Can’t say why that matters.
It doesn’t matter.
But I notice it anyway.
The light in here is no better than the gym. I flick it on. Mal glances at the bare bulb, then back at me—downat me. He’s taller by an inch or so, and he makes full use of it as he eases past to where the washing machine and the dryer take up most of the room.
He drops his bag on the floor—the only thing he brought with him when he came here. He has less stuff than even Jack, and I can’t help my curiosity about what the bag contains beyond the handful of clothes he shoves into the machine.
I hand him the detergent.
Mal nods his thanks and sets the machine to run. “I haven’t washed my clothes in this country in five fucking years.”
“When did you last come here?”
He shoots me an unreadable glance. “Three years ago—after Jack got hurt. I came to the hospital in Birmingham.”
“You came to Birmingham?”
Mal nods. “For all the fucking good it did him.”
“What happened?”
“You want to know something about Jack, ask him yourself.”
A ghost of a grin warms Mal’s face.
I like it more than the distant haze it replaces, but I don’t smile back. “I was working in Birmingham when they brought Jack back. I didn’t know he was there until three weeks later when Sol found out.”
“You worked at Queen Elizabeth?”
“No, Heartlands. But I was with Jack a lot once I got them to let me in. Maybe you walked past me on the way out.”
“I was long gone by then.” Mal moves closer to put the detergent back on the shelf. “But there’s no way that happened anyway.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because wherever my head was at, there’s no way I walked past you any-fucking-where and forgot about it.”
That grin is nowhere to be seen as he spits those words. But it’s not the lack of humour that makes them so believable. It’s that IknowI’ve never been anywhere near him before we crossed paths in that seedy bar up the coast.
I’d remember.
More than that, I’d be different. Like I have been since I first felt the flicker of his stare on my skin. “Jack never told me you’d been to see him. Sol said you were deployed and no one could find you.”
“I was embedded.” Mal shifts again, rotating so I can’t see his face. “But a mate of mine got word to me and moved mountains to get me out.”
“Then what happened?”
I ask again, because I know what Jack was like the first few months after he got hurt. That he wasn’tJackfor a hell of a long time.
Mal takes a breath before he turns back to me. “I fucked up. He was awake. Talking whole sentences. I didn’t realise how bad the injury was until he was trying to hit me with a monitor screen.”
“He was awake?”
“I thought so at the time.” Mal catches the surprise in my voice. “Next word I got was that he’d been put in an induced coma. It was a month before I heard anything else.”
“From Sol?”