The Shut Door

The city at night was a different thing altogether.

In the daytime it was swamped by a cloud of people in a hurry and noise with no shape to it.

Now the pavements were empty and the quiet let you see the details: the street lamps one at a time, the long shadows, the cool of the paving stones under her feet.

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.

And it wasn’t that she had hardly anything. It was that everything she had, she used every single day, no exceptions, and there aren’t many people who can say that. She’d learned it as a kid, in a place she didn’t talk to anyone about any more.

She walked without hurrying, checking the doorways the way she checked the verges: in case somebody. A year and a half on the street teaches you that before anything else, and she’d learned it so well she didn’t even notice she was doing it. Fay trotted beside her, stopping now and then to sniff a corner before catching her up. You’d think that cat was a dog on the inside.

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.

And it had cost her everything.

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 half eleven 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 paper in her hand.

He’d gone.

Along came the usual little voice, which never takes long.

“See? That’s why you don’t go for things. Because 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.

Then something went through her head that wasn’t the little voice, and that one did make her angry.

That he hadn’t been the one who was late.

That she was the late one. Three hours on a step to turn up at an empty flat.

And that she’d spent a year and a half with no shoes, no keys and no address, telling herself that was freedom. And a bloke she’d met that very afternoon had gone off north at night without knowing where to. And in all that time she hadn’t gone anywhere. She’d been in loads of places. It’s not the same.

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 followed the alley to the end. Then a few avenues, each one darker than the last.

And then, a bridge.

On the other side things changed. The houses and the street lamps ran out, the ground stopped being tarmac and turned to dirt.

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 where she was going or whether she’d find him, and she didn’t care about either, because for the first time since she’d left home she was going somewhere in particular.

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