Andrea Segovia Loses Control

Andrea Segovia was twenty eight and she had recently discovered internet dating. She was not satisfied with any of the Spanish men she had dated in her home town of Madrid. On the internet, she had met an English man called Craig Stemford. Craig lived in London and seemed to possess none of the flaws that she had discovered in Spanish men. Andrea was excited and could foresee no problems. They had been chatting online for two months and six days and now Andrea was strolling through one of the arrivals lounges at Heathrow airport with her single suitcase in tow. She was beginning a new life and was travelling light.

Craig met her and took her back to his house in Chepstow Villas. She told him how to greet her, how to sit, how to eat his meal in a satisfying way and how to drink tea properly. Andrea knew all about good taste. As a child, she was raised by her mother. She was an only child and had no recollection of her father. After the marriage had ended, her mother had been left with two valuable possessions, an antique couch and a set of six antique soup bowls. These were the only material possessions that she truly cherished. The other passion in her life was order. Everything in the household had to be placed in a particular place, and all tasks had to be done in a particular way and at a particular time. Andrea loved her mother and the two of them worked as a team, ordering their household, correcting the placement of objects by rotating them five degrees to the left, or nudging a place mat an extra two millimetres to the right. But the most care of all was taken on the displaying of those antique bowls, six in a row, along the living-room dresser, and meticulously brushing the couch, so that its fabric always caught the light in a pleasing way. At first, Andrea merely helped her mother to maintain this order, but at some point, Andrea herself became just as obsessed with order and correctness. This quality accompanied her into adulthood. Andrea could spot incorrectness from twenty paces away. She seemed to possess a sixth sense that told her how everything should be done, and what was and was not good taste. When she first entered Craig’s house, she helped him out by telling him which of the pictures on his walls belonged in the dustbin, and after instructing him on his manners and habits, they had found themselves in bed and he had begun to kiss her when she pushed him back and said: “No, you are doing it all wrong. You do not know how to kiss. Your mouth should not be so much open. Now, try again.”

She motioned for him to attempt the technique again and he obliged. She pushed him away and said, “No, that is still no good. You are not using your tongue correctly. Let me show you.”

She placed her fingers over his chin and closed his mouth, which was hanging open, and then she placed her lips against his and seemed to start to massaging his lips with hers. His mouth opened again and his tongue attempted to part her lips. She pushed him back and said, “You will need lots of training. You are no good at this.”

Andrea’s first experience of kissing had set the standard that no-one since had seemed able to meet. At the age of sixteen, she met her first boyfriend, Jorge. When they kissed it seemed to go on endlessly and transported her to another world and twelve years later Andrea could still vividly recall the taste and texture of Jorge’s mouth.

Six days after first meeting Jorge, she took him home to her mother’s house. Her mother was away and Andrea did not expect her back for a few hours. Her mother’s rule was that the antique bowls were never to be used and food was not to be eaten in the living room, to protect the antique couch. But Andrea wanted to give Jorge something special and it seemed appropriate to break these two rules. She warmed some soup for him which her mother had prepared the previous day, a particularly delicious batch. She served the soup into two of her mother’s antique soup bowels and, to complete Jorge’s treat, she decided that they would eat the soup while sitting on her mother’s antique couch. The two of them were about to sit on the couch and Andrea held out Jorge’s soup for him. At that moment, she heard her mother entering the house through the front door. She turned to look at the living-room door. She was almost dizzy with pride, since her mother was about to meet Jorge. She thought that Jorge had taken the weight of the bowl from her and she released it. She felt a sensation beside her, as though a large well had opened up and black air were rushing down into it, heavy air that seemed to be plummeting down to the centre of the Earth. She looked round to see the bowl landing on the couch, its soup emptying over the fabric and the bowl then falling to the wooden floor and smashing. The living-room door opened and her mother entered and her eyes seemed to be drawn to the pool of soup that was sinking into her couch. She then looked down to the smashed soup bowl and fainted.

From then onwards, there was a permanent stain on the couch and there were only five remaining soup bowls displayed on the dresser. Her mother never mentioned her loses, but in the line of bowls, she left a gap where the missing bowl should have been. The sight of this gap haunted Andrea; whenever she saw it, it seemed to grow in depth and darkness and its sight reminded her of a missing front tooth or the space where an amputee’s leg should have been. And her mother’s face, too, seemed darkened from that moment onwards, as though some part of her had died along with that bowl and the loss of her couch’s pristine state. Andrea never saw Jorge again, and from that moment onwards, she vowed to always follow her instinct for correctness, and to never fail to correct anything that was wrong or out of place. This was her penance for the damage that she had done to her mother on that day.

Craig Stemford had not impressed her with his kissing. Andrea knew what the perfect kiss should be like and she was not accustomed to compromising her standards. She had pushed him away and told him that he was no good at kissing.

Craig sighed and took an interest in her body instead. She moved his hand aside and said, “What are you doing? Now is not the right time to do that. You must do things in the right order.”

Craig said, “Are you playing with me? Is this a joke?”

Andrea said, “What do you mean? I do not understand.”

Craig sat up in bed, folded his arms, looked away from her and said, sarcastically, “Is there anything you do like?”

She thought about this for a while and then said, “You have nice curtains.”

Craig put out his light and went to sleep.

In the morning, he had arranged for her to start work in her new job. Craig was a partner in a firm of solicitors: Bright and Stemford Solicitors. His partner, Dicky Bright, had agreed that Andrea could work part-time for the firm as a secretarial assistant. In Spain, she had started training as a primary school teacher but she had found that the structure of the training was wrong and they had refused to change it, so she left, trained in administration skills and started working for a company where she could set up her own systems—which she had insisted were strictly adhered to by all personnel.

Craig greeted Dicky and said, “Dicky, this is Andrea Segovia.”

Dicky said, cheerfully, “Oh! do you play guitar?”

Andrea said, firmly, “No, I do not play guitar.”

About fifteen years ago, Andrea had become infuriated by this question from every new person that she met. And after a further fifteen years of being asked the same question, she sometimes found herself surprised at just how much the question could still irritate her.

Dicky said, still cheerfully, “Oh, I am sorry. Welcome to our practice,” and he held out his hand.

Andrea said, “Everyone thinks I play guitar. It is not polite to make such assumptions.”

Dicky looked surprised, took his hand back and then took his puzzlement into his office and closed the door.

Andrea was given a desk to sit at and given some work to do. Her morning progressed routinely until she came to her final task. She was midway through typing up the will of Dame Harriet Blewit of Mayfair, when she noticed something that was not right. Dame Harriet had bequeathed ninety five percent of her estate to one of her sons, and only five percent to the other son, since he had married “a foreigner”, as Dame Harriet had put it. Andrea felt that something was not right here, and then, at the back of her mind, she recalled that soup stain on her mother’s antique couch and this seemed to reinforce her notion that there was a mistake here that needed to be corrected. She could tell that Dame Harriet was only momentarily annoyed at her son, and that, of course, she had really intended to reward both her sons equally. So Andrea changed the wording of the will and awarded both sons fifty percent of the estate.

Andrea bound the will and left for lunch, her day’s work at the office now being complete.

The offices of Bright and Stemford Solicitors were situated in Golden Square, and Andrea was to walk the short distance to Piccadilly Circus underground station. She had been given simple directions, but she felt sure that they were wrong, so while making her way there, she devised her own short cut. She had turned off the route prescribed by Craig and she was about to cross a street when she noticed a woman who was obviously a prostitute. The woman was standing next to the alleyway across the street and was beckoning to any motorists who would pause at the nearby traffic lights.

The woman was wearing a creased red and yellow dress, which did not match her shoes, nor her handbag, which both looked battered, and her hair was untidy. Andrea thought that the woman seemed to have deliberately arranged her hair in that messed up fashion. And then she realized that the woman had probably deliberately chosen her clothes for the same reason—in some mistaken belief that her appearance would attract the custom she was looking for. This irritated Andrea. She could see that the woman needed to make some changes to her appearance if she was ever going to be successful.

Andrea decided to cross the street and instruct the prostitute on how to dress properly. She was about to step off the pavement when she noticed a short-haired man talking to the prostitute. The man seemed interested. Andrea paused, and then she noticed an old woman standing a few yards along the pavement from herself. The old woman looked afraid. She was obviously concerned about crossing the busy road. Andrea stepped over to her and put her arm through hers. The woman pulled away from Andrea, shielding her handbag. Andrea grabbed her arm and tried to pull her across the road. The woman started shouting, “Thief! thief! help me someone!”

Andrea said, “You are wrong. You need help.”

The woman shouted, “Stop her someone, stop her!”

At that moment, the short-haired man and two uniformed police officers closed in on Andrea. She looked over the street and noticed a police woman leading the prostitute away. The short-haired man held up some credentials in Andrea’s face and one of the police officers grabbed her arm.

The old woman said, “She tried to steal my bag,” and she turned to Andrea and said, “I haven’t collected my pension yet, so you’re out of luck.”

Andrea said, “I do not want a pension. I am much too young.”

The police arrested her and led her to a van. She sat in the back, next to one prostitute. Sitting across from her were two other prostitutes, one of them being the woman with the red and yellow dress.

Andrea told her, “You will never get work looking like that.”

The woman folded her arms and looked away.

Andrea said, “Your dress is creased; you should iron it each day. And the colour is all wrong. And your hair is a mess.”

The woman said, “Who are you?—my pimp!”

Andrea said, “You look unclean.”

The woman leapt across the van and tried to grab at Andrea’s hair but the prostitute beside Andrea intervened, pushing the other one away, and one of the police officers at the front of the van rattled the cage, saying, “No fighting in there, girls; it’s all in a day’s work”

At the police station, Andrea got confused and pleaded guilty to soliciting for sex. She was locked in a cell, since there was some suspicion over the address that she had given, and the custody sergeant was not happy about her identity. When she had given him her name, he had said, sarcastically, “Oh! do you play guitar?”

She did not respond. And further, the vice squad wanted to interview her, since she had not been previously known to them.

The duty solicitor was shown into her cell. She was pleased to see a familiar face. By a happy coincidence, the solicitor was Dicky Bright, Craig’s partner. Dicky walked in, sat down and said, sarcastically, “I bet you’ll shake my hand now.” He opened his briefcase and added, “But there’s no way I’m shaking yours—‘impolite to make assumptions’—ha!”

Andrea said, “I do not need a pension. She was mistaken.”

To Dicky, it now made perfect sense that she was a prostitute. Back at the office, he was suspicious about her from the start. Craig had been evasive when he had told him about her; he had merely said that she was a friend whom he was helping out by offering her the job. But when she had snubbed him by refusing to shake his hand, he knew that Craig had put her up to that. And now that he knew she was a prostitute, it seemed obvious that Craig had hired her to humiliate him. He wondered what other tricks Craig had in store for him. He arranged for her release on bail and quickly returned to the office to try to unpick their apparent plot against him.

At home that evening, Craig hardly knew where to begin. Over the space of a few hours, he attempted to find out why she had adjusted the will and why she had got involved in prostitution, but he could get no explanation from her. Instead, all he seemed to be able to elicit from her were intricate instructions on how he should amend his behaviour and his house so as to make himself more appealing to her. She had told him at what stage he could kiss her each day, and she was midway through demonstrating to him the exact technique that he should use, when he pushed her away and shouted, “Look, this is no good. I’ve made a big mistake. You’ll have to go. Dicky is going to sack you in the morning. I told him you were just a friend I was doing a favour for. I couldn’t tell him about us—you’ve embarrassed me too much. And now you’re going to have a criminal record, and you’ve got sacked from your first job on your first day!”

He told her that it would be better for her to go now. He said that he would either pay for her flight back to Spain, or would pay her first month’s rent in a bedsit if she wanted to start a new life in this country.

Andrea took the second option. She decided that Craig was not a suitable lover because he could not even kiss. She would look for another man. Craig then told her that he had phoned a friend of his, Doctor Andrew Duncan, who ran his own surgery. Andrew had offered her a month’s trial as a receptionist. Craig had also phoned another friend who owned a house in Dawson Place which had been converted into twelve bed sitting rooms. He had one vacancy. Andrea accepted both the job and the room.

She moved into the room that evening, and the next morning she was let loose on the surgery’s computer system. She could immediately spot several shortcomings, which she proceeded to fix. She could not help herself. Each time she noticed one of these errors, she would recall that gap on the living-room dresser where her mother’s broken, antique bowl should have been, as though this gap were an irreplaceable first kiss, which, once gone, was lost for life; and as Andrea recalled this, she would feel duty bound to correct the mistake.He told her that it would be better for her to go now. He said that he would either pay for her flight back to Spain, or would pay her first month’s rent in a bedsit if she wanted to start a new life in this country.

Andrea took the second option. She decided that Craig was not a suitable lover because he could not even kiss. She would look for another man. Craig then told her that he had phoned a friend of his, Doctor Andrew Duncan, who ran his own surgery. Andrew had offered her a month’s trial as a receptionist. Craig had also phoned another friend who owned a house in Dawson Place which had been converted into twelve bed sitting rooms. He had one vacancy. Andrea accepted both the job and the room.

She moved into the room that evening, and the next morning she was let loose on the surgery’s computer system. She could immediately spot several shortcomings, which she proceeded to fix. She could not help herself. Each time she noticed one of these errors, she would recall that gap on the living-room dresser where her mother’s broken, antique bowl should have been, as though this gap were an irreplaceable first kiss, which, once gone, was lost for life; and as Andrea recalled this, she would feel duty bound to correct the mistake.

At midday, a Mrs Rosemary Blegthorpe phoned to make an appointment. Andrea asked what the problem was. Mrs Blegthorpe said that it was rather personal. Andrea said that she would listen carefully. Mrs Blegthorpe explained that she was not being sexually aroused by her husband and wondered if Doctor Duncan could do anything for her. Andrea gave her intricate instructions on how to perform better in bed. Mrs Blegthorpe was most grateful for the advice and hung up.

Andrew Duncan popped his head round the corner and asked Andrea how she was doing. She said, “I am very helpful.”

Andrew Duncan said, “Splendid,” and retreated back into his consulting room.

At 12.17, Mr Gardner phoned to make an appointment. Andrea asked him what his problem was. He said that he would rather not talk about it on the phone. Andrea said, “You are probably on the wrong medication. I will check it for you.”

Mr Gardner said, “I’m not on any medication. I just want an appointment.”

Andrea said, “If you do not want any medication, it would be better for you not to come.”

After a pause, Mr Gardner said, “Thank you,” and hung up.

Andrea had a few minutes to spare between each phone call, so she started to review the surgery’s database. She noticed that the records for some patients took up far too much space on the system, so she started to carefully review the information and she deleted any that she thought was not necessary. By the end of her first day, she had reviewed the records of fifty seven patients and had managed to make a dramatic reduction in the length of their files.

As she was leaving, Doctor Duncan asked, “How are you getting on?”

She told him, “I am being very efficient.”

He said, “Splendid. See you tomorrow.”

Over the following two weeks, Andrea continued to make many improvements in the surgery’s database system, and she even managed to make a noticeable reduction in the number of appointments being made. Doctor Duncan was most please.

In the evenings, Andrea had been watching the behaviour of her neighbours. The house where she lived was on the corner of Dawson Place and Pembridge Villas, and from her room she had a good view along both these streets. The only problem was that each time she peered through her window, she found that her keen eye for correctness was offended. The people just did not seem to know how to do anything. The previous morning, she had left for work five minutes early, so that she could spend the five minutes rearranging the garden furniture of the house opposite her. And this morning, before setting off for work, she was looking down on the improved layout of their garden, when she noticed that the adjoining neighbour was out cutting his garden hedge. It was a sunny morning and he was obviously keen, since he had started so early, but Andrea found that his workmanship started to cause her pain. At the back of her mind, she recalled that soup stain on her mother’s couch and she knew that she had to take action. She dashed down the stairs and crossed the street to him. She tugged on his shoulder to stop him from working and she told him, “I have watched you doing this. You are wrong. This is why you get this bad pattern,” and she indicated the texture of his hedge.

She said, “You should do it like this,” and she took hold of his hedge trimmer.

He held on to it.

She said, firmly, “No, let me show you.” And the two of them started wrestling with the trimmer. The man’s hand was held firmly over the handle, keeping the trimmer running. Andrea tried to free it from his grip and he managed to nip his other hand on the blade.

He shouted, “Look! you’ve cut me. Are you on drugs?”

She said, “You have done that yourself.”

He said, “You’ve just done it!”

She told him, “You should have let me show you. You are a stubborn man.”

He said, “Let me have it,” and he tried to pull the trimmer free of her grip.

She held onto it and told him, “But you are doing it wrong. You don’t know how to.”

He tugged, “Get off!”

She looked up and noticed her bus off in the distance. She released her grip and said, “Now I have missed my bus. You have made me late for work. You are inconsiderate. All English men are selfish, and they can not kiss.”

He said, “You’re on drugs; I’m calling the police.”

She said, “I am not a prostitute. I do not like disposable sex. Do not offer me any money.”

He said, “I wasn’t going to; why would I pay you!” and he walked back into his house and slammed his door shut.

When Andrea finally got into work, there were two police officers waiting to interview her. Doctor Duncan, who was looking rather pale, told her that the police were investigating a serious matter and that they needed to interview her. He told her that her trial employment was over and that she should not come to the surgery again. The police took her to the same police station that she had attended before, and lead her to an interview room. A detective came in and sat before her. It was the same short-haired man that she had seen talking to the prostitute on her first morning. The detective said that the surgery had discovered discrepancies in their patient database. Records had been tampered with. Did she have any explanation?

Andrea said that she had noticed discrepancies herself, and that she had done her best to correct them.

He said that the problems had only started since she had been working there.

She said, “Well, they were lucky to have me there. I have corrected what I could.”

He said, “No, you don’t seem to follow. They think you did it.”

Andrea said, “I did do it. I have just said that. No-one here can understand English.”

He said, “Are you saying you made the changes?”

She said, “I corrected what I could. Now someone else will have to do the rest.”

After a pause, he said, “I see.”

Andrea said, “This is a strange country. No-one will let me help them.”

He said, “I’m not sure what we could charge you with, so I’ll have to let you go for now.”

She said, “You have good eyes. Why do you do this job?”

He said, “What?”

She said, “You are not evil. Are you married?”

He said, “You are free to go.”

She said, “You should not be afraid. I will show you how to kiss. English men do not know how to kiss.”

He showed her out.

Over the following week, Andrea continued to watch the painfully incorrect behaviour of her neighbours. During the day, she walked the streets, so that she could explore her new environment. She discovered Pembridge Square, a nearby communal garden, encircled by a high hedge. She would sit on a particular bench there, watching a beautiful plane tree while reflecting on her life. Her first month in England was now coming to an end and she was not earning any money and her rent would soon be due.

The following day, she noticed an advert in the window of a local fruit and vegetable shop. The advert said, “HELP REQUIRED!” This seemed to strike a chord with Andrea, since she was good at helping people. She was given the job and the next morning she started work there.

Andrea could see that she was greatly needed in the vegetable shop. There was much work there for her to do. On her first morning, she started to make a mental note of all the things that needed correcting in the shop. But first, she thought, she would start with the customers.

Lucinda Evesham-Hall, a teenager who was shopping for her mother, placed her basket on the checkout. Andrea told her, “You have got this all wrong. Those green peppers are too old. You should have picked the back ones. I have not had time to change them yet.” She took out the three green peppers and dropped them into the dustbin beside her. “And this cabbage has brown leaves. Why do you buy rubbish like this?” She took out the cabbage and discarded it.

The girl said, “But I have to follow my list. My mother always says to follow her list,” and she took out her list and pointed at it.

Andrea took the list, dropt it into the dustbin and moved on to the next customer.

On her second morning, she was left alone in charge of the store and she took the opportunity to rearrange the displays. She changed the position of the oranges, cucumbers, potatoes, and the tomatoes.

On the third morning, Mr Graham, the owner, who was clearly uncomfortable about something, asked her why she had changed all the displays. She told him, “It is now more pleasing to me.”

He said, barely able to keep himself from shouting, “But you’ve moved the tomatoes; they’re the best seller; they must be at the front.”

She said, “Their colour does not go with the bananas. They had to be moved.”

Mr Graham yelled, “Their colour! This isn’t an interior design shop!”

She told him, “You are ungrateful. All English men are the same.”

A queue was forming at the checkout. Mr Graham put his hand to his chest and said, “I’m having palpitations again. I must keep calm.” He walked into the storeroom at the back of the shop.

Andrea looked at the man at the front of the queue. He was unshaven and his shirt was crumpled and dirty. She told him, “You should take more care of your appearance,” and she started taking the produce from his basket, weighing it and placing it in a carrier bag. At one point, she glanced up at him and said, “You are a mess.” And then she came to the courgettes that he had chosen. She picked them up and said, “No, this is no good. You have picked a bad one.”

She held the offending courgette in one hand, took hold of his arm with her other hand and walked him over to the courgette display. She picked through the courgettes until she found one that pleased her. She handed it to him and said, “This is a good one. It has a good colour and feel,” and she indicated for him to try it.

He stroked it and looked at her, puzzled.

She asked, “Is that not pleasing?”

He shrugged.

She told him, “It is good.”

He could no longer hold back his growing excitement. He whispered to her, dry at the mouth, “Would you like to feel my courgette.”

She told him, “I do not understand you. I have already felt your courgette.”

He stepped closer to her, placed his hand on her hip and whispered, “Come back to my hotel.”

At that point Mr Graham came back into the shop. He said, “Andrea, what are you doing? Look at this queue——” There were five people waiting at the checkout.

Andrea said, “I was helping this man. He does not know how to shop.”

Mr Graham said, “There was a box of avocados in the store room. Have you moved them?

She said, “I threw them away. They were too old.”

He shouted, “Right! that’s it. Get out, get out.”

She said, “You need my help. Your shop is garbage.”

He shouted, “You’re sacked! Get out!” and he started to push her out of his shop.

Andrea left the shop, but not until she had told Mr Graham, “You are English. All English men are ungrateful, and they are no good at kissing.”

Outside, it was sunny. She decided to walk to Pembridge Square to sit in the calmness among the trees and work out what to do next. She heard some quickening footsteps behind her. The courgette-man from the shop appeared beside her. He said, “I run a hotel. I am looking for an extra cleaner if you’d like a job.”

She told him, “Maybe it is you who needs cleaning, not your hotel.”

He said, “Now, look here. A joke’s a joke, but I’m offering you a job.”

“And I am offering you good advice.”

He told her, “If you want the job, be there at nine in the morning. Here’s the address,” and he gave her his card and walked off.

When she got home, Mr Jacobs, the landlord, told her, “Your rent is due today. I do insist that tenants pay on time.”

She told him, “I have lost my job again. English people are strange. They do not want you to help them.”

He asked, “So, you can’t pay your rent?”

She said, “I will start a new job in the morning. I will pay you when I can.”

He said, “That’s not good enough. Look for somewhere else to live,” and as he was walking away, he said, over his shoulder, “I’ve heard all about you.”

Andrea looked to the ceiling and said, “If I am reincarnated, do not return me as an English man.”

The following morning, she was about to leave to start her cleaning job at the courgette-man’s hotel. She had five minutes to spare and she was looking through her window, admiring the new layout of the garden opposite. She noticed a courier van pulling up in the street. And then she noticed the neighbour who lived in the ground-floor flat on the corner house. She had often seen him coming and going. She had noticed that his hair was in need of styling and that he always seemed to wear the same trousers, which were at least one inch too short for him.

From her room, she could see his front door, and could also see into his kitchen. At that moment, she watched him placing some bread into his toaster and plunging down the “start” lever. At the same time, the courier arrived at his door and rang his doorbell. The man appeared at the door, started to sign something but then seemed to change his mind. He then seemed to start struggling with the courier and then he pulled his door to behind him and hurried away, leaving the courier there. Through his kitchen window, Andrea could see that he had forgotten his toast, which was starting to burn. She hurried down the stairs, out into the street, turned the corner, and she could see him in the distance. She shouted after him, “You plunge it in and leave in a hurry.”

He seemed to have not heard her, and if anything, he seemed to quicken his pace. She broke into a run and shouted after him, “The fire will come after you have gone!” but he was now out of sight.

He seemed to be heading towards the Notting Hill Gate tube station. Andrea just seemed to know that he was headed there; she did not know how; she just knew; so she took her own shortcut. At the entrance, she noticed him making his way through the turnstiles. She quickly bought a ticket for a random destination and followed him. She somehow managed to tail him to his platform and she spotted him boarding his train. She boarded the same train, but she was two carriages further along from him. The train pulled away. There was standing room only and Andrea started to make her way through the standing passengers as best she could. A few minutes later, she stepped through into his carriage and she could see him in the distance, sitting on an end-seat near to the far door. She started to push her way through the bodies, and at that moment, he looked up and their eyes met again. She was about to shout out to him, “Your bread stick is burning,” but he got to his feet and started pushing his way towards the door. The train came to a halt at the Westminster station and the passengers started pouring out. By the time she had made it to the platform, she had lost sight of him.

Up on the street, she looked in either direction. She could not see him, but again, she somehow knew which direction he had gone in; she did not know how she knew; she simply knew that she should follow the people who were walking in that direction. A few minutes later, she spotted him entering a building. When she got closer, she realized that it was a government building. She entered and came to a barrier and a security guard who was looking at her suspiciously. She tried explaining that she was following a man who had just entered the building, but he did not seem to understand. She told him, “His trousers are too short.”

The guard said nothing.

She said, urgently, “His house will burn down if I can not see him!”

The guard said, “If you don’t have an appointment, I can’t let you in,” and he started guiding her towards the outside door.

She said, “English men do not like being helped.”

He said, “Madam, you cannot stand in the doorway; it is a fire hazard.”

She said, “You have just pushed me here!”

He said, “I did not push you. Would you like me to call the police?”

Andrea pictured the short-haired detective who did not want any help with his kissing. She said, “English men do not like being helped,” and she walked out onto the pavement.

Outside, she looked up at the building. There were five floors and endless windows. She crossed the street, sat on a bench and wondered what to do. She watched the traffic and pedestrians for a while. She thought about the courgette man and his hotel; she thought about her landlord demanding his rent, and she wondered how she would ever be able to fix the mess that she seemed to have found herself in. Somehow she knew that it was more important to help the man with the short trousers, whose house was surely burning down by then. About an hour had gone by when she looked up at the government building across the street and she thought that she could see him sitting on a ledge which was at the foot of one of the windows on the top floor. She thought that perhaps he had received a phone call, telling him that his house had burnt down. She stood up and started waving to him and shouting, “Do not jump! All is not lost!”

But he seemed to have sat further back on the ledge, so that he was now out of sight. All she could see were his legs, dangling over the edge of the ledge. She looked behind her and noticed people entering and leaving the building behind her. It seemed to be some sort of commercial building. She entered, found a lift and took it to the fifth floor. It opened out onto an open plan office. It seemed to be a call centre of some sort. At every desk, a person was speaking on the phone and watching their computer screen. Andrea crossed to the window, and she had a clear view of the man with the short trousers. She started banging on the window and shouting, “Do not jump. At least you will not have to clean hotels for dirty men.”

Some of the other staff started looking through the window. Another man had now climbed out onto the ledge and was edging towards Andrea’s man. Andrea’s man stood up, climbed back into the window and closed it, leaving the other man outside, banging on the window and shouting something in at him.

Andrea crossed the street again, entered the government building and told the guard, “He is on the top floor. I tried to tell him his bread stick was on fire.”

The guard said, “Hold on a moment, madam,” and he made a call. She gave him her name and he told her to take the lift to the fifth floor. When she reached the reception on that floor, a young girl told her that Mister Pam had just left for lunch. “Mister Pam” was his name, apparently. The guard had known all along whom she had meant. Perhaps, Andrea thought, everyone else had also noticed his short trousers. She asked the girl, “Does he know about his house?”

“Know what?”

“Is that why he tried to jump? I tried to tell him, but he went away too quickly.”

The girl said, “Perhaps you can catch him after lunch——”

Andrea left the building. She took the tube back to Notting Hill Gate and made her way to the courgette man’s hotel. He told her that she was three hours late and that he had given the job to someone else. She told him, “At least you have combed your hair. But you still need to learn how to shave.”

At her bedsit, she found that her key did not fit the lock anymore. Mr Jacobs told her that she was now evicted and that he had let the room to someone else.

Out in Dawson Place, she could see three fire engines. There had, indeed, been a fire at Mister Pam’s house. She made her way to her favourite spot in the garden at Pembridge Square, sat on the bench there and watched the plane tree. Again, she wondered what she was going to do now. While watching the tree, she found herself looking at a particular branch, which somehow seemed attractive to her. There was something about the shape of the branch and its relation to the pattern of leaves around it that made it pleasing, even “perfect”—Andrea thought as she watched it. Then a squirrel jumped onto the branch and the branch sprang into a different position, disrupting the pattern of leaves and changing the branch’s perfect relation to everything around it. The squirrel then seemed to look directly at Andrea, as though it had jumped onto that particular branch so that it could demonstrate something to her. Andrea noticed that nature was flexible, that the tree had bent to accommodate the squirrel, that the tree did not try to hold onto its state of “perfection”, but allowed itself to bend when some outside force intervened. She thought about her own tendency to correct other people’s mistakes, and she wondered why she did this. She also wondered why people seemed to do so many things incorrectly. When she saw these mistakes, she felt a desire to correct them, and it seemed to her that is was this that had got her into so much trouble. It seemed that the people did not want to be helped. But how could she help feeling the desire to correct people, and why did she feel it?

She thought back twelve years and recalled herself handing Jorge that bowl of soup and feeling it falling from her hand. That moment had seemed to be a turning point in her life. She wondered what had been wrong with what she had done. She had bent her mother’s rules, which had destroyed all that her mother had held dear. So it had seemed to Andrea that she should not bend those sorts of rules, that she should not allow people’s mistakes to go uncorrected.

She watched the squirrel, who was watching her, and she could see that nature was flexible, that the tree did not cling onto its own perfection but allowed itself to bend. It bent because otherwise it might break. Andrea pictured herself allowing people to keep their mistakes, instead of her trying to correct them, and she realized that it was her mother who had been wrong on that day. Her mother could not bend, so her mother had broken. Her mother’s loss had been caused because she was too attached to her antique items and their pristine state and once that state had gone, something within her had died. But it was not Andrea who had caused this loss; her mother had caused it herself by being too attached to the pristine state of her physical objects, too attached to “correctness”. Andrea realized that she had not done anything wrong that day. She had only wanted to please Jorge. Her intentions had been good, but her mother was too attached to things being in a particular way, so her mother had suffered a great loss.

At the time, that incident had seemed like a lesson—to not break the rules; but Andrea now realized that she had learnt the wrong lesson. Her lesson should have been to not be too attached to physical objects, or to things being in a particular way, not being too attached to “correctness”; this just caused pain when those things were not “correct”. When she realized this, she felt as though she were floating. Perhaps she should not try to correct people but should allow them to make mistakes, as her mother should have allowed her to make those mistakes. Yes, that was it. From now on, she would try to allow people to be incorrect.

Andrea sighed, and, as she did so, the squirrel jumped to another branch, as if her lesson were now over. The branch sprang back into place and the tree’s perfect state was restored. She looked over to another bench and noticed that Mister Pam was now sitting there in the garden. She crossed over to his bench and sat beside him.

They spoke for a moment. She told him that she had been trying to tell him about his toaster. He said that he knew that now. She told him about her misfortunes, all due to trying to help people. He said some things that she could not understand and she told him where he was going wrong and how he should change his thinking, but then she remembered the bending branch. She looked at his left eye, which seemed to be slightly out of alignment with his right, but she managed to not mention it. She looked at the bottom of his trousers as he sat there, and because he was now sitting down, his trousers seemed so short that they were revealing the bottom half of his shins. She wanted to grab hold of the ends of his trouser legs and tug them down; her left hand involuntarily moved towards one of his trouser legs but she restrained it with her right hand. She looked up and noticed that his hair was wrong and that his tie did not match his shirt. She felt a strong desire to tidy him up, but she told herself that these things did not matter. She would bend. They did not matter. Instead, she smiled and told him, “I like you.”

He hesitated for a moment and then said, quietly, “Thank you.”

They both returned to watching the plane tree. Andrea then found herself wondering if he knew how to kiss. She was watching that same branch again on the tree and she realized that she should dismiss the thought and that it did not matter how he kissed. But then she realized that there would be limits to how much she could bend on that issue, and she started imagining a whole range of kisses and trying to decide which ones would be acceptable and which ones would not.

Finally, she dismissed the thought and returned to simply watching the plane tree. In the background she could here the distant sound of passing traffic and the occasional burst of bird song.

 

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Read some of Andrea's poems, which give further insight into some of her experiences that are depicted in this story.