‘I’ll take you,’ Lucy says quietly, and when I look down at her, her eyes are set, determined. ‘We can leave right now.’
I don’t know if it’s the inbuilt arsehole alpha male bullshit in me, but I want to tell her no. I want to pretend that I’m fine, that I don’t need help, but from the look on her face she knows exactly how terrified I am. There’s something in her eyes– some understanding that tells me that she’s been here before– and my heart breaks for her.
‘I’ll drive,’ she says, her voice soothing but absolutely firm, and I have to give in, caveman instincts or otherwise. I can’t deny that I’d be a danger on the road in my current state.
‘Ok,’ I say with a nod. ‘Let’s go.’
Lucy runs to the annexe to grab her bag while Peggy walks me to the front door, holding both of my cheeks in her palms like she used to do when I was a little boy.
‘Call me as soon as you know anything,’ she says, her mouth pinching with held back tears. ‘Safe journey.’
I kiss her on the cheek and head down the stone steps.
‘And Bram?’ Peggy calls after me, and I turn to look at her over my shoulder.
‘She’s a good one.’
The journey to Leeds is quiet and fraught with a heavy tension that has both of us in its grasp. I distract myself by focusing on Lucy’s knuckles which periodically whiten as she tightens her grip on my steering wheel. Every so often she takes a breath in like she’s about to speak, but no words come. She doesn’t say a single thing until we’re all the way past York.
‘I don’t know what to say to make it better,’ she blurts all of a sudden, so earnestly that it makes something tighten in my gut.
I blow a breath out. ‘Just you being here is making it better.’ It’s kind of a trite sentiment, but it’s true. I dread to think how much of a mess I’d be if I were on my own. I sneak a glance at her as the road straightens out. It’s dark now, and her profile is backlit by the streetlights outside. It looks like a halo.
Like I said, she’s an angel.
‘Talk to me about something,’ I say, and in my periphery I see her nibbling on her thumbnail. ‘Distract me.’
‘Ok.’ She nods, replacing her hand on my steering wheel and adjusting her grip. ‘I sent Mina an important message this morning, and when she finally got back to me, all she sent was two brain emojis and a thumbs up.’
I smile my first genuine smile since the phone call on the beach. ‘Yeah, that does sound like Mina.’
‘Absolutely useless,’ she says with a chuckle, glancing my way quickly before she merges onto a roundabout. ‘Sorry, didn’t mean to badmouth your family there.’
‘You know she’s not even my real cousin.’
I feel the air move past my face as Lucy whips her head around to look at me. ‘What?’
My smile’s bigger this time. ‘Peggy’s my dad’s sister, and Wladek is Mina’s mum’s brother.’ That’s their story, anyway. He’s actually more like Mina’s mum’s great-great-great-great-grandad. Or maybe more greats than that. But that’s pretty difficult to explain without going into the whole immortality thing. ‘What’s that, second cousins? Something once removed?’ I shake my head. ‘I don’t know how any of it works. Maybe we’re not actually related at all.’
‘I don’t think you are,’ Lucy says with a sudden air of confidence. ‘Not officially, anyway. Second cousins share agreat-grandparent, and cousins once removed are just a generation away from cousins. You and Mina don’t share any ancestors at all, from the sound of it.’ She takes a breath, and it sounds a little steadier now. ‘Best case, I’d say you’re cousins-in-law.’
I manage a chuckle, even through my panic. ‘You’re pretty impressive, Lucy Partridge.’
She waves the compliment away. ‘I once did a piece on a lady who’d compiled the biggest and most comprehensive family tree in England. She talked me through the whole thing.’ She moves again, like she’s shrugging. ‘I know a lot about family now. Ironic as I don’t really have one.’
That wipes the smile off my face. She says it so matter-of-factly, the way you might say that you don’t own a cat or you don’t have a front garden. It’s not the way you should say that you don’t have a family.
I can’t even imagine it. I mean, my immediate family is a bit… well, it’s lacking, but my parents were both from big families, so I have aunts and uncles and cousins all over the country. And fake cousins and their ancient ancestors too, obviously.
‘None?’ I say, and the shock is plain in my tone even though I try to hold it in.
She makes a noise beside me that I can’t read. It’s somewhere between a laugh and a sigh. ‘My mum…’ she says, ‘well, we know about her. My dad didn’t want to know me. I loved my grandparents like crazy, but they’ve both passed now.’ Her voice catches, and she pauses a moment before she speaks again. ‘I have one uncle, but he never married, and he’s been living in New Zealand for twenty years now. Always remembers to send me a birthday message, but it’s never on the right day because he can’t figure out the time difference.’ One finger taps lightly against the steering wheel as she drives. ‘Mina’s my family,’ she says, and then, after a beat, ‘even if she’s not yours.’ The joke’s a small thing, a thin thread of humour, which feels like it’s holding back a sea of pain. It makes my chest ache. I want to reach out for her, to hold on to her so tightly that neither of us ever has to hurt again. But instead I settle back into my seat, watching as the bright lights of the city streak past with the smallest niggle of doubt sitting heavy in my guts.
She wants a family, a small voice mutters somewhere deep inside me.
And you can never give her that.
And maybe, if there were fewer emotions rioting around my body right now, I might actually have listened.