‘All right,’ he said. ‘Look, just make sure you hold onto it next time, okay?’
Yonas looked up at him, astounded, but just nodded mutely.
And then he heard a series of clicks, camera-like. Behind the conductor, that blond man was holding something in the air. Yonas tensed. Who was he? Why would he be taking pictures? Was he plainclothes police? Immigration? There was nowhere to run…
Sure enough, the man approached the conductor and asked if this passenger was travelling with a valid ticket. Yonas bit the insides of his cheeks. But then, bizarrely, the conductor told the man to back off and mind his own business. This seemed to anger the blond man who then claimed he was a politician. As the two men locked horns, Yonas saw his chance to slip away.
Down in the furthest carriage, the toilet was occupied, so he slouched down into a seat, so the top of his head couldn’t be seen from behind. He realized he was rubbing his scarred fingertips together: a tic he’d developed since they were burned, as if he could magic the sensitivity back. Across the aisle an elderly lady was looking at him sideways, but when she saw him turn to her, she immediately pretended to return to reading her newspaper. She was wearing pristine pointed leather shoes and her hair was set in immaculate ringlets, like a wig, so white it was almost purple. Maybe it was actually a very pale purple. The headline on her newspaper read:
SMUGGLING GANGS WANT TO SNEAK CALAIS MIGRANTS INTO BRITAIN TO COMMIT CRIMES HERE
Yonas turned to look out of the window. Unseeing, he clasped his hands, felt the sharpness of his nails digging into his knuckles. He wondered how many smuggled migrants like him there were in the UK right now. And where were they all? How many of them had claimed asylum? He supposed he’d meet some more when he got to London. He wished he didn’t have to find his way all on his own. He already missed Gebre like a limb.
At King’s Cross Station, announcements boomed from the tannoy like a robotic priest’s pronouncements across the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people on the concourse. Yonas weaved slowly through them, thinking how strange it was to be surrounded by so much energetic life. White faces might even be a minority here, he was pleased to note. There were lots of other black and African faces around, and also Chinese faces, Indian faces, Hispanic faces and faces with features he couldn’t place, so he didn’t feel like he stood out too much. But he did seem to be the only person in the entire station who wasn’t attempting to rush for a train, or staring with an anxious frown up at the departure board.
He leaned against a pillar in front of a coffee shop, closed his eyes to inhale the scent, and was right back in the Asmara house, walking down the stairs and towards the intoxicating aroma of roasting coffee beans emanating from the kitchen, mingled with incense and song. His mother, by the stove, her voice filling the room, wearing her favourite outfit, the burnt-orange wrap skirt and blouse resplendent with palm leaf patterns.
He looked inside, and watched the baristas standing at sleek chrome machines, bashing coffee grounds out of a filter gadget, refilling, locking the gadget into the machine and putting blue paper cups underneath to catch ebony streams of espresso. A perfect-looking concoction in seconds. He thought of how long it took his mother and Melat to make coffee, the traditional way: how they would measure out the bright green beans, pour them into a menkeshkesh, roast them until they were dark brown, grind them with a pestle and mortar, pour them into a jebena, heat and fan it on the stove, boil the liquid several times, filter it through date fibres… Melat loathed the ritual, but their mother insisted on it whenever guests were invited over. The rest of the time they all used a metal Italian espresso maker that his grandfather had acquired when it was left behind by the colonizers. Yonas and Melat both liked the coffee that came out of that just as well: sacrilege, according to their mother and grandmother. It was so long now since he’d had any kind of coffee. He watched the customers process out of the shop, blue paper cups of deliciousness carried unthinkingly in their hands.
A couple of sleek-haired ladies in high heels clip-clopped past, and the blonde one glanced at Yonas and wrinkled her nose. A targeted wrinkle. A clear message. He looked down at his overalls and tilted his head down to sniff his armpit discreetly. Bad. Of course it was bad. It was just hard to tell quite how repellent you were to others when you had got used to your own smell. Not just body odour – he probably reeked of fish guts as well. The thought prompted him to scan around for Aziz or Blackjack… but why would they be here? They were just small-time con artists. They’d never actually come after him, just as he’d told Gebre.
Outside the station, a road heaved with revving cars and grand, grumbling red buses, black taxis as glossy as aubergines and intent cyclists with helmets on, zipping through tiny gaps. It was all so loud, so intense… Yonas felt the sharp edge between pleasurable anonymity and terrifying loneliness. But he had to focus on the task at hand: to source some coins and call Auntie. He wondered whether she lived far from here, what she would look like, what she would be like, whether she would be as smiling and maternal as he imagined, whether she would be able to offer him a floor to sleep on, even just for a few nights. Surely she would be generous enough for that – she’d known his mother well, according to Melat. But even Melat had never actually met this Auntie. She had just read out her number to him over that crackly line. He’d written it onto the back of his hand, repeated it aloud over and over, and then he and Gebre had spent the next few evenings testing each other on it.
He went up to a couple of people, asking them if they had a coin for him to make a local phone call, but they just shook their heads and said ‘sorry’, as if the thing they were really sorry about was that their walk had been interrupted. He gave up, and walked slowly around, scanning the ground for dropped change, wondering if he would have to ask somebody to borrow their mobile phone or sit down and cup his hands, until, behind a kiosk selling newspapers and sweets, he spotted a silver glint. He squatted down. It was a small, angular, silver coin – twenty pence! He brushed off the dirt, examined the image of the Queen, who looked surprisingly pretty and young, and then looked around for a phone box.
When he found one, he was so anxious to get the coin in the slot that it sprang out and bounced on the floor, nearly rolling out of the booth. He rescued it, put it in with more care, and dialled the number. Auntie, it is me, Yonas! I am here! How do I find you? A quiet stuttering on the line, as he waited for the ring, but instead there sounded three notes rising in pitch, then again, then again. ‘This number is not recognized,’ a curt woman’s voice informed him. He must have mistyped. He tried again, more carefully, concentrating on every button. The same three notes. ‘This number is not recognized…’ He let it repeat a few times, then dropped the receiver so it hung from its cable, groaned low and long, and sank down to his knees on the grubby floor. He closed his eyes for a few seconds, then opened them, and fixated on the abandoned Coke can and globs of old chewing gum stuck in the corner. Had he memorized Auntie’s number wrongly? Surely not – he’d checked, and repeated it, so many times. Had he written it down wrong? Again, impossible – the line was crackly, but he’d had Melat repeat it twice. So had she been given the wrong number? Or had Auntie left the place where she was living? He would have to ask Melat when he had enough money for a long-distance call. If only he had an address for Auntie. What was he supposed to do now?
He stood up, pocketed the coin, and looked out at all the people passing by, each intent on a mission to get from A to B, to meet friends, family, to do business. If only he had someone to seek out in London, just one face that would light up in recognition and welcome and congratulate him for making it. But he had to deal with the situation he was in. The sensible thing would be to focus on finding some random Eritreans who could help him find a foothold. He’d heard that a couple of old army friends from back home were in the UK, but he had no idea where, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to see them anyway. Amanuel, that distant cousin he’d met once, was supposed to be in Scotland…
Scanning the crowds for an approachable face, he spotted a woman who looked like she just might be Eritrean, with a curly cloud of black hair tied up. He remembered Melat styling hers just like that once.
‘Excuse me,’ he said, ‘can I ask