Nat nudged Marc in the ribs. “It was a bad idea, but it worked out because it was meant to. Is that what you want with Jamie?”
Marc shrugged. “Maybe. I don’t know what he wants, though, and I don’t think he does either. Life hasn’t been kind to him.”
“Has it to any of us?”
“It’s different for us,” Marc said. “We chose our path and accepted the risks. Nothing happened that we didn’t halfway expect.”
Nat was silent, and Marc imagined that any reply he might make would echo Jamie’s own harsh words about himself, but Marc would never believe that Jamie’s addiction was the result of poor choices. Jamie had taken a bullet the same as the rest of them, it was just from a different gun.
“Any word from Wedge?” Marc asked when it became clear that the conversation about Jamie had reached a dead end.
“Yesterday,” Nat replied. “Satellite call came in as I was leaving. Noisy as fuck, but he seemed happy enough. They had a bit of drama a few days ago, but they shut it down. Got the grunts squared away.”
To a civilian, Nat’s explanation would probably be little more than gibberish, but Marc absorbed it all, read between the lines, and grunted with a sharp nod. “It’s a daft fucking mission. What the hell are they thinking?”
“Fucked if I know, but that isn’t much anymore. I only know what I do because of Wedge’s call.”
“He all right?”
“Hard to tell. He’s been over there so long he’s only speaking Arabic these days, and I’m a bit rusty.”
“You didn’t ask Connor to translate?”
“Very funny. It’s been a while since he spoke any Arabic either. He covered the Jungle in Calais, but he doesn’t travel as much as he used to. Persuaded him to stick closer to home.”
“Seems to be working out for him.”
“You know Connor. There isn’t much he can’t do.”
The vague innuendo took Marc back to a drunken night in Dublin nine long years ago—memories that usually came with a bucket load of heat and longing. But Marc knew real heat now, and yearning too, and as much love as he had for Nat and Connor, his heart was Jamie’s whether Jamie wanted it or not.
* * *
Jamie washed the final plate and handed it to Connor. It had taken some persuading to get Connor to let him help, but they’d cleaned up in a companionable silence, and Jamie had decided that he liked Connor a lot more than his surly partner.
Surly? How old are you?
“Something funny?” Connor asked as he came back to the sink. “That’s the first time I’ve seen you smile all night.”
“Just laughing at myself. I think I’ve spent so long alone in Marc’s house that I’m starting to become one with it.”
Connor laughed. “I know that feeling. My last piece took me a month to put together, and I was a raving lunatic by the end of it.”
“What was it about?”
“The piece?”
Jamie nodded. Connor had already shown him some of his war-correspondent articles upstairs. Most were from conflicts that had passed Jamie by while he’d been lost to junk and hooking, but there’d been a few from theGuardianthat he suspected he might’ve read before.
“It’s about austerity. I figured it would be an easy lefty rant, but I got a bit caught up in the research. Turns out the government cuts really have killed people.”
Jamie could believe it. He didn’t know much about politics, save what he’d read in day-old newspapers, but it was a rare day that cuts to welfare weren’t on the front pages.
“It’s not just that, though,” Connor replied when Jamie said as much. “It’s the little things that people going to work every day don’t notice straightaway—like the old folks’ bus into town. The council stop funding it, so little old Betty can’t get into town to buy gas for her metre. So she doesn’t, and she gets cold, and then she gets ill, so she can’t walk into the village to get food. Eventually, she dies a few years earlier than she should have. And that’s not considering the fact that she likely couldn’t get an appointment at her GP surgery either.” Connor took a breath. “Jesus. Sorry. Don’t get me started, or I won’t stop. Nat says I’m a keyboard anarchist, but words are all I have.”
“It’s okay,” Jamie said. “I know it’s bad. Before I went to America, there was a needle exchange by the train station where I lived. You could go in and clean yourself up, and get an appointment with the counsellor if you wanted one. Now, I have to wait twelve weeks before they’ll even put me on the list.”
“Do you need an appointment sooner? I’m sure Marc has contacts who can help you.”