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My tone’s urgency and undercurrent of fear cut off Nico’s droll reply, replaced by a heavy drawn-out sigh.
“It’s to do with him, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it’s to do with him. And I know what you said. I heard you. I listened and took note, but this is important. He’s sick, Nico.”
I played Charles’s rambling voicemail message to him down the phone. Whimpering sounds for the most part—I couldn’t work out who the fuck it was at first, especially with the background noise of seventy-plus members of the cooperative thinking they all had the most important piece of advice to impart to their new, democratically elected Chair. When he’d calmed down enough to form real words, they were an incoherent mess of black shadows and insects, trains and galloping sharp navy and fuck knew what else. But all of it dark. So dreadfully, heartbreakingly dark. I didn’t hang around to decipher it; by then I was out the door and running home.
After four minutes, the voicemail cut out; I couldn’t bear to listen a second time with Nico. Once had been enough to scar me for life, imagining Charles crouched on the bathroom floor, or huddled under the covers of that big, lonely bed, shaking with fear, fighting imaginary demons crowding his apartment. When in reality, his worst enemy was living in the fucked-up space between his two ears. Nico gave another deep sigh down the phone line, but this time when he spoke, his tone was gentle.
“Are you sure you don’t need me to come with you?”
God, how much I’d have liked to say yes. Even if he had no more of an idea what to do than me, Nico would be calm. His legs wouldn’t be trembling, nor would his heart be pounding out of his chest with fear.
“No, I need you to look after Papi. One less thing for me to worry about.”
“Are you sure you should go? Hasn’t Charles got anyone whose number you can call, someone nearby who can pop over and check him out?”
I’d already thought of that. I had the name of his business; I had the company’s phone number. Whoever answered could put me through to Marcus, assuming they understood my shit English. Or I might get to London to find Marcus already had everything in hand, a recipient of a similar phone call himself. But there were too many mights and ifs and maybes in that scenario, whilst a very sick man who still owned my heart was cowering in his bathroom letting a living nightmare wrap itself around his soul. And in the middle of that nightmare, he’d reached out to me. Oh fucking merde, how could I not respond to that?
After abandoning Nico’s beaten-up Citroën in airport parking as though it had been joyridden and dumped, I managed to catch the evening flight from Bordeaux into London. The mass of people and the tedium of the seatbelts, safety warnings, and queues at passport control reminded me why I lived on a sparsely populated island and how much I wished I could take Charles back there with me, smother him in my arms and never let go. But he was very sick, and the cure wasn’t my warm body or walks on the beach or painting flowers on faces or tumbling into bed, but medicines and doctors and therapists and perhaps grief counselling and whatever the fuck happened when paranoid delusions invaded and conquered a fragile brain.
A taxi into the middle of London was an expense I could ill afford, but the spaghetti map of train, bus, and Tube lines defeated me. Measured against Charles’s safety, I’d have paid five times as much. Central London at night was a smorgasbord of flashing lights, screeching horns, wailing sirens, and chaotic traffic systems. Foolishly, I’d dreamed that one day Charles would be my guide navigating it. Hand-in-hand, we’d have roamed the streets and cafés; he’d have indulged my whim to ride the top deck of one of the bright red double-decker buses and taken me to Buckingham Palace for the changing of the guard. Instead, a tired cabbie dropped me off outside a smart, white column of apartments set back from a bustling city square. Charles occupied the penthouse; I knew that much.
I charged up the stone steps and hammered the buzzer. Then buzzed again and again, pressing even harder and for longer. No answer. I hadn’t expected one. Squinting up, I saw the top floor was cloaked in darkness. Perhaps Marcus had already rescued him—perhaps Charles was no longer alone at all, but in a secure place and being given the treatment he needed. Pulling out my phone, I thumbed his number. And thank God, on the fifth ring, he answered.
“Mon chèri, c’est moi. It’s me. Pressing on the buzzer. Are you going to let me in?”
“You shouldn’t come in, Florian! They’ll get you too! They’re everywhere!”
Oh fucking merde. He gabbled at three times normal rate, words tumbling over each other, that brilliant brain working in overdrive. Where had his paranoid mind taken him? Fucking merde, I needed to see him.
“Try and stay calm, Charles. Let me in.”
“I can’t! You’re not listening! They’ll get you too! They’re everywhere!”
My poor, poor man. I tried to keep the panic out of my voice. “Not all your thoughts are true, Charles. You have to trust me on that.”
Putain, what the fuck was the right thing to say? “Can I come up and give you a hug? I’ve missed you so much.”
“Sshh, they’ll hear you,” he hissed. “They can’t get into the bathroom though. Not yet. It’s too slippery and I’ve locked the door.”
Mon dieu, he sounded utterly petrified. “That’s good, mon chèri, so good. So you are safe, yes?”
“Yes. Until they work out how to get under the door.”
His teeth chattered, sounding eerie as hell down a phone line, a sort of droning in between his shaky words. I heard shuffling noises and then a pained whimper.
“Listen. Charles,” I said urgently. “If you let me in, I’ll come and hide with you. Then I’ll be safe too. We can fight them together. Just the two of us. Please?”
“We were a good team, weren’t we, Florian?”
Two women walked past, their heels clicking on the pavement. One of them turned around to stare at the distraught scruffy French guy pleading with a metal buzzer. Probably imagining a lover’s tiff. If only.
“Putain, yes. The best team mon chéri. And we can be again. You must be very scared, Charles. I can’t imagine how scared. Please let me in to help.”
Some more shuffling around followed a long pause. Another whimpering sound and then quiet. For a horrible moment, I thought he’d hung up. And then he spoke, in a fearful whisper.
“How can I trust it’s you, Florian? You could be one of them. How do I know you’re not tricking me?”
