Chapter 2: Strange Days

It was not just me, I tried to tell myself. These were strange days for everyone. Admittedly, not everyone had been abandoned on their wedding day and returned to David Tennant in their office, but still, it was a really weird year.

The weather, for one thing. While the rest of Europe baked in a long hot summer, the angry God of Rain had squatted over Britain like a great fat toad. There were floods everywhere, and blackouts, and people panicking about drinking water. My next-door neighbour in chambers, who is one of those pontificating people, was really gleeful about it all. He said things like, ‘Why are people surprised? As soon as there were blackouts in LA and New York, anyone with a brain could see this was going to be a feature of the 21st century.’ I don’t think I’d ever seen him so happy.

It wasn’t just the floods. Each day seemed to bring at least one piece of news which, even when it wasn’t earth-shattering, added to the general weirdness, be it Graham Norton getting married to Liz Hurley, The French electing Le-Pen-the-fascist, or Posh Spice winning an Oscar for reprising the Kim Novak role in the remake of Vertigo. Today’s lunacy, in which I had played my own tiny part, was Boris Johnson becoming Mayor of London.

In my determination to appear normal when I went to work, I’d forgotten about the election. It was only when I popped out of the office for a late lunch that I saw the Evening Standard headlines. The skinny man who runs the kiosk near Chancery Lane tube, who I think must once have been much bigger, because the tattoos on his forearms are all collapsed and scrunched, was putting a new billboard into his slot. Out went, THAMES FLOODS RUN WHILE YOU CAN, and in came, BONKERS BORIS MAYOR 12 HOURS NO GAFFES YET.

I’d voted for Boris, and I was literally not alone. He was fun, he was obviously clever, and my dad told me to. He said – my dad, not Boris – that Ken and Boris were similar peas from different pods. They were mavericks who were strong enough to ignore their parties and do what was best for London. Ken had done fine, but he’d been there long enough to start to feel entitled. The polls had predicted the result, but seeing Boris gurning out of the Standard was still freaky. The headline next to his face ran, ‘How Safe is the Tube?’

I hate the Evening Standard. One day, in its wildest dreams, it will get to run the headline, TUBE STRIKE GRANNY KILLED BY KNIFE WIELDING TEEN IN HEATWAVE FLOOD TERROR PANIC. But the real reason I hate it is not that it is a scaremongering trashrag, but because of what it says about me: when I saw the Boris/tube headline, I instantly thought, ‘Oh no! Has this election really screwed up my commute? That would be a nightmare!’ The Standard is like the horrible boy at the back of the class who, the precise day you know you have achieved the perfect weight for your height, and it is brilliantly your sixteenth birthday, says, ‘Morning, Mary Sue. Eat all your cakes for breakfast?’

I thought about the Evening Standard again as my clerk showed David Tennant through my door. A few days earlier, the day I came back from Cornwall, when there had obviously been a terrible dearth of granny-slayings and flooded tube chaos, and the billboards near my house had read, DOCTOR WHODUNNIT? Predictably, like everyone else who fancies David Tennant, which is almost everyone I’ve ever met, I immediately bought the paper to find out what it was all about, cursing myself for handing over the money.

It was quite a funny story, actually. David Tennant had gone to his private gym for his regular morning swim, but when he emerged, someone had broken into his locker and stolen his clothes. He told the police that nothing valuable had been taken, and it was just a prank. What is interesting is that yesterday, I myself went for a swim. I was just about to jump into the water when I realised that I’d forgotten my goggles. I returned to my locker, and there was a strange woman trying to open it. ‘That’s my locker,’ I said.

The woman spun round, calm as you please, and looked down at her key. She said she was terribly sorry, but she was short-sighted and must have wandered up the wrong aisle. This morning, I told this story to my pontificating neighbour in chambers, and I said that it was like what had happened to David Tennant a few days ago.

My neighbour said, ‘the human mind is obsessed with making patterns, Mary Sue. It’s why medieval peasants looked at a dying cow and said there must be a witch. It’s why people look at the floods and say a great fat toad rain god must be angry. The idea that you and David Tennant have a secret, unknown connection is one you have magicked up from scraps of evidence that have other, more logical explanations, simply because you fancy David Tennant.’

Well, as it turned out, I was right, and my neighbour was wrong.