Maxim Jakubowski - The Mammoth Book of Best British Mysteries 6

“Look at them watching us,” you shouted into my ear.

“They think we look good together.”

I watched the figures silhouetted by the yellowish light inside the carriage, while you held me around the waist.

How I wish now I could have been one of those passengers inside the train looking out at the people dancing. You would have been no more than a frame-grab to me and I would have got off at Hammersmith and carried on with my life. A different life.

A couple of days after the party, we watched Un soir, un train for the first time.

I guess you thought the two of them – Mathias and Anne, Yves Montand and Anouk Aimee – were supposed to represent the two of us. If so, then the flashback in London is probably when they are happiest. The way they sit in the back of Michael Gough’s car when he takes them on a drive through Rotherhithe, both of them in the back so they can be together, leaving the front passenger seat empty, like it was a taxi. The way they hold hands, later when they’re out of the car. The look Michael Gough gives them when he sees them holding hands. I think he’s envious of them because they’re so happy together. Like we used to be.

The tape was recorded off Japanese TV. Do you remember that? A friend of yours had taped it for you because it was so rarely screened. So it was in French with Japanese subtitles. We had to watch it six or seven times before we knew what was going on and we laughed when we realized that Mathias and his companions couldn’t understand what the people in the village were saying either.

I started looking out for Anthony on the Hammersmith & City line. After all, I’d seen him twice, so there was a good chance he worked or lived somewhere along the line. A good chance I’d see him again. I didn’t carry my DV camera. I wasn’t going to film him this time.

The reason the footage I sent you was so uneven and featured other people as well as him, especially the stuff I shot in the gallery, was because I was having to do it on the sly. It’s not easy filming from inside a half-fastened coat.

I tried boarding the same carriage as the last time I’d seen him. Then I tried varying which carriage I got in. I still didn’t see him.

I was looking out for him on TV, too, and in Time Out and online, but it seemed like he wasn’t doing anything that was listed anywhere.

I watched Un soir, un train yet again, rewinding the tape endlessly to study the scenes shot in Rotherhithe. Both locations were previously unknown to me, yet notable enough to appear in The London Encyclopaedia, which you may remember buying me. I hung around the gallery on Wharf Road, but I didn’t see Anthony there either.

Then one morning I got on the train and there he was again. Sitting more or less in the same place. Looking every bit as much like you as he had done before. I didn’t stop to think. If I had done, I might have got tongue-tied and everything might have played out very differently. I contrived a conversation. It was easy. He was reading a script. I asked him if he was an actor and he smiled and said he was. It was so easy. Because his bone structure is the same as yours, his smile is the same as yours too. His teeth are slightly whiter, but that’s OK. It really did feel like I was sitting there and talking to you. Except it felt like talking to you at the beginning, not the end. And not now. Talking to you now – writing to you now – feels very different. We talked until King’s Cross, where he said he had to get off. I said I was getting off there too. I wondered if he was going to Wharf Road again, but I didn’t ask him that. I said, “Where are you going?” He said he was going to a rehearsal. He had a part in a play and they were using the director’s flat on Gray’s Inn Road as a rehearsal space. I said that sounded exciting.

He asked me what I did. It wasn’t like he’d only just thought to ask. I’d just not given him the chance.

“I’m a film-maker,” I told him, as we were about to part on the street.

“Really?” he said. “Now that’s exciting.”

The way he said it, I could tell he meant it. I guessed he preferred film to the stage.

“Do you have a card?” he asked me. A card! Me!

“I’ve run out,” I said, and as I scribbled my number on an old receipt, my sleeve rode up and I realized he’d be able to see the marks on my forearm.

“Well, I never had any,” he said carefully, then wrote his own number in small, precise figures on an empty page of a little notebook that he produced from his shoulder bag. He tore the page out along its perforation and added: “I should probably get some.” We said goodbye and I set off in the opposite direction to his, but then turned to watch him go, weaving through the commuters. He’s even a similar height to you.

I waited for him to call me and when he did I said there was a location in Rotherhithe I needed to have another look at and would he like to meet there for a drink? Before leaving the house I slotted the tape into the VCR again. The thing I discovered about Un soir, un train, is that it’s not actually a black and white film, after all. I looked it up to check something, and every source that lists it, from Time Out to the IMDb, has it down as colour. Maybe some incompatibility between Japanese TV and the UK standard. I couldn’t – and still can’t – figure out why you gave it me so close to the end. What was it – a week, two at the most, before things fell apart? Were you trying to convince yourself we still had a future? Was your butterfly mind already selecting a new film to show to Fareda?

I picked up the remote and had a last look at those London scenes. In the back of the car. Michael Gough telling Mathias and Anne how Rotherhithe is “notorious”. His dialogue, of course, is in English. Their arrival at Bermondsey Wall East, walking on to Cherry Garden Pier, then the visit to the Angel pub. Some kind of balcony, sitting down, holding hands, Michael Gough remaining standing, but that’s when he notices their clasped hands.

I also opened a file on my laptop and brought it up to date. When I’ve finished with it, I’ll print it out and close the machine down.

I’ll take the tube to London Bridge and walk down impossibly narrow streets between fantastically tall buildings. Converted wharves. Exclusive flats, apartments. Portered, gated. The kind of place we could have ended up sharing in another universe. I’ll skirt the Design Museum, cross a bridge of wire and stainless steel. The river a constant presence on my left, tide creeping in.

Bermondsey Wall West, cut inland, along a bit.

Derelict wharves and warehouses. Gaps in the gentrification. Back towards the river. Bermondsey Wall East, Cherry Garden Pier, the first of the two static locations. I can’t walk on to the pier as they did in the film. It’s owned by a private company now. City Cruises plc. I’ll walk up the ramp towards a blue door with a no-entry sign on it, barbed wire coiled above. A security light will flick on, blinding me.

A hundred yards further downstream, the Angel. Lights burning at the windows will turn the blue air a half-shade darker. The light won’t last much longer. In the film, Mathias and Michael Gough enter the pub while Anne remains outside. Next shot, the two men are on a balcony, where Anne joins them.

I’ll push open the door and go inside. The first thing I’ll notice, like the last time I was there, will be the Sam Smith’s logo on all the taps and bottles and I’ll think to myself, as I did before, that you wouldn’t have liked that. This pub has been there since the fifteenth century, and the moment you come along, you find out it’s a Sam Smith’s joint. Beer’s just beer to me, as you know. But I remember how Sam Smith’s used to provoke extreme reactions in you. I’ll look around. There’ll be a handful of locals in. Sam Smith’s or no, it’s a decent-looking old-fashioned boozer, lots of wood and brass, comfortable seats. I’ll move through into the back bar and my eye will be drawn to the picture window. On the other side of the window a balcony, and out on the balcony I’ll see Anthony’s shaved head shining under the artificial lights. As if sensing my arrival, he will turn round.