He no longer wondered how long he will be here, in the depths of a three acre triangular woodland that forms a buffer between the highway to the west, and the houses to the east. Full of brambles and sharp leaved, glossy holly bushes, it's edges were a dumping ground for old sofas, chipboard desks peeling laminate and soaking up water, plastic bags of nappies. It wasn't an appealing woodland, until one managed to force a path of sorts into it's depths.

In the first year, he slept in a tent that he had found erected by the roundabout on the south east corner, discarded by a wild camper perhaps, engaging a Youtube audience with his daring. Sometimes he wondered whether the owner would come back, but mostly he was nursing injuries both external and inside his wounded self. Kachura had beaten him badly, holding keys between his fingers right up to the knuckle. He was laughing. 'You owe me!' he had shouted. 'You owe me!'.

He wondered why he hadn't run before, but this time he had, some primal instinct that made him want to live, regardless. He had stumbled down the stairs and collapsed by the pile of boots by the front door, leaving a smear of red on the tattered wallpaper of the hall. Many years later he would learn that forensics would be testing for blood, spraying the walls and carpet with luminol. Someone had reported him dead.

He had certainly felt dead, until the robin came in the fourth spring.

When he had escaped it was pure luck - men were coming and going all night in the apartment, and Kachura was drunk and inattentive. They stepped over him as if bodies in doorways were not a suprise. Eventually, through swollen eyelids, he saw the open door and stumbled out onto the wet and dark street, and into the forest beyond. The fact that Kachura would find him was inevitable, but still his body screamed: 'live!', despite the pain.

In the second year he lived a little better. Pushing deeper into the woodland he found an abandoned shack, perhaps a woodshed from a home before the area became motorways and housing estates. He lived like the foxes did, rummaging the Asda bins at night and searching the streets for useful things, like a sleeping bag and warmer clothes. People discarded all sorts of things. The shack became a home, but he was still careful. He slept under a lean too of corrugated iron to the rear of the shack, so that anyone that stumbled across it might not realise that someone lived there. In the winter, it was cold. He pushed plastic bags over nails around the window and torn blankets, hoping to keep the cold out, and sometimes risked a small fire on the days that no one would be looking toward the woodland, only hurrying along to get home, heads down, noses pressed into scarves, hands deep in pockets, unaware of the man who lived on the very edges of their world.

Perhaps he could have called home, but he was so very scared of Kachura, and distrustful of the police. By now he had overstayed his visa, and was even more illegal than when he first migrated, promised a lucrative job so that he could support his family at home. Even he did not believe he truly existed, until the robin. He was a ghost, duch, nikt, zero, nothing.

In the late Spring, he would tear off the plastic from the window and, ever alert for anyone pushing through the woods, sit and read or watch the leaves of the birch and hazel move in the milder breezes. The shack became a home, despite his deep shame for living as he did. He tried to be neat, to shave and to wash, to maintain his dignity, but sometimes he was painfully conscious of his life, and marvelled how he had got here, and how long since he had spoken to another human being.

When the robin landed on the windowsill, he expected it to flit away like the others do, bouncing off the decaying wood in alarm at his presence. This one, however, looked at him intently. 'Tsk' he said. 'Hajda! Off you go!'. It hopped sideways, cocked it's head, and looked at him again. Before long he found himself leaving breadcrumbs for it, and sometimes seeds. Now, in the fifth year, it came through the window in the Spring and landed on his outstretched hand. 'Maleńka!' he said. 'You are kind to visit!'

This tiny bird had reminded him of things he had lost: a lightness of being, sparks of tenderness. Maleńka was also the name he had given his baby sister - she was such a dear little one. When the robin had shed a tiny rust red breast feather, it had floated on an old phone he had collected from the skip the day before and left on the table inside the window. It was fully charged - perhaps a discarded burner phone, tossed hastily. He walked to the edge of the woods and connected to the supermarket wifi. They spoke for nearly a minute. She cried. 'I must go' he said, unable to articulate where he had been. She had never believed him dead, she had sobbed. Never.

When they came for him, he did not look back at the robin. He could hear it singing as the police walked him kindly toward the waiting cars and a new life in the north. Maleńka would visit him soon, they assured him. She was on a plane from Berlin, right now. 'We've been looking for you for a long time,' they said. 'We're glad we found you, mate. It's going to be alright. You're safe now. You're safe.'

The robin called: cheer-up, cheer-up, cheer-up, cheerio! He muttered softly, so that only the robin could here. 'Do widzenia,' he said. 'Do widzenia, maleńka, little one.'

*This was in response to the Inkwell Prompt this week, 'window'. It fleshes out a real life story I saw called '24 Hours in Police Custody', about a man who was caught up with traffickers in modern slavery in England. Beaten badly, he hid in the woods and was too frightened and distrustful of the police to seek help. Someone had reported him murdered, having witnessed the beating, but despite searching, the police couldn't find him until they found a Facebook profile with his name and face. He'd found a phone and connected to the supermarket wifi, setting off a search to find his shack hideout. The story has stuck with me - five years he had spent alone in the woods. What fear must drive a man to do that, and how incredible he survived in such terrible conditions. The details, of course, are my own - the names, the robin, the finer details, are mine, imagining, and the images are imagine by myself and Midjourney.

With Love,

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