Life in a toilet

So far, so bad. The entire morning had left me feeling bewildered and lost. After Adam left, I quietly unpacked some of my clothes onto the wooden shelves. I couldn't hang anything on the bar because there I had no clothes hangars. I placed a few pictures on the shelves, along with a brightly painted wooden box an artist friend had made for me years ago.

Instead of making the place feel more like home, seeing my few belongings so far away from everything I knew made me feel even more lonely.

My suitcases filled the little space to bursting and I could only cross the room by clambering over the bed.

This was no way for a grown woman to live, I thought reprovingly. Back home I'd had a two-bedroom apartment filled with things I owned. My pictures on the wall. My color scheme. My furniture.

Now I owned the things on that shelf. Some clothes, a couple of photos. A pretty box.

I had the two keys Adam had given me. The emptiness of the key ring reminded me of the James Spader character in the film Sex, Lies and Videotape. His goal had been to live his life with just one key. To him that symbolized freedom and independence. (Although I did puzzle over that while watching the film. He had a house and a car. Surely he had two keys? But I didn't like to quibble - it was a very good film.)

Wait - why am I thinking about Sex, Lies and Videotape right now?

By now I was fairly certain that moving to England had been a foolhardy action, taken without sufficient reflection or consideration, and likely to leave me in a worse position than when I'd started.

So, the usual then.

If I wanted to, I thought wearily, I could go back home right now. I could be gone by the time Adam came home tonight. He'd wonder what happened to me. I'd be a great mystery - he'd talk about me for years. And I could just tell my friends in Seattle that I'd hated it here.

I imagined their responses, and realized I couldn't actually do it. They'd think I was nuts. Or a coward.

'You can't just give up!' I told myself firmly. 'You haven't even given it a chance. Quit being a baby. Pull yourself together.'

The first thing to do, I decided, was to get out of this room.

So I explored the chilly house from top to bottom. Or, at least, I explored all that I could - the other bedroom door on the top floor was closed, and I didn't dare open it.

That must be 'Shazza's' room. What kind of name is 'Shazza'? Sounds like a genie. Or a horse.

A door left ajar at the end of the hallway opened onto a bathroom - more spacious than the one downstairs - with a 1970s acid-green bath tub, sink and toilet. It was clean, but the color scheme depressed me.

Somebody had carpeted it with thin, gray carpet that was darkened with mildew around the tub.

Down, then, to the next floor, to the living room and kitchen, which were nice enough - I suspected I'd spend most of my time here. Down again to the garden-level, where there were two more doors. One was closed, and I presumed it was Adam's room. The other was ajar, and I pushed it gently with the back of my hand and peered into the gloom. The spacious room was twice the size of my bedroom and filled with odd pieces of sitting room furniture, most of it antique - dating back, I figured, to the 1940s. The room was dusty and dim; the dusky pink brocade curtains were closed. Boxes were stacked here and there, and an ironing board was set up near the door. It was a strange looking room to find in a man's house, although it was clear it wasn't used much. I suspected I wasn't welcome to poke around it.

Back in the lemony yellow living room, I pondered my next step. I was tired and longing for sleep, but I was too anxious and excited to rest. I needed a purpose, and food could be that purpose.

Taking the map Adam had left on the kitchen table, I grabbed my new keys and struck out for the Tescos.

Once on the street and in the fresh air, I regained my equilibrium. Now it felt like I was exploring. Intrepidly researching my new neighborhood. This would allow me to make more educated decisions about whether or not I liked the place. It was time to meet the neighbors.

The first decision was simple - right or left? Left would take me to the park at the end of the road, and its green depths were attractive. Right would take me further along the curving length of Marlborough Road - into the unknown.

Right it was.

As the map dictated, I turned right again almost immediately into a narrow alleyway lined with little 19th-century cottages. In one of them a baby screamed lustily. Ahead of me a startlingly young woman pushed another child in a stroller.

She strode confidently through the shadow cast by an ominous Victorian aqueduct that hung over the street like a bird of prey. I followed hesitantly, thinking what a perfect murder location it would make. I could almost picture a body lying in a pool of blood in the gloaming beneath it.

But there was no body. Just bricks and the cooing of pigeons nesting in the bridge's under-skeleton.

This street was quiet but short, and carried me through to a bustling main road dominated by a graceful old town hall building where the clock told the wrong time. All around it winos perched in noisy flocks on iron benches placed around the gray town square. Empty potato chip bags wrapped the lower branches of beleaguered looking trees and bushes.

Somebody seemed to have painted everything here with a thin layer of dirt. Why on earth would they do that?

A wino shouted something incomprehensible in my direction, and I hustled by, towards the busy road ahead.

An old man with no legs propelled himself down the street rapidly in a wheelchair, a can of something nestled in his lap. He drew near another man in charity-shop clothes who leaned nonchalantly against the wall of a bus stop. The wheelchair-bound wino shouted in a thick Irish accent, 'Feck you, then! Feck you! Cunt! Cunt!'

Oh great, I thought. My first encounter with a person sharing my family's Irish heritage. How heartwarming.

Following the map's suggestions (I was now mentally adding tiny drawings of drunken hobos to it for future reference), I veered left, down the busy road, looking for the prettily named Morningside Lane. But after a few blocks it still hadn't appeared despite the map's insistence that it would, and I began worrying about the map's intelligence and trustworthiness.

I considered asking one of the people rushing by me, but they all seemed to move with the speed of the pursued. Then I saw sailing serenely among them the reassuring tall hat of a police officer. I made a beeline for him.

'Excuse me,' I began, and he turned his pale blue eyes on my appraisingly, 'I'm looking for Morningside Lane. It's probably right in front of me but I can't actually find it. And... ' I faltered as he studied me with open curiosity. 'I'm... new... here.'

'I'm sorry, I don't think I'm going to be much help,' he admitted in an accent nothing at all like Adam's. More like Michael Caine's. 'This isn't my usual beat. It might surprise you to know that I don't know this area at all. You'd probably be better off popping into one of the shops and asking the locals.'

Then, seeing my slightly crestfallen expression he asked, 'What are you doing here anyway? Are you a student?'

'No, I've just moved here from America. This is my first day,' I answered brightly.

'But you can't!' he said unexpectedly. 'You can't move here.'

'Why not?' I asked, startled.

'Because it's a toilet.'

He said it incontrovertibly. As a matter of fact.

Suddenly I found myself defending my newfound shit hole.

It might be filled with drunken, cursing Irish winos, teenage mothers and picture-perfect murder spots but, damn it, this was home.

'Oh, it can't be that bad, can it? It's got... shops, and...' my mind cast around wildly for anything to defend Hackney. I didn't know it well enough to protect it yet. And it looked pretty grim to me. What had I seen that wasn't wretched?

I came up with, '...and that nice town hall.'

He laughed at me. Laughed at me!

On my first day in London a policeman laughed at me.

Jeez. All I wanted was a sandwich.

'Well,' he said, 'I wouldn't want my daughter living here, and I don't think you should live here either. If you've rented a place, stay for as long as you have to and then take my advice: move someplace else. Just about anyplace else actually.'

And with that, he wandered off, whistling. And I still didn't know where the damned grocery store was.