I See You(14)

‘I’m not sure I can take another no,’ she says quietly.

I sigh. ‘It’s a tough business, Katie. You’re going to get a lot of nos, I’m afraid.’

‘Thanks. Nice to know my own mother has faith in me.’ She tosses her hair as though she’d be flouncing off if we weren’t both walking in the same direction.

‘Don’t be like that, Katie. You know what I mean.’ I say hello to the dreadlocked busker standing by the entrance to Crystal Palace station and reach into my coat pocket for one of the coins I keep there. Her name’s Megan, and she’s only a little older than Katie. I know this, because I asked her one day, and she explained that her parents had thrown her out and that she spent her days sofa-surfing, and busking, and queuing up at the Norwood and Brixton food bank.

‘Cold today, isn’t it?’ I throw ten pence into her guitar case where it bounces on top of a handful of others, and she breaks off from her song to thank me, before seamlessly catching up with the lyrics on the next bar.

‘Ten pee isn’t going to get her far, Mum.’

The strains of Megan’s song die away as we walk into the station.

‘Ten pence in the morning; ten on my way home. That’s a pound a week.’ I shrug. ‘Fifty-odd quid a year.’

‘Well, if you put it like that, it’s very generous.’ Katie’s silent for a moment. ‘Why not just chuck in a quid every Friday, though? Or give her a bundle of notes at Christmas?’

We tap our Oysters and push through the barriers towards the Overground.

‘Because it doesn’t feel like I’m giving so much, this way,’ I tell Katie, even though that isn’t the reason. It isn’t the money that matters but the kindness. And this way I give a little kindness every day.

At Waterloo we fight our way on to the platform, and join the thick procession making its way on to the Northern line.

‘Honestly, Mum, I don’t know how you do this every day.’

‘You get used to it,’ I say, although you don’t so much get used to it as simply put up with it. Standing up on a cramped, malodorous train is part and parcel of working in London.

‘I hate it. It’s bad enough doing it on Wednesday and Saturday night, but to do it at rush hour? God, it would kill me.’

Katie waitresses at a restaurant near Leicester Square. She could find somewhere closer to home, but she likes being in what she calls the ‘heart’ of the city. What she means is that she thinks she’s more likely to meet a film producer or an agent hanging out around Covent Garden and Soho, than in Forest Hill. She’s probably right, although in the eighteen months she’s been there it hasn’t happened yet.

Today Katie isn’t going to the restaurant, though. Today she’s going to an audition, where the next in a long line of theatrical agencies will see her, and – she hopes – agree to take her on. I wish I believed in her as much as she wants me to, but I’m a realist. She’s beautiful, and talented, and she’s a great actress, but she’s a nineteen-year-old girl from Peckham comp, and the chances of her hitting the big time are about as much as me winning the lottery. And I don’t even play it.

‘Promise me that if this one doesn’t work out, you’ll at least consider the secretarial course I told you about.’

Katie looks at me scornfully.

‘As something to fall back on, that’s all.’

‘Thanks for the vote of confidence, Mum.’

Leicester Square station is heaving. We’re separated briefly as we approach the ticket barrier and when I find her again I squeeze her hand.

‘I’m just being practical, that’s all.’

She’s cross with me and I don’t blame her. Why did I have to pick that moment to bring up the secretarial course? I check my watch. ‘You’re not due there for another forty-five minutes. Let me buy you a coffee.’

‘I’d rather be on my own.’

I deserve that, I think, but she catches the hurt in my eyes.

‘To go over my audition piece, that’s all.’

‘Of course. Well, good luck, then. I mean it, Katie. I hope it goes brilliantly.’ I watch her walk away, wishing I could have just been happy for her; cheered her on, the way Simon did before he left for work.

‘It wouldn’t have hurt you to have been a bit more enthusiastic.’ Melissa slathers margarine on to slices of bread, stacking them in pairs, butter-side-in, ready for the lunchtime rush. In the glass-fronted cabinet are tubs of tuna mayonnaise, smoked salmon, grated cheese. The Covent Garden café is called Melissa’s Too. It’s larger than the Anerley Road place, with high seats facing the window, and five or six tables with metal chairs that stack in the corner each night so the cleaner can mop the floor.

‘Lie to her, you mean?’ It’s ten to nine and the café is empty, bar Nigel, whose long grey coat is streaked with grime, and who sends a waft of body odour into the air when he moves. He nurses a pot of tea perched on the high stools in the window, till Melissa shoos him out at ten each morning, telling him he’s bad for the lunch trade. Nigel used to sit on the pavement outside the café, a cap on the ground in front of him, until Melissa took pity on him. She charges him fifty pence, two pounds less than the blackboard price, and he certainly gets his money’s worth.