Like everyone else, he first saw the images of the collapse the morning after it happened. Camera crews from all the major news channels set themselves up on the street outside the exclusion zone and streamed live footage of the rescue efforts. Lorenzo watched on his phone from his rented cottage near the film studio as fire crews and paramedics rushed around in protective clothing, their faces obscured by the breathing apparatus it was necessary for them to wear. The news channels sent their main anchors to the scene and they delivered the rest of the day’s news while on location, panning back to the Soho street when there were pressing updates.
Lorenzo’s mum phoned him from her new house in Essex as soon as she heard the news on the radio. Lorenzo wasn’t able to get away—the producers had a long list of shots they needed to get done before cast and crew departed for Christmas—so his mum said she’d pop to town and check on the flat. The flat wasn’t particularly close to the site of the sinkhole, but it made sense that one of them went to check on the place, just in case. Maria also had lots of friends still in the area and was anxious to make sure they weren’t hurt.
Lorenzo and Maria continued to exchange texts while she was on the train to Liverpool Street, and she kept sending him links to the video clips from the scene and other updates, even though he had access to exactly the same online media sources as she did. She texted him again when she arrived at her old flat:
Flat fine. Bit messy. X
Lorenzo received this while waiting at the side of the set between takes, and he put his phone away in irritation. The flat was fine. It was perfectly clean. He had left in a bit of a hurry and hadn’t sorted out the sitting room as well as he maybe should have, but it wasn’t as if he’d left dirty dishes in the kitchen before making the journey north. The next time he checked his phone, he saw that his mum had sent another text:
It looks like a warzone.
Lorenzo assumed this was from the scene itself. When he got a minute to himself, he gave her a call. She told him there was dust across the whole district, and the closer you got to the old walk-up, the harder it was to breathe. It was all over the pavement, on lampposts, windowsills, on top of postboxes, benches, vans, cars and in the air. A huge cloud of brown-gray dust just hung there, as if it was solid. It didn’t fall to the ground as quickly as she expected.
Lorenzo went straight to his parents’ house in Essex for Christmas. He changed trains in London on Christmas Eve, getting off at King’s Cross, taking the Circle Line to Liverpool Street, and then getting the train on to Clacton-on-Sea. It would have been easy enough to stop off in Soho, but he didn’t. At the time, he told himself it was because the rail network, and London itself, was so busy, and if he missed any of his connections he might not be able to get to his parents’ house for Christmas at all, which would have been upsetting. He thinks now that it was because he wasn’t ready to see it. He hadn’t had the news about Robert then, but he feared the worst without being able to articulate why. He always suspected Robert spent time at the walk-ups, and it seemed more than likely after what he’d told Lorenzo about his past.
Lorenzo returned to London a couple of days ago. The last week of filming was frantic. Everyone on set was stressed, tired, overworked, and even people who were otherwise perfectly friendly went around shouting at each other. The show wrapped a month late. Lorenzo had intended to go on holiday afterwards, and had booked flights to Majorca, but was forced to cancel them once the necessity of staying on at the studio became apparent.
The first couple of days being back in London, Lorenzo mooched around his flat. Everything looked and felt and smelt different. His mum had obviously forgotten to shut one of the windows before she left and a pigeon had wandered in and laid a single egg in his underpants drawer. He found it when he went around vacuuming the carpets and dusting the surfaces. At first it seemed so surreal he couldn’t quite make out what it was. It sat there, the size of a walnut and the color of full-fat milk, so simple and perfect. For a second it looked to him like a brand-new creation, as if he’d made a miraculous discovery: a divine teardrop, frozen solid on descent. After the surprise passed, he saw it for what it was and had to laugh, at the thought of his own confusion, at the thought of the pigeon herself waddling in here, full of egg, gently squatting over his socks and boxer shorts, laying then leaving. He wondered if the pigeon had tried to incubate her creation at all or whether it was just a hit and run.
This evening marks the first time he has returned to the Aphra Behn since being back. It has changed. The Behn used to be a traditional pub. The color palette was brown and burgundy, and the walls were covered in wood paneling that matched the bar and the furniture: oak polished with a dark walnut tinted varnish. The walls were decorated with old prints and ornate mirrors advertising defunct breweries. The area directly around the bar had wooden floorboards, likewise tinted and polished, but further back, where there were low tables and chairs
