’d never seen my city before from the water at night and was charmed by the thousands of acid-blue bulbs along the South Bank and, inside the office buildings, the ceiling lights of open-plan floors, stark and beautiful as art installations.
Kit got on at Blackfriars, picking up a pair of Peronis from the bar before joining me with the air of someone whose day had only now properly begun. Having not done so in the morning, I was reading the emergency instructions and slid the laminated card back into the pocket in front as he thrust the beer at me.
‘You’re not reading the safety card,’ he mocked, taking his own from its pocket and reading aloud in a scoffing tone: ‘“Your crew are trained in emergency procedures . . .” I should bloody well hope so!’
‘It’s not funny,’ I said. ‘You obviously haven’t heard of the Marchioness disaster.’
He slurped his beer. ‘No. What was that?’
‘A collision. Back in eighty-nine. Happened the first year I lived here.’ And just like that, we resumed the morning’s dynamic. (Perhaps I could propose to my career coach that I become a tour guide? It would not, I suspected, fulfil Clare’s brief.) Having taken the edge off his post-work euphoria with my account of the worst loss of life on the Thames in living memory, I cast about for other historical pearls to impart. ‘Did you know the Thames Tunnel is somewhere below us now? It was the world’s first underwater tunnel. London’s the most tunnelled city in the world. Built on clay.’