By the next morning, I was sitting on the wall before the sun had risen. Gianina joined me and we sat gazing out at the town. From our vantage point, she pointed to her favourite spaces. When we were hungry we ate, and when it got dark we went back to Gianina’s house.

That night it began to rain, and as we ate breakfast the next morning Gianina glanced out the window and told me she had a busy day of catching up on Netflix ahead of her. I said I’d bring Ayamin back and we could all watch together. Gianina laughed, but her eyes seemed worried.

I sat in the rain in Gianina’s pink jacket. The rain quickly soaked through my pants. The tip of my nose was impossibly cold.

People dashed in and out of buildings. The only colour was flashes of warm yellow light from the stores, everything else was a different shade of grey.

It grew dark and I kept sitting there – only I wasn’t waiting – I was stuck. Ayamin and her quest had been my purpose, my life, for months. Suddenly I had nothing.

My teeth chattered between each breath. I tried to bury my hands under the coat to keep them warm, but that skin was just as cold.

‘Danny! Danny!’

A tiny phone light appeared in the rain. Footsteps splashed in the puddle I was sitting in.

Gianina was yelling at me but her voice seemed muted and cold… We stumbled back to her flat and she pushed me, fully clothed, into the shower… She was hugging me and crying and the hot water was soaking through her clothes… Gianina pulled my jacket off and then my shirt… and then the two of us were sitting on the floor of her shower with hot water gushing over us…and then as the water thawed me I started to cry and talk. I told her about the journey. About Greece, Macedonia, riding trains, kissing under the stars, and cuddling in the cold.

‘And now… and now it’s all gone.’

Gianina had her arms around me, her skin was warmer than mine, she was crying too.

‘Maybe that’s okay Danny. Those memories make you sad now, but one day they’ll make you smile.’

‘She was everything. She made me a good person – and now what am I? I’m nothing. I’m a criminal.’

Gianina was kissing my bare shoulder, she was rubbing my back.

‘I came here for an Italian boy. I gave up my job, said goodbye to my family, got a lease on this apartment and he dumped me after just a month. Everyone has breakups, Danny.’

‘But I just thought we were more… we’d been through so much shit together… I thought we couldn’t be separated.’

She shook her wet hair, ‘I wouldn’t have left you Danny. Seriously. I’ve never met anyone like you.’ Gianina was looking into my eyes, and I saw in her face that same desperation I felt inside.

I looked away from her. The shower was starting to run cold. I turned it off, stood, and grabbed two towels.

‘It’s getting late.’

****

I woke before Gianina, and I was glad of that. The city streets were quiet as I walked them in the dawn light.

There’s no way Ayamin’s coming to find me, I thought as I passed the wall where she’d left me.

Not far from the wall was a bus stop, and next to it – a radio station. I walked past the bus stop and thought about travel, she could already be in France – or even England.

Something made me stop outside the radio station. It had its signs written in English and Italian. It made me wonder if perhaps there was a slight hope… So I can’t text or call her… but maybe there’s another way? A plan was beginning to form.

I fixed the address of the station in my head and hurried back to Gianina’s. She was sitting in bed, and laughed when she saw me, ‘Danny, it’s good to see you smiling.’

‘That’s because I have a plan – I think I know how to get a message to Ayamin.’

Her face dropped, ‘Oh… that’s great.’

‘I’m going to ask the radio station to put a message on, but it’s got to be something only she will understand.’

I sat down on one of Gianina’s chairs and glanced at her bookshelf – there on the upper left corner was a very familiar sight. Two Hearts in the French Night.