When I arrived at our office building I found the entrance had been bricked up. The elderly woman who sold halal samosas every Friday was there on the street as usual, hawking her wares. I asked her what had happened to the door but she seemed not to know much English. As I was always the first person in the office I decided to wait until one of my colleagues arrived. There was a mosque just around the corner and a number of men returning from prayers stopped to buy breakfast from the food vendor. ‘It’s been bricked up like this for months,’ one of them told me. ‘The building is being turned into flats,’ another said.
In the entrance way a large pile of leaves had accumulated. A half-concealed scrap of paper caught my attention. I picked it up and discovered it was a sealed envelope with my name printed on it. Inside was a ticket for a performance of a play scheduled to take place that evening. The play was called: No Entry.
The food vendor looked at me with concern and held out a samosa, gesturing for me to take it. I realised I was hungry, ate the food greedily and bought two more. A quick search on my phone showed the company I worked for was at a new address a few miles away. I called the number given. An automated voice message said: ‘The number you have dialed has not been recognised.’ Calls to several of my colleagues produced the same result. The only option left was to try to find the new office.
I decided to take the underground. The train was packed and I barely had room to stand. But after a few stops I managed to get into a seat. I must have fallen asleep. When I woke up the train was in a siding, and a member of the cleaning staff was shaking me by the arm. A month back, I had lost my phone on an underground train and it was found a few hours later by a cleaner. By an odd coincidence it was this depot to which I had come to pick it up.
I remembered the walk to the nearest station being through a park, but a new estate seemed to have sprung up there. My phone was now out of battery and I soon lost my sense of direction. The streets were deserted and the houses appeared uninhabited. Night was falling and the darkened windows had a malignant aspect. I crawled into a large bush, concealed myself as best I could, and feeling hungry retrieved the samosas from my shoulder bag. I could feel the theatre ticket in my jacket pocket. Would the play provide me with clues I wondered. If I could find my way out of the estate I might still make the performance.
Simon Collings
Picture Rupert Loydell
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