"Where am I, exactly?" I asked the woman, after she'd given me my change.
The way I said it made it sound like a completely normal question. But the woman looked at me as if I were completely odd.
"You're in Sainsbury's, dear," she told me.
But after some further conversation I realized that I was not in Torquay and got some pretty good directions that led me straight to the library.
So now I'm in a car park that is indistinguishable from any other car park in any other town, and I watch as people unload buggies and small children, or pack away large, shiny carrier bags with the word SALE on them. Two women go past, both in those new mobility scooters that look a bit like bumper cars, and they seem to be arguing about something. The gray concrete is smeared with old fag butts, familiar take-away wrappers, and polystyrene coffee cups. I look beyond all of this, towards the thin line of bare-branched trees up a small hill separating this car park from the road above. The trees are the only things that stand out in the grayish-whitish smudge of official buildings and the sky. And then I see something in the trees: six or seven squirrels all moving at once; one in each tree, or so it seems, moving and jumping and rearranging themselves constantly, like pixels on a screen. Their bodies are silhouetted by the pale light of the sky behind them. It's winter, and I can't imagine what they find to eat in a place like this. Aren't squirrels supposed to hibernate? Do they have a god looking after them or does nobody pray for squirrels? I shiver. What if Burlem isn't in this place anymore; or what if I can't actually find out where it is? I imagine what it's like to live as a squirrel—or any animal—in a concrete, urban space, where everything costs money. What will I do if I can't find Burlem? I can't go home; I think it's fair to say that I have no home anymore.
I wonder if the book is still safe.
I wonder if the men have got to Adam yet.
And I feel a pulse like a fist, hitting me first between my legs and then somewhere in my stomach. Is it possible that I'll ever see him again?
I stop thinking and get of the car. There's a billboard layered with rained-on, peeling posters, most of which are advertising a pantomime starring someone from an Australian soap that I've never heard of. Above that there's a sign: NO OVERNIGHT SLEEPING. Shit. I never realized that you could be stopped for just parking your car somewhere and sleeping in it. I walk over to the ticket machine, the cold wind jabbing at my face as if I've stolen something from it. As I'd feared, it's extortionate to park here: about a pound an hour. I pay for half an hour and then use my fingernail to smudge the time on the ticket as I walk back over to my car. Then I prop the ticket in a hard-to-see place on the edge of the windscreen, so only the date is showing, before locking the car door and walking across the road and through a tinkling door into the café.
It smells of soup, plus something sour that I can't identify. It's almost full up, but I manage to get a seat in the corner by a display of greeting cards, jewellery, and Fairtrade muesli. There are various pictures on the walls depicting slim white women in Africa leading choirs of small, brightly clothed children; or helping equally brightly clothed women pull water up from a well. I realize this is a Christian café just as a late middle-aged woman in a yellow twinset comes to take my order. As I ask for the carrot and parsnip soup and a black coffee, I notice the leaflets that are scattered around, and the poster on the wall advertising the times of the service in the church—presumably the one next door. And I wonder: What kind of god is created and sustained by the hundreds of people who must pray here? Apollo Smintheus is the result of six people's prayers and he seems real enough. What does more prayer do? What sort of god does it make? And is this god—the one made by the people here—the same god created by the people in the church near Burlem's house? Is it the same god created by the people in the Faversham priory? What would a god like that look like? I suppose if I met him in the Troposphere, he'd look exactly as I'd want him to look—probably an old man with a white beard: the atheist's view of a Christian's view of God. And what does he do for these people? What must it be like to have millions of people telling you what to do? And I also wonder: What does he ask in return?
While I'm waiting for my soup, I study one of the leaflets. It talks vaguely about "joy." But I haven't seen anything joyful since I've been in this place. I haven't seen anything joyful since ... I can't actually remember when the last time was. And that's why I like reading Heidegger and Derrida and Baudrillard. In that world life isn't a matrix of good and bad; happy and sad; joy and failure to achieve joy. Failure and sadness are there to be examined, like a puzzle, and the puzzle is open to anyone. It doesn't matter how many people you've slept with, or whether or not you smoke, or whether or not you get something out of damaging your own body. You can have a go at the puzzle that assumes imperfection and never asks you for anything.
I look down at my wrists—the pinkish, silvery marks—and then I glance around the café. Most of the other people here are middle-aged and dressed in respectably unstylish catalog clothes. They scare me a little; not because of what they might do to me (these people never do anything: They're benign) but because of what I am in their thoughts. These aren't the middle-aged women I remember from the estate I grew up on—women who'd cackle and smoke and discuss the benefits of giving blow jobs without your false teeth. Neither are they like the social workers who'd come round every so often to check we weren't being sexually abused by these women's husbands (it was more usually the sons). No. These are of the same species as the women I remember from the bakery and the corner shop: the ones who don't bother to stop talking about your crazy mother when you walk in because they think you're too stupid to understand. They're the school secretaries who could have simply told me I needed to wash my clothes more often, rather than talking about it behind my back and, eventually, reporting me to the head teacher. They're the kind of women who would never wear flattering clothes—or anything black—because looking attractive equals sex. There's only one other young person in the café: a blond guy with shabby clothes who looks like the sort of RE teacher who'd spend a long time talking about world religions and not so long on Christianity. He looks at me for a moment and I see a familiar desire in his eyes. It's not romantic desire: It's for sex, raw sex, and it's because I look like I'd be up for it. Compared to everyone else in here I look like a whore. But, of course, that's the point of these women. By being what they are, they make you a bad person by comparison, even if all you're doing is wearing lipstick. I try to give him a look back that says "Not today, thanks," and then I pick up the leaflet and pretend to read it again.
The woman with the yellow twinset comes with my soup.
"Six thirty is the next one," she says to me, in a crisp voice.
"Sorry?"
"The next service is at 6:30."
I don't want to appear rude, so I just say, "OK. Thanks."
"Are you local?" she says.
"No. Not really."
I don't mention that I could easily become locaclass="underline" a local bum with nowhere to go—except, I'd guess, the library and the church.
"Oh."
"I'm just passing through," I say.
But respectable people don't have hair like mine, and they don't pass through anywhere. Passing through is the kind of thing men do—truckers and cowboys—and we all know what happens to women who act like men. The woman walks off, making a tutting noise.
When I've finished my soup I look around in my bag for a notebook, so I can write a list of things I'm intending to look up in the library. I take out the tobacco as well. Obviously I can't smoke in here, but I'll roll one to have while I'm crossing the road. I've rolled my cigarette and put it to one side on the table when the woman comes back to collect my bowl. I drain the last of the coffee and offer her the cup, too.