I blanked. Passport. I couldn’t believe I’d been so stupid. The woman looked at me, her unsmiling mouth set in a thin pink line. I made a show of looking in my bag, stalling for time, digging through the pockets of my old school jacket, leafing through the pages of The Handmaid’s Tale.
I looked up. I said, “I think I must have left it somewhere.” I heard my voice wobble slightly. “Is there any way—”
“Next.”
I caught sight of someone reflected in the booth’s glass window and it took a moment to realize it was me. I looked ashen and small, my eyes too big in my face. The oversized donkey jacket and woolly hat made me look exactly like what I was: a child. I turned away, hollow and dumb. It was hopeless; the whole thing was impossible. I didn’t know what to do. And I was hungry. So hungry. At Frieda’s house I’d grown used to eating good food and lots of it too. From somewhere across the concourse the smell of fried food and coffee filled the air and made my stomach rumble. I needed to eat.
Five minutes later I was sitting at a plastic table with a mug of pale tea and a slice of plain buttered toast, the cheapest things I could find on the menu. I wrapped my fingers around the mug, trying to warm my fingers, to shake my slow brain into gear. Consider my options, or at least try to work out if I had any.
“This space free?”
The man didn’t wait for my answer but settled himself into the seat opposite mine with a loaded plate: bacon, black pudding, eggs, sausage, fried bread, beans. Despite my own hunger, my stomach turned.
“Looks like you could do with a bite. Want some?”
I glanced up. The man smiled at me, revealing a bank of nicotine-yellow teeth. “No, thanks.”
“Suit yourself.” He shoveled food into his mouth, yolk catching on the scrub of gray bristle that jutted from his chin. I could feel his eyes taking me in.
“Going to France?”
I looked up. He smiled, waiting for my reply.
“Maybe.”
“Still thinking about it, are you? Funny place to make up your mind.” He grinned broadly.
“I’ve got family there.” I held his eyes, daring him to call me out. “Grandparents.”
“Good on ya. They’ll be glad to see you.”
“Yep. Okay, well, I guess I’d better go.” I stood up.
“Found your passport, have ya?” His face was open, smiling. “That was me behind ya in the queue. Shit, innit. Can’t tell you the number of times I’ve left somethin’ or other at home. Now the wife makes a list, sticks it on the fridge and makes me check it off before I go. She’s an honest-to-God lifesaver, that woman. Don’t know what I’d do without her.”
I looked toward the ticket booths, then the exit back toward the trains.
“No rush. It’s ages till the next crossing. Perhaps between the two of us we can sort out a way to help you out. Two heads better than one, right?” He smiled again, his mouth full of food. “I’ve got kids myself, as it happens, boy an’ a girl. Hang fast, I’ll bag us a couple of hot drinks and we’ll figure somit out.”
He walked over to the counter and hovered there, ordering, his eyes flicking back every now and again to where I stood, unsure of myself. Waiting. Then he was back with two steaming Styrofoam cups and a bag of croissants.
“Here,” he said, his voice lowered, “take this—hot chocolate—an’ listen—I’ve had an idea.” He gave me a conspiratorial wink and leaned toward me, “As luck would have it, I’ve got my daughter’s passport in the van—you can use that. She looks like you an’ all. Just let me have it back when you get through customs on the other side. Then, when you get to your nan’s, you just get your folks to mail your own one over for the return. See—sorted—told you I’d think of something, right?”
“They’d see it wasn’t me.”
“Border control? They barely look at the things. Been over three times this week and they didn’t ask for it once, the lazy bums. You’ve just gotta have one in your hand, that’s all. Come on—we’ll grab it, then you can sort out your ticket. I can even give you a lift in the van if you like, save you wandering ’bout on ya own.” I stood, hesitating, torn. “Up to you,” he said. “I’d just like to think if my kid was in a bind, some nice bloke would do the same for them.”
He turned away, leaving.
I hesitated for a long moment, watching him walk away through the doors. My one and only option. Then I followed.
Outside the terminal doors was a space like a vast amphitheater, ringed by concrete barricades, a circling flyover, and behind that the curved wall of the scrubby White Cliffs and the heavy dome of a granite-lidded sky. We were walking diagonally across a car park at a good pace, past rows of cars and lines of massive haulage trucks, heading toward a livestock lorry that smelt of pure terror, where the wet eyes of calves peered out darkly between the gaps in its side. I felt a sudden reluctance to go any further. I thought, This place is hell. Rain started to fall.
“That’s me,” he said, indicating a blue Bedford van half hidden behind the truck, rust mottling its flank.
“Jump in. Keep yourself dry.”
He opened the passenger door with a key. I glanced at him, then back at the squat terminal building, now just a gray block in the distance.
“Get a move on,” he said. “I’m getting wet here.” I hauled myself up on to the seat and he slammed the door behind me. He got in the driver’s side.
“S’better. Just realized I haven’t even properly said hello. Jerry, Jez.” He held out his hand. He waited.
I paused.
“Never mind,” he said. “You don’t hafta say. Right, don’t let your chocolate get cold. Here—have a croissant.”
I was so hungry. I took a bite of the stale pastry and chewed. Rain drummed on the windscreen.
“Just in time.” Jez shoved a load of old food wrappers off the seat between us. “Sorry ’bout the mess. I practically live in this van. Sleep in it too sometimes—see that?” He nodded toward the dark back of the van, which, as my eyes adjusted, I could see was almost entirely taken up by a stained mattress and filthy-looking duvet. “Here, give me that.” He took my bag and threw it in the back.
“I even got curtains, see?”
He reached across the windscreen and tugged together a pair of green curtains attached top and bottom by lengths of elastic cord; then he did the same with the side windows, and the cab filled with a strange greenish light, like I was under water, looking up from the bottom of a pond. I felt the hairs on the back of my neck prickle and rise. My eyes flicked toward the handle of the door.
“Right, then. Let’s get you sorted, shall we? Find that passport.”
He leaned across me and tugged open the glove compartment. His body suddenly felt very large and very close to mine. I could smell his head, the dirty smell of unwashed hair. I pushed back in the seat.
