Read Charlotte Street for Free Online Page B

margherita seemed fitting.
    ‘I’ll have an Abrizzi’s.’
    The waiter – whose name I then noticed was Herman, so I don’t think he’s got much right to laugh at others – wandered off with my menu, and I sipped at my drink. I was on a table for two, and I was facing the window, watching the evening crowd leaving work, hailing taxis, heading for the pub. Meeting friends, meeting partners, having fun.
    I snapped a breadstick in two.
    But hey. This wasn’t so bad. Perhaps I looked mysterious to the people around me: this lone, dangerous man staring out on to Charlotte Street. Perhaps I looked like a trained killer, and everyone was craning their necks to see what a trained killer would order, and then be disappointed when it was a margherita and some Appletizer.
    And then something remarkable happened.
    Something that made me put my breadsticks down and sit right up. And then get right up. And then leave my margherita far behind, before it had even arrived.
    I saw her.

THREE
Or ‘The Woman Comes and Goes’
    ‘So what happened?’ said Dev, excited. ‘To the pizza, I mean?’
    He took a slug of his
Polo-Cockta
and did a little burp.
    ‘Are you serious?’
    ‘Did you just leave it? Had you paid?’
    ‘I don’t know what happened to the pizza. I presume they brought it out and then took it away again. Maybe they weaved it into the curtains. That’s not really the thrust of this story.’
    ‘I wonder if someone else took it? That’d be great, if every time you went to a restaurant you could just pilfer other people’s pizzas. Mind you, I suppose you
were
getting it free, so—’
    ‘Dev … the girl. The girl, Dev.’
    ‘Yes. Sorry. Go on. The girl.’
    Because
that’s
the point. The girl.
    She’d come out of nowhere.
    One moment I’d been staring at my own reflection in the window, wondering if I could pass for a trained assassin, and the next, there was a small movement somewhere in the dark. As small as a flinch a mile away, but enough to shift my focus on what lay outside.
    She was walking out of Snappy Snaps – same blue coat, different shoes, I think – and she was looking around.
    For what? For me?
    Of course not. But for something.
    I stood up, almost involuntarily, hoping to catch her eye, all lit up in an Italian, maybe exchange a wave, but she couldn’t see me, and even if she did, she wouldn’t remember me. How odd it would be if she did.
    ‘Hi, I’m the fella who—’
    ‘You held some bags for me once.’
    ‘Yes!’
    ‘Okay, bye!’
    And then, with a jolt, I remembered.
    ‘My jacket, can I get my jacket?’ I asked a waitress.
    ‘You’re finished?’
    ‘No, I just need something – I need my jacket.’
    She pointed me towards the concierge desk, but the lady there was dealing with someone else, and I tried to make her see me, but she wouldn’t look round. I grabbed someone else, a man with a tray.
    ‘Hi, could I get my jacket?’
    But he just smiled and said hello, and carried on walking.
    I looked out the window. She was still there, still looking about.
    Should I run out? Should I say, ‘Hi, you don’t know me, except you kind of do, but wait there for a second and I’ll bring you something’?
    ‘Yes, sir, how can I help you?’
    At last. It had only been a matter of seconds, but
at last
.
    ‘I need my jacket, please! I’m on table … I don’t know what table, that one there with the breadstick and the Appletizer.’
    She glanced round and for a second I lost the girl, but there she was, slightly further up the street, still looking around. I could
do
this.
    ‘Table 9. Mr Priestley?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Jason Priestley!’ she laughed. ‘A celebrity!’
    ‘Yes, I know.
Please
, can I have my jacket?’
    I’d lost sight of her now, but she couldn’t be far away, she’d be on the corner of Goodge Street at worst, but now Herman was taking his time fishing my jacket out of the cloakroom, and I started clicking my fingers and saying ‘Come on’ a lot, which