The Invisible Man

It’s cold. Not the real ice-blasted freeze of home. This is different. A damp grey chill settles over everything, works its way into your bones, driven in by the slightest breeze that plays around your neck and your fingers. It strikes straight through the jumper they brought me from a doorstep clothes collection and my old saggy running trousers that make me look like some hopeless tramp. I’m trying to look as if the cold is nothing to me. We have to stay proud and keep our feelings inside. If we start to let them out, there’ll be no going back.

The other boys and I don’t talk as we wait to be picked up. Ansel with a recycled cigarette butt hanging from his mouth, Indrit sitting against the door with his head between his knees, Bron staring straight ahead as if there’s something worth seeing beyond the soggy litter and the terraced houses. Then there’s Lian, the only girl in the group, the only one looking as if she’s made an effort. She has some make-up on and her hair is drawn back from her tired face. I feel sorry for her. More for her than the others. She is better than this.

It isn’t long before the first car arrives at the forecourt. The driver looks smart, dressed for his work. He doesn’t bother to smile, just hands us the keys to his blue Audi. Just the keys to one of his most expensive possessions. He has no idea how much I dream of jumping in a car and driving it away: the freedom of it. Lian takes his money, brings him coffee in a polystyrene cup. I’d give a lot for a shot of caffeine now, but that is strictly only for the customers.

Most of them look through us. They look embarrassed, as if we are cleaning their shitty arses for them. They don’t want to see what we really are. Occasionally they try to talk to us but we pretend not to understand, pick up our sponges and our buckets and set to work.

We are washing the man’s blue Audi when the van pulls up. I see Ansel stiffen slightly and he ducks quickly into a door to clean the footwell. The rest of us double our efforts, focusing hard on our jobs, not daring to look at one another. Blue Audi man will have the best clean of the day.

Lian, as always, is the one to make the effort. She smiles, although her eyes stay as dead as the out of date fish they gave us to eat last week. The man getting out of the van eyes her up as if he owns her, then kicks off what looks like a playful flirtation.

“Hello my darling Polski. How are you today?”. She isn’t Polish but none of us are who we used to be. It means nothing.

He tosses the van keys over to her. “Just the outside. I’m seeing the boss today so she needs to look her best.”

Then he watches us. His greedy eyes need to see Bron pour water from the hosepipe across the bodywork, under the wheel arches and across the radiator grill. He will watch our wretched, wrecked hands scrub every inch of his van with cold soapy water that drips down inside our sleeves and soaks our chilblained feet. Then another arc of freezing water from the hosepipe before we wipe down the windscreen, making sure that we flip up the wipers to clean the blades, and finish off with the lights and number plates.

After he has checked that we are doing our jobs right, he tells Lian to fetch the money from the Portakabin. He follows her in. When they come back out, none of us ask why she looks ruffled, her eyes black with anger and her hair escaping across her face. Afterwards, she will go back inside, tidy herself up, and nobody will ever say a thing.

It’s the endlessness of it all, the constriction, as if we have ropes tightening every day around us until we can’t breathe, until this is all our lives can ever be. Every day we stand there, cold and tired, everything hollowed out from us. We know Lian cries in the night. We hear her, but we can’t stop the world from being as it is. And all of us know the girls get moved on, that one day she won’t be here any more.

I have stopped thinking about my family and my gang of friends back home. It’s better they think I’m dead than know the truth. It’s better not to wonder what Yeta thought when she stopped getting my messages.

The sun is shining this morning and our customers seem brighter and more carefree. The weather really matters to these people who endure those months of damp, cold nothingness. Some of the men are wearing shorts and women shiver slightly, waiting without their coats, while we wash their cars.

Blue Audi man is back. He is still dressed in a suit and hands his keys over to me. No smile. That’s fine. I’m not here to make anybody happy.

Indrit switches on the hose and, even though we could step back and stay dry, Bron and I stand in the blast of cold water as if we feel nothing. We sponge the car clean, rinse it back down, brush the gravel from the footwells. The owner chucks his polystyrene cup in a bin and walks back over to take his keys. He comes close, looks me straight in the eyes and, quietly and gently, says “Get in”.

I blink. A million thoughts pass through my emaciated brain. In an instant I decide to place my trust in this man, though all I know of him is his shiny blue Audi. I clamber into the car, slamming the door behind me. I hear Ansel shout as we accelerate down the road, away from the buckets and the soap and the freezing water. Away from Lian with her worn-down face.

He doesn’t talk to me except to tell me I’m going to be safe. And I don’t know where we are going in this beautiful blue Audi that shouldn’t know about invisible people like me. But in these first minutes of freedom I hardly dare hope this sunny day could be for me.

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