Chapter Ten
Walker
It was little more than ten minutes later when Walker actually left the fire station, and by then he had plenty to think about.
He’d been called in to talk to his boss, Appleby, who’d arrived unannounced at the station, wanting to talk about his future with the fire service.
As he eased his car out of the forecourt, he felt the urge to drive and keep driving.
It might ease his mind. He could do with the distraction.
Halfway up the big hill to town, he spotted a familiar sight.
Gabi. Leaning against a wall for support, taking a breather.
She obviously hadn’t made it home yet. It couldn’t be more perfect.
He needed a distraction and there she was.
He didn’t think twice before flicking on an indicator and pulling in beside her. He lowered his window.
‘Fancy a ride?’ he asked, noticing her pink cheeks. No matter how fit she was, this hill must be a killer on crutches.
‘I’m fine,’ she insisted.
‘I know you are,’ he reassured her. ‘I just fancied a drive. Wondered if you wanted the scenic tour of Honeybridge?’ She grinned and he watched her move towards the car.
He rubbed his chest where the braces had pinged against him earlier.
It hadn’t hurt as much as shocked him. He could still feel her hands there on his chest. She was petite, Gabi.
He guessed maybe five foot four in her trainers.
And she looked smaller now that she was settled in his passenger seat, smiling expectantly.
He waited for her to click her seat belt in before checking his mirror and easing out.
Within minutes he was leaving the town and driving along country roads bordered by fields and farms. She gazed out of the window, and he heard her long, slow exhale.
‘This is so different from where I live,’ she said after a while, turning to face him.
‘My apartment is on the top floor – the twelfth – of a complex. We have a doorman and a gym on site. And from my window, I can see the Thames and the London skyline. Which is stunning, but hardly any green at all.’
‘Sounds fancy,’ he said, two hands lightly turning the wheel. She laughed and it made him smile.
‘And expensive,’ he pushed and she laughed again.
‘I bought it about five years ago after one of my films that year.’ He remembered the monogrammed luggage sets that he’d carried for her. She was obviously well paid for what she did.
‘You looking forward to getting back to work?’ he asked, taking a turn to follow the wide, meandering river.
‘Can’t wait. Rang my agent a couple of days ago to update her on my recovery schedule. She’ll start looking for appropriate roles for me. I’m always wanting the next one to be bigger. Better.’
‘My boss wants me to take on a bigger role too,’ he found himself saying, but without the same excitement as she had in her voice. ‘He literally just told me after you left.’
‘A promotion?’ Gabi asked, clapping her hands. ‘Congratulations!’
Walker focused on his driving, remembering his Commander’s praise. ‘Seems they want me to consider taking the job as Station Commander for this area,’ he said. Gabi clapped again.
‘When do you start?’
He blinked. She made it sound so easy whereas just saying it out loud made his stomach drop. It was a lot of responsibility. What if he wasn’t up to it?
‘I asked if I could think about it,’ he said, keeping his eyes on the road.
Gabi made a small noise of surprise. ‘What’s to think about?’ she asked, sounding genuinely interested. He considered for a moment before replying.
‘The existing Station Commander is a guy called Perkins. I’ve worked with him since I joined the brigade.
And I’ve never seen him out of breath, or panicked, or flustered.
Not at major car crashes on the motorway, or house fires where we’ve rescued sleeping babies, or even when we found an unexploded bomb on the old army site.
He always takes everything in his stride, gives clear and concise orders and seems to have planned ahead for every eventuality. ’
‘So?’ Gabi challenged
He slowed into a turn, expertly keeping his line on the road as he turned back into town.
‘What if I can’t do that?’ He pressed his lips together to prevent himself saying anything else. He could sense Gabi watching him and he could feel the colour rising in his cheeks. When she spoke, she was unusually serious.
‘They wouldn’t ask you if they didn’t think they could depend on you.’
He pulled up outside Amber’s house, suddenly sorry he hadn’t taken a longer route home. He ran round the car to open her door for her. She steadied her hand momentarily against his chest as she arranged her crutches.
‘You should do it, Walker,’ she said, looking up into his face, and then, over her shoulder as she swung up the path, she said, ‘Honestly, what’s stopping you?’
The words hung in the air between them as Walker watched her navigate the path and let herself in.
What was stopping him? Good question. He climbed back into the car and reversed easily out of the drive, turning towards home, thinking.
It was only as he pulled up outside that he acknowledged his fear to himself.
The truth was, everyone knew that when the time came, Perkins would always do exactly what he needed to do to save the day.
But Walker couldn’t say the same. He gripped the steering wheel, tight, and closed his eyes, trying to block out images that he only normally saw in his nightmares.
He shook his head to clear them, not letting them in.
Not letting fear win. But the doubt remained.
His stomach tumbled away inside. What if, when it all came down to him, he froze in front of everyone, and they saw him for who he really was?
Later, Walker stood at the open fridge in his kitchen, staring blankly at the contents inside until the fridge alarm beeped.
‘You all right, bud?’ Alex pulled the braces away from Walker’s back and let them snap.
Walker yelped and bolted upright. Alex had used full force, as opposed to Gabi’s playful little ping earlier. Alex laughed.
‘Second person to do that today!’ Walker said, turning back to the shelves. ‘You in for dinner?’ he asked without looking.
‘Where else am I going to be?’ Alex said.
He had a point. Unless it was Tuesday or Thursday when he went out for band practice, Alex was usually home in the evenings.
Depending on Walker’s shifts, they sometimes met up with the Brothers from Another Mother for a couple of beers if Fox could get a babysitter or if Etienne could disentangle himself from Isabella.
Both seemed quite hard to do lately. So, Walker and Alex had spent a lot of time together since Alex moved in.
In fact, they’d become a bit of a double act around mealtimes.
‘Right,’ Walker said. ‘Let’s eat.’ He rummaged inside the refrigerator, pulling out a tray of chicken thighs and grabbing a bag of fresh pasta which he tossed over his shoulder without warning.
Alex caught it deftly and set it on the table, spinning on the spot immediately to catch the next items, tomatoes – which came flying one, two, three over Walker’s shoulder – followed by a solitary onion.
He placed them all next to the pasta, neat in a row, and got chopping. Walker turned on the music.
They moved around each other in the kitchen as though choreographed.
Walker sidestepped when Alex passed him to get a saucepan.
Alex ducked down to choose a saucepan from the bottom drawer as Walker swung open the cupboard door above his head to find the salt.
The chicken was chopped and fried, Alex reaching over to sprinkle paprika in the pan as Walker stirred.
The pasta was boiled and Walker threw in the salt.
By the time the meal was ready to serve up, Walker had chopped feta cheese and Alex had opened them both a beer.
It might not have been restaurant standard – Etienne and Isabella would have made something much fancier – but it was good, healthy and protein rich, which both of them needed for their gym schedules.
‘Table or lap?’ Alex asked as they plated up the food.
Walker laughed. ‘Lap. I’m knackered.’
Alex grabbed two trays and passed one over. A minute later they were side by side on the sofa, Walker’s ginger rescue cat, Fatboy Jim, squished in between them, TV on and tucking in.
‘You’re like my wife,’ Walker said, over a mouthful.
‘Get out of it, mate,’ Alex said. ‘You’re like my wife.’
Walker coughed and swallowed his mouthful.
‘We need to get out more.’
‘True, that.’
They ate in silence for a moment or two, watching a car show on TV.
‘But it’s also nice just to have some company at home, you know?’ Walker said, thinking how his mood had improved once he’d got home from work. Having Alex there was good for him. It stopped him spiralling or his thoughts crowding into his head. It distracted him.
‘I know, mate. And it’s good not having to worry that every time I enter a room, I might catch my brother or his girlfriend in various stages of undress.
’ Walker laughed. He’d seen for himself the lovestruck look on Etienne’s face that had been pretty much permanent since last autumn.
The guy just couldn’t get enough of Isabella.
And by the way Isabella wrapped herself around her man, the feeling was mutual.
Walker couldn’t remember feeling that intensity with his ex-girlfriend Mia.
It had felt more like a warmth, rather than a fire.
‘Have you ever lived with a girlfriend?’ Walker asked as he speared his last bit of chicken.
Alex shook his head, chewing.
‘Been close?’
‘Yup.’
This was news.
‘When?’
‘Few years ago.’ Alex contorted his face at the memory. ‘Well, I hoped it was heading that way anyway. With Amber.’ He put his knife and fork down and sighed. ‘I thought I’d end up living with her and Jayden.’
Walker choked on his chicken. Alex slammed him on the back. Fatboy Jim opened one eye to check he wasn’t going to die and then closed it again.
‘I didn’t realise it had been that serious,’ he said when he could talk.
‘Ancient history now, mate.’ Alex settled back into the sofa.
‘What happened?’ Walker asked, far more interested in this story than the prattling presenter on television. Alex took a pull of his own beer and then began.
‘I fucked up, mate. That’s what happened. I did what I always did when things got tough. I ran away rather than stay and sort things out.’
Walker knew Alex’s history. He’d heard from Etienne how Alex had become addicted to gambling in his late teens.
How it started with arcade games and fruit machines.
After their parents died in a car crash, Alex had sought to escape his grief in backroom poker games run by the local gangsters with impossibly high stakes.
He’d run up a massive gambling debt and had to run away for his own safety when he couldn’t repay it.
He’d lived almost on the run like that for four long years.
It was when he contacted Etienne again after all that time, asking for help to repay the debt and regain his life, that Etienne had enlisted the help of Walker and Fox, and they’d made a plan to bring him back.
Which didn’t quite go to plan and ended up with an attack at Tutto Mio and the first gunshot injury in Honeybridge in a decade.
None of them had known of the romance between Alex and Amber, who had moved to the town a year or so before Alex arrived.
When they found out there had been a relationship, everyone had presumed a one-night wonder, or perhaps a brief fling, because neither party seemed to want to go into detail.
In fact, if he was honest about it, Walker had presumed Alex had cheated on Amber because she seemed to want nothing to do with him. ‘Why did you run?’
‘Long story, Walks. Let’s just say I made the wrong call. I thought I was making the right move, but I made the wrong bet.’
Walker sipped his beer thoughtfully.
‘Anything still there?’ he asked.
Alex shrugged. ‘Wouldn’t matter if there was,’ he said. ‘She hates me. She moves away if I get anywhere near her.’ He screwed his eyes closed. ‘I really fucked it up.’
‘So, you don’t think she feels anything?’
Alex exhaled slowly through his nose.
‘I hope she still feels the connection,’ he said. ‘But she’s definitely not letting herself act on it.’ He half laughed and Fatboy snapped out a paw in surprise and caught Alex’s hand in his claws.
‘Steady there, boy,’ Alex said, holding very still until the cat relaxed again and went back to purring.
‘Anyway, enough about that. Who else snapped your braces today then?’ Alex abruptly changed the subject.
Gabi’s face flashed into Walker’s mind – her smile as she looked up at him, leaning against his chest.
‘Gabi,’ he said.
‘Feisty,’ Alex said.
Walker snorted. It was a good word for Gabi.
Feisty. Funny. Feminine. Flirty? He caught himself with the last one.
He saw the flash of her eyes under her dark lashes as she laughed.
They had been flirting earlier. Just a little, but there had definitely been something there.
And the way she’d listened in the car had been surprising.
Her encouragement of him to take the promotion.
He’d add another F. Fearless. She was all the Fs.
‘She came by for her earring. She was saying she finds it hard in the day when she’s on her own to move about, to carry things.’
‘I can imagine,’ Alex said, standing and lifting his tray from his lap at the same time. ‘I’ll sort the kitchen.’
‘Thanks, darling,’ Walker smiled.
‘Fuck off.’ Alex laughed.
Walker watched him go but his mind was lingering on Gabi’s face.