Run To You

He’s right there, on the other end of the phone.

‘Hello, Alissa,’ he says.

It’s practically his catchphrase.

‘Hello, Janos,’ I say.

His name sounds like something sacred and unspoken, in my mouth. My clumsy English accent stumbles over the J that should be a Y and the missing H at the end. It’s a travesty, really, but he doesn’t seem to notice.

‘You remembered,’ he says, as though I could ever forget now.

It’s burned onto my brain. I say it in my sleep.

‘Of course I did.’

‘I get an “of course”? Well. I do feel privileged.’

‘You shouldn’t.’

‘No?’

‘I’m hardly anyone important.’

‘And you believe that is how I weigh things? By importance? Perhaps I would like you better for being the undiscovered queen of a small country.’

‘It would make more sense.’

‘Then I shall make you one. You can be queen of my island.’

‘What island?’

‘The island that all men are, naturally.’

He sounds like he’s laughing, again, but I’m starting to think that’s his default state. Or at least it’s his default state with me. I make his voice go all rich and rolling like that, with a faint curl upwards on the end of every sentence.

‘That sounds like a lot of responsibility. I’d probably have to wave a gloved hand from inside an expensive car. Accompany you to functions I’m not prepared for. Wear outfits I look terrible in, with hats I can’t afford.’

‘That isn’t the sort of island I had in mind.’

‘No?’

‘No.’

‘Then what? What sort of island are you?’ I ask, but I’m picturing it in my head before he’s even said. I see tangled jungles lit by a thousand lurking eyes … great jagged rocks turned black and nightmarish by a storm that’s always raging.

And me, swept up on the beach.

‘One where it’s always night.’

‘I can see that.’

‘And the ocean rages.’

‘My little boat hardly stands a chance.’

‘No, probably not. But you needn’t worry.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I am waiting for you on the shore.’

‘In your suit?’

‘No, I’m never in my suit, on the island inside me.’

For some reason it makes my breath catch in my throat, when he says it like that: ‘island inside me’. I have to sit down on the edge of my bed, because my legs don’t want to hold me up any more. I’m almost in the same state I was before, at the office.

Flushed, famished, eager to get lost again.

‘Then what?’

‘Barely anything. A savage animal stripped to the waist.’

‘I think you’re just telling me things you think I want to hear, now.’

It’s not the first time I’ve wanted to say it. It’s just the first time I’ve been brave enough to – and not just because of how intimidating he is. I wanted to hold onto the illusion a little longer. I wanted him to be real, to honestly find me interesting, to wonder what lies beneath my cloak of invisibility.

But now it’s OK if he doesn’t.

Because I’m pretty sure he does.

‘I’m disappointed in you, Alissa. Do you really think I’d be so dishonest?’

‘I think you’d do a lot of dishonest things to get what you want.’

‘It’s true. I have. I do. And yet not with you.’

‘Why not with me?’

‘Because you are already sure everything is a lie. My only defence is the absolute truth. My only power over you is the truth. And if I keep telling it, eventually you’ll believe.’

My breath is caught again. Actually I think it’s been bound and gagged and sent before the firing squad. And when I finally speak, my voice is shaking slightly.

‘How do you know this stuff? Did Lucy tell you?’

‘Lucy?’ he asks, and my heart sinks before he’s even finished. ‘Who is Lucy?’

‘The woman you were supposed to meet that night.’