Bluebird // Phan

Chapter 1: I

I
1998

By the time Phil Lester arrived at the orphanage, it was midnight. The sky was a tangle of silver strings, all moonlit and dismal across the inky darkness. Rain had begun to cascade down onto London, water slanting into all the crevices of the metropolis. It was the first breaths of September and the rebirth of winter was prominent in the cooling air. Frost was crusting into the corners of everything, it seemed, finding its place where it wasn't wanted.

The cab had slowed to a halt outside a crestfallen building. Between the shimmers of reflection from the headlights, Phil made out a grey face, implanted with filmy windows and a small entrance. It was tragically drab behind the obfuscated glass, and Phil felt a tightening in his gut as he stared between the flecks of rainwater.

Everything was slow, lethargic. London was flourishing on a grand scale (Phil had heard the stories of its flair back home) but this street was its own world of bleak indifference.

His uncle made no comment as he helped him from the car. There was probably a reason for it, but Phil was having trouble focusing on anything but the daunting building before him. The way it soared above the clouds was almost mocking and it amazed him that his knees didn't buckle when he stepped out onto the pavement, dragging along a suitcase that accompanied his striped backpack.

"Come on then, Bud," his uncle eventually spoke, palm flattening out against the square of Phil's shoulders. "And you too, Martyn, I'm on a schedule. Straight up to Manchester for me now."

"Really?" Phil chirped, voice angling upwards with fascination.

"Hhm. Wish I could take you," he ruffled Phil's hair, disarraying the black strands between his fingers, as if the breeze wasn't doing a good enough job.

"Wish I could come," Phil mumbled back, deadpanned. He kicked at a stone and watched it skip across the empty pavement as the wind hissed.

"It'd be much better when it gets boring, if you were there," his uncle responded, then shifted his attention promptly to Phil's brother clattering his own luggage up over the curb. "Martyn, please hurry."

Martyn had found every opportunity to ignore their uncle's remarks on the journey, and it didn't seem he was giving that up now as he walked straight past them, eyes downcast. Phil didn't take it to heart, for he knew his brother was better left alone when like this, so resentful and acrimonious.

Not another word was spoken out on the street. Phil followed his brother through tumbledown doors and into a picturesque reception. The lighting was weak and a feeble silence clung to the air, magnifying the volume of their stride against the panelled floor. It made their entrance almost disruptive, tearing chunks from the stillness.

At the desk, an elderly woman sat, grey hair fastened lazily away behind her ears. There was a book in her hands, opened flat on the wood.

"Evening," she greeted, upon peering up. Her voice was gravelly ragged with age. "You must be the Lesters. Been waiting for you."

"Sorry," their uncle apologised, punctual. "Was a bit of traffic up near Westminster."

"Not a problem. That's inner London for you, sir."

"Yeah, the cabbie mentioned."

Phil struggled to concentrate on anything but the craggy pattern of Martyn's breathing as the woman flitted through a book of call logs.

"I'm sure we won't be needing you, but I'll need to take your number. Vital precautions, I'm afraid."

"No, of course," their uncle agreed, inevitably easy, before reading his phone number aloud. After a stifling beat of silence, in which Phil was certain he heard the floorboards above his head creak, she shut the book and spoke again.