Vanya watches the customer with the black eye make a beeline for the exit. He moves nimbly for a big man, deftly sidestepping shoppers. He’s polite too, Vanya notices, as he holds open the door for a group of slow-moving seniors. One of them takes much longer than the others, but he waits patiently as she shuffles inside. It’s a small show of real politeness beyond surface-level please and thank yous—a rarity in this city where everybody hurries.

His wave goodbye to Vanya is a surprise, a moment of simple friendliness that’s entirely unexpected. Vanya guesses he must still be smiling when he finds Kaspar’s gaze fixed closely on him. Both his eyebrows rise as he refolds clothes without looking at them, his movements sure and practiced. When he mutters something, Vanya pulls a shirt towards him and replies in Russian. “Speak up. I can barely hear you mocking me over the piped music.”

“I’m not mocking you. I’m surprised, that’s all. You should know me well enough to tell the difference by now. I only suggested you practice your English, not….”

“Not what? Talk to that customer for so long?” Vanya shrugs. “It… it was easier than I expected,” he admits. “A lot easier. I understood almost everything he said. Besides, it was you who said I should expand my vocab.”

Kaspar’s surprisingly stern. “Yes, but that was before I saw his face.” His hands clench around expensive fabric even as his expression softens. “That black eye looked fresh. You think I would ever make you speak to someone violent?”

No.

Vanya doesn’t, not when they spend so much time avoiding violence at the hostel.

Kaspar isn’t done yet. He leans close, regretful. “What if he was homophobic and I pushed you in his direction?”

“He wasn’t.” Quite the opposite, it turns out. Vanya carefully folds clothes that cost more than he could ever dream of blowing on a single garment, but each item on this counter is crumpled, left on the changing room floor like it’s worthless. He finishes refolding a shirt he might have treated equally casually before he learned the real value of money. It’s something he could have bought for a single evening before discarding in his old life. Now the price tags leave him vaguely queasy. “But anyway, why would he get offended? I didn’t exactly come on to him.”

Kaspar’s eyebrows rise even higher, like he just heard a bald lie.

“I didn’t.”

“Vanya, I watched you. You didn’t take your eyes off him even once. And you spent ages talking to him. I’ve never seen you do that.”

Vanya shrugs. “I had to.” He focuses on the next shirt rather than meet Kaspar’s eye. “And I have to keep doing it,” he insists. “I have to get over talking to strangers if I’m going to improve my English. Besides, I can’t stay scared forever.” He lifts his chin in time to see Kaspar’s slow nod. It comes with a solemn expression.

“No one’s going to hurt me like they did in Moscow—not that customer or any of the dicks who hang around the hostel. Yes, I froze the first time someone started trouble, and I’m glad you stopped them”—strength in numbers really matters where they live—“but you don’t have to keep watch over me every minute. Okay, that guy had a black eye, but he seemed….” Vanya pauses, unwilling to say aloud that Kaspar was right in one way, at least. There had been a lot to like about that customer, especially the way his cool gaze melted somehow, warm whenever he smiled with honest humour. “He was okay.” He teases to lighten a moment that’s suddenly weighted. “Actually, he was my type.”

“Maybe you should find another type to go for.” Kaspar quits talking while folding another shirt, but this time his movements are quick and jerky, like tension guides his motions. “I didn’t even notice the black eye until you two had already started talking. It reminded me of the photos in your evidence folder. The ones taken right after you—” He blinks fast a few times and stammers. “I-I didn’t open it on purpose. It slipped from your bed.”

Vanya holds up a hand—stop—then lets it fall, done with thinking today about why he fled his country. “He told me he wasn’t the one throwing punches.” He pushes away from the counter when a customer approaches, and he speaks one more time in English. “See later at home?”

Kaspar adds the pronoun he missed. “See you later.” Maybe he notices Vanya’s reluctance to leave. He adds some more in Russian. “Let me get back to earning enough cash to rent somewhere better for us. We almost have enough for a deposit, so stay positive. Go to the library or launderette if you’re worried about being alone at the hostel. I’ll be back this evening.”

Vanya nods rather than insist that the hostel doesn’t scare him—the place itself isn’t the problem; it’s the threatening atmosphere that’s lately grown much thicker. Now that his English is good enough to translate newspaper headlines, he knows the rising tide of tension isn’t limited to London. It’s a national problem.

He wishes, as he heads to the exit, that his customer hadn’t left in such a hurry. It doesn’t matter that the bruising around his eye was vicious or that he dressed like fashion was a foreign concept. Spending more time with him to practice his English is a hundred times more appealing than where he’s headed.

No, make that a thousand.

It wasn’t only that he’d been easy to talk with. He hadn’t mocked Vanya’s grammar or tried to hurry him when he stumbled over phrasing. Some people rushed to finish sentences for him, leaving him wondering exactly what he messed up. That was no way to learn a second language. His customer, on the other hand, had patiently waited him out.

He puts off returning to the hostel by visiting the closest library to it, where he waits for a turn on a computer. It’s bustling inside while rain drips and drizzles outside, a rare cost-free place for people like him with more time on their hands than options. He settles in front of a computer screen. A storytelling session starts in the children’s section, Vanya listening like the children as he types an email to his mother.

Each new word he understands without the use of Google feels like a small win, each phrase the children happily singsong adding to a tally of minor victories that make him feel accomplished. Just like the little ones who gather around the storyteller, he silently repeats her phrasing. Only he can’t help noticing as the story approaches its finale that not all the children join in.

Slow down, he silently begs as the story races to its climax. You’re reading too fast for them to keep up. His hand tenses around the mouse. Some of these children can’t speak English. He can easily tell that from their baffled expressions, so why can’t she? Make sure they can at least see the pictures. If only he could speak up for them in English. Stop and ask them questions, he begs silently in Russian. It could be the one time today they get to feel important.

His thoughts echo classroom observations from his first year of teaching practice. He rushed through stories too, without thinking of each child’s unique contribution. A second semester with a decent mentor taught him to observe twice as much before speaking. In his final year of study, stories became vehicles the children drove to their own destinations; pride fostered when they knew their opinions mattered.

It’s beyond sad that he’ll never get to use his hard-won practice.

He keeps that thought to himself, just like he carefully files his unfinished email to his mother, stowing it safely with all the others in a drafts folder that’s full to bursting. Then, his free half hour up, he leaves the warmth of the library, reluctance slowing his steps.

He’d offer to volunteer if his English was better. That wouldn’t count as paid work so wouldn’t jeopardise his plea for asylum. With more practice he could help those children integrate so much faster.

A broad-shouldered man crosses his path, his face set in British blankness rather than expressive like the customer back in Bond Street.

Wishing for more time with him to help improve his English is completely pointless.

In a city teaming with millions of strangers, there’s no chance of their paths crossing.