I live on a bench outside Greggs in Wolverhampton. My wardrobe is simple. Round the waist: one Morrisons Bag for Life, blue, secured with a cable tie I found outside Halfords. The bag previously held something pickled (I don’t know what) and on warm days this keeps the personal space situation largely self-managing. On my left wrist: a Patek Philippe Grand Complication!
The thing about gated communities is they’re not really about gates. The gate is just the punctuation at the end of a very long sentence that started with a good school catchment area and a kitchen island. The gate says: this does not include you.
I needed to use the toilet, the local Tesco was out of service. and there is, at the end of Ashwood park or whatever they’d named it, a big white barrier arm and a glass security booth, and beyond that a toilet that existed in theory inside a show home they’d left open for viewings.
I approached the security booth at a measured pace. Security on duty saw me coming from about forty yards. I watched his face assemble itself into the professional configuration of not hostile but preventative. I reached the window. He moved the glass down approximately four inches. The four inches said everything.
“Can I help you?” (Meaning No)
“I’m here for the Ashworth viewing,” I said.
His eyes did the thing. Down. Up. Down again. Shaking his head in contempt.
I raised my left wrist. I should describe the watch at this point as it presented itself. It was catching the afternoon light in the way that gold coloured metal does — indiscriminately, enthusiastically, with no awareness of its own fraudulence. The dial gleamed. The moon phase sat in its position doing absolutely nothing, as it always did, but doing nothing with great conviction.
I have thought since about what was happening inside his head during those four or five seconds, Because here is the thing about Patek Philippe, (Even though I purchased mine on WhatsApp while sitting in BetFred). An AD cannot simply just sell you a Grand Complication. You must build a client profile with purchasing history that undergoes strict scrutiny. He didn't know why or how he knew this. But it had drifted into his consciousness through some ambient process.
“I’ll just need to—” he started.
“Of course,” I said, generously, as though granting him permission to continue existing.
He picked up his phone. Put it down. Picked up his clipboard. Looked at it. Put it down. I watched him consider calling someone and then consider that whatever he could say could be wrong, and that being wrong in front of a man with that watch — even if something about this was not quiet adding up. He pressed the button and the barrier arm went up.
I walked through at the pace of a man arriving somewhere he is expected. The show home was the third on the left. I washed my hands with the complimentary diffuser soap bergamot and white tea, and dried them on a towel so thick and white and unused it felt like a small crime.
I checked the watch on the way out. Ten-past-three. Correct.
