* * *
SAINT: meet me in an hour
NASH: y?
SAINT: because
NASH: not an answer
SAINT: says who?
* * *
EMBRY: Someone needs to tell Locke he doesn’t need to be on Willow day and night. We have her
NASH: tell that to your husband once your kids are on the road
EMBRY: I hear you, but he’s knackered, and recovery doesn’t happen without rest
NASH: let him be
* * *
CAM: know you’re probably pissed at me rn, but you should know it wasn’t on Nash to keep this from you. However he felt about it, the final order was mine, and maybe I called it wrong. Find me if you want to talk
LOCKE: _
* * *
NASH: we love you
NASH: whatever happens that’s not gonna change x
LOCKE: _
16
ORLA
Locke didn’t come back for days. Then he did, and yet somehow he was still gone all the time. Invisible. I didn’t see him or Folk for the best part of a week, a fact I found myself apologising to Decoy for.
“Stop,” he told me. “He’d only be fretting about him if he was at home.”
Fretting wasn’t a term I’d ever associated with Folk, but I took Decoy’s word for it and returned to my own misery. Another two days passed. Then I stumbled across Folk dozing in the merman hammock Saint had bought for him, and every fibre of my being knew that Locke was home too.
I searched the compound for him.
Found nothing.
Nash came home and persuaded me to come to bed. “Don’t do this to yourself, Orls. It’s me he’s angry with.”
I stood at the window, tapping an unlit cigarette on the sill. “He wasn’t angry.”
“No?”
“No.”
From his position on the floor, messing with an engine part he’d brought to bed instead of himself, Nash sighed. “I know you want to fix this, but we can’t force him to get over what happened. This is him asking for space, and we have to give it to him.”