“I don’t want to accuse him of something he hasn’t done.”
“You wouldn’t be accusing him,” Arthur says. “You’d be giving him the chance to understand.”
I stare at the flowers.
“He’s a man,” Arthur adds dryly. “There’s every chance he doesn’t even realise he’s doing it.”
That… feels uncomfortably plausible.
“We can be a bit thick when it comes to our own behaviour,” he continues. “Especially when we care. We get inside our own heads and forget the rest of the world can’t see the map we’re using.”
I glance at him.
“And if you’re wrong?”
Arthur’s expression hardens slightly.
“If I’m wrong,” he says, “then you come straight back here and tell me.”
I blink.
“And then what?”
Arthur’s mouth curves slowly into a smile.
“Then I’ll rally the grey parade.”
I laugh despite myself.
“The grey parade?”
He nods toward the other end of the conservatory behind us, where three women sit clustered around a small table, their heads bent together in conspiratorial conversation.
“My harem,” he says matter-of-factly. “Sharpest minds in Fellside. Terrifying, the lot of them.”
One of the women looks up at that exact moment and waves at him.
He waves back solemnly.
“They’d sort him out in five minutes flat,” he says. “He wouldn’t stand a chance.”
The absurdity of it loosens something in my chest I hadn’t realised was clenched.
“You’re very confident in their abilities.”
“I’ve seen them dismantle a vicar over bingo rules,” Arthur says. “Bambi wouldn't stand a chance.”
I laugh again, properly this time.
Arthur reaches over and squeezes my hand, his grip warm and steady.
“He’s not ashamed of you,” he says quietly. “But if he’s being an idiot, he deserves the opportunity to stop.”
I nod.
The doubt doesn’t vanish.
But it no longer feels like something I have to carry alone.