“They kept him on. Gave him a permanent position.”
“With the lodgings too?”
I nodded. “I was worried about him for a while, but he’s settled now. Happy, actually. Sometimes I forget what he was like when I met him.”
Fen shuddered. “I don’t. When I think about that place, I remember how scared he was, and how he didn’t believe it would ever get better.”
“But it did get better. Would you believe me if I told you his brother drives up every month to visit him?”
“No.” We reached Fen’s car. He opened the driver door and tilted his head as he frowned at me over the top of it. “He told me his brother hated him.”
“Well, he doesn’t now. I don’t think they’re exactly mates, but they’re working harder at it than me and Damon ever did.”
“Damon ever did, you mean.”
I shrugged, gripping the handle of the passenger door, grounding myself in the cold metal against my palm. “Trust me, it wasn’t all on him. I checked out for years before I realised he was sinking, and by then it was too late.”
“People sink or swim based on their own actions. You know that.”
“Do I?”
Fen snorted. “You’ve read the instruction manual. That counts, right?”
It counted for nothing in the end, but I hadn’t sought him out to bend his ear moaning. Damon was dead and I missed him, but I was literally on Christmas Mountain with the most gorgeous dude I’d ever known while my nephew lived his best life in any child’s paradise. In this moment, I didn’t have much to complain about.
We got into the car. Fen threw his arm around the back of my seat and reversed down the steep pathway until we reached the dirt track descending Durdle Fell.
He navigated the complex road with one hand on the wheel while he fiddled with the radio, but I wasn’t worried. He knew the mountain like the back of his hand and it wasn’t like he was stupid enough to white-knuckle it in a blizzard.
No, that would be me.
“What are you grinning about?” Fen treated me to a gentle smile of his own. “Not that I’m complaining. It looks good on you.”
“I was laughing at my own idiocy, as it goes. Can’t believe I thought it was a good idea to drag my heap of shit Fiesta up this road in the dark. I must’ve mistaken myself as a rally driver somewhere between here and the M6.”
“Yeah, I thought you’d lost the plot when I realised what you’d done.”
“You might’ve been right.”
“Have you found it yet?”
“The plot? Uh, that would be a hard nope. And it’s hard to think up here when it’s so far removed from my actual reality.”
Fen sucked his teeth, finally settling on a crackly soft rock radio station. “Maybe you could flip that and take advantage of the change in perspective.”
“Is that Officer Hawthorne talking?”
“They called me Mr Hawthorne inside, but yeah. And no. I’m not that person anymore, but I still think being up here could help you think if you let it.”
“What makes you think I’m stopping it from helping me?”
“That’s not what I said.”
I gave him a look to let him know I’d caught the implication whether he’d meant to voice it or not.
Fen sighed. “Will you hate me if I’m brutally honest?”
“No. Bullshit annoys me.”