Read Charlotte Street for Free Online

something you can’t even be bothered to remember? And yet it’ll all be fine. Tomorrow night, there will be as many people in Sinbad as there are tonight. No one else even cares. Even I only cared for about half an hour, and then I watched
The Weakest Link
. But Mr Sinbad? Mr Sinbad will carry those words with him to the grave, feeling a little less of a chef on the way. And all thanks to a man who can’t even remember what it was he ordered.
    I shook the image away.
    ‘Where is it?’ I asked.
    Somewhere central, please. Not Harrow, or Uxbridge, or Mudchute. The last thing I want is an hour’s trip to Mudchute to eat on my own at a bad Chinese.
    ‘Charlotte Street,’ she said, brightly.
    Charlotte Street. I was just there. Just yesterday.
    Blue coat. Nice shoes. The smile.
    What if I’d talked to her last night?
Properly
talked to her?
    ‘It’s a six o’clock reservation.’
    ‘Six? You must know some people in some pretty high places.’
    She smirked. I thought back to our uni days. When did we change? Were we still pretending to be grown-ups, more jadedand jaundiced than we were? I’m not sure who we were trying to impress: the world, or each other.
    ‘Whenever you can file is good,’ she said. ‘Ask them what they recommend, order whatever it is, keep your receipt, don’t go mad, and pay for your own booze. Also, keep Thursday night free.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘Gallery opening.’
    ‘But I don’t know anything about art.’
    ‘I’m giving you work,’ she said. ‘I thought that’s what you wanted.’
    I spent the journey home looking at the albums and DVDs she’d given me for review, trying to work out how I could make fun of their titles.
    When I got back to the flat, I knew there would be emails. Ones I wouldn’t really want to read. Ones telling me what a fool I’d made of myself, how I should just grow up, and others full of concern for my mental health and saying things like,
Hey, pal, if you ever want to talk
.
    So I checked them anyway.
    Jase
, wrote Ben.
Do you want to meet up for a coffee? Might be good to chat
.
    Delete.
    Jason, it’s Anna
, wrote Sarah’s best friend, who’d been just waiting for this engagement to be announced so she could run around town organising horrible hen nights and buying pink fairy wings for everyone to wear as they crash and whoop and blunder their way into every Pitcher & Piano in Islington and beyond.
I just think you need to take a long hard look at yourself and maybe reign in the drinking because it’s not healthy all this drinking, Jason. A pint does not solve anything, and you also need
to let Sarah and Gareth live their lives because you had your chance and you need to be a grown-up about it
.
    There were another nine paragraphs below it.
    Delete.
    And then … uh oh.
    Gary.
    Jason. Listen, fella …
    I cringed. He was using ‘fella’. He was going to be matey. Worse, he was going to be
understanding
.
    Sarah doesn’t know I’m writing this, so best keep it on the downlow
.
    Of course she knows, Gary. Because you told her and she said it didn’t sound like a good idea, but you decided to be the bigger man about it, and she probably said, ‘God, that’s why I love you. It’s so amazing to be with an actual grown-up’, and then she stood there and read over your shoulder as you typed.
    But I saw your messages and I just want to say I know how you must be feeling. I wouldn’t want to lose Sarah either. And the way it happened means I guess there are unresolved issues. If you ever want to talk …
    And that’s where I had to stop reading.
    I fired back a quick,
Thanks, Gary, that’s really good of you
, and I wandered downstairs to get Dev to shut up shop and come for a pint.
    Because actually, Anna, sometimes a pint solves
everything
.
    There can be nothing worse than sitting in a restaurant on your own, people who don’t often sit in restaurants on their own will tell you. But I don’t mind it. I get to think.
    My afternoon with Dev Ranjit