Chapters (29)
‘You!’ I shouted. ‘Sir! You, sir, who shut the window! Please, just buzz me in. I’ve made a mistake! I need to correct it.’
I looked around for something light I could throw against his window to get his attention again. There was a skip a few doors down, and I rummaged around in it until I found a little chunk of masonry that didn’t feel too heavy.
I tried the buzzers one more time.
All they had to do was let me in, and I would have left them alone forever. I called again. ‘Hello! Hello!’ Then I threw the little piece of rubble up at the window. The window didn’t break; no one was in any danger. It just cracked a bit.
The window opened. A white-haired man looked down at me. ‘What the hell are you doing? The police were called five minutes ago, you know, and all of this is on camera.’
‘Please,’ I said. ‘Just let me in. I posted the wrong letter!’
He retreated from the window again, and I sat back down on the steps and put my head in my hands. Then I stood back up.
‘Fine!’ I shouted. ‘I tried! Let them know I tried!’
The building loomed over me, serene, the windows filled with reflected greenery.
I set off walking, dawdling past the doorways, stopping to look back in the direction from where I was coming. I still believed then that I could reverse things, that I could come back in an hour and explain – that the man whose window I’d broken would see the funny side and perhaps even let me off the repair bill when I offered to pay him.
I still believed that they would let me in, that this was all a mistake.
When a police car came past on a corner, the officer in the passenger seat looking hard at me, I smiled at him as though I belonged and kept moving. And as soon as I was round the corner and out of their sight I ran as fast as I could to the Tube. I didn’t dare to wait for the elevator down. Instead I skipped down the stairs, all ninety-three of them, and when I got to the platform I threw myself through some closing doors and I sat down and started to laugh as the train took us east. People were looking at me and shuffling away but I didn’t care. They didn’t let me in. They would never let me in. I was not coming back here.