(This story isn't true, but it's based on some real events. I just put them together.)
Tottenham Court Road on a busy Friday lunchtime is not the tine to start playing Frogger for real but the young woman in front of me obviously didn't realise that. I was moving before my conscious brain kicked into gear, my hand shooting out and yanking her back by her shoulder as the taxi swerved to avoid a bike courier weaving in and out of traffic. It happened in slow motion; the taxi screeching into the space she would have occupied a millisecond later, her foot flying up and banging into the bodywork, the taxi speeding off as I pulled her back onto the pavement, her shocked 'ow!' as the pain registered.
I sat her down on the bench at the bus stop outside Goodge Street Station and had a quick look at her foot. Bruised and not broken. I asked her if there was anyone she wanted to call. Distracted, she shook her head. I told her to sit still for a moment as I dispersed the concerned onlookers. I asked if she thought she needed an ambulance. She checked her watch, clearly late for something. And then she was gone. I hardly saw her go it happened so fast, disjointed, and a moment later she was swallowed in the crowd.
I know what you're thinking and you're wrong. To my knowledge I have never seen that woman again. I never got her phone number. We never went out to dinner. I never charmed her pants off then went down on one knee. We never walked down the aisle together. But in its own little way that brief snapshot of London life determined my future, because someone was watching.
Later that day I met up with the gang at a cellar bar near London Bridge. Don't ask me the name of the bar because I've forgotten it, but I haven't forgotten how we used to take advantage of the happy hour; Dominic chatting up the barmaids, Jo giggling at one of Richard's terrible jokes, Swanney piling up the drinks on our table, me being all too serious as I set the world to rights. Every Friday night for nearly two years.
Steve and Tara walked in after we were settled but we'd saved them seats. Tara was lovely, tousled auburn/ginger hair, long shapely legs, big (bloody huge) baby blue eyes. She was an eyeful, but also my mate's girlfriend, so that's where my appreciation stopped: Never crap on a mate. They sat down and Tara looked directly at me, amusement in her eyes.
"Well, Mr Samaritan, you didn't get her number, did you?" she asked me, enjoying my confusion.
"My office is on the first floor overlooking Goodge Street Station," she explained, "I happened to be looking out of the window and saw it all. I think it was rather unfair of her just to dash off like that."
So I had to explain what had happened to the rest of them, the lads groaning at my missed opportunity, Jo looking at me as if this really should be the beginning of something big; perhaps if I put a personal ad in Private Eye, hoping to track her down. I rolled my eyes, embarrassed. It was nothing really, I acted without thinking, and it's just what you do, isn't it?
"Well, I thought you were sweet," said Tara, leaning across the table and kissing my cheek. Aw, shucks!
"Careful, babes, he might explode," joked Steve, "he hasn't had a girlfriend in months. Or is it years?"
So the discussion turned to my tragic lack of a love life. Full disclosure; I am absolutely hopeless with women. I never pick up if there are signals, and if I try to talk to a woman I blow it. My romantic dalliances always took me by surprise, fuelled by beer, and I never knew what I had done to result in a girl lying in my arms. What's worse, I was a romantic, never able to distinguish between a one night stand and the possibility of a real relationship. I was intense and that scared a lot of girls once they had actually got me to realise that they were right there in front of me. Like I say; a tragic case.
"We'll have to set you up with someone," said Steve, and I knew he meant it.
"Fuck, no! Please! Not a blind date. She'll hate me or I'll hate her and we'll be stuck somewhere wishing we were somewhere else."
"Your loss, sunshine! Anyway, want to meet up in the week?"
"Sure, bell me and we'll sort it."
The conversation shifted away from me and the night got much, much drunker. We all went home (me alone, of course).
I never met up with Steve. On the following Monday evening he dropped dead from an undiagnosed heart defect as he was training with his local amateur football team.
The funeral was bad, but not the worst I've been to. Steve was young when he died, just twenty-three. We had a wake and sent him off, sad for his family and angry that life had been stolen from him. I barely spoke to Tara at the funeral. She'd only been seeing him for a couple of months, and I guess that she'd been having fun rather than tumbling into the arms of love's young dream.
Tara drifted away from the gang once Steve had died. She was Jo's friend, really, though I'd always got on with her, making her laugh when I wasn't being too serious for my own good. I occasionally heard about things she was up to, boyfriends she was seeing. I wished her well, and thought nothing more of it.
Years passed and the gang spread out a bit. We were pushing towards thirty and in a lot of ways we were different people from the young idiots who drank themselves almost insensible every Friday. Richard and Jo got married and settled down to grumbling but happy domesticity. Dominic kept chasing the ladies, a different one on his arm every time I saw him. Swanney? Well, sadly we lost touch with him. I'd love to know what he's doing these days, and whether he ever slowed down on the booze.
I stupidly got married as well. The whole thing was a case study in what I do wrong. Again, I have no idea how she ended up kissing me in the street outside the pub (alcohol strikes again!), and I have no idea why I overlooked our serious differences and decided to try and make it permanent. After three years she made the perfectly reasonable point that she didn't really love me any more, and that was that.
Of course, I called her every name under the sun. I had gone back to University to actually get some kind of education and she had felt the pressure of supporting us both financially (although I had sworn I would return the favour), but I was suddenly facing my final year, homeless and hopeless. I basically broke down.
There were moments when I was close to begging on the street, days when I didn't eat because I couldn't afford to. Mentally I was fucked up. I alienated a lot of my friends, and finally I found myself sitting in Victoria Park one Tuesday evening eating a load of pills and shuffling back into some bushes so that it was less likely that some kids would find my body. Fortunately I was so screwed up at that point that I'd got hold of the wrong kind of pills. After three hours I still hadn't fallen asleep and I called myself an ambulance. They took me to the Royal London Hospital and the staff there were brilliant, the doctor even holding my hair out of the way as I hurled up the charcoal and pills into the basin. I was there for three days and came out to a new world. I'd hit bottom and the only way was up.
