The Streets of Cricklewood

A literary piece addressing some of the tragic life events which might explain why people leave Cricklewood from time to time.

The streets of Cricklewood are streets I try to avoid. The wide lumbering Broadway lined with its kebab shops, off-licences and pound savers is little more to me now than painful memories. I had to go there yesterday to pick up some mail. I caught the tube to Willesden Green. I knew I’d never have the strength to walk through Cricklewood Station. So I walked up Walm Lane – past St Gabriel’s on the right and I almost managed to ignore it – that magical place where we had stumbled late at night, drunk on our own love, and made her fantasy happen in the churchyard. God only knows how many times. She seemed so free, so guileless, so honest and I wanted her. I wanted to possess her, as much as I could and more. I wanted to surrender to her. I wanted to become part of her. There was no God I could have worshipped more.

The pain gripped my heart. I hadn’t really known before that it actually physically hurts. I thought all those songs were just tedious metaphors. I didn’t realise that her invisible hand actually reached into your chest and pulled it so tight that it burns.

I shook it off and walked on, down Chichele Road, past the Moroccan restaurant where she had taken me that night after I had mentioned to her that I liked tagine. I remember her eyes piercing my heart with their smile as they looked expectantly for approval across the table and it was all I could do not to take her face in my hands and kiss away the longing I felt for her.

I swallowed and walked on to the right down the Broadway past the bakery where we had shared breakfast so many times after tumbling out of bed, hoping to grab something quick before our hunger for each other overwhelmed us. We’d walk down to the bakery wrapped up in each other, me only taking my eyes off her long enough to check the footpath ahead to be sure that I wouldn’t fall – though I knew that if I did, I could count on her always to catch me… or I thought that I could.

On my left I could see from the corner of my eye the Crown, where we had often ended up when we wanted to leave all our friends in Soho and dance, just the two of us, unknown and alone in the crowded bar. All eyes always followed her as she glided through the doors and I would be so proud to be her man. She would be in the centre of the dance floor and every man there would want a piece of her. She’d smile, she’d flirt and she’d dance with fluid moves that were pure sex but she’d come home with me, every time, and I’d devour her – every smooth soft perfectly tanned inch of her. Once, at the Crown, there had been this fireplace and somehow she knew how to stand just so and move me just so…

I walked on.

I walked on around the corner to where our flat had been… where my flat was… to where the mail was waiting.

I took a deep breath and I turned the key. The click in the lock was familiar, the creak of the door was familiar, the way the door handle felt in my hand was familiar.

I don’t know whether it was morbid curiosity that took me the other path home. Maybe it was just force of habit that took me along that familiar path. I saw the place, though, the place I had to accompany her back to so many times. The place he had ruined. The place where she broke down and admitted at last to that persistent Detective that she had known him before. The place where the police chose not to take it any further. The place where our lives changed forever.

I felt less than I thought I would. My heart still raced, my chest still hurt but I was in control. I didn’t expect to be able to go home that night. She wouldn’t be expecting me back tonight anyway after this. I had thought it would be worse though, I reflected as I stepped onto the Thameslink for a hotel somewhere near Blackfriars. Somewhere where I could drink and drink and drink and drink, all alone, until I passed out alone and woke up to a new day where I could again bear to face this precious, dangerous girl and resume our life, nowhere near Cricklewood.