43

Danny

I have a theory that barbers and black cab drivers must be the sanest people in London. All that chatting in the line of duty has got to be so much better than any kind of therapy. Jaz, who seemed extremely sane, barely drew breath as we crawled through the streets of Camden Town, South Hampstead and skirted the edges of the Heath. The sound of her voice against the background chug of the motor was melodic and reassuring, and I felt safe and comfy tucked up there in the back of the cab. And also just a little bit regal, which probably had a fair bit to do with me still being about two and a half sheets to the wind, despite trying to delude myself otherwise. I resisted the urge to wave at my subjects as we drove slowly through Primrose Hill, but it was strong.

After about an hour I could probably have cracked it on Mastermind with my specialist subject, The Life and Times of Jaz, the Lady Cab Driver. As high streets and houses slid by, Jaz told me about her four daughters, who ranged in age from five to the problematic fourteen-year-old. Absolute blinders they were, every one of them, according to Jaz, despite the fact their father had turned out to be a prize-winning liar and cheat.

She’d met him at school when they were thirteen, married at nineteen. Neither of them ever had eyes for anyone else, proper little Romeo and Juliet, they were. But when she was five months pregnant with the last one, little Jojo, Jaz had come home early from her evening cleaning job and found the kids home alone watching telly and Lucas next door shagging the neighbour.

‘Turned out she was far from the first, and actually everyone but me knew he’d had eyes for quite a few other people even before we got married. What a mug.’

I wanted to say, No, Jaz, you’re never a mug if it’s love. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, and actually you might just be my hero for sticking it out for fifteen years and what’s your secret? But if I’d learned anything over the past month of giving advice, it’s that the key is remembering not everything is about me. Or at least not letting on.

‘Trust me, you’re no mug, Jaz.’

‘Yeah, I know. I was talking about him.’

As Jaz cut a corner and with a tricky manoeuvre turned into a shortcut to a laneway where a group of teens stood around scuffing the ground (but not my teen), she told me how she’d been accepted to do the London Knowledge on the same red letter day her divorce had come through. Her grandparents gave up their own house to move in with her in her three-up two-down rental to help look after the kids, and for the next two years, eleven months and eight days she’d spent ten hours a day out on her scooter enlarging her hippocampus, and cleaned offices at night. When she finally got her green badge, her grandfather cried and told her he was the proudest man in London.