didn’t react in the usual way. Her face didn’t contract with distress or sympathy and there was no rush of consoling words, although Noah realised a second later that this was what he had been looking for. Instead she just nodded, quite matter-of-fact.
‘Will she recover?’
‘Oh yes, I think so.’
‘That’s good.’
He might have concluded that she was unusually detached. Most people, in his experience, when you told them your mother had cancer, were concerned for you and her, even though they might never have met her. There was a look about Roxana, though, that told him she wasn’t unconcerned. He noted the way her incredible mouth drew in at the corners and her neck bent a little, as if it were made of soft wax. He thought she might have heard a lot of stories that were sadder than the illness of a stranger’s mother.
Their glasses were empty. ‘I have to go, really,’ she said.
He said too quickly, ‘No time for one more drink?’
‘No. Thank you for this one.’
They both stood up, awkwardly negotiating the edges of the table. Roxana twisted the handlebars of the yellow bike and prepared to wheel it away.
‘Which way are you going?’ Noah asked. He was thinking, Do you have to sound so desperate, you sad bugger?
‘Over there. There is a small bridge.’
‘Oh yeah, that’s the Millennium Bridge. Known as the Wobbly Bridge, usually. I’ll walk that far with you.’
They wove through the crowds together. Noah heard himself giving an overlong and over-animated explanation of why the footbridge had acquired its nickname. She might perhaps have been half-listening, but she was also frowning and biting the corner of her lip. She was anxious to get away, probably to return the borrowed bike to its owner. He wasn’t usually quite this hopeless with women. What was it about this one?
They were crossing the bridge. Streams of people poured past them, which meant she had to keep dodging and breaking away from him.
‘Would you, um, like to meet up again? As you don’t know London, maybe we could, ah, go on a riverboat.’ A big white one was passing directly underneath. Roxana briefly glanced at it. ‘Or do something. See a film? Or I could come and see you dance.’
‘No.’ She said that very quickly, and in a firm voice that meant absolutely not.
At the far end of the bridge she bent her head and pushed the bike up the steps, leaning into the job. She looked tired now, and – what? Forlorn. That was it.
‘I do have to go.’ She gestured at the handlebars. ‘There will be trouble.’
‘Can I have your phone number?’
‘I don’t have any phone. Not at the moment.’
‘Roxana, I’d like to see you again. Is that all right? Won’t you tell me where you live?’
She looked away, in the direction she would be heading as soon as she could get away from him, and Noah knew that she was concealing something.
‘I will have a place. In a few days.’
You’re getting nowhere, mate, Noah decided. Can’t you take a hint? She’s probably got a huge Uzbek boyfriend stashed away somewhere.
‘Well. I enjoyed talking to you.’
Roxana made to get on the bike, then stopped.
‘You have a telephone?’
‘Sure. Yes, of course.’ He took a work card out of his wallet and scribbled his mobile number on the back. ‘Call me.’
‘Okay. Goodbye, Noah.’
She tucked the card away, slung her plastic handbag over her shoulder, straddled the mountain bike and forged out into the traffic. She was looking the wrong way and he almost called Look out. But she veered away from an oncoming bus and wobbled into the left-hand lane, then pedalled uncertainly away. He watched until she was out of sight.
He was sure he would never see her again and the thought left him entirely disconsolate.
His mobile rang and he tore it out of his pocket, allowing a flare of hope.
‘Oh, yeah. Hi, Dad. Yeah, I was there for an hour, maybe a bit more. She was very sleepy. Call me later? Yeah, me too. Bye.’
His father was on his way to the hospital. Noah put his head down and started walking towards the tube.
As soon as she was safely round the corner Roxana peered up at a street sign, then stopped to search in her bag for the street-map book that the man Dylan had loaned her. She found where she was now, after some flipping back and forth through the small grey pages, and also where she had come from. It didn’t look so far, in terms of map centimetres, but remembering the difficulty she had had in getting to the place Dylan had sent her to for the audition, she suspected the return journey was going to cause problems.
Still, she’d find it in the end, wouldn’t she?
She tried to memorise the names and the sequence of the four or five big roads she needed to follow, but before she had even reached the first junction they had jumbled themselves up in her head.
London was a big place. She couldn’t even imagine how far it spread. All these rooms stacked on top of each other, all these tall buildings and streets and glassy shops. All these people. She felt very small in the thick of it, as if she were no more than a speck of dust, a little glinting mineral fragment that the wind might suck away. She kept on determinedly pedalling, bracing herself against a gust of fear as well as the buffeting of the traffic. Buses and trucks hooted at her as they roared past.
It would turn out fine, she kept telling herself, why not? She had a job now, at least.
She had got talking to Dylan on her first morning in London, in the café near King’s Cross Station where she had looked out at the rain and the crowds of people all walking heads down with somewhere to go. She had spent the previous night in a nearby hotel, in a room that was noisy and dirty and had still cost far more than she budgeted. Her savings and the money her mother’s old friend Yakov had loaned her wouldn’t go far at this rate.
The young man, thin as a bamboo pole, asked her for a light and then slid closer along the red plastic bench. He offered her one of his cigarettes and bought her another cup of coffee. It was nice to talk to someone.
It turned out that Dylan lived in a house where there were cheap rooms to rent. When he asked if she wanted him to find out if the room next to his was free, she said yes, because she had no other ideas. Once she saw the place she didn’t want to stay there, not even for one night. But she did stay, because she had no alternative. She promised herself that it was just until she found some work.
The house was a catacomb of rooms, the doors leading off the dim staircase all padlocked and the grey walls daubed with slogans. Apart from Dylan, Roxana didn’t know who else lived there. She rarely met anyone on the stairs, and when she did they hastily drew back into the shadows.
