The Jelly Voice (apaologies for length)
I fell in love with Edinburgh as soon as I arrived for the first time. Over a period of eighteen months I spent many, many weeks there, always staying in fabulous hotels in the centre of the city, flying in every Monday morning and home every Friday, and wandering around the streets and closes every night without a map, until I felt equally at home there as I did in my home town, if not more so.

Whilst my hotel was always in the centre of Edinburgh the building where I worked was out to the west, close to the airport, and so I had to use taxis to get there and back every day. Thankfully the company had a contract with a local taxi firm and, as I used them so often I was given a thick pad of triplicate dockets to carry with me, with which I could pay for my ride without exchanging cash. In order to use the dockets, however, you had to request an account taxi, which meant phoning the taxi firm to make a special booking. As I used the company twice every day I quickly became known to the firm so as soon as I said the words “could I have a contract taxi…” they would immediately ask if I was at the office or the hotel.

One of the telephone operators suddenly became very friendly though and used to engage me in conversation for a while every time I called. On one occasion I called from the hotel reception and she started to ask what I had done the night before, how I was, was I doing anything interesting that day and so on, until she added “anyway, the taxi has been outside for the last few minutes now,” and as I looked up I saw a somewhat bewildered driver walking around the reception looking for me.

“What’s she like?” I asked the driver. I told him what I knew about her and he told me that it sounded as though I was describing a particular lady and he told me her name. I asked what she was like. “Quite big, a bit of a nutter,” he said. That was enough for me.

As the days passed I found that every time I called for a taxi she would answer the phone and engage me in lengthy conversations. People around me in the office would stop their work to eavesdrop, eventually asking who I was talking to and when I replied that I was trying to book a taxi they just looked confused as they thought I was talking to an old friend, maybe even a loved one.

Her conversations became stranger and stranger every day until they reached something of a crescendo. “Everyone knows when you’re on the phone because I go all funny,” she said. “Your voice makes my legs go to jelly so everyone calls you the Jelly Voice.” I laughed this off at the time, but that evening things took a bit of a scary turn.

I went to a local restaurant for my evening meal, and then strolled around the city for a while before returning to my hotel. As I walked into my room and turned the light on I noticed a gift-wrapped parcel and an envelope on my dressing table. I opened the parcel and found that it was a single rose inside a long plastic box. The envelope contained a greetings card (I think it was a birthday card, but this was around October or November and my birthday is in June) but its printed greeting had been crossed out, “be my valentine” written in its place in biro. The card was signed by “an admirer” and I confess that I was baffled. I called the concierge and asked if he knew anything about it. He told me that a woman had brought the parcel and card and asked for them to deliver them to me before leaving. It was her.

That evening I worked until late, writing reports on the project I was working on at the time, and at around eleven o’clock my telephone rang. My parents often called me to see how I was but this was rather late for them, so my instant thought was that something terrible had happened such as a family illness. I answered the phone with a curious “hello?”

“Hi,” she said. Of course it was her. “Did you get anything tonight?”

“Well, there was a rose and a card in my room.”

“Do you like them?”

“Yes. Were they from you?”

“They might have been.”

“Well I’m very flattered. Thank you.”

The conversation continued, her telling me that she was in bed clad in her nightie, before asking if I was single and so on. I told her that I was, and she continued to talk, telling me her life story while I just sat there, frowning, and feeling very confused and rather scared to be honest.

“Just a minute,” she said at one point, before a quiet clunk indicated that she had put the phone to one side. I wondered what was happening for the time she was away, but when she came back on the line she unnerved me with the revelation that “I’ll be alright now – I’ve just had my injection.” I hoped that it was just insulin or something similar.

She kept me on the phone for over an hour, and only let me go when I told her I was getting up very early the next day as I had to be in work unusually early. We ended the conversation and I went to bed, as I imagine she did.

The next morning I was worried about calling for my usual taxi. I pleaded with the concierge for him to call on my behalf, explaining why and seeing him laugh in response. When I was leaving work that afternoon I asked a colleague to call for me, and from that day on I never called for a taxi myself whenever I was in Edinburgh. She terrified me, and I still feel a twinge of fear every time I go back up to Edinburgh for a weekend visit, the film “Misery” playing in my mind on a constant loop.
(nasalhair The Twix guy!, Thu 31 Jan 2008, 19:58, 1 reply)

Apologies
...for only just getting around to reading this. What a cracker (partial pun intended)! There's a mini-series in this if I'm not much mistaken.

'Click'
(Che Grimsdale Best before:, Thu 7 Feb 2008, 12:17, closed)