“To seek comfort in the familiar? Sounds pretty sensible to me, and you’re not the only one who ran away up a mountain, remember? We literally talked about it a couple of hours ago.”
Fen hummed. A week ago, I might’ve taken the hint to shut my mouth. But we were closer now. Maybe he was ready to talk. “How long were you in hospital?”
“Three weeks.”
I took a breath. Three weeks was a long time to be in hospital, but no time at all to turn your back on your entire life.
As if he could sense my thoughts, Fen sighed. “I didn’t plan on never coming back. I didn’t have my flat cleared until six months later.”
“Oh.”
We were nearing the block where I lived. I pulled into the car park and into the space allocated to my flat.
Fen was lost in thought again. I shut the engine off. The radio went with it, cloaking us in a silence that seemed to make him jump.
“We’re here,” I said. “You coming in?”
“Sure.”
My flat was on the fourth floor and was as dark and grim as I’d left it.
I opened the blinds—all of them except the kitchen to spare Fen a view of the prison, and myself the contents of my fridge as I emptied it into a bin bag.
Fen busied himself picking up Charlie’s toys and rescuing the dry washing from the airer. “This place is nice,” he said. “But it doesn’t feel like you.”
“I never meant to stay here. It was a stop gap when I came to the city to keep an eye on Damon, but life got away from me.”
“Doesn’t it always? To everyone, I mean. Not just you.” Fen peered at the photographs dotted around my living room. Damon. Safia. Our parents. “Your mum was beautiful.”
“Thanks.”
“You look like her.”
“Double thanks.” I held up the bin bag. “Back in a sec.”
I jogged downstairs to the wheelie bins and ditched the bag of out-of-date food, thankful my bare shelves had saved me from a horror show that could’ve been far worse.
Back inside, I found Fen in the kitchen. He’d opened the blind and spotted the prison in the distance.
I didn’t stop to think. I came up behind him and hugged him tight.Fuck. He’s shaking.It was subtle, like everything else that had changed in him since I’d known him before, but I felt it all the same.
And it hurt.
Fen was a good man. The best. He didn’t deserve this pain.
I kissed between his shoulder blades, then gently turned him around. “Will you tell me what happened?”
Fen’s hands twitched, like he wanted to lay them on me, but didn’t trust himself not to squeeze too tight.
Fuck that.
I took his hands. Squeezed them hard enough to bend the bones. “I’ve got no milk.”
“Have you got booze?”
“Probably.” I released him to open a few cupboards. A bottle of cheap vodka I’d confiscated from Damon once upon a time was buried at the back of one.
I passed it to Fen.