“Sure about that?”
“Sure as houses, mate. I don’t know anything about him other than how he takes his tea.”
And even that knowledge was shaky. The Fen I’d known in Manchester hadn’t had a sweet tooth, but the lumber-sexual version tipped two spoons of sugar into his tea mug.
“I don’t believe you,” Safia said. “He’s a different man to the one who came up here five years ago to help his dad clear our land before the sale went through, and I’ve always wondered why.”
“Maybe it’s none of your business.”
“It’s not my business in the slightest, doesn’t stop me thinking about it. We love Fen. He’s part of our family when he lets us make the fuss of him he deserves, and I hate to think that he’s ever suffered alone because I didn’t know he needed us.”
I felt bad then. My sister was the fiercest supporter any soul could ever wish for. I was lucky to have her, and so was Fen, in whatever capacity their friendship had formed in the years I’d been absent and/or oblivious. “Look, there’s a reason he left his job at the prison and came back here, but I don’t know the details, and he doesn’t seem to want to talk about it, so maybe it’s best we both leave it well alone, eh?”
Safia let it go, but as the conversation returned to Charlie’s future, I found myself stuck on Fen. Something had changed in him since I’d found him staring into the fridge last night. Or perhaps it hadn’t and all that had happened was he’d forgotten to lock the gates on whatever went on behind his pretty eyes.
Regardless, he was as mysterious as he was open and warm, and wasn’t that an addictive puzzle? Compelling enough to consume every thought that wasn’t about Charlie, though that wasn’t new.
Whatwasnew was the captive audience I found myself with every moment I wasn’t taking a piss. Charlie. Addie. Mae. All three of them attached themselves to me like Velcro, and it was early evening by the time Safia took pity on me and hustled them all away for a bath in the “pig shed”.
No joke. My sister’s shower rooms were powered by solar panels, but she had an old copper tub in a barn that was heated by a pellet stove. It was kind of luxurious if you didn’t mind the smell of the nearby sow and their piglets.
I did mind, so I stayed where I was on the couch, nursing the mulled cider Paddy had brought me and picking at a plate of nutmeg-spiced biscuits. My phone was on the arm of the couch, lit up with work emails I’d have to spend the next morning answering. There was a voicemail too, from Charlie’s social worker, thanking me for keeping her updated. I appreciated the sentiment. How many times had I sat waiting for an offender who had already been recalled to prison and no fucker had bothered to tell me?
Too many.
Still, her trust in me was scary. I didn’t want autonomy. I wanted someone to make the hard decisions for me.Go home. Back to your real life.
Instead, I cleared the email notifications from my lock screen and stared into my sister’s fireplace. It was more rustic than Fen’s—no stove or guard, just a hole in the wall housing a glowing pile of burning logs, timber that had come from Fen’s land, no doubt. Thinking about him was the welcome distraction it had always been, but as hard as I tried to focus on his rugged, unshaven jaw, his broad shoulders, and deep, masculine voice, the more my brain seemed stuck on the frown creasing his brow as he’d slept in my arms, and the sadness in his gaze when I’d left him that morning.
The lights on Safia’s Christmas tree came on. They were multi-coloured, and half obscured by the sheer volume of decorations, but the dancing light still reminded me of Fen, and I let my imagination run wild, picturing him felling the enormous tree that took up most of Safia’s living room. Hoisting it onto his broad shoulders and onto Paddy’s truck, his blue eyes sparkling in the winter sunlight.God, why does he have to be so fucking beautiful? I have real shit to worry about.
Something warm landed on my chest. I glanced down to see a bundle of pale skin, tiny limbs, and enormous brown eyes. Lalla, my youngest niece.
Paddy sank onto the couch beside me. “Don’t worry, she’s a quiet one.”
I adjusted the baby to where Charlie had spent most of his early months, sprawled on my left arm while I’d typed on my laptop with my free hand. My supervisor back then had told me I looked“fraught”on the days I’d actually made it to work. I’d figured him for a bit of a cunt, but hindsight was a wonderful thing. “I never minded the screaming. It let me know I hadn’t fucked up enough to kill him.”
Paddy snorted. “As if. You’re an amazing dad.”
“I’m not his dad, though, am I?”
“Might as well be now. Damon gave it a good go for a while there, but it was always going to end up here. You know, that, right?”
I sighed. “Maybe.”
Paddy didn’t argue with me. It wasn’t his way, and living with Safia, he was well-versed in the reality that there was little point. Stones were stubborn. We couldn’t be told and we had to learn every lesson the hard way. “Hold still,” he said instead.
He held his phone up and snapped a selfie of us on the couch with Lalla.
I gave him the finger. “What did you do that for?”
“Two reasons. First, to prove you were actually here when you disappear down south again. Second, I’m sending it to Fen. He asked me how you were doing and I hate typing on my phone. A picture speaks a thousand words, eh?”
I watched him fire the photo into the ether, torn between calling him a nasty word he didn’t deserve and snatching the phone out of his hand to get Fen’s number. Considering the sweet-scented bundle on my chest, neither seemed appropriate, so I settled for glaring at him until he noticed.
Then glaring some more when he didn’t give a shit. “I’d rather have sent him a thank-you text than a picture of me slumming it on your couch in your donkey-sized clothes.”
“Text him then.”