You step into my path, saying, ‘The bank is shit? The bank is shit. The bank is shit.’
Unsure if you’re some undercover Socialist Worker, I pull down my hood and crane my neck towards your mouth: ‘shit’ morphs into ‘shut.’
The closed doors and empty kiosks make this ridiculously obvious. But the world has socialised me to be polite, so I nod and smile and say yes.
‘You want to walk?’
Your story isn’t the one I’m after; it isn’t the safely-amusing adventure I’d imagined would fill this twenty minute gap between leaving the office and meeting my friend; but every other face is glued to an i-Phone, and so again, I say yes.
We walk through the salt-n-miso vapours from Wasabi, Trinity’s latest lab-like culinary offering, swerve around a pack of teenage girls leaping for one last look in Primark before it shuts.
I wonder whether anyone notices us, and if they do, what stories bloom in their heads. Perhaps we’ve been set up by mutual friends and are now cursing said friends; perhaps we’re long lost relatives, silently calculating our percentage of shared blood. Or is it as obvious we don’t know each other as it is the bank is shut?
You ask me am I from Leeds, and when I say no, you incline your head deeply: ‘Ahhhh. You speak good. You speak very good.’
You mean I’m southern? I sound like the TV? I sound posh? I’m far too uptight to say any of this out loud. ‘Thanks… I guess.’
‘You like tea? Coffee?’
‘Yes.’
‘You want we get?’ You nod towards a decidedly somnolent street of shops selling shoes and watches and glittery greetings cards. In London, the city that gave me the voice you claim to like, a street would only sink into as deep a sleep as this at 5am – if at all. And that’s all it takes to slam down my internal shutters, for the homesickness to swell in my throat, for me to realise it’s just the same old story and I’m an idiot to have thought otherwise.
‘I have to go.’
The sky still holds its watery weight but I lift my hood and power-walk towards Briggate.
I don’t dare look back and I don’t dare stop until I’m buffered by three or four layers of sweatshop-free neon. I’m in American Apparel.
No, you won’t find me here, amongst the high-waisted skirts and polka dot crop tops. And that’s when I notice the assistant, glancing at me through her hyper-straight fringe, as if I am dangerous.
Leeds in the Loop 