It took a little while, because Simon hadn’t given me your surname and asking for it would’ve been too direct, despite his drunken fog. But I found you eventually, after spending hours sifting through girls called Grace who worked in fashion PR. I worked by digging up info on the other girls, most of whom gave enough information about their lives on social media to make it easy to eliminate them. Happy photos of their families? Off the list. Wrong age, wrong ethnicity, lived somewhere else? Crossed off. Eventually I came across Grace Bernard. There was no photo on the company website, which felt like a sign since everyone else was happy to pose away. With the surname, I went down a few wrong lanes before I landed on a tiny article about you in the Islington Gazette from well over a decade ago. Well, it wasn’t actually about you at all. A woman called Sophie was protesting about a spate of muggings near the local school. A grainy photograph showed her holding up a sign which said ‘safe streets!’， and behind her was a surly-looking teenage girl and a slightly bemused-looking boy of the same age. The photo, well that’s when my heart started pounding. The caption gave your name. The boy was called Jimmy. The angry woman referred to you both as her children, which confused me for a minute. Simon had said that your mum died. Sorry, I’m being nosey. But there were gaps I couldn’t fill in and the mind wants answers! No matter, I got them later.
Anyway, I came to your office. I’m sure that probably sounds frightfully creepy but I felt more nervous than you’d have been had you known! I waited around from 5 p.m. one Friday, suspecting that PR girls, like us City boys, knock off early for drinks. A gaggle of women came out at 5.15, forming a human chain as they swept down the street. You came out at 5.32. I knew it was you straight away, you looked like me. Well maybe that’s not very fair to you. My nose has been broken twice in rugby scrums and I’ve got hands the size of dinner plates according to my mum. But I just knew your face. It was like I’d seen it before a million times. You’re petite and have much darker colouring than me, and you’ve got eyes a shade of green that neither me nor my sisters share. Mine are a slate grey, which I’ve always rather liked. But you were undeniably the right Grace Bernard. I almost ran across the road to say hello, like the duffer I am, but I restrained myself. Difficult to make an introduction like that on the street!
I don’t know what I wanted from you back then. Perhaps just to see you in the flesh? I think I had a deep need for information. Not knowing about my parentage had shaken me up, and I firmly believe that knowledge is power. Knowing everything about you would help me be more in control, something I’d not really felt since Christopher died. So I followed you. I’m not proud of that, by the way. It’s not nice for men to tail women around. I felt grubby really. You sat on the Tube across from me, gazing over my shoulder at nothing very much. I tried not to stare at your face for too long, but I took in as much as I could. Black trousers, a cropped leather jacket, and a weird fluffy top that I assume was fashiony. Chunky buckled loafers which I imagine you wore to make men like me feel intimidated, and it worked. I walked behind you from the station to your flat, and gazed up to the first floor as the light went on. Then I had a stern word with myself and went home. Madness really. I’m a man who doesn’t even go to North London for a hot date.
I couldn’t leave it there. I wanted to. But over the next few weeks I found myself walking down your road every spare moment I got, hoping to catch you on your way out. Seeing if you’d lead me somewhere that would tell me more about who you were. A couple of times I saw you go out running, which meant I had to wear trainers just in case. Once I followed you to a local café where you ordered a ridiculously specific coffee. Not a big socialiser, are you, Grace? One visitor in two weeks – a man who looked a lot like the teenager in the local paper.
I was getting sort of bored of it all by then. I was ready to stop following you around and weighing up whether I should send you an email explaining who I was. I wasn’t sure I even wanted to open Pandora’s box really. But it was surely saner than skulking around, not learning anything about you. Then one evening flipped everything on its head. And if I’d ever assumed that you were a bit dull Grace, I never would again.
You went to a pub and had drinks with a fairly motley crew. A young guy who looked like a total hippy cliché. An old man, and a plain-looking girl who wasn’t his daughter but definitely wasn’t his girlfriend. You didn’t seem like you were too attached to the hippy either. But you spent most of the evening talking to him. I nursed my pint and tried to sit near enough to pick up the conversation. Not that it was worth hearing. Newts, Grace? I really wondered about how you’d turned out when I heard that passionate discussion about amphibians.