I have very strong, very fond memories of Newcastle. My brother, Charles, was at Durham University and while visiting Durham was good, going to Newcastle was a different kind of good, a bigger, dirtier, scarier, more disorientating kind of good. I was 15 by the time I went to stay with Charlie, I had been a mere child of 14 when I'd been to Manchester for the first time. By now I was an old hand. And later there was the incredible experience of passing through Newcastle on the way to Edinburgh, a journey I have done many, many times since going to university.
On this occasion, though, I have managed to forget that we will also be passing through Darlington. Kate took very few direct roots to anything in her life and when she decided to train as a radio journalist she applied for many courses, and was only accepted on one: Darlington. She was disappointed to the point of distress that the courses with better reputations than Darlington did not want her, it tapped into her sense of being the outsider, of never being good enough. She lodged with a family in Darlington and enjoyed the course a great deal, though it was tough. As we pass through Darlington on the train, and stop, I feel such a melancholy. So many things led to her being outside the Sahafi Hotel on 9 February 2005, having been accepted at Darlington being one of them. And as I have no reason to visit Darlington in the normal round of my daily life, suddenly finding myself here has that poignance which jumps on me, ruffles my hair, steals my doughnut, and goes, leaving me confused and bereft in another, slightly different shade, to all the other berefts I've done... and I've done a few.
We are staying at a new youth hostel in the centre of Newcastle. I have booked us a twin room, and it turns out to be two sets of bunkbeds, the bottom of one being a double bed. Bartelt's double bed. I try to make the upper bunk of the other set whilst crawling around on the bed itself. I was not designed for anything 1. domestic 2. tidy, and so this causes much hilarity (Bartelt), photo-taking (Bartelt) and swearing (me).
The hostel is only a week old and so, inevitably, there are problems with the wifi. We go out in search of other delights. I have raved about this city to Bartelt is, understandably, excited. We stumble upoon the Tyneside Cinema. What a gorgous place! The guy in the ticket booth is from Poland and he is very, very enthusiastic about a film, so we just buy tickets on the spot. Both Bartelt and I fancy him a bit and so, when the film turns out to be tedious in the extreme, we find we can forgive him.
Before the disappointment of the film, however, there is another disappointment: the guy says there is wifi in the building. Hallelujah! We head up the stairs to find it, only to discover that it's not working today, of course, as they have a gig later. I am getting further and further behind with the admin. I try to drown my stress in a diet coke. It's still SecuLent; I'm still off tea and coffee. I had no idea before I started on this just how obsessed I had become with both tea and coffee, it's a real struggle. Which is absurd, as a REAL struggle is living in a slum or walking five miles to school every day.
My phone rings. It's Roger, the guy who was engaged to my sister. He is engaged to someone else now, wisely he has decided that the dead to not make good wives, and they have a lovely one-year-old boy. There is always some residual panic when Roger calls – we can go months without speaking properly and I am very, very used to him calling with bad news. His voice says “I have my papers”.
“What?”
“I have my papers, for the UK.”
I cannot believe what he is saying. His life has been such a terrible struggle since Kate died, for so many reasons, that the idea that he now has his papers to remain in the UK is..... too much for my tiny mind. I tell him he has to call my aunts, I tell Bartelt, who becomes covered goosebumps. Bartelt documents my amazed face with his camera.
More than six years after Kate's death, Roger has his papers. I have an enormous slice of Victoria sponge to steady my nerves and a desperate little weep. I probably could have contained myself, but for once I don't have to.
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