Best of 2017

A simple three-sixty makes it obvious I’m just a guy amongst a regular crowd going about their business. Just good old Ted Brown heading across town to do his bit for the community.

Maybe I can add paranoia to my list of sexual-abstinence side effects.

I didn’t pick some random homeless charity to absolve me of my self-loathing. The decision to volunteer at New Start, at the Brickwood branch, was an accidental choice, made for me one Friday evening after too much whisky.

The tube station is the same grimy shithole it was a few months back. I head up to the street amongst the stream of people disembarking, being careful not to dirty my hands on the filthy handrail.

Vivian Rachel Farr, the girl who haunts my dreams, died on the streets here. A heroin overdose. They found her body in an alleyway I’ll have to walk past this evening, a note for her parents written on a greasy old fish and chip paper in her pocket.

That’s before I managed to get her rapist an acquittal six months later, and before her parents screamed in my face on the court steps, their haunted faces burned into my memory for all time.

Annabel Pilcher found my drunken ass in the very same alleyway Vivian took her last breath. She smiled down on me as though I was one of life’s unfortunates – just as Vivian had been – and offered me a mug of hot soup. Enough to sober up my sorry ass.

Sober me up it did.

Permanently.

If Annabel Pilcher had been on hand with a mug of hot soup when Vivian was facing her final dark night, then maybe she’d have made it through. Taken a sip of watery tomato goodness and lived to see another day. Just as I did.

Unfortunately New Start was just a fledgling community effort back then, struggling for both the funding and manpower to make a difference.

In me they found both an anonymous donor – generous enough to finance the opening of three branches across the East End – and good old Ted Brown, on hand every Friday evening to help cook up meals in their community kitchen and offer them out on the cold London streets.

I was worried they’d have put two and two together by now. Ideas for expansion tossed around over cook-up time invariably led to yet another anonymous donation. As if by magic. By miracle.

Our angel has answered our prayers again, Ted! We’ve got to secure another kitchen, Ted! Our donor came through again!

It doesn’t mean I can sleep at night. There isn’t any donation great enough to secure that pleasure. But it enables me to face my reflection in the bathroom mirror every morning, and as far as I’m concerned that privilege is priceless.

People always pull a sympathetic face then they talk about the homeless. Poor souls. So awful. They’ll throw a pitiful glance along with their loose change at a beggar on the street, then head on into a boutique coffee shop for a huge latte with their conscience squeaky clean.

I’ve pondered this a lot, the disconnect between surface level social-driven empathy and the kind of genuine desire to help the world that people like Annabel Pilcher are consumed by.

I’m not a good man and I know it. I’m fully aware of my distinct lack of moral fibre. I don’t pretend to myself that I’m anything other than a self-serving, ethically-corrupt sonofabitch.

It’s the people in the middle that add most to the social apathy in our world. The people who share the horror stories with a simple click of a social media button, thank their lucky stars they’re one of the ok ones, and move along.

They wouldn’t be homeless, because they don’t make bad life choices. They wouldn’t be a drug addict because they have the will power to just say No.

Poor unfortunates. So sad. But it couldn’t be them. Oh no.

Except it could. It could be any of us.

Born under different circumstances, tried by life pressures greater than we could comprehend. A few badly dealt cards from life, and that could be any one of us, huddling in an alleyway at night, injecting poor quality drugs just for a break from the mental torment.

I get that.

I feel that.

Most of the time these days I’m just relieved I feel something.

Annabel has a big genuine smile for Ted Brown this evening.

She wraps me in warm arms and her hair smells of cheap soap. The press of her body to mine always feels alien and leaves me feeling strangely emotional. I experience the simultaneous urge to push her away but hold her for longer.

“Ted!” Her voice is muffled by my coat. She squeezes me and then lets go. “So nice to see you!”

“Nice to be back,” I tell her, and I’m not even lying.

Frank and Mary are already chopping vegetables. They smile and wave as I hang my coat up, and I say hello as I pass them on my way to the sink. I scrub my hands with their basic essentials anti-bacterial soap and take up position at the hob.

Annabel unpacks the Styrofoam cups and we get to work.

I’m not much of a chef. I choose my own meals based on simple acquired tastes and nutritional value, not from any desire for culinary expression.

Nobody on the street cares whether I have a five star rating on food genius though.

“How have you been, Ted?” Frank calls. His eyes are kind and well-meaning, but I hate small talk at the best of times, not least when I’m lying through my teeth – which is a lot of the time.

“Same old, Frank.”

He shakes his head. “You wanna tell that boss of yours to get stuffed. Works you too hard.”

“Bosses, eh? All the bloody same.”

He nods. “Profit, profit, profit.”

Frank starts up his trademark rant on how it should be people not profit, and my cover is safe for another week. He’s a union type, campaigning for justice and fair treatment for all. He doesn’t just do Friday night soup kitchen, he does all three branches and he works like a trooper.

Works and talks.

He talks a lot.

That’s the thing about people. Most prefer talking to listening. Set someone off on their own little monologue and nod in the right places, and you’ll have a friend for life.

These people think they know me. They’d call me a friend, and yet they don’t know anything much about Ted Brown. They don’t know where he lives, or which company he works for. They know he’s in his forties, has a couple of kids but no significant other.

They know he makes an average soup at best, but they don’t seem to care about that.

The thought makes me smile, and Annabel smiles back.

“It’s gonna be a cold one tonight,” she says.

I nod. Agree.

Freezing.

The irony is that the street is the only place I ever truly feel warm.

MELISSA

CINDY DIDN’T KNOW everything of note about Alexander Henley.

She didn’t tell me about his Friday night moonlighting at a soup kitchen for the homeless.

She didn’t tell me that Alexander Henley wanders around the streets with a cap down low to cover his eyes, handing out hot drinks to people with nothing when he could be drin

king champagne in some posh cocktail bar somewhere.

This blatant oversight is what renews my vigour to find out everything about Alexander Henley.

Everything.

Every. Little. Thing.

Dean doesn’t think an evening volunteering for charity makes any difference. He maintains I’m in too deep, that the man whose house has become my own fantasy playground is just as dangerous as the internet rumours make him sound.

He doesn’t know about the escorts. I didn’t tell him that bit. Not yet.

He hasn’t admitted to me that he’s got photos on his phone, so I feel ok about withholding the truth, just for a while. Just until I’m certain of my next move.

Brutus barely even growls this morning. He pads through to the entrance hallway as I disable the alarm, stares at me with mean eyes, but doesn’t make any move to see me off his property.

Progress.

It usually takes at least twenty minutes for him to stop growling at me, fish treats or no, even if I do get a little happy swish from his tail.

I’ve got fresh orchids as well as fish treats, and some outdoor-reared bacon that I charged to the expenses credit card.

My last impromptu food change seemed to be a win. Mr Henley now has two eggs every morning rather than just the one he had before.

Maybe Mr Henley likes smoked outdoor-reared bacon too. We’ll see.

I can’t stop beaming as I realise he’s topped up the water in the vases. He likes the orchids.

I change them for fresh, even though they’re barely wilting, and I wrap up the old ones. I’ll take them home until they’re long dead, a piece of this place in mine.

Yes, I like that.

I clean fast but thoroughly, taking just a moment to smell the scent on his clothes before I do his laundry. His Friday night clothes are right in the middle of the hamper, clearly stashed amongst the pile of shirts, as though that will camouflage them. I have a sniff of those, too. The worn denim shirt smells of vegetables, but I can still smell him, that spicy smell. It’s enough to make my tummy flutter.

And thinking of spice, I clean out his kitchen cupboard today, making a note of the opened spice jars amongst the sealed ones. He likes paprika. Paprika and… chilli. Turmeric too.