You see, no one called me Sir back then. This was before the University. Before California or The Company. Before you knew my name. Before I ever really had one. Back then, I was nobody, singing for my supper and going hungry most nights. I wasn’t quite your stereotypical tortured artist, at least not enough for it to get me laid, but I was committing pretty hard to finding rock bottom, and staying there.

The kid coughed. In that way people only ever do to get your attention. Such a British idea. That interrupting someone is somehow less intrusive if you pretend you’re not doing it.

I looked up from the lukewarm drain water that passes for coffee in this town to see a young man, not quite a spotty-faced teenager but younger than he wanted you to think, waiting not so patiently at my table. Oversized suit, too much product in his hair, tie a little too tightly knotted, like he’d tied it beforehand and slipped it over his head. You know the look.

“Your car. It’s waiting, Sir.”

I’m terrible at impressions. Imagine his voice a little lower, with a bit of North London sprinkled in that he was trying his best to hide. Like a bookie talking to their parole officer.

There was no question who he was talking to, but I still did the comical thing of turning around in case I’d accidentally positioned myself in front of someone who was used to being addressed as Sir by youths in ill-fitting suits. Not an abundance of choice in a corner shop cafe on a Thursday afternoon. Though not impossible, I doubted I’d been mistaken for the bored serving girl, eyes glued to her screen, or the brightly coloured teenagers who were far too conspicuous to be anyone but themselves. There was an elderly man in the corner, asleep on yesterday’s paper, but I’d like to think I still have a few years before that’s how people see me.

“Your car, Sir.” The lad was starting to fidget.

“My car.” Not exactly a question, but not not a question.

“Yes, Sir. Out front… I’m parked on double yellows.”

Ah, I can see you haven’t lived here long. ‘Parked on double yellows’ is south-of-the-river slang for ‘stop wasting my time and hurry the fuck up’. The British have such a great knack for being passive, don’t they?

Most people would have spoken up then. Explained the confusion, shared a humourless laugh with the kid and gone about their day. But as you well know, I am not most people.

“I’ll be right out.”

Looking back now, I couldn’t tell you why I said it. On my more poetic days, I might claim my actions were guided by some innate desire for change, an attempt to grasp for something other than what I had, other than what I was. But honestly, I was probably just bored.

“Very good, Sir,” the lad nodded, turning to leave, little bell above the cafe door ruining his otherwise professional exit.

Nobody called me Sir back then. I was starting to like the sound of it.

As I stood to collect my things, I expected someone to yell. To call me out for the ludicrous game I was about to play. But no one paid my movements even the slightest mind, the little cafe remaining a quiet bubble of calm against the dimming lights of the city, determined to exist outside whatever realities ebbed and flowed beyond its doors.

The car waiting on the curb was conspicuous in its blatant attempt to be inconspicuous. Imagine a car that might drive an ambassador to the airport or drop a high-priced call girl home from an afternoon at the Ritz. Nothing flashy. Black, of course. Unassuming. Immaculate. Clean as a rental but without that ghastly rental car smell. Imagine the kind of person that would say, “I’ve sent for the car.” This was that kind of car.

“I came as quick as I could, Sir. Traffic, you know.”

The lad kept glancing at me in the rearview mirror even after he pulled into the slow trickle of traffic. I figured I should humour him lest we both crash.

“Right. No bother.” He seemed to relax a little at the exchange. Maybe it really was his first day.

I was sat in the back, obviously. Have you ever sat in the front seat of a cab? There’s something far too domestic about it. The interior was clean and uncluttered, no discarded parking tickets or trinkets hanging from the mirror. Neat. Organised. Purposefully so. The only thing out of place was a battered phone shoved in the driver-side cup holder, glowing blue with GPS directions. He at least had the forethought to put it on silent.

“You’re new.” It wasn’t a hard deduction.

“A few months, Sir.” There was that Sir again.

“You enjoying it?” I tried.

“Pays better than driving a cab, Sir.” I’ve never been good at small talk. Give me awkward silence any day. But this lad had information I wanted, namely, where the hell we were going and who the hell I was supposed to be. If I could find a way to ask him without coming right out and saying it.

“You know, you don’t need to call me Sir.” I was going for casual, but it came off as more condescending than anything.

“Oh ok… right then.” The silence stretched on, stuffy and uncomfortable.

“We close?”

“No more than ten minutes, Sir.”

I know you’re new, so here’s a piece of advice from a veteran. Nowhere in London is ever more than ten minutes away. The wretched tube system would have you believe this city is a million miles wide, but if you step outside and look up from the multicoloured maps, you’ll find your destination is never more than a brisk walk down the road.

I could tell we were driving in the rough direction of the river. Most places you want to go here usually are. It’s the heart of this city, feeding it, nurturing it, splitting it in two. You can easily get lost here, turned around and trapped, but you always know where you are with the river. Give it a few years, you’ll understand.

I gave up on my failed attempts at conversation in the cab that was not a cab, and watched the lights of the city pass through tinted glass. Stop starting in the ever-present traffic that flows through every town large enough to earn its place on the map. I wondered if this had ever happened to anyone else. Sure, we’ve all done the awkward thing of waving at someone who wasn’t waving at us and felt the immediate burning shame when you realised your mistake. But this was… well, this was more than that.

Perhaps this little charade would get the kid fired? I was contemplating if that troubled me as much as I thought it should, when the car stopped abruptly, mid-traffic, mid-thought, halfway across London Bridge. Horns blared but the lad didn’t seem to notice. Or care. After a few seconds, he turned to me and nodded at the door.

“She’s waiting, Sir.”

Despite never having met this kid before, having been in his company for less time than it takes to pour a good pint of Guinness, the idea of explaining his mistake to him, in the middle of London Bridge, surrounded by racing traffic and screeching horns, felt far less appealing than simply getting out of the car. Leaving a healthy tip, of course.

There were a few people on the bridge that night, walking dogs, taking pictures, doing the innocuous things tourists do in cities that are not their own. Only one stood with the air of someone waiting who was not used to waiting.

As I drew close, she turned, elbows leaning against the railing, looking into the distance while still tracking my approach. Assessing. Considering. A skill that takes practice. One I’ve since mastered.

She looked effortlessly composed, like she had all the time in the world and far better places to spend it. She smelled like what I imagine Chanel to smell like. The hard-won, assured femininity of a woman who knew the rigged hand she had been dealt and had found a way to beat the house all the same.

“You’re different than I expected,” she said to the vast expanse of inky black water, sparkling and shimmering beneath us as it made its lazy way through the city’s heart. There was a stillness to her, something dark and deadly lurking beneath the surface. A silent promise of dangers I didn’t yet understand.

“Thank you.” People often think a more elaborate lie is easier to believe, but you don’t realise how much of yourself you give away in the details. In life, there are people you can lie to. People who will accept what you show them on the face of things because it’s easier than digging in and finding the truth. She was not one of those people.

“Your reputation precedes you.” She smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. She looked colder for it. Like a shadow playing at being human and quickly losing patience with the façade. “From the way they talk of you, I thought you’d have horns.” There was a cut to her words that betrayed her careful mask of indifference. A power, a presence, that sat in stark contrast to the ragged city around her. Made you want to apologise for the chipping paint, the mismatched street lights, the junk and squalor of a place that could have been beautiful in another life.

I couldn’t think of anything witty to say. Wasn’t sure wit was the right tactic. So I let the silence linger. I read somewhere that if you leave things unsaid, people will make their own inferences without the need for clarification. This seemed as good a time as any to try out that theory.

We stood for a heartbeat, watching London breathe around us. Separated for a moment from the millions of lives stumbling through the night, knocking into each other as they went.

I pictured the life of this man I had accidentally become. This man that was driven around London in a cab that was not a cab, to a place that was not a place, to talk to beautiful people on dingy bridges. This man would pay his bills on time. Would know how to fix a broken car. A broken computer. This man would order a double espresso without milk and drink expensive Whiskey because he enjoyed it. He would make dinner reservations for one. Read the classics in French. Know his tailor by first name, his bookie by last. He would love fierce. Open. Honest. No care for the boxes people wanted to put him in or the white picket fences that were never in his future. This man took what he wanted from life, not what he needed, and didn’t apologise for being who he was.

When the woman finally spoke, her voice cut through the crisp night, no room for questions. No time for those who didn’t play on her level.

“Things will be changing,” she said, cold, intimate, “and your kind have as much to fear as mine.” The ghost of a thought whispered in my mind. A memory, a feeling, an instinct. Being small and powerless, surrounded by dangerous creatures lurking in the dark, just waiting for you to notice them. “It will be soon, and it will be quick. A reckoning is coming. And I need to know that you’re on my side.”

I thought hard about how to reply, but not for the reasons I’m sure she imagined. I thought of the man in whose shoes I currently stood. Who, in these few stolen moments, had become for me the epitome of everything I wished I could be. I thought of him, of what I owed him, what he needed from me in this moment. What could I give the man who had everything?

It took a minute, but it came to me with a smile, and a little confidence to match the mood.

“I will be where I’ve always been,” I replied. “Where I need to be.”

She looked at me then, eyes glinting gold in the lights of the city, a predator sniffing for blood, taking in my everything, making her own assumptions, some of them probably accurate. I don’t know what she saw, what she expected to see, but whatever it was brought a hint of a smile to her perfectly painted lips.

“That will be enough.”

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I never saw The Woman again. Or found out what happened that changed it all.

To this day, when I see a sleek black car idling at the side of the road, I think of that man. The man that wasn’t me. The man that has meetings on bridges and takes sides in coming conflicts. The man who had it all but, for a few minutes on a grey Thursday, needed me to keep his world spinning. I wonder if he ever found out what happened or if he just spent a rather confusing afternoon waiting patiently for a car that never showed up.

My life is very different now than it was back then. You probably have a list in that folder of things you think I’ve done. And I’m sure you’re right about some of them. I never did learn to fix a car; complicated, messy things with minds of their own. And computers don’t seem to break the same way they used to. But I do prefer single malt. Glenfiddich, if you’re buying. And Voltaire really does lose something in the translation, don’t you think?

You asked me, before, where I found my courage. How I became the man that I became. Stepped into this life that most others would run from. A life of monsters in the dark. Of hunting or being hunted. My answer, though I’m sure it’s not what you want to hear, is probably the most truthful I’ve been with you all night.

From a man I never met, who showed me who I wanted to be.

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