Swimming

 

 

IT’S DARK and I’m not sure what to expect when I reach the swimming pool. I’m half prepared for metal boards to be fixed in place, blocking the way in, but nothing looks different. The plywood covering the entrance is still liftable, and when I step inside, a familiar silence descends. I was hoping maybe Milo would be here. I haven’t seen him for days, but no light glows from beneath his door and it’s too quiet—I would hear him if he was sleeping. I’ll leave a note on his door before I go, explaining things.

Carefully I pick my way across the broken tiles to my room.

The door is still open. Everything so far is undisturbed, so I expect my shell to be exactly the way it was when we left with the paramedics yesterday. As my eyes adjust to the gloom, I can see that it’s not. My heart sinks. There are clothes scattered across the floor and a few of my jars of flower water are spilled and broken. No great destruction, but small ones here and there.

Thankfully Micky’s expensive-looking makeup case sits untouched on the floor near the bath, as is my backpack of phone spares.

But the cardboard surrounding my nest looks as though it’s been… nibbled.

I inch as quietly as I can into the room, keeping to the wall. Even my breathing is quiet, but it’s not quiet enough.

Three pairs of eyes follow my every move. As soon as I realise, I stop. With my hands splayed out on the tiles behind me, I sink down to a crouch.

Three foxes are curled in my nest of blankets. A mother and two cubs. I’m sure these must be the foxes I was leaving food out for, and I can see all the food I had left in this room has either been eaten or dragged into my nest with them.

After a minute the cubs decide I’m not much of a threat and put their heads down and close their eyes. Only their mother keeps watching me, and I keep watching her. Even in the gloom, her coat is so striking I can pick out her markings. I’m fascinated and transfixed, my heart thumping excitedly. Foxes have great hearing, and it’s a wonder I haven’t scared her off yet, but she doesn’t appear to be readying herself for flight and I don’t think she will attack me unless I threaten her cubs. Perhaps she knows I just want to have this moment and then I’m going to leave her to it.

It would be sort of poetic to leave my old life to the foxes, since the life I have now began that way.

Sort of.

I have no memory of what happened. When I was eleven or twelve, my social worker from one of the nicer homes showed me a newspaper clipping—just a few words. It didn’t even have a headline; it wasn’t that important.

Baby taken from local house by foxes, found by passerby two days later in nearby woods, badly bitten. Police still trying to get in contact with parents.

Me. I was about a year old when it happened. The house I was taken from was a local squat. The authorities never traced my parents after I was found, but I know someone had cared enough to report me missing in the first place.

Whoever they were, whoever I am, I’m never going to know, but it doesn’t matter—the past is a long way behind me now. I don’t think too much about it. The now is what’s important. Maybe the future too. And if I want Micky to be a part of it, I know that future can’t be here. It can’t be like this.

Slowly I push my way up to standing. I don’t blame the foxes—they do what they do to survive. We all do, and sometimes we hurt people, even when we don’t mean to. I’m going to hurt Micky, and it’s the last thing I want to do. I only hope he’s going to understand when I show him, for the first time in my life, I have a sort of plan.

Careful of my shoulder, I swing my backpack on my back, and then I pick up Micky’s case. I don’t want to look back, but I do, one last time. Then I close my eyes and breathe it in. I’ve never gotten too attached to places. As long as they’re safe, that’s all that matters to me.

Before I leave the swimming pool, I pin a note on Milo’s door telling him about the foxes, about Micky, and where it is I’ve gone. I tell him I hope I see him again. I miss him with his weird advice and funny-tasting tea.

I try and phone Donna again, and when I get no answer, I leave a message for her too. I have this weird idea that she and Vinny have taken off, maybe gone traveling, some place they can lose themselves in.

 

 

BY THE time I reach the hospital, I am exhausted. My feet hurt, and all I want is to sleep and sleep and not think about everything yet, because everything I have to think about hurts.

Visiting time is almost over when I get to the ward. Both Benjamin and Micky look like they’re asleep. Micky curled up like a comma on the bed, Benjamin slumped on the uncomfortable chair next to him, his head dropped at an awkward angle to his shoulder, his mouth open.

Hawkeye smiles at me as I pass, and I ask her if I can put Micky’s case somewhere safe. As soon as Micky hears his name, he wakes up.

This time when I pull the curtain around to give us a bit of privacy, Hawkeye lets me. Her name is really Susan, but I like calling her Hawkeye. I told Micky this yesterday and he laughed and told me she’d probably like being a superhero.

I kick my shoes off and crawl up on the bed next to Micky, putting my arms around him and pulling him close. Benjamin remains asleep.

“You okay?” Micky whispers.

“Am now,” I whisper back, pressing my face to the warm skin of his neck, closing my eyes, and breathing him in. This is all I need. When everything gets too difficult, I know I’ll need to remember this and hold on.

“Me too…,” he breathes. “Did you do everything you needed to do?”

Just about. I nod. “Did you?”

Micky shifts onto his side so he’s facing me. “Talk to me about why you can’t come with me.” I promised him earlier that we would talk about this. “I know I don’t have a lot of choice in what’s going to happen, but I told Benjamin I wasn’t going to agree to anything until I’d spoken to you. I know you don’t have a passport right now. But we could get that sorted somehow. Benjamin has money. Unless… you want this to be over. I mean, I’d get it. I’ve fucked up…. Don’t give me hope when there isn’t—”

I trace his lips with my fingertip. “Do you remember that letter?”

“The letter you wrote me that night in the café?”

I nod. “I think I was wrong.” I’m not sure how to put it into words. “About planning and not being able to do it. Sometimes I think I make my life small so I can deal with it better, but I do want to try for bigger. I want to try to be more. For you. For me. I want to be able to do the things you told me you wanted.”

His hands are so warm as he cups my face. “You don’t have to be more. You’re everything.”

I lay my fingers over his, locking our hands together. “And you’ve got to be Dominic. You can’t pretend about that. It’s not something you can cut away or make disappear.”

He nods, blinking back tears. “I know,” he says softly, though he looks like this is something he wishes he didn’t know. “But I don’t want to get on a plane knowing you’re not coming with me. I’m scared I’ll never see you again. I’d rather run away and be with you. I don’t care where.”

“Can’t go back to my shell. It’s been taken over by foxes.” I try to make light of it, but Micky is upset. “Wait for me?” I whisper.

From my pocket, I take out the letter Dytryk gave me, and we read it together.

“So, they want to give you a room in their house?” Micky asks.

“As soon as they have one. Until then, Diana sorted out a temporary place at a Centrepoint hostel.” My hands are shaking. “It’s not like the hostel I was in before. There are people there who want to help me.”

“I wish I could be the one to help you.”

“You have helped… you will. You took the lid off the sky for me… you gave me hope, and… I think I want to do that for other people too. Diana thinks I could have a job helping people.” Talking to people on the streets, helping them figure out where to go, what to do.

I didn’t know there were jobs like that until Diana told me and made it sound so simple. She told me there are charities that support the homeless. Places that would want people like me to work for them—people who understand how hard it is, who’ve been on the street, who have difficulties in dealing with the everyday things other people find easy. It’s not hunting sharks, but like Donna said once, I’m never going to find them all. And what good did it do? At least this way I might stop someone getting hurt, if only by letting them know they have a choice.

Life has teeth, all we can do is try not to get bitten.

“It’s going to be okay,” I whisper.

“Kiss me and make it a promise,” he whispers back before pressing his lips to mine.