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It’s no one I say, it’s a friend, and I say it’s someone I know from work because I don’t want to try and explain.
She says, oh, okay, I’d better let you go then, and she sounds disappointed but somehow she also sounds relieved.
I say thanks for phoning mum, I appreciate it, I really, and she’s already putting the phone down.
I look out of the window, I open the door, I check the time.
I think of all the things that can happen to a person when they’re trying to reach you.
Cars skidding in wet conditions.
Men falling out of pub doorways with tempers raised.
Boys with needle-thin arms asking for money, a flash of silver in their hands.
I think of him being lost in this weather, the rain heaving down out of the dark sky, I think of him soaked through and shivering, blinking anxiously, looking for streetnames, road-signs, familiar buildings.
I put a towel on the radiator to warm up, I put the kettle on to boil, I look out into the thick veil of rain and I wait for him.
And I wonder how this has happened, already, why I can be so worried for someone I’ve so recently met.
And I know why it is, and I don’t want it to be like that.
The kettle boils, clicks off, quietens.
I hear a siren from a few streets away and my heart clenches inside me, I rush to look outside but there’s nothing to see.
I feel like flinging open the window and calling his name.
I realise that if s
omething were to happen to him now, if that siren was chasing to the place where he is lying in the rain, that no one would tell me.
That they would find his parents, and let them know, and ask them to come quickly, find his brother, wherever he is, and tell him, and ask him to get on the next available flight.
But that they wouldn’t find me and tell me, there is no reason why they would, and I would never know and this all seems wrong.
I put the kettle on again, I turn the towel over so that both sides are warm, I open the door and look into the night.
I see him running across the carpark, his hand held over his head like a tiny umbrella, his face looking up at me.
He runs up the steps, he says sorry I’m late, sorry, I got lost, and he stands in the doorway.
I say are you alright you’re soaked, I say come in come in, come here, and I take hold of the sleeve of his coat and pull him towards me and I close the door.
His arms, his whole body is shaking, water quivering and falling from his clothes like rain from a shaken washing line.
His teeth, when he talks, his teeth rattle like polished bones in a box, he says I got lost I tried I couldn’t it was I got lost and I say shush don’t worry it’s okay it’s okay.
I say you’re soaked, you should, I’ll get you something to wear, I’ll get you a towel, and I fetch a V-necked jumper from my room, the towel from the radiator.
I hand him the towel and I stand in front of him, holding out the jumper like a shop assistant.
He starts to dry his hair, I say no take your top off first, get something dry on first, and he says oh right, okay, and he hands me the towel and I stand and look at him.
We are both breathing as though we’ve been running in a rainstorm.
He takes his coat off, he pulls his top off, it gets stuck around his head and he wriggles for a moment, blinded, arms held up, and I look at his smooth wet chest, his nipples, his bare shoulders, the thin drift of hair below his belly-button.
