This is Not a Love Story (24 page)

The sound of wood being split comes from down the alleyway at the side of the building. I can just about make Crash’s silhouette out of the shadows, and I run toward him. He’s holding a door off its hinges and carefully leaning it up against the wall.

Want to have a look around?
he signs.

We should put the door back.
I motion that there were kids watching us outside.

Inside, there is very little light. Crash uses his phone to illuminate the debris-strewn corridor that leads to the changing room and pool, but it wears the battery down quite quickly so he slips the phone back in his pocket, and we make our way slowly and carefully in the dark. I put my hand on his arm and tell him to stop every now and then so I can listen.

I didn’t expect the place to be quite so eerie. We’re gripping on to one another’s sleeves by the time we reach the changing room. There is too much silence. Nowhere is this silent in London. It’s as though we’re in a vacuum.

As we edge our way through the gutted changing room and out into the large open space of the pool, the air temperature seems to drop, and I shudder involuntarily. The pool is huge and empty, though the room still smells damply of chemicals. In the dull orange gleam of the streetlight that streams in through the glass ceiling, I can see the bottom of the pool is set out like a mini bedsit with a broken sofa and a mattress and various stained-looking cushions and blankets scattered around.

Crash jumps onto the ladder and slides down the metal handrails to the bottom of the pool. The loose tiles crack as he walks across them.

Think this is theirs?
he signs, holding up a blanket.

I stare at the dirty, ragged thing, hopelessness coursing through me. I don’t know. How am I supposed to know if it’s a blanket Julian or Pasha have picked up? I want
him
to be here, curled up beneath that blanket, safe and warm. But he doesn’t have belongings; he doesn’t leave a trace.

Even if they were here, they’re not here now, and that is what counts.

Crash springs up out of the pool and puts a sympathetic hand on my arm. I can’t look at his face. He knew this was impossible from the start, and he didn’t say anything. He humored me because if he didn’t, he knew I would have run. Well, I want to run now. But I don’t. My traitorous body leans into his, and I let him take my weight and hold me. I don’t protest as he leads me out of the building and into the shivery cold. I know he’s going to take me home to his foster parents. I know I’m going to let him.

The windows of the bus are fogged up, and it’s warm. I don’t even care that it’s so busy we have to stand up in the narrow aisle and fall into each other every time the bus stops.

I want to carry on searching
, I sign. But my heart’s not in it. There’s only so much disappointment I can take.

Crash looks at me kindly.
Tomorrow we’ll bring a torch
, he signs and absently pats his pocket, frowning.

What is it?
I sign.

My phone, it’s not here.
He checks all his pockets again, and runs his hand anxiously through his hair.

The bus stops and more people pile on, and we’re shifted farther up the aisle. It must be coming up for rush hour.

When was the last time you had it?
I ask, though I know the answer. We used it as a torch back at the swimming pool. He must have dropped it.

Bizarrely, my heart leaps a little at the thought of going back.

We can go back for it tomorrow.
I can tell he’s trying to will himself to relax. I can almost see the words he’s telling himself circle around his head.

The bus slows, and I grab his sleeve.

Come on
, I mouth.

We step out into some cold, unfamiliar street and wait for another bus on the opposite side of the road.

It feels like hours later, but we’re back outside the swimming pool again. We sealed the side entrance pretty well, and it doesn’t look like anyone else has been there. Crash yanks the door off its hinges and looks at me somewhat apologetically.

You’re still going to come back with me after this, aren’t you?

I nod. I’m not sure why he thinks looking for his lost phone would change anything.

My foster parents would love to meet you. You’ll like them….

I still Crash’s hand—there is a sound from deep inside the building. It sounds like tiles cracking on the bottom of an empty pool as someone steps across them.

I freeze, no longer sure I want to find out who is walking around inside, but it might be Julian.

What’s wrong?
Crash reaches out to me.

There’s someone in there
, I sign.
In the pool.

Okay.
He shrugs, like this is no big deal, like whoever is in there is not a potential threat and won’t mind us intruding on the little hideout they’ve got going on.
Let’s find out who it is, then.

It’s not that simple
, I sign.

Yes, it is
, he signs and strides past me down the corridor.

I stare after him. How can he do that? He’s deaf, for God’s sake. Shouldn’t he be just a little bit more cautious? How the fucking hell did he survive out on the streets?

I chase his disappearing figure down the corridor, perplexed at how differently he reacts to situations, how given a choice he’d probably pick fight rather than flight. Then again, I think Julian probably would too. He’d rather deal with something head-on than run away from it. Whereas me, I can run for the whole of London.

I hear his voice before I catch up to him. It sounds deep, just like I imagined it would, only he speaks with no inflection, and his words sound clipped and a little muted. He’s telling someone it’s okay, that he’s deaf, and we’re just looking for someone. But whoever they are, they’re not speaking back to him. I step out of the changing rooms just in time to see a figure scrabbling up the broken ladder on the far side of the pool.

Crash stands awkwardly on the edge in front of me, his hands shoved deep in his pockets. The light is so poor we’re all just grainy figures blurring into the darkness. The figure on the far side of the pool reaches the top of the ladder and quickly vanishes into the darkness beyond it. I guess some people are even more scared of confrontation that I am. I always imagine that in situations like this I am going to be challenged or hurt, but maybe most people just want to be left alone, and Crash is right, I’m worrying about nothing.

The blankets that lay scattered on the bottom of the pool are gone. A small black rectangular object lying on the tiles captures my eye, and I clamber gracelessly down the ladder to take a closer look. It’s Crash’s phone. I’m glad we’ve found it and that whoever was here didn’t take it. I’m about to hold it up to him, but something catches my eye, something I’m sure wasn’t scrawled on the bottom of the pool earlier—my gaze flicks toward the other end of the pool and then back to the writing—something I definitely saw scrawled on a poster of my face this morning. Could it have been?

Crash jumps down next to me.
What is it?
He signs, though it is so dark by now I can barely make out his hand movements.

I saw this earlier at the train station.
I point to the tag
. I think it says Pasha. He was with Julian.

Are you sure?

Yes.

Crash takes a picture of the tag with his phone.

Do you think that was Pasha?

We both stare into the silent darkness.

I shrug.
I don’t know. I thought he would have stopped if he recognized me.

Maybe he didn’t see you.

I know there is no point running into the dark and chasing him. He’s a ghost now, surely long gone. But I think Crash’s lack of caution is affecting me, and I grab his hand, pull him toward the other end of the pool, up the ladder and into the dark.

A
LL
IS
silent, crushingly so, as if this darkness has a solid weight to it, smothering all sound, drowning all light. And even though the pool is just behind us, I feel like this is all there is.

Gripping my hand tightly, Crash holds out his phone and in the faint light it emits, we edge forward into the sooty blackness, every step becoming more and more hesitant and unsure, our shadows looming like specters.

It feels like we’re being watched.

The hairs on the back of my neck stand on end, and all the terrifying thoughts I’ve ever had about the dark, about whatever psychopath has plastered my face all over the train station, about… anything and everything flood my brain. I see shapes I know aren’t really there. I feel the gloom solidify and touch my skin. And all hopes of Julian and Pasha being back here seem suddenly ridiculous, as childish as my lack of caution.

Breathing in shallow sips, I try not to make a sound, but the floor is uneven, and I stumble noisily, quickly righting myself as though my life depends upon it. I don’t want to go any farther. The darkness is too complete, the tiles underneath my feet too slippery and unsteady. I can’t see enough and my panic grows.

Crash bumps into my back as I stop, his warmth knocking me forward until his arm wraps around my waist like a safety harness and pulls me back against his chest. His heart thuds strong and steady, while mine hammers wildly, a bird in a cage.

I turn, half ignoring the fact that Crash’s arm is still around me, and search out the streetlights, the glow of London visible through the pool’s high glass windows behind us, life. Only when I see them do I feel my chest able to expand a little more freely.

Whomever we followed is gone, I’m sure of it. The sensation of being watched just a result of my paranoia. So when a wide beam of light flicks across the room, hovering over us like a searchlight, I dig my fingers into Crash’s arm as he squeezes me tighter and freeze.

“Hello?” Crash calls out.

I notice how his body tenses, and I know he feels me shaking.

Nobody answers. With the light shining on us, I can see we’re stood underneath a crumbling archway leading through to several what look like plunge pools. The floor beneath our feet is covered in smashed bricks and tiles.

Covering my eyes a little, I stare up to where the torch light is shining from. There seems to be a low stone balcony just above us, but it’s too bright to make anything else out.

“Who are you?” a wavering voice calls out. The evident exhaustion in the speaker’s tone lessening my fear a little.

He wants to know who we are
, I sign to Crash.

“We’re looking for our friends, two boys, one has a Russian accent, have you seen them?” Crash calls out.

“If you’re deaf, how can you hear me?”

I sign the question.

“I can’t,” Crash says, frowning.

The torch beam swings away, highlighting the deep curve of tiles around the domed roof, and back to the ground. The speaker makes his way slowly down the stairs, moving with difficulty, as though he’s in pain. He’s just a wiry old man with thick, fractured glasses and a ragged tweed coat pulled so tightly around himself I can make out the skeletal ridges of his spine.

“You don’t speak, I suppose?” He jabs a finger at me, and mutters something under his breath as though he’s talking to someone else we can’t see.

I shake my head.

“You kids need a place to sleep? You shouldn’t be out in the cold on nights like this.”

Again, I shake my head. However desperate I’ve been, offers of places to sleep from strangers set alarm bells ringing through my head.

“Two boys…,” he murmurs. “Thought all they needed was each other….”

Ask him about the two boys
, I sign quickly to Crash as the man walks back again toward the pool and climbs down the ladder.

“Were two boys staying here?”

The man stops, a half glazed look on his face. “There are always two,” he says softly. And I know with a sinking feeling he’s not seeing us or hearing us. He’s either living in the past or in his head.

We watch as he picks up a bundle tucked away in a dark corner of the pool. Crash holds me back with a strange apprehensive look on his face. It’s only when he suddenly releases his arm from my waist that I realize how tightly he was holding me.

Are you okay?
he signs.

I nod.

Want to get out of here?

Disappointment sweeps through me, but again I nod. I said I’d go home with him. I promised. And I will.

The man climbs back up the ladder. He has a bottle concealed in a torn plastic bag. The scent of alcohol fills the air as he twists off the cap and offers it to us.

When neither of us moves to take it from him, he shrugs his bony shoulders and takes a swig.

“You should take care of your heart,” he says earnestly to Crash. “Take care of him.” He looks pointedly at me, and I feel sick thinking how much I wish it were Julian standing with me right now.

What’s he saying?
Crash signs.

He’s just lonely
, I respond, taking his hand and pulling him away around the edge of the pool.

“Won’t you stay, my Louis, my Louis, so lost and alone,”
the man sings quietly as we walk away.

Louis…? It couldn’t possibly be the same Louis from the shelter, but my chest tightens painfully all the same as I wonder.

What I thought was Pasha’s tag on the bottom of the pool catches my eye, and all at once I realize how foolish I must be to think I will find signs of them everywhere I go. How impossible and futile this all really is. There are ten million people in London, and I want to find just one.

T
HE
BUS
is near empty. We sit at the back, and I stare out the window into the passing dark feeling flattened and subdued. That man must have been near sixty. It scares me to think he could have lived all those years with nothing. Was he once like me? Did the days just roll together into years that crushed him to a place too far down to ever return from?