This is Not a Love Story (18 page)

A
WARM
hand brushes lightly across my forehead. The gesture is absentminded maybe but not uncaring. The touch is what has woken me.

For a moment I feel okay. Wherever I am it is quiet, and I am warm, and the warm hand, Julian’s hand, is protecting me from all harm. As long as he is here, it will be okay, everything will be okay. But it’s just a moment, just the time it takes for air to fill my lungs, and when I open my eyes, the world is not how I want it to be, and it hurts. It is hell.

Everything is dark, but gradually I begin to make out the low walls that surround me. I am not warm. I am shaking with cold. My burned hands are curled into fists that can’t open. I gasp with the pain.

It is Pasha and not Julian who leans over me, concerned. His movements and his voice are calm, but his eyes are terrified.

“They dragged you here,” he says.

This time he speaks in broken English. Maybe he thinks I am too far gone to cope with deciphering anything else. Maybe he is right. In any other situation, I would be transfixed by the heavy accent he has, the lilt and song of it, the way he masks the rough harshness with the lightness of his voice.

We are in a narrow drain that leads out to the river. I can hear the water as it touches the concrete below us. It is freezing.

“Are you in pain?” he asks me and places both hands on my head to feel my answer.

He tells me he is going to get help.

Julian
, I mouth, but he can’t see to understand me in the dark, and I’m not even sure he knows Julian’s name. Or mine.

Belatedly, I reach for him, but he is gone, and all I can feel is the numbing ice of the tunnel floor through the sleeve of my jumper.

Drunken yells, the never-ending sound of cars, the dark water that laps against the concrete that entombs me—these are what my world is made of. I feel the familiar tightness of panic stirring deep in my chest.

Desperately, I try to remember something happy. I need something to hold on to. I have nothing else but this. I don’t think of Julian. It is too painful right now, and even though I believe he is all the good I’ve ever had, I must have something other, somewhere….

The crush of lips, so sudden and secret, of my first kiss—the memory sweet and fleeting and not enough. My first night sleeping on the street, in a doorway, my arms around a warm body, Robyn/Roxy, feeling safe for the first time in a long time, even though we weren’t safe. How could we be, alone out here? Thinking it was all going to be alright,
I
was going to be alright, because I had somebody to hold on to. Only it wasn’t the right somebody, but we used one another for a while. We pretended.

I wonder vaguely if Cricket is the right somebody for Roxy, and if so, how is that possible? How can Cricket be the right somebody for anyone? He doesn’t care enough. He gave up so long ago he’s probably forgotten. He is grasping only for himself. And every single one of us needs more than that. We all need someone to hold on to who will hold on to us back.

Julian holds on to me back. I don’t know what has gone wrong, but I can’t accept it.
I can’t think of Julian right now
, I plead. I slide further back in time… my mother… it hurts to think of her too. I hate her for abandoning me—walking out to buy bread one morning and never coming back. I blame her for all this now, for all the bad that has happened. It is all her fault. My anger is more use than despair. My tears are hot against my cheeks. I would wipe them away if I could. But I had loved her; I can’t pretend I didn’t. That’s why it hurts so badly. I want to lie. I want to have always hated her for the things she did to me, for the shame that I felt, but I loved her so openly, so trustingly that when she left, it obliterated some bright hopeful part of me. And I know I can’t take that kind of abandonment again.

When she spoke of home, of my
babushka
and
dedushka
—her parents—she was different. She was gentle when she told me how much they would love me when we met, but we never did. She missed them, but she never told me why she had left to come here, why she couldn’t return home with me, and those are not the questions a child ever thinks to ask. A child just accepts the way things are—that tomorrow always follows today, that some people live not knowing whether or not they are going to be hungry today because that’s the way they live. Some people are rich, some people poor; it goes no further than that in a child’s mind. There is no blame, no why.

I remember she smelled sweet. Her cheap hairspray filled our room with clouds of sticky vapor. Even now out on the street, if I passed someone, their hair molded and held in place with the same stuff, it would remind me, and I would have to suppress it. If I didn’t, I would go crazy.

Now, I let the scent come. I let myself remember the feel of the brittle strands of hair against my cheek as I threw my arms around her neck. I was young, five or six, and awake with nightmares. I remember her arms. She felt so strong to me then, as though she would protect me forever.
How could she leave me?
I choke back a sob. I remember how safe I felt. I remember feeling at peace completely. I feel it now, and I let myself go, knowing it could destroy me.

When they come for me, they are people from a dream, all made of light. From below the surface of the dream, I hear Julian scream himself hoarse, but he is so far away, and the arms of a darkness deeper than sleep hold me.

R
EALITY
FLICKERS
.
There is no pain, no sensation, no thought, but this wavering thread, this filament of disappearing light that is my life.

These people are taking me home.

I scream silently when they touch my hands, because
this
is where the pain lives, this blistering agony I cannot breathe through. I have no strength to cough—my breath bubbles, drowns in my throat. The darkness comes again and I do not think I will ever wake….

A familiar melody weaves its way into my dream: a Russian lullaby my mother used to sing about a boy who is lost in a forest and his mother’s song guides him home. This part of the lullaby is her call to him. She believes her love will guide him back to her. She never loses faith.

Feeling as though they have been stuck down with glue, I try to open my eyes. I can see nothing but the odd blurry shape of everything, hear nothing familiar but the song that is woven in the air. I can’t move any of my limbs, and when I try to open my mouth, it feels as though something alien has crawled inside me. My brain starts to panic, but my body is a heavy bag of sand sinking to the bottom of an ocean, and it drags me under again…

…a machine beeps solidly…

…This time my awakening is sudden, my consciousness shot through to the surface like a bullet. I try to gasp and see, leaning over me, are two nurses or maybe doctors, I don’t know. They tell me to breathe out as the tube down my throat is withdrawn. They say it makes it less uncomfortable. They ask me to nod when I’m ready. It’s all so sudden, such a shock, I just nod, and they pull, and it feels like I am throwing up in one long, continuous heave.

Afterward, they ask if I feel okay. They watch the machine that beeps beside me and settle me back down on the bed in a more upright position.

I glance beyond their concerned faces and see the pale curtains around my bed are drawn. It’s all a little claustrophobic. But I don’t want them to draw the curtains back. I want to remain in this insular sectioned-off little area. I feel too unsure and exposed to be stared at. And more importantly, I feel as though I have forgotten something, something incredibly important. I don’t push it, but as I lie back testing how it feels to swallow again, how sore my throat is, I’m wondering.

Sleep claims me in the time it takes to draw a breath.

“Here, he is here!” calls an excited voice so very close to me.

His accent is from far away, across the sea.

Do I know him?

“Shhh… he’s sleeping.”

My heart stutters. This voice I recognize. This voice I know. Every cadence. Every pause. He sounds sad somehow, and even through the haze that is stopping me remembering, I know that I love him. But that is all I know.

“We only have half hour!”

“It doesn’t matter.”

My eyelids are weighted down, my lashes made of lead, but I know his eyes are beautiful, some unusual light shade of brown I have never noticed on anyone else. I know he is skinny but strong, and I know how his body fits against mine. I know the weight of it in my arms. But forgetting is a strange sensation…. I don’t know his name (I don’t know mine). If only I could open my eyes, see him before me, then I am sure I would know, the haze would lift like morning mist… but I’m gone again before I can think any further.

Was it a dream?

Remee.

I open my eyes and blink. The ward is dimly lit. The sky beyond the windows as black as it ever gets in London.

Julian….

I remember.

A whole day passes. Every minute of every hour weighs on my heart, because he doesn’t come. I don’t have the strength to move, never mind leave. I am immobile, on a hospital ward full of other immobile, depressed-looking people. I am a prisoner in my own head. No one comes to explain the extent of my injury, and I am left staring at my heavily bandaged hands, unable to feel my fingers.

I cough, but it is no longer painful or unstoppable. There is no blood on the bandages as I lift my arms to cover my mouth.

I don’t give up, but I no longer expect to see him walking down the corridor toward me. Visiting hours are almost over anyway.

But suddenly, out the corner of my eye, I see a dirty gray coat. I turn my head, and Pasha’s elfin face is pressed up against the glass in the doors. He holds one hand up in greeting.

Anxiously, I search for Julian standing somewhere behind him in the swell of ever-emerging people, but he is gone before I can even blink.

“Romeo?”

I jump and turn away from the doors to see a woman standing beside my bed, her wide blue eyes watching me. She looks out of place. She should be standing outside surrounded by nature, in a field or on a beach. She gives off an aroma of fresh air and flowers. Her red hair is wildly flyaway, and the low sunlight coming in through the windows gives her an aura of fire. She smiles openly and touches my arm.

“I’m sorry I’m late. I’m Estella King, your social worker.”

I don’t want to like her, I really don’t, but the ache in my heart is making me weak. And she’s being too fucking nice, too kind, and I’m literally unraveling before her as she talks to me, tells me that I am under her care until I am ready to help her piece together the story of what has happened to me. She tells me it is okay. There will be someone to care for me. I’m not on my own.

She goes away to ask the doctors what the situation with my hands is, and I curl up and sob silently into the pillow until she returns. She introduces a doctor who looks barely older than me, who peels away my bandages and tells me that although my burns are extensive, I should have full functionality back within a few weeks. I take a deep grateful breath as I slowly move my blistered fingers. But the relief quickly evaporates when I think who I want to share this news with, who is not with me right now, who I would go to if I could get out of this bed and even just fucking crawl.

“This is great news, Romeo!” Estella looks radiant as she watches the nurse carefully bandage my hands back up. “The foster family that I have found for you will be over the moon!”

I
STARE
at the ceiling for hours, planning my escape and imagining increasingly far-fetched ways of how Julian is going to come and rescue me, until I finally drift off to sleep.

Pasha is there when I wake—sat low in the uncomfortable plastic chair next to my bed. Outside the early-morning rush hour is just beginning, the slow roar of traffic, the yawn of commuters conscious long before the sun.

We are the only souls awake on the ward.

“I promise him I check on you,” he whispers conspiratorially.

I have no idea how Pasha managed to sneak past all the nurses. He carries an air of quickness with him, an innate catlike agility, but he is not invisible.

Where is he?
I mouth, spreading my arms helplessly. I want to reach inside him and pluck out the truth.

He studies my face for what feels like an eternity.

“I tell him you look better,” he says eventually before getting up to leave.

Vigorously, I shake my head. I am so frustrated by his apparent lack of understanding, willful or not.

I am not better
, I mouth—even though I am.
Tell him I am dying!
I don’t care if he doesn’t get it.

Pasha smiles kindly.

“He would come,” he says as he looks up and down the corridor.

I know he is going to disappear any moment.

I flail my arms to grab his attention.

Why?
I mouth. Suddenly this is important.
Why are you helping me?
He hardly knows me, yet he saved my life, and now he’s risking arrest creeping in and out of this hospital to check if I am all right. And something tells me being arrested is the last thing he needs.

With abrupt intensity, Pasha sits down on the bed so close to me I can feel the warmth of his skin. His pale fingers hover next to my jaw, but he stops himself from touching me. Perhaps he can see how uncomfortable it makes me. His Russian is breathless when he speaks, and it takes me a moment to translate it.

“When I got off the train in London, the first face I saw was yours. Your posters were everywhere along the platform. I thought about you. I wondered who you were, what had happened to you. And then I met you, and I knew we had this connection, our paths were meant to cross. There has to be a reason.”