This is Not a Love Story (34 page)

S
TANDING
IN
front of the train timetable on the wall outside the station, I try and work out if we can somehow bypass London and get on a train direct to Cornwall from here, but the station names are like places from dreams, and the lack of light is making my head hurt.

Out the corner of my eye I see a small red car bounce up the curb and stop, but I don’t pay attention to it until Julian touches my arm, his expression unreadable, and inclines his head toward the worried-looking woman who climbs out of it.

Kay.

Of course Crash would have told her where we were going.

I take a deep breath, expecting to have to fight off the urge to disappear into the stream of people coming out of the station behind me, expecting my chest to tighten with anxiety and dread, but strangely I feel none of those things.

She tries to smile, but her eyes are too pained to pull it off.

“I’m going to sit down.” Julian points to the row of metal benches inside the station foyer.

I turn toward the car, knowing I can’t just walk away. I don’t even think I want to.

“Romeo, I’m not here to stop you,” Kay says in a low voice as I approach. “I just wondered if I could talk to you before you go?”

She gestures that I get in the car.

I look around, making sure it’s not a trap, that Estella and a comic horde of police cars aren’t waiting around the corner to whisk me away, and reluctantly open the door and slip into the front seat.

The car is warm, and when I breathe in, all I can smell is Crash when he hugged me, all warm skin and fabric softener. Like pressure on a bruise, it hurts. I watch Julian through the windscreen, awkwardly curled up on one of the hard benches, his eyes closed. I doubt he’s sleeping.
He’d just probably rather not see this
, I think miserably.

Kay assumes it’s her that’s making me uncomfortable, and she starts to speak quickly.

“Romeo, I know this isn’t easy for you. I know so much has happened and it feels like running away is the only option you’ve got, but I want you to know it’s not.”

Her words are just an echo of Crash’s.

I’d be arrested if I went back with you. I can’t be arrested,
I sign distractedly, not touching on the real reason we’re at the train station, though the sight of him fills my vision.

As if he can sense me, Julian opens his eyes. Even worn so thin, his light buried so deep, he still shines brighter than anyone else I’ve ever known. Just being with him is stepping out of the shade into sunlight. And I don’t want to be sat in this car while he’s out there, so separate and unreachable, yet here I am.

I turn away, feeling as though this is a tiny betrayal, knowing we can’t take many more of those.

All that’s left of the daylight is a thin, bright line that threatens to vanish every time I blink. Inside the station people hurry to and fro, the glaring artificial light making them seem more substantial and solid than we are.

Kay shakes her head. “I spoke to the police, and the charges against you will most likely be dropped. You do need to give a statement, though. Crash told me about your cut… what really happened, Romeo?”

She’s so concerned, and I’m so tired, too tired to keep everything bottled inside anymore, so I tell her how Vic stabbed me. But my fogged-up brain doesn’t know where to stop and words keep pouring out of me. And before I know what’s happening I’m telling her about Julian. About how I came to be on the streets, my mother, the posters, the man looking for me, how he might be my father, and how he wants to take me back to Russia.

She listens quietly. She doesn’t touch me when I break down. She knows I’m not ready, that this is the closest to me she will get right now.

“Whether he is your father or not, he has no legal rights over you,” she says carefully, obviously disquieted by what I’ve said but trying not to show it. “I’ve seen your papers. He’s not named on them. He can’t make you go anywhere you don’t want to.” She watches for my reaction. “Do you want to meet him?”

No.

“Maybe in time you might. And it’s okay, either way, it’s okay.”

A train rumbles into the station, brakes screeching like birds.

“I don’t suppose Crash ever told you what happened when he first came to live with us?” Kay gives me a small wry smile. “He didn’t find it easy after being on the streets, and the second night he was here, he graffitied the outside of our house and the next five houses down the street with all the names and tags of the people he knew. It took weeks to clean off. But he needed to get it out of his system before he could move on. I think he felt like he was betraying them, that he had somehow left them behind.”

I look away.

Estella once told me Crash was an artist of a sort. I realize now this is what she meant.

“I can see why you think you need to do this, Romeo. After having to figure life out on your own for so long, I understand why you think it has to be this way. But whatever happens, I want you to remember we are here. And if you need me, I will be there for you.”

I hear the sincerity of her words, but I don’t let myself really think about what she’s saying. In the distance, the echoey Tannoy on the platform announces the destination of the next train. I have a desire to be on it.

Are you going to take care of Pasha?

“I hope so,” she says simply, smiling that sad smile again. “But there will always be a place for you with us.”

Suddenly she frowns and asks, “You’re not doing this because you think he needs a home more than you, are you?”

I shake my head. I wish I were that selfless.

Thank you,
I sign.
I have to go now.

My limbs are heavy as I get out of the car.

I don’t say good-bye.

I’m scared he’s not going to come back.
Kay’s words drift to me through the open car window. I wish the noise of the station had somehow drowned her out. She’s talking to someone on the phone. I see her reflected clearly in the dark glass of a shop window. I reach Julian in the foyer and pull him up and with me around the corner, out of sight, before I crumple. I don’t know why it hurts so much.

Gathering me up, Julian puts his trembling arm around me, and we find a seat on one of the curved metal benches along the platform.

We board the next train.

T
HERE
IS
a sleeper from Paddington to Penzance that leaves at 10:00 p.m. I’m reluctant to go back into the city, but it’s the only way. I half expect fate to have placed a final obstacle in our way—I half expect the man whose shadow has loomed across London to finally darken our path—but we make it onto the sleeper without even a ghost or a whisper.

We buy tickets for a narrow cabin on the train, and with one last push of energy, we pull the thin mattresses off the bunks and lay them out on the floor. Fraught with longing, I curl my body around Julian’s, and in between the warmth we create and the constant movement of the train, I finally lose my grip on the day and let the blackness take me.

All night, Julian sleeps fitfully, one moment drenched in sweat, the next shivering and gripping onto me as though I am the only thing holding him out of the abyss. Too tired to wake fully, his restlessness infiltrates my dreams, making them wild and unsettling, full of images I can’t decipher, until dawn comes and he clumsily untangles himself to be sick in the miniature sink.

Sleepily, I pull myself upright, certain I fell asleep wearing a T-shirt but unable to locate it now.

Are you okay?
I sign.

“Do I look okay?” he snaps.

I flinch, his words stinging.

“Baby, I’m sorry,” he groans immediately, rubbing his hands across his face. His skin is pasty and covered in a light sheen of sweat. “I feel like shit. I don’t mean to take it out on you.”

Gripping his stomach, he heaves into the sink once more. “I wish this fucking train would stop moving,” he murmurs.

I search through my pockets for the paracetamol and hand the packet to him, but he shakes his head. “I’m just going to throw them up.”

Beyond the palm-sized cabin window, the rushing night is fading. The train is due to stop at a couple of stations outside of Penzance before 7:00 a.m.

We’ll get off at the next stop,
I sign, certain a few miles won’t make much difference. We’ve walked much farther before.

I find my T-shirt tangled underneath me and pick up the mattresses and pillows while Julian kneels down, his face against the sink, cold water running over his hands.

A
BLOODRED
sun stains the eastern sky as we step off the train. The air is cold and green, the birds whistling. There is no station as such, just a long empty platform and a few benches. Julian grabs my hand and pulls me off the low edge onto the nettle-thick ground beneath and crouches sickly in the grass. The ground vibrates around us as the train leaves.

My head is spinning,
he signs crookedly, unable to speak.

I’m aching to hold him tightly, to lock our bodies together so close I can feel what he feels and take it away somehow. But instead I sit down, my arm loosely around him, so afraid of being rejected, of stretching our current limits too far, but prepared to wait for him, however long it takes.

It must be around nine o’clock by the time we move, the sun shining weakly, the sky fragile as porcelain. A man in a florescent jacket patrols the station car park, just walking up and down, absently brushing his hand against the cars. Remembering how easily Crash communicates with people without writing down or speaking, I take a deep breath and decide to try and ask him where the nearest shops are. Julian squeezes my hand, and though he doesn’t know it, that gentle reassurance is all I need. I’m ridiculously elated when the man understands me and directs us to a superstore a mile down the road.

Like tourists in a foreign land, we navigate the narrow country lanes, stopping often to rest beneath the occasional trees—their waxy leaves shyly uncurling toward the light—or to lean against the bramble-covered stone walls that separate the wandering roads from the fields.

Every few hundred yards, Julian sinks to his knees and heaves, but nothing comes up. He’s getting weaker and weaker, and the sight of him retching into the grass fills me with a deep fear I try to keep hold of.

Is this just the withdrawal?
I sign when I can’t take it any longer. If it’s some other sickness, I need to get help. I can’t watch him getting worse and worse and do nothing.

Wiping his mouth with a shaking hand, he shrugs.
I just… I need to stop. I’m sorry,
he signs helplessly.
I can’t….

The dark bruises around his eyes stand out in stark contrast to his skin as he squeezes his eyes shut and rocks back and forth on his knees.

Crouching down, I rest my head against his shoulder and take his weight. He’s burning up and shivering.

It’s going to be okay. I press my lips against his ear and will him to hear the words I can’t utter.

F
OR
HOURS
we rest at the roadside. Abstractedly, I stroke Julian’s hair as he sleeps, his head in my lap, the sun arcing across the sky above us. A thick-branched tree shades us from the brightness and casts strange elongated shadows across the road. I stare off at the close dark copses and sprawling woods beyond the fields, longing to explore their cobwebbed depths, knowing that’s where I want to go once we have the provisions Crash suggested. We’ll lose ourselves in there, in the dark amongst the trees. And that’s what I want, isn’t it?

I no longer know.

Everything is so silent and yet at the same time it’s not—the low hum of electricity in the wires above our heads, the
puckpuckpuck
of a tractor somewhere, birds calling, the wind and its whispers. All of it is quiet, all of it peaceful.

But I didn’t think I would feel this way.

Only two cars have passed us all morning. Trying not to disturb Julian, I pull the phone out of my pocket, but I don’t turn it on. I wish I could call Cassey or Crash just to hear their voices, but I’m keeping it charged for an emergency.

The sun is right overhead when a beat-up truck ambles slowly down the road and pulls over beside us. Instinctively I tense.

“Need a lift?” a man’s voice calls from inside the truck. I’m too low down to see his face.

In the city it’s so easy to just walk away.

Julian stirs and blinks at me blankly, his beautiful eyes dark with discomfort.

My legs feel dead, but I help him up.

Yeah, we need a lift.

The superstore is not far. When the driver of the truck works out I can’t speak, he gives up trying to communicate with me and, with a genuinely puzzled look on his face, drops us right outside the entrance. He doesn’t seem to expect anything for this simple act of kindness.

I use the cash machine in the football-field-sized car park, taking out so much money it makes me feel a little ill. I have the perverse urge to throw the wad of notes up in the air and watch them flutter away on the wind. But of course I don’t.

I focus on the things Crash said we should buy. I sign them to Julian, and we step inside, our new life like a limb we haven’t worked out how to use yet.

E
XHAUSTED
,
WE
finally make it to a small copse nearby with our new possessions—a tiny, impossible tent and two sleeping bags. I will have to go back for food and water, and I intend to set the tent up for Julian before I do, but my patience has evaporated, and in the end I leave Julian tucked up in a sleeping bag, the tent useless on the ground beside him.

It takes longer than I want. I am daunted by the vastness of the shop, my head spinning, but Julian is still asleep by the time I get back, and without unpacking anything I curl up on the loamy ground beside him and sleep to the sound of rain falling through the branches above.