“Sorry, sir. We’re closed.”
Vulk tries to push through, shouldering Gilbert aside, using the flowers as a flail, but Gilbert is as big as he is. He blocks his way.
“Didn’t you hear? We’re closed.”
“Hrr!” Vulk gives him another hefty shove and barges through to the kitchen. But in the moment’s grace that Gilbert’s intervention has bought him, Andriy has grabbed Irina, pulled her into the kitchen storeroom and, taking the key from the lock, has locked the door from the inside. Clack.
The storeroom is cool and smells of onions. The light switch is on the outside. In the darkness they wait and listen. She is shaking and whimpering. He grips her tight against him, putting his hand across her mouth to keep her quiet. He can feel her heart jumping around inside her chest. On the other side of the door they can hear Vulk still charging around. They hear a crash of plates and the metallic bounce of a saucepan rolling on the ground, and that voice, like a mad beast bellowing, “Little flower!” The storeroom door judders and the handle rattles, but the lock holds. Someone-it must be Vulk-switches the light on from the outside, and for a moment they gaze into each other’s terrified eyes.
“Little flower! You vill never hide from Vulk! Every place you hide I vill find you!”
Then they are plunged into darkness again.
He holds her closer. A moment later he hears Gilbert.
“What the fuck are you doing? Get out of here, you asshole!”
There is more crashing and banging, and a yell that could be Vulk or Gilbert or someone else. Then the kitchen is suddenly quiet. They can hear a faint wail of sirens.
“Is he gone?” Irina whispers.
Andriy listens. “I think so.”
As quietly as he can, he turns the key and eases the door open a crack. In the dining room he can hear voices, but no one is in the kitchen. He tiptoes through to the scullery end and the washing-up sinks. No one. No one in the cloakroom. He peers through the back window. The yard is empty. He picks up his backpack from the cloakroom and Irina’s striped bag-ever since the incident with the children, they don’t leave anything of value in the caravan-and makes his way back to the storeroom. The door is locked. She has locked herself in again. He taps softly.
“Open the door. Quick. It’s me.”
He hears the key turn in the lock. Clack. She opens it two centimetres and sticks her nose out.
“Is he gone?”
“Yes. Let’s go!”
He grabs her by the hand and together they sneak through the kitchen and out of the back door. There is no one in sight. When they are in the street they start to run. The wail of sirens is everywhere. He has slung the bags over one shoulder, and holding her hand he pulls her along. The caravan is only a couple of blocks away. At least, he thinks it is. Maybe it’s the next block. No? Maybe the next one? No, surely it was back there by those bins. They turn back. They are no longer running, but panting for breath as they walk. They go round the block a couple more times before they realise that the caravan has definitely disappeared.
He sits down on the pavement and sinks his head in his hands. His legs, stretched out in front of him, have turned to lead. His heart is still thumping. The caravan and the Land Rover. Their sleeping bags. A few clothes. The carrots. Their water bottles. All gone.
“Dog! They’ve even taken Dog!”
But even as he is thinking of what he has lost, another part of him is thinking, you’re alive, Andriy Palenko, and the mobilfonman is dead. His blood is turning sticky on his fancy suit, and yours is pumping through your body. And you held the girl in your arms and felt her body against you, yielding but firm, soft but lithe, tenderly curved. And now you want more.
And here’s the problem: they all want more-the twenry-pound-note man, Vulk, Vitaly, and all their seedy cohort of clients-they all want what you want. To wash themselves in the sweet pool of her youth. This decent young girl, as fresh as the month of May. And she senses it. No wonder she trembles like a hunted rabbit. No wonder she jumps about all over the place. Leave her alone, Andriy. Be a man.
I AM DOG I RUN I EAT TWO PIGEONS MY MAN AND MORE-STUPID-THAN-A-SHEEP-FEMALE ARE GONE AWAY I AM DOG ALONE TWO MEN COME TO TAKE AWAY OUR WHEELIE-HOME I BARK I SNARL I JUMP ON THEM I BITE BAD DOG SAYS MAN HE IS BAD MAN I AM BAD DOG I AM SAD DOG I AM DOG ALONE WHEELIE IS GONE MY WHEELIE-HOME IS GONE BAD MAN CATCHES ME PULLS ME INTO BACK OF WHEELIE CAGE WITH MANY SAD DOGS WHERE ARE WE GOINS WE ARE GOINS TO DOGS’ HOME SAYS SAD DOG I KNOW THIS DOGS’ HOME IT IS NOT A GOOD PLACE SAYS SAD DOG IN THIS HOME ALL DOGS LIVE IN CAGES SMALL CAGES AND ALL THE PLACE SMELLS OF DOG SADNESS AT NIGHT SAD DOGS CRY THEY HAVE NO MAN I WILL NOT GO TO THIS SAD DOGS’ HOME I AM A RUNNINS DOG MAN OPENS WHEELIE-CASE I JUMP I RUN MAN RUNS I RUN FASTER I RUN FROM CAGE I RUN FROM DOG SADNESS I WILL FIND MY MAN NEAR THAT PIGEON PLACE I RUN I RUN I AM DOG
When he held me and pressed me against him in the storeroom and I could feel the grip of his arms around me, strong and protective, that’s when I knew for sure he was the one. It was dark in there. I couldn’t see anything. I could only smell and feel. I could smell onions, and spices, and the warm nutty smell of him, my face pressed against his chest, and I could feel our two hearts beating together. Boom. Boom. Boom. I was scared, yes, but he made me feel safe. It was so beautiful, like that bit in War and Peace when Natasha and Pierre finally realise that they’re meant to be together. Except I think he doesn’t realise it yet.
He grasped my hand as we ran, riot in a passionate way, but it was still romantic. And I thought, even if it doesn’t always last for ever, all that man-woman-romance stuff, you still have to believe in it, don’t you? Because if you don’t believe in love, what else is there to believe in? And now I’ve found the one it is only a matter of time until the night. Maybe tonight, even, him and me together in the fold-out double bed, wrapped in each other’s arms in our little caravan home. OK, I know it’s not War and Peace, but so what.
When we found the caravan had disappeared and we had nowhere to go, he sat on the pavement with his head in his hands and I thought he was going to cry, so I put my arm round his shoulder. But he just said:
“Dog! They’ve even taken Dog!”
I love the way he really loves that dire dog. I was thinking that they had also taken my new thirty-pound trousers, which was annoying as I hadn’t even worn them yet, but I didn’t say that. Of course I also felt very sad for the loss of our homely little caravan, especially when I realised that tonight wouldn’t be the night after all. I showed him the yellow-and-black sticker I found on the windscreen, and he said, in quite a nasty voice, “Why didn’t you show me this before?” Then he said, “Sorry, Irina. It’s not your fault. Probably it was already too late.”
I love the way he says sorry. Not many men can do this.
We sat side by side on the pavement, with nothing except what was in our bags. We hadn’t even been paid our first week’s wages. At least I had some tips. How I was wishing I hadn’t bought those trousers. Andriy said that we should get out of London and go to Sheffield straightaway, so I said I’d go with him. Sometimes you have to let men have their way.
We spent that night outside, huddled up on a bench in a square, not very far from our caravan parking place, because Andriy said the dog might come back. We put on all pur clothes, and we found some newspapers and cardboard boxes to put underneath us and two unused black plastic rubbish bags outside a shop which we climbed into like sleeping bags. And though it got cold in the night I think it was one of the happiest nights of my life, feeling so safe with his arms around me, his body solid like a tree, and all the brilliant lights of the city twinkling away, and up above them, very faint in the sky, the stars.