This is Not a Love Story (19 page)

T
HE
SUN
streams in through the tall windows opposite, glares blindingly across the wet rooftops below, and lights up Estella, who stands smiling at the end of my bed.

I still think she looks too otherworldly to be anything as mundane as a social worker. She should be casting fantastic sculptures in some ruined cottage by the sea or playing the harp to an audience of open fields. I stare too long, and she smiles even wider as I look away, embarrassed.

I’ve never met anyone so easy to be with, and after I work out she lip-reads pretty well, we talk about my drawing. Shyly, I show her the sketches in my pad.

She studies each one with great care, as though they are delicate pieces of art, her expression thoughtful. I expect her to comment on some of them, on what they depict—I have grown bold in my subject matter—but she doesn’t. Afterward she looks me in the eye with wild intensity and says I have a gift, I must use it. She says people would buy my work. I tell myself she’s just being polite. I tell myself it’s her job to be like this, but how can you fake this glowing enthusiasm for everything?

I tell myself that even though she doesn’t mention the fostering or ask me any questions about my life, about what I’m throwing away living the way I do, she doesn’t have to. The words are there, the questions unasked but looming darkly over us and every frivolous thing we say.

Every few minutes I find my eyes are wandering toward the corridor, looking out for Pasha—
for Julian
—as if my brain has been rewired to follow a compulsive new pattern.

Estella notices. How could she not? She asks me if I’m expecting someone. I wish I were. But no, I shake my head. I’m not
expecting
him. I’m just clinging on to my stupid lonely hope that he’ll come.

She stays the full visiting hour. She says she will come back this evening.

Does she never go home?
I think. But I’m grateful, even if I don’t want to be.

When she leaves I wonder how I’m going to make it through the afternoon.

A
FTER
LUNCH
my bandages are removed for a while—for as long as I can bear it. My skin feels tender against the blankets covering me; the rawness of it looks unreal. My hands start to hurt if I stare at them too long; if I move them, it feels as though the skin is tearing along the crease lines.

Why doesn’t he come? Why?

I keep stretching my fingers. I torment myself with the pain. It stops me thinking.

Visiting hour starts again at two. I watch the ward fill with other people’s friends, other people’s relatives, and I curl up, the pillow in my arms, my face buried in the stiff, scentless cotton. I feel so fucking unwanted and I can’t keep it up, the pretense that I don’t.

I
T
’
S
LATE
.

“Romeo? Is that you?”

Amid all the chatter, I hear my name.

Oh God
, I think,
Cassey
!

I push the pillow behind me and wipe my bandaged hands across my puffy eyes. It’s so good to see her. Her wispy, pinned-back hair, her kind smile, remind me how much I’ve missed her. It’s as though I can pretend everything is back to normal and that big fucking nothing inside me can be ignored and forgotten for a moment.

Glancing at my hands, she hugs me as though I am made of glass. Her warm arms hold me for much longer than she perhaps intended, but I don’t want to let her go.

I make her sit on the bed so she can see me as I try to form my words clearly.

She concentrates so hard I want to cry.

I’m so happy to see you! We saw the cafe. I was so worried!
So completely crushed and devastated I couldn’t breathe, the dawn folding like a blanket of ice around us, Julian’s arms holding me…. I press my hand into the bed painfully. No.

“Could do with a paint job, couldn’t it?” She smiles, sighs. “No one was hurt, and really that’s what matters. Sometimes these things happen, and we just have to deal with them as best we can, don’t we?”

And I don’t think she’s just talking about the cafe any longer.

“I’m helping my sister out in her cafe across the river while they sort out how much insurance they’re going to pay out, which will determine whether or not the place is going to be rebuilt. I didn’t own the place, Romeo. I just leased it. Ever since it happened, I’ve been looking out for you two, you know. Every morning, every evening, all along on the embankment. I wanted to let you know that even if my cafe is gone, there is somewhere else you can come to. My sister would welcome you.”

I nod, staring out at the winter blue sky.

You two.
Us two.

Yet right here, right now, it’s just me.

And somewhere out there, it’s just him.

Cassey touches my arm. “I spoke to one of the nurses, and he said you’re going to be okay.”

I nod again, distractedly.

She must sense my enthusiasm. “Can I tell you something?” she asks, her expression becoming wistful. “Something I think about when everything seems too much to bear?”

Okay
, I mouth.

“When I was your age, my parents split up, and while they fought out who was going to have custody of Deonne and I, we went to stay with our aunt in Cornwall. It was summer. It was beautiful, though it rained every other day. After living in London, being in the countryside was like learning another language, and at first we understood nothing. For weeks we’d wander about those fields and woods, sometimes not seeing another person all day, until one day we saw this guy. Well, actually we saw his caravan first, and we were going closer to explore it—we thought it would be empty. It was on the edge of a copse, miles from any road. I still don’t know how he got it there, or whether he just found it. His name was Caius. He was young and friendly. At first we thought he was as young as us, but he wasn’t. We spent every day after that with him, either at his caravan or down by this secret cove he took us to or helping him to collect the food he ate. He lived entirely off the land. He had no money to speak of and anything he needed that he couldn’t find in the woods or fields, like fuel or clothes, he would offer himself as a laborer to one of the local farms and trade for. His existence was idyllic to us. He had no one to answer to. We had to go back to London at the end of the summer, of course, school and all that. We were devastated. We’d all gotten so close.” Cassey smiles sadly. “This is what you do, Romeo, as you get older. You become nostalgic and wish for what could have been. I’ve often thought about him, and the way he lived, so freely. I’ve dreamed of doing the same, and it’s got me through some hard times, the thought of that caravan, of living like that. You need to have a dream, something to hold on to.”

She looks away for a moment, and I wonder what it would be like to have somewhere like that, to be someone who could live in that way, surviving off the land. I’ve only ever lived in this city. Curiously, I think of Pasha. Is he someone who could do that?

Am I?

I think of how we struggle through each day on the streets; would it be easier? Harder? Is it just having nothing in a different environment? But I don’t think it is; somehow it seems a more forgiving environment, or at least a more noble and satisfying one. I think of my mother trying to find me if I disappeared into the wilderness. I could be dead, and she wouldn’t know. No one would know.

Did you ever go back and see him?

“We tried many times. But although the caravan was still there, it was full of debris and didn’t look like it had been lived in for a long time. We’ve never found Caius. We even asked at the local farms, but no one had any recollection of him.”

Caius could be dead, and Cassey and her sister would never know.

I need to change the subject, so I tell Cassey about the posters, about my mother’s search. I’m relieved to finally tell someone, someone who cares for me that way.

“How would you feel about seeing her again?” she asks after I’ve finished.

Anger flashes through me like a spear of lightning, and I’m going to say I don’t want to see her ever again in my life. After what she’s done, she has no right to come back into my life. All this is her fault, but… I stop. I’m angry at her, of course, but that anger is just a mask for all the other feelings I have. If I let myself feel them, if she was stood at the end of the ward right now, what I’d feel after all this time, after all this hurt, all this pretending-it-doesn’t-matter, is, perplexingly, relief.

Confused
, I mouth eventually.

Cassey nods, and I know she understands.

She reaches into her purse and pulls out a piece of paper, which she hands to me.

“I wasn’t sure it was you at first. But you’re right, Romeo, these posters are everywhere. There are thousands of them. It must have cost someone a fortune.”

I stare at my face. I can’t even remember when this picture was taken, but I’m not so thin, or my eyes so hollow. It must have been a few years ago. I wish I could screw the stupid fucking thing up. What a fucking pointless waste of money! I think of all the ways it could have been better spent.

“Someone really wants to find you.”

But I don’t want to be found. By her, anyway.

The nurse calls out only five minutes left before visiting time is over.

My heart sinks. It’s now been two days. What fucking momentous thing happened to us that I wasn’t aware of? How can he suddenly not fucking care? I sweep the poster onto the floor. For the first time, I feel so angry at him and not just grief stricken that he’s abandoned me. Outside the blackness reflects my face, the window a ghostly sepia mirror.

My fingers twist together inside my bandages. I have to know.
Have you seen Julian?

“Yes,” she says, and even though her expression doesn’t change, I know by her voice that something is wrong.

A
LL
I
think about after Cassey leaves is how I’m going to get out of here. But there is no question of me leaving tonight. I’d have no chance on my own out there. I’m too weak, my hands incapable of even getting my hospital gown off. I feel at the mercy of everything. I am powerless. I have no control, no choice. I’m trapped here.

It takes all my willpower not to think of Cassey’s tight smile as she told me she would look out for Julian on her way home. She didn’t expect to find him. And she left too quickly after that for me to ask her anything else.

I try not to notice people coming into the ward shaking ice off their boots. The moon and all the fucking stars will be visible tonight, it’s so clear and cold. People die out there on nights like this. Alone and unnoticed, their frozen bodies discovered by some disgusted passer-by walking to work. I feel sick.

Pasha will look out for him, I tell myself. But who will look out for Pasha? And how can I trust him?

How? How do people survive this?

I don’t know what to do.

The evening visiting hour comes and goes. No Estella. I don’t know what I expected. I don’t know why I let myself trust her, even just a little bit. People let you down. It’s just what they do.

When everyone is gone, the duty nurse gives me a sleeping tablet. She strokes my hair and tells me it will be okay. I stare listlessly into the space between the beds, waiting for oblivion.

Sometime later, I’m woken. I feel groggy and swollen, as if my brain is pressing uncomfortably against the inside of my skull. Disorientated, I half expect the boy I love to be lying warm next to me. And when he’s not, I think I’m dreaming and I want to wake up.

Estella, her eyes downcast, helps me into a wheelchair and pushes me out of the ward. The clock on the wall reads 12:15.

She wheels me down the corridor to a small consulting room with a couple of soft chairs in it. She pushes me opposite one and sits down in front of me.

I glance around the blank little room. A couple of generic pictures of fields, nothing too adventurous, beige carpet, beige walls.

“I’m sorry I had to wake you, Romeo.” It strikes me then that these are the first words she has spoken to me tonight. “I’m in Leeds tomorrow and maybe for the rest of the week, and I wanted to speak with you before I went.” She sighs, and I feel my breathing start to go.

She’s arranged the foster home. I know she has. Maybe she’s taking me there tonight. I look at my bandaged hands and imagine myself shut in some tiny bedroom somewhere far away, unable to get out, unable to communicate, a house full of people I don’t know watching my every move.

What else could be so important she has to wake me up in the middle of the night?

“Romeo, it’s about your mother….” She runs a hand through her hair. She looks tired. This woman who has seemed so full of energy suddenly looks as though she’s had it all siphoned off.

My hands are beginning to throb from how tensely I’m holding them.

“I’ve just spent the evening down at the police station. The last place you told me you were living with your mother, I cross-referenced it with any significant events in the area for the approximate time period of her disappearance.”

I can’t believe I’ve been so stupid. Why did I tell her all that stuff earlier? And now she’s put it all into some fucking police computer. I think of how I’d run if Julian was here, how we’d escape all this. She’ll never find me.

“From what you’ve told me, it struck me as out of character. She’d never left you before, even for a short period.”

God, I long for him. I need him here with me. I need his fucking arms around me, holding me together. The tightness in my chest constricts my throat.

“Romeo?”

Reluctantly, I open my eyes and look at her.

“I’m so sorry… but there was an accident. Your mother was crossing the road when she was hit by a motorcyclist. She had no identification; no one knew her. No one knew she had a child waiting at home for her to return. She never woke up. She died in hospital.”