Outside St Martin's in the Field, London, 15.26

If Tomorrow Starts Without Me

And the sky is that particular shade of clear true blue it rarely is on a winter’s day, fading to white on the western horizon as the sun begins to lower and as it does it hits the white stone of St Martin’s, illuminating for one blazing moment, the whole of the front of the church. Think of Siemon Scamell-Katz’s reaching for the sublime, that moment of illumination there, right there, but so fleeting it is gone by the time my camera is out my bag and breathe.

All day, a feeling of sickness. Balled tight in my stomach. Five minutes away is a bookshop with a stack of books on the counter. A very big stack of books. A stack of my books. Peered through the window, saw them. Was early. Ran down to this church. A sort of touchstone these last two years in the way a church should be. It knows things about me. Lots of the buildings round here do, we are making a story, me and them, of a life spent running around doing and seeing and just living and forgetting to breathe. Just breathe.

A day so crisp and clear it belongs in a film. London is good when it’s like this, this beauty of a city. Love it in my bones in ways that continue to surprise me. Recall hating it, but god, you fall in love and you stay there, at the bottom of things.

And breathe. Rewind. Wake and it’s dark still, dawn lifts it. A crow in the thin branches of the tree outside the window. An omen. Again. All midsummer, crows. And Ted Hughes in Ava Anna Ada, a sign on publication day and stretch and do not be sick and up and drink tea and shower and jump on the tube and out at Pimlico and there’s a friend’s feet, coming down the stairs at the entrance and there’s a cinnamon bun just like I said I wanted and we go to the Tate Britain just like I said I wanted and the guard searches bags asking if we have sharp knives or bombs and we laugh and we drink coffee and smuggle the contraband bun into the cafe and then it is up to look at the Bacons just like I said I wanted and my phone doesn’t stop buzzing all the way round congratulations good luck break a leg happy publication day several emojis and just breathe and then out into the eye watering sunlight and get lost in a tangle of streets and end up on a street I’ve not been on since the day, the very day, the exact day on that exact street when my editor read Ava Anna Ada for the first time and sent a message to say it was a dark miracle and he very much hoped to acquire it and the chances are what and through St James’s Park for the pelicans just like I said I wanted and into Hatchard’s and there she is, that pop of neon on the shelf and just breathe.

Oh fuck I have not breathed properly the whole way here and there it is, my silly little novel and my silly little thoughts and all my petty concerns in the brightest cover and oh my God he compared it to Nabokov and how do you write another sentence ever again after that and Cocteau too and breath struggles to get lower than upper chest and recall Christine Brooke-Rose all of a sudden, a strange thing to do, right here, sharp pain in left chest and in stomach and then turn around, too shy to ask if you can sign your own book, you idiot and just along Piccadilly, into Waterstones and look round it’s where where where is it, not there surely not not there and there, right there, in front of your nose with its staff picks label and just breathe.

And out into Piccadilly Circus and past buildings that know things and keep your secrets for you and into Soho, just for old time’s sake and past the French House and up Greek Street and all these places it was concocted, this ‘poetic addition to the dystopian novel’ conceived in the back streets of Soho and they moan about the tourists but it’s ok, the tourists don’t know where to go not really, there’s plenty of the old Soho around if you just know where to find it and we do, that’s the problem and just breathe.

Foyles. Charing Cross Road and there it is, on the staff recommends shelf right at the front of the shop underneath Booker Prize Winner Paul Murry and no, no it can’t be right there and you sign them, your signature getting bigger, bolder than it’s been before and they get their little signed stickers and god what time is it and it’s nearly two and how and just fucking breathe and out and up past The British Museum, no wind to lift the flag high on the pole and breathe in out you can if you just try and think of The London Review Bookshop and how welcome a coffee would be and surely it won’t be there that’s the holy grail and in the shop and don’t look don’t expect too much from this ‘perverse dark tale of shifting identities, deceit and manipulation’ and oh holy fuck there it is is. Right there. On the fucking table. Think about running away. Right next to Jonathan Lethem. Now it’s a joke. Someone’s made this day up. I am not here. I am just misplaced. Yes. That is it. It is too bright and too crisp and too much my favourite winter weather and January never does this. No, I cannot be here. I am sleeping. I am six and dreaming this up. Wake up. Pinch skin. No. Doesn’t work. I am still here.

Coffee. And a homeless man next to me. I talk to him. I’ll talk to anyone. One of the greatest pleasures of life are the chance encounters. You learn things this way. He’s a poet, he tells me, he recites one of his poems, tells me it was published. Tells me it can’t be possible that humans came from apes, not really, not with the way we think and they think. Asks me what I think about space, what’s it for, he muses. I tell him I’m a fan of the mystery of it all. He says he’s going to write a poem about love. It’s the thing he says. It’s the only thing. I tell him I’m not a poet. That it would drive me mad. I’d get too obsessed, I say, as if to claim I am not obsessed when writing books. He suggests he could buy my book in instalments, he has one pound and 54 pence in his possession. He puts these coins on the table and carefully counts them, sliding them along the table with one long fingernail. I wish I had a copy with me to give him. And then it is time to go. And breathing is hard again. Hide in the toilet for a moment.

Down to Covent Garden. Find the bookshop. The stacks of books and run to St Martin’s and breathe. Just a simple deep breath. And the whole front of the church, illuminated for one blazing moment, hitting the white stone of St Martin’s as the sun begins to lower on the western horizon fading to white and the sky that particular shade of clear blue it rarely is on a winter’s day.