The Shut Door

The city was a different place at night. Without people rushing about everywhere, Eva could notice the street lamps, the long shadows of the buildings and the coolness coming up through the soles of her feet from the paving stones.

To Eva almost everything felt like too much. Things weren’t something you used, they were something you carried. And she’d been letting them go: why bother with shoes when it’s so much nicer without?

What she had left fitted in a school rucksack with room to spare.

She used everything she carried every single day. She’d learnt to choose what she took with her very carefully, in a place she no longer talked about to anyone.

She walked unhurriedly, checking doorways in case someone was hiding there. After a year and a half on the streets she did it without thinking. Fay trotted beside her, stopping to sniff at corners before catching up. You’d have thought that cat was part dog.

She had the scrap of paper bag in her hand. Callejón de las Palomas, number 6, flat 1A. Nine o’clock. And underneath, in smaller, quicker writing, “don’t bottle it”.

As she walked, she practised what she’d say when she got there.

“Hi, sorry I’m late, I got caught up with some stuff”

No. Too stupid.

“Hi, bit late, but I decided to come in the end”

No good either. It sounded like nothing, like coming hadn’t cost her anything.

She got to the alley and found number 6 first time. An ordinary building, peeling paint and a row of letterboxes with half the names rubbed off.

She looked up at the front for a lit window. They were all dark, and she told herself that at gone midnight that doesn’t mean anything.

She took a deep breath and pressed the very first buzzer, 1A.

Nothing.

She pressed it again. Waited. Nothing at all.

“Maybe he’s asleep,” she said to Fay, more to herself than to the cat.

She tried once more. Nothing.

“I wouldn’t bother if I were you,” said a voice from up above.

Eva looked up. On the other side of the street, leaning out of a lit window, was an old man in a string vest.

“Sorry?”

“If you’re after the lad, he’s gone. I saw him go a while back.”

“He’s gone?”

“Loaded up with boxes and a bloody great rucksack on his back. In the middle of the night, I ask you.” The old man shrugged. “I only saw him go past, love, that’s all I know.”

And he went back inside and shut the window.

Eva stood in front of the door with the piece of paper in her hand, listening to that familiar little voice again. “See? That’s why you shouldn’t take a chance. Because when you do, the door’s always shut.”

She sat down on the doorstep. Fay climbed onto her lap.

All she could do now was go back. Get her head down, forget it, and tomorrow go back to her usual corner, her songs with no names. Her cosy, safe little nothing, where nobody let her down because she didn’t expect anything from anyone.

What really pissed her off was realising that Axel hadn’t been late for anything. She was the one who’d spent three hours sitting on a step, only to turn up at an empty flat.

She’d spent a year and a half without shoes, keys or an address, telling herself that meant being free. She’d been through loads of places and always ended up in the same situation, while that bloke had set off north without a fucking clue what he’d find.

She looked at Fay. The cat held her stare without blinking, which is what cats do when they’re not going to help.

“So what now, eh?” she asked him.

Fay didn’t answer. He never did. But he jumped down off her lap, walked a few steps down the street and turned round to look at her. As if to say “this way”.

Eva knew that look. She trusted it more than any other.

“That way?”

Fay kept going, without a moment’s doubt.

That lad had said he was going north.

Eva got up off the step and put the paper in her inside pocket, which was where she kept the two things she had.

“All right, Fay. Let’s go and see what’s up north.”

The cat set off with his tail straight up.

They went down the alley and along several increasingly dark avenues until they reached a bridge. On the other side, the houses and street lamps stopped and the tarmac gave way to a dirt track.

Eva stopped for a moment in the middle of the bridge.

On the stone pillar of the railing, level with her face, something was sitting looking at the water. Something small.

Eva walked past without turning her head. She was very good at that.

A drop landed on her cheek. Then another. And ten seconds later it was raining.

She crossed the bridge. The earth was soft and cool under her feet.

She didn’t know whether she’d find him or how far she’d have to walk, but she no longer felt like turning back.

On the other side, Fay was waiting for her, in no rush at all.