Rachel Weisz

I was in Cambridge this morning. It's a place I go quite often with a friend. While he returned books to the University Library I sat in the coffee shop in my favourite bookshop. It has lots of nooks and crannies and, as a single woman, it's easy to sit there alone and not feel that you are taking up a table that several people could sit at. But yesterday there were no free tables. So I sat at a large table with one other older lady sitting at it. I was happy to keep my nose in a book but she struck up a conversation with me, about the book I was reading.

It's such a small world. She used to live in almost the exact spot where I lived in London, and she turned out to be the mother of the actress Rachel Weisz. Rachel Weisz of 'The Constant Gardener', 'About a Boy' etc. fame. She was really lovely, and seemed almost surprised that I knew of her daughter, who has for years now lived in New York.  But of course I knew of her, and I saw her several times in the street in Hampstead where I lived when I first moved to London after my Law Society Finals at The College of Law. I was young and full of life then, probably the same age as Rachel, and my childhood was just that childhood, something that happened way back in the past -  as whatshisname said 'The past is another country' and  I wasn't even sending postcards back there at the time, I was too busy enjoying life.

But speaking to her today, I had been through that whole car thing and homelessness and had written the book, so the childhood issues had come to the fore again. She probably would never have guessed though. We ended up having a long chat. When we got on to books and writing and the things I wanted to do in the future I stalled, because of course I couldn't tell her about the book I had already written. Or maybe I could have done, maybe I should have... Maybe she wouldn't have looked any differently at me, wouldn't have turned away as I fear people will. Maybe now, after all this time, it's time to stop worrying about those things completely, and just be who I am - which is the friendly, respectable, approachable woman who was sitting in the cafe opposite her today, chatting about the times I had seen Rachel Weisz in Southend Green when I lived there: one memorable time standing behind her in a queue in the greengrocer, her with a summer cold and a tick black scarf wrapped multiple times around her neck, with a rosy face and glazed eyes and a nasally voice as she chatted amicably with the greengrocer, who clearly knew her; another time at Belsize Road tube station walking up and down platform in a short skirt and very high heeled shoes. It felt like two different worlds the me I was then and the me I am now since the whole car thing and then writing the book. Wished none of the latter had happened and I was just standing behind Rachel again at the greengrocer's getting an equally friendly smile from him when she left and it was my turn.