(Untitled)

Sitting down beside me, the young man began with:

 “Your name is - but, no, I’ll keep that till later. I always say it too soon. You are 23. You were born on a Thursday in, um, September - between 1 and 2 in the afternoon. Your father says he was at home eating a steak-and-kidney pie; your mother contradicts him, saying it was chicken-and-mushroom.”

The train I had been meaning to take pulled into and out of Earls Court.

 “That makes you - September - a Virgo: ambitious but realistic, calculating but tender. I’ll work up to your exact birthdate. The 10th? I’m not sure. I have a bit of a blindspot for dates. Colours, I’m good at. And smells. At the moment you work in something to do with Information Technology, which I’m pretty sure is VoiceMail.”

 When he spoke, his eyes were closed. He had blonde ringlets.

“Yes, it’s VoiceMail. Every day, for lunch, you have a pack of Walker’s crisps which you buy from the newspaper stall at the station, even though they cost 5p more there than at Sainsbury’s - which is where you usually stop. Your favourite flavour is ... don’t tell me, Smokey Bacon - though by the end of the week you’ll often have Prawn Cocktail instead.”

Another train drew in and out. I didn’t know why I wasn’t getting on it.

“It’s only when you get to the station on Monday morning - somewhere in South London - Wimbledon? - that you see the newspaper stall - Southfields! - and you remember that you always have crisps for lunch. The stall-holder is tall, black. He calls you darling, especially when you buy The Monday Guardian - which you get for the jobs section. You want to work in the media, if only in ‘a secretarial capacity’.”

By now, I was late for work and ignoring the trains. There was absolutely no sense of danger.

“You’ve applied for about 20 such jobs, but have only succeeded in getting one interview. It was at a literary agents’ near that cinema in Chelsea - what’s it called? - God, I’m terrible with names. Anyway, the agent’s name was Nick - no, Mick - and she wanted a secretary. You got along very well at the interview and she offered you the job. Unfortunately, she smoked 50-a-day and you couldn’t breathe in that little office, so you said no. Where you work now is a non-smoking environment. You have a desk that’s nowhere near a window and a computer that isn’t as good as the one you’d like. There’s a picture of Marlon Brando pinned up on the partition. (Marlon Brando in The Wild One, which is probably his best film.) Most of the time are involved with admin and low-level client services, though occasionally you get to make a presentation. You don’t like being called a secretary. The company is medium-sized - about 100 people. There’s a girl sits at the next desk, Madeleine, but everyone calls her Maddy - last week she was in Soho, out on a Friday night pissup, when she saw this gorgeous guy standing beside a blue Mercedes. She doesn’t know how it happened, but they ended up snogging and she spent the weekend at his flat. When you get in to work today, if you go, Maddy’ll tell you all about how great it was. What she won’t tell you, because she doesn’t know, is that she has contracted the HIV virus and that she will die of a combination of AIDS-related illnesses in approximately 11 years time. Until then, she will keep her infection a secret. The guy she got off with, Charles, will kill himself in a couple of months time by taking some pills. I can give you the prescription if you want. I’m sorry - I didn’t mean to make you cry - I don’t really have that much control over what I say. I shouldn’t’ve told you that about Maddy and Charles. Charles will leave behind a suicide note containing the names and telephone numbers of 13 young women. Only 12 of these numbers will work. The 13th number is for an estate agents’ office above a nightclub in Balham called Skimpy’s or Slinky’s which burns to the ground in about 36 hours time. A cleaning lady dies, but no one else. Her son owns a pizza restaurant and her daughter is allergic to anchovies. Sorry. Maddy takes three sugars in her coffee, but is trying really hard to lose weight. She collects Pierrots, but would be really embarrassed if anyone found out. After the Christmas party last year, she went home with Jim - I mean, your boss - Mr Sanders. His wife had just left him, hours before, taking the kids and the Christmas tree. Mr Sanders bought the Christmas tree from a man at a roadside stall. The man at the roadside selling Christmas trees had raped 6 women in less than 2 years. He has yet to be caught. I just know these things. Mr Sanders has a birthmark on his back shaped exactly like a koala bear. In the early 70s he was in an R&B band called The Whammie-Bars. They put a single out on a subsidiary of WEA, ‘I Don’t Want to Know If You Don’t Want to Tell Me (About It)’. It got to number 73 in the charts. You were born on the 11th of September 1972. The record at number 73 in the charts was ‘I Don’t Want to Know If You Don’t Want to Tell Me (About It)’ by The Whammie-Bars. Jim plays a tape of that record every day when he gets home from work. He really misses his wife and kids. That’s why he’s such a bastard to you and Maddy. When you were a kid, you were very frightened by the turkeys in the farm next door. You grew up in a small village, near the coast, in Cornwall. You once saw the ghost of a blind woman carrying a lantern. The ghost actually died in 1534 of the bubonic plague. Her name was Ellen Makepiece. She carries the lantern because she is looking for her eyes. At the age of 10, you moved to Guildford. Your father was a successful stockbroker and your mother worked for Marks & Spencers. They divorced on the day of the 1983 general election. Amicably, they said. But you heard what they screamed at eachother that time in the kitchen. You stayed with your mother in the house in Guildford and saw your father at weekends. He took you to the zoo and to Rugby matches until you told him, ‘Dad, I’m a girl.’ Then he took you shopping. You were a big fan of Culture Club and once saw Boy George getting out of one of the lifts in Harrods. You followed him out of the shop and down the street without ever daring to speak to him. He was very tall. You were thinking of Boy George when you had your first orgasm - which made you were a bit worried you were a lesbian. (You aren’t, though you once snogged a girl called Sarah.) You were lying on the floor in the bathroom in Guildford when you had your first orgasm. The mirror steamed up with the bath you were running. The carpet was green. Between the ages of 13 and 17, you went steady with Mark, who you still see sometimes. He works in the City now. ‘A professional wanker,’ as he says. When you split up for the last time, on that wet park bench, you went to the Chemists and bought 2 large bottles of extra-strength headache pills. The Chemist wouldn’t sell them to you at first, but then you told him you were moving to the Arab Emirates and wouldn’t be able to get them out there. You had very bad periods, you said - which shut him up. You kept the pill bottles at the back of your knicker-drawer. Your mother found them and confronted you that evening. ‘How could you be so selfish?’ she said. You told her to stop spying on you. You told her to ‘get a life’. A year later, you moved out - you moved in with Sarah. You got your current job two years ago. You didn’t used to believe in God, but you’ve started to think that it must all mean something. You buy Elle and read it on the toilet, picking your nose and sticking bogeys on the faces of the thinnest models. When you look in the bathroom mirror, you wrinkle up your nose and stick out your tongue. Seven months ago, you had a one-night-stand with someone called Richard who you met in The Pitcher and Piano, Covent Garden. He was nice and the sex was good but he didn’t seem that interested and you didn’t swop phone numbers. You could locate his flat again, though, if you tried - near South Ken tube - but you don’t think he’d like that. You worry about growing older. Your breasts sliding, your forehead getting lines across it, your hair losing its shine and becoming brittle. You worry all the time. Every Wednesday evening you go swimming. But, Mary - your name is Mary - I’ve known it all along but I had to save it up - Mary, what I’m here to tell you in all this is that I know: I know you. I know you now and I’ve known you your whole life. When you were in the womb, I tickled your toes. When you were a baby, I chose your dreams. Through your whole life, I’ve helped out when I could. Everything you have done, I saw; everything you’ve thought, I experienced.”

There was a train in the station now. He stood up.

“Mary, listen to me: you are a totally loveable human being - from start to finish. And - er - I, I just thought someone ought to tell you.”

Before I could stop him, he jumped through the closing doors of the train.

“Bye,” he said, waving. I took the day off work.