Wash Your Hands,’ I said wearily; then I went downstairs.
I felt a little, well, yes, flushed from my exertions so I made a cup of tea. And the kettle was just boiling when I heard the loud clatter of the letter box. On the mat was a creamcoloured envelope, marked, To Our New Neighbour in a large, round hand. Inside was a floral card, inscribed, Welcome to Hope Street, from…Hey! I’ve got celebrity neighbours!…Beverley and Trevor McDonald.
I realise, of course, that my neighbour is very unlikely to be the real Trevor McDonald. Why would a famous broadcaster choose to live at the wrong end of Camberwell? No, if Trevor McDonald had chosen SE5 then he’d have one of those vast Georgian numbers on Camberwell Grove. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining about Hope Street, even if it is at the Peckham end. I had to move fast, it met my needs, and it has a kind of unpolished charm. And the mix of cars – Beemers and Volvos nose to bumper with clapped out Datsuns – suggests that the area is ‘coming up.’ But I guess my neighbour simply shares the same name, which must be a bit of a bore. Constantly being asked over the phone if he’s the Trevor McDonald, for example, or receiving the Trevor McDonald’s mail, or being introduced as ‘Trevor McDonald’ at parties and hearing everyone go ‘BONG!’ But on the other hand it’s probably useful for booking tables in restaurants, or getting tickets for Wimbledon.
This train of thought diverted me from my thermonuclear fury with Ed as I found my way to the bus stop this morning. And I was standing there feeling perfectly calm, mentally backing a steamroller over Mary-Claire Grey, when suddenly the man standing in front of me did this distressing thing. He took out a pack of Marlboro, peeled off the cellophane, screwed it up, then chucked it down. And as I watched the wrapper skittering about in the gutter I realised that I felt exactly like that. I feel as though I’ve been screwed up and discarded. Thrown away. You might find that weird, but after what’s happened to me I see rejection in everything.
So to keep negative thoughts at bay I started doing the crossword, as usual tackling the anagrams first. The skill with these is not in rearranging the letters – that’s easy – but in spotting them: you have to know the code. ‘Messy’ for example, usually indicates an anagram, as do ‘disorder’, and ‘disarray’. ‘Mixed up’ is a good anagram clue as well; as is ‘confused’ and also ‘upset’.
Doing anagrams makes me feel oddly happy: I often anagrammatise words in my head, just for fun. Perhaps because I was an only child I’ve always been able to amuse myself. I particularly enjoy it when I can make both ends of the anagram work. ‘Angered’ and ‘Enraged’ for example; ‘slanderous’ and ‘done as slur’; ‘discover’ and ‘divorces’ is a good one, as is ‘tantrums’ and ‘must rant’. ‘Marital’, rather appropriately, turns to ‘martial’; ‘male’ very neatly becomes ‘lame’, and ‘masculine’ – I like this – becomes ‘calumnies’, and ‘Rose’, well, that’s obvious. ‘Sore’.
At least my journey to work was going to be easy I noted as the bus trundled up Camberwell New Road. The Daily Post is bang opposite Tate Britain, in a brown smoked glass block overlooking the Thames. This is the home of Amalgamated Newspapers which also publishes Celeb!, and the Sunday Post.
I got the lift to the tenth floor, swiped my security tag (for keeping out nutters), then prepared for the fray. I passed the News Desk, the Picture Desk and the back bench where the sub-editors sit. I smiled at our gossip columnist Norris Hamster and our new features editor, Linda Leigh-Trapp; I said good morning to ‘Psychic Cynthia’, our astrologer, and to Jason Brown, our Chief Sub. Then right at the end of the huge newsroom, by the window, I reached my ‘pod’ with its cupboard and files. I know quite a few agony aunts – we have lunch sometimes – and we all claim to be marginalized at work. Our (mostly male) bosses seem to view us askance; we’re like the white witch who lives down the lane. But I don’t feel slighted at being sidelined like this, not least because it’s relatively quiet. There’s always such a noise at the Post. The day starts calmly enough, but by eleven o’clock as the stories firm up, the background babble builds. There are people arguing, shouting and laughing; the incessant chatter of TV screens; computers are humming, printers spewing, and there’s the polyphonic trill of mobile phones. But being seated about two miles from everyone else I don’t usually notice the din.
‘Hi Serena,’ I said brightly to my assistant. ‘How are you?’
‘Well…’ – I braced myself – ‘…can’t complain. And at least,’ she added, with a glance outside, ‘the weather’s nice for the time of year.’ Serena, let me tell you, inhabits Cliché City: she could win the Palme d’Or for her platitudes. She’s one of these people who are perennially perky; in fact she’s so chirpy I suspect she’s insane. Especially as she invariably has some dreadful domestic crisis going on. She’s late thirties and mousy with three kids and a dull husband called Rob (anagram, ‘Bor’).
‘How was your weekend?’ I enquired as I sat at my desk.
‘Oh it was lovely,’ she replied with a smile. ‘Except that Jonny got his head stuck behind the radiator.’
‘Oh dear.’
‘He was there for three hours.’
‘Gosh.’
‘He’d been looking for Frodo, his white mouse, but then, somehow, his head got jammed. We tried olive oil and butter, even that low-cholesterol Flora, but it just wouldn’t budge. In the end we dialled 999 and the fire brigade got him out.’
‘What about the mouse?’
‘Well, sadly, after all the palaver was over, we discovered he’d been eaten by the cat.’
‘Oh.’ I felt unaccountably crestfallen.
‘Still, it could have been worse. All’s well that end’s well,’ she concluded breezily. Not for Frodo. ‘And how was your weekend Rose?’
‘It was fine,’ I replied with a tight little smile. ‘You know, settling in. New house.’
‘Onwards and upwards,’ she said encouragingly.
‘Mmmm.’
‘No use crying over spilt milk.’
‘Quite.’
‘I mean, life’s not a…’ Oh God…
‘Bowl of cherries?’ I interrupted. She looked slightly nonplussed.
‘No. Dress rehearsal I was going to say.’
‘Okay Serena,’ I said mentally awarding her a Bafta for banality, ‘let’s get down to work.’
I stared, with anticipatory pleasure, at the envelopes in my over-flowing in-tray. There were brown ones and white ones, airmail and Basildon Bond. There were typed ones and handwritten ones, some strewn with flowers and hearts: I fancied I could hear the voices inside, crying out for my help.
My practised eye had already identified from the writing the likely dilemmas within. Here were the large, childish loops of repression, and the backwards slope of the chronically depressed. There the green-inked scorings of schizophrenia and the cramped hand of the introvert. While Serena logged and dated each letter for reference, I sorted out my huge index file. In this I keep all the information sheets which I send out with my replies. I’ve got over a hundred leaflets covering every human problem under the sun, from Abandonment to Zoophilia, via (and this is just a selection) Acne, Blushing, Body Hair, Confidence, Death, Debt, Insomnia, Jealousy, Nasty Neighbours, Nipples, Pregnancy (both wanted and unwanted), Race Relations, Snoring and Stress. Seeing the problems neatly ranged in strict alphabetical order like this gives me a satisfied glow. Having tidied the drawer – Smoking had somehow strayed into Smacking – I opened the day’s jiffy bags. Serena always has these X-rayed