on to the Underground, another change and finally I make it to Dean Street, Soho, having hoofed it down Oxford Street as if someone gave a damn about what time I clocked in.
And then the key won’t turn in the lock.
‘Brilliant, just bloody brilliant.’ I ease the key out, wipe it on my skirt and try again. Jiggle. Plead. Swear under my breath. ‘You will not defeat me, you stupid bit of useless metal.’
I’m coming apart at this last hitch. My head is pounding, hands trembling, tears close. Don’t do this to me, world.
I then notice that the Yale lock looks new – a shiny brass face, unscratched, innocent. Right. OK. Reason this through. I’ve been on holiday for a week so it’s possible my boss has had cause to change the locks in my absence – a mugging, a drunken oh-shit-key-went-down-the-drain incident, or maybe he’s finally listened to my doubts about the cleaner? I indulge in a grunt of vindication. I’ve been complaining that she barely wipes the surfaces and seems to think a squirt of air freshener into the scummy bathroom will convince me she’s doing the job. But if he has given her the boot, and changed the locks to pre-empt revenge attacks, why didn’t he at least text me to let me know?
I thump on the door. ‘Jacob, are you in there? It’s me, Jessica?’ I shout my name with a rising inflexion. Remember me? You know, the research assistant who’s been working alongside you for three months.
No response.
Defeated, I sit down on the top step and review my options. This comes as a particularly fat fly buzzing on top of the pile of crap that is my morning so far. This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper.
OK, some would say I’m being overdramatic. So what do I do now?
I try ringing Jacob but the number is unobtainable. No surprise there, as he usually keeps it switched off, claiming he doesn’t like the idea that his position can be triangulated from every phone mast. I’d once made a lame joke about drone strikes but he just looked at me in that way of his. Some men, actually most men, seem to find me the equivalent of the tissue left in a pocket during the wash. My jokes and ill-thought-through comments are fluff to be brushed away with a show of mild irritation. I then try ringing the office phone, just in case. It’s only a few metres from me on the other side of blue door and if he is in he’ll have to pick it up. I should be able to hear it ringing, but there’s only silence. I lift my mobile to my ear and hear the distressed beep of another unobtainable line.
OK, think this through. I don’t wait for a solution to come to me; I always act. This is my place of work, right? Starting to doubt myself – and that’s very easy to do as doubt is my factory setting – I go back down the stairs and stare at the number 5a on the front door.
Yes, it is the right one, with the busted entrance that yields to a firm push. Our narrow door is sandwiched between the empty shop that was briefly a nail bar and the ex-tapas restaurant that rapidly went bankrupt in the way of overambitious eateries. Both premises are gathering post and circulars on the doormats like letters from an obsessed lover who really just won’t give up. They’re gone. Get over it.
I go back upstairs and carry on an extra flight. I know there is a flat up here as I have heard the sound of feet and occasionally bursts of loud music as I did my internet searches in the office below. I’d never seen the inhabitants so my mind has naturally run riot. We keep very different hours and I’ve sometimes speculated as to whether it is home to one of the prostitutes for which the area is famed. Don’t take any notice of me though. Little do I know about the contemporary sex industry, not having met a sex worker recently – at least, I’m not aware that I have. I probably have. I mean, do Michael’s students count? Some are said to be sleeping their way through college to avoid taking on crippling debt. Well done, government, prostituting the best and brightest.
I realise immediately that I’ve got my picture all wrong when I see the messenger bike blocking the stairwell – unless this is a form of sexual delivery about which I am ignorant. That is entirely possible as my recent experience has been vanilla all the way – and what came before that I really don’t want to remember. I shuffle past, reminded of my less-than-sylphlike proportions as my hip takes a jab from a brake and my butt squashes against the wall. I knock on the door.
After a few seconds, I hear someone approaching. The door opens and a lanky guy wearing an entirely too-small towel, is staring down at me.
‘So?’
What kind of greeting is that? ‘Um, hi, I work downstairs but I can’t get into my office. I don’t suppose you know if there was a locksmith here during the week?’ Stupid question. Why would he know that? What am I even doing here? I try a friendly smile even though my head is still throbbing. I probably look demented.
He rattles off a reply in a foreign language, Polish I think. I can get the ‘nie mowie po angielsku’ (I don’t speak English) thanks to a Polish barista who had once taught me a few words and given me a free coffee for my attempts. It dawns on me that the man hadn’t said ‘so?’ at all, but ‘co?’ – Polish for ‘what’, which sounds almost the same.
‘No English?’ I find myself saying, as if this is in any way relevant to my situation. In post-Brexit Britain I go for an over-friendly, I’m-not-one-of-the-haters, commiserating tone.
‘Leetle,’ he says. As little as his distracting towel.
‘Sorry, never mind.’ I back away before the towel gives up its perilous grip on his hips.
‘You have problem?’ he asks.
Not as long as you keep a hold, mate, I want to quip, but bite my tongue. This month’s goal, agreed with Charles, my therapist, is not to blurt out inappropriate comments or jokes. I failed spectacularly last week but am trying the new-leaf approach. Anyway, here is someone actually showing an interest in helping. I feel so grateful to find a human who cares that I begin a pantomime of my predicament, complete with props: key, lock, downstairs, shake of head.
‘OK. Moment.’ He goes back into his flat and closes the door.
Hanging on to the promise in that ‘Moment’, I wait for him to emerge, which he duly does a minute later, wearing lycra that looks like it’s been slapped on with a roller brush. Soho’s answer to Chris Froome, he hefts the bike out of my way and follows me downstairs. I hold up my keys, and point to the lock. Then magically, he produces a brand-new Yale key on a ring with a fob in the shape of a little bicycle-wheel.
Thank God, some sanity is being restored to my morning. Jacob must have had the locks changed and had the idea of leaving the spare with the guy upstairs. He could’ve told me. My headache begins to ease.
My Polish white knight opens the door and stands back.
‘Thanks.’ I hold out my hand for the key, but he shakes his head.
‘I keep. For boss.’
I don’t really hear this explanation because the room I enter is just not right. Ten days ago, my messy desk with laptop sat in front of the sash window, a grey filing cabinet in the corner, a pinboard of all the cases we were working on next to that. Jacob’s desk had taken up the majority of the room across from me, a chair for clients and a coffee table pushed against the wall. The decor had been gunmetal
