He looks around, and I look around, and he smiles weakly at me, unimpressed. I thought he might be different from the rest, given his efforts this morning, which makes me feel stupid. It was a rare moment of heroism that you rarely witness these days, but it doesn’t really say anything about him. I never feel that I am meeting anybody new. We are all trying to be the same person, the same ideal, and the result is that we blend into a big ugly gloop of unexceptionality. The same hair, the same clothes, the same trainers, the same opinions, the same jokes, the same lives. Why would I expect this man to be any different? I am not interesting to him, not blonde enough, not bubbly enough, or whatever his criteria, and that is all that matters in his head.
But then he juts out a hand, to be shaken. ‘Cagney, Cagney James.’
My eyes widen involuntarily. That’s not a name, it’s a 1950s detective show, complete with black-and-white opening credits, and old-fashioned sirens under the theme music, and bad edits and childish graphics.
I remember my manners and offer my hand to be shaken. ‘I’m Sunny. Sunny Weston. Just Sunny.’
I see his eyes widen too. He has trained his face into deadpan but this time his reaction was too quick to suppress. I wonder if he is ever caught so off guard that he smiles.
‘Your name is Sunny?’
‘Yes.’
‘Sunny?’
‘Yes …’
‘Like Perky, or Happy, or any of the other dwarfs?’ He looks at me with incredulity.
‘And who was Cagney?’ I ask. ‘The dwarf who liked to drink and sleep with hookers?’
We are still shaking hands, our fingers clenched in a mutual rage. Given the chance I believe we would break each other’s bones. Simultaneously we pull away, equally alarmed.
I wriggle my hand to cast him off me, and pray my cab will arrive and toot its horn and that will be that. I glance up at his face but he is staring at his fist. I won’t call it electricity. It was just … funny. Weird funny, not ha ha funny. Not good funny.
I step backwards when he speaks.
‘That was a stupid thing you did this morning, Smiley.’
‘I’m sorry, Caustic, I don’t understand.’
‘No surprise there. This morning, running after that bastard. You shouldn’t have done it. I was only a few feet behind you; you should have waited. You could have been hurt. Or can’t bad things happen in fairyland?’
‘I was hurt, as it happens, but my ego survived, getting the child back and all, and not losing a lung in the process.’
I stare at him, shocked at my own tone, shocked at his. I need to make this normal. I don’t know why I am behaving this way.
‘Anyway … he looked really scared, actually. I don’t think he quite knew what he was doing …’
‘And that justifies it, does it?’
He straightens his back. I cock my head. I feel angry, and I can’t explain why.
‘Of course not. But it’s not black and white, is it?’
‘Not black and white? Snatching a child is not black and white? Is it the colour of ice cream and butterflies, Sunny? Is it a magical adventure on a unicorn?’
‘No, but it’s not black like your lungs or white like your hair …’
‘Well, Miss …’
I stare at him expectantly until I realise he has forgotten my name, and is waiting for me to fill in the blank. ‘Weston,’ I say irritably.
‘Well, Miss Weston, what is it exactly? I’m dying for the insight.’
‘Look, Cagney,’ I enunciate his name with sarcasm, and instantly regret it, feeling ridiculous.
He looks at me with disdain.
‘I obviously didn’t mean that it was OK to do what he did.’
‘How else could you mean it?’
‘I meant that, although not making it right or justifying it in any way, there must be a reason why he did it.’
‘He is a sick bastard. That’s all the reason there is.’
‘Well, yes, he probably is sick, in some way. But he wasn’t just made that way. As a baby, he wasn’t born wanting to hurt people or … snatch children … or whatever.’
‘Of course he was! Some people are born sick.’
‘You don’t really believe that?’
‘Utterly. What do you believe, that he wasn’t breast-fed until he was eighteen and his daddy was a drunk, and it’s all his parents’ fault?’
A line of sweat trickles down the back of my neck. I hate him.
‘Is that your excuse, Mr James?’
‘I think, given who we are comparing me too, I turned out OK.’
‘Yes, ignorant and angry is very healthy.’
‘I might not be hugging this tree but I’m not hurting anybody.’
‘Maybe not hurting, but boring. I pity your wife.’
The skin around his eyes tightens and his jaw locks. My hands are shaking with rage.
‘Do I look stupid enough to be married?’ he fires back at me.
‘You look stupid enough to do most things.’
Two policemen walking into the station glance at us suspiciously as I raise my voice, and I smile at them as sweetly as I can. I wait for them to go through the swing doors, and turn to Cagney, half expecting him to be gone. But he is standing in exactly the same position, staring at me with what can only be contempt.
‘I wouldn’t be stupid enough to do you,’ he says flatly, and I flinch.
‘I, like most women, wouldn’t be stupid enough to let you try,’ I say, my voice as controlled as I can manage.
‘Well, women today are too busy burning their bras, and lifting weights,’ he motions with his eyes, just in case I didn’t realise he was talking about me, ‘to know a good man when they see one.’
‘Burning their bras? Are you still trying to pay in shillings? News flash: it’s the twenty-first century. If you see a good man do point him out to me because I’m not sure they still exist. I’ve missed them all so far!’
‘Maybe they saw you first.’
Cagney glares at me, and I glare back. If I wasn’t outside a police station I’d slap him.
‘Hello?’
We
