Read Online Charlotte Street by Danny Wallace - Free Book Online

his direction. He’d only ever been on one path. From university to his first job in Singapore, to meeting Amy his first week at the company and starting a family, to moving his way up the company with solemn predictability. It was like he’d been given all his five-year-plans at once and simply popped them all in the same Excel document, ready to gradually tick them all off one by one. I was happy for him, but frustrated, too: he was happy, but I had my own brand of middle-class disappointment. One where you know you can’t blame your life on anyone but yourself.
    ‘And … have you seen Sarah lately?’ asked Mum, daringly, with just the faintest hint of hope in her eyes.
    ‘Yes!’ I wanted to say. ‘Yes, I forgot to say! We sorted everything out! We met up and had a milkshake and it turned out the whole thing was just a misunderstanding and we’re fine!’
    I wanted to say that for her. I think I wanted to say that for me.
    ‘She’s engaged,’ I said, and I nodded, and under the table, my dad squeezed my mum’s hand, hard.
    I had work to do.
    These reviews. An 80s Best Of … (easy – name a few tracks, pretend we’re all so much cooler these days, make a lazy 80s reference or two). An American import by a folk band with beards (find a few quotes that sound like they know what they’re on about and re-word them). And a documentary that did well at Sundance about animals who can paint (and which I would actually have to watch).
    But this, of course, was why I’d left teaching. Or at least, it was what I’d left teaching to do; dashing off articles and being welcomed and celebrated by London’s literati: the new golden boy with potential and opinions to boot.
    I’d said my goodbyes and made my speech at the leaving do they threw for me at Chiquita’s on the high street. They gave me a miniature trophy, engraved with my name and ‘Most Likely To Succeed’ underneath, and I drank tequila and toasted seven happy years. And then Mrs Haman, head of humanities, had a dizzy spell and knocked over a potplant, and that felt like the right time to go. We’d been spotted leaving by Michael Shearing and his gang, hoods up, some of them on bikes, congregating around a can of lager someone had left near a bin.
    ‘Oi! Sir!’ he’d shouted. ‘You pissed?’
    ‘It’s not “sir” any more,’ I shouted back.
    ‘What is it then?’
    I struggled with a comeback.
    ‘Lord!’ I tried. He didn’t get the joke. If it wasn’t on YouTube, and didn’t have a man falling over, Michael Shearing never got the joke.
    ‘Lord?’ he said, and then one of his mates – Dave Harford, maybe? – muttered ‘
Gay
lord’, and they all laughed. I let them have that one. Because I was finally free of them all.
    Free. Free to sit here, in this room, enjoying my dream: a cup of milky coffee in a CodeMasters mug on a rickety table in a room above a videogame shop next door to a place that everyone thought was a brothel, but wasn’t, watching a film on a scuffed MacBook about animals that can paint.
    Who’s laughing now, Michael Shearing?
    Still, I know what you’re thinking. The money, right? The money makes it better? Well, no. The money’s appalling. I might as well take over Dave Harford’s paper round. It wouldcertainly be a firmer footing in the media. Certainly more likely to be welcomed and celebrated by London’s literati. But this was a start. Me and Sarah had always had big plans, and we’d saved accordingly and well. As things began to crumble, and though we’d deny it to each others’ faces, I think each of us had secretly had our eye on our half. Another good thing about living practically: hope fades, but at least savings get interest.
    So I had a decent bank account, I paid no rent, and I was building towards something bigger. Features writing, maybe, or travel. Some kind of speciality.
London Now
for now,
Vanity Fair
or
Conde Naste Traveller
or
GQ
for later. Gone would be the days I was offering opinions I