Chapter Twelve Tristan
CHapter twelve
Tristan
Twenty four hours later, I stood on the doorstep of a narrow-terraced house in Stratford, trying to work out whether I’d slept at all.
I don’t think I had.
Between securing what needed securing to get me here, I’d still had to do my job.
Other cases. Other clients. Other courts requiring me to stand up straight and sound as if my head wasn’t full of fractured timelines and contingency plans.
There hadn’t been enough hours in the day to do any of it properly. I’d simply… kept going.
I blew out a breath and rang the bell.
The door opened to noise. Three babies crying at slightly different pitches, overlapping in a way that felt almost mathematical. Two women shouted over the top of it and Lennon filled the doorway, one sleeve smeared with something I hoped was milk. He took in my expression and smirked.
“Yeah.” He waggled a finger at me. “That face right there is why you rich boys don’t come out east.”
“Christ.” I winced. “No wonder you’re keen to relocate the population.”
He shot me a look. “Watch it. It’s chaos, but it’s my chaos. And I ain’t keen, I’m being made to.” Then he stepped aside and jerked his head towards the hallway. “Come in. She’s nearly ready.”
I stepped inside and the noise closed in behind me.
The house was small. Not in a way that demanded comment, but it was compact, efficiently lived in.
Two rooms downstairs: a narrow lounge at the front, a kitchen at the back, divided by a tight hallway barely allowing two people to pass without turning sideways.
Upstairs, I assumed, the same again with a bathroom carved out wherever there had been space to take it.
It was easy to see why Lennon was worried about space if Razor ended up here as well. Especially on tag. If Razor came, he wouldn’t be going far. The house would become the boundary of his world. Every wall a limit, every room a reminder that freedom, for now, meant staying put.
From the kitchen, a woman in scrubs lifted a hand in greeting, a baby balanced expertly on one hip while another clung to her leg, wailing as she tried to stuff nappies and bottles into a canvas bag.
I assumed this was Amara, Lennon’s partner, the twins, Micah and Marley, asserting themselves as the centre of their universe.
Then movement down the hall caught my attention.
I’d seen Keeley once before, but I hadn’t really met her. I’d been operating on avoidance, slipping out of Razor’s life after a weekend that had left too much exposed, trying not to be noticed.
She had a presence I couldn’t miss now I was paying attention.
Or perhaps it was simply that she was Razor’s.
The one person he loved without qualification.
The fixed point around which all his worst decisions and best intentions orbited.
She was his everything, and responsibility had landed on his shoulders far too young, much like it now had hers.
And it showed. Not in hardness like Razor, but watchful. Cautious.
And that scowl…
That, at least, was unmistakably his.
Keeley halted when she saw me.
She had her baby on her hip. Maisie, I reminded myself, though she looked closer to a toddler now. Bow pinned crookedly into dark, flyaway hair, dressed in a neat pink tracksuit, shoes that had clearly been wiped down minutes earlier.
Keeley herself, though, looked… young. Younger than I knew she was.
Long dark hair scraped into a messy knot, wisps escaping everywhere, leggings and a tight top that on anyone else might have looked deliberately provocative.
On her though, with her sharp angles and hollowed cheeks, it emphasised how slight she was.
My sister was the same age. Sheltered. Cocooned in the soft, managed safety my mother insisted upon. Amelia worried about riding schedules and university open days. Keeley worried about roofs and money and whether the people who owned her house might come knocking.
Or worse.
“This him?” She snapped her gum as she looked me up and down.
Not hostile. Not welcoming either.
Entirely justified.
“Hi.” I held out my hand and immediately knew I’d misjudged the moment. This was not how one greeted a teenage mother from Hackney who was being told her life was about to be uprooted. Keeley grimaced down at my hand, unimpressed. I withdrew it, chastened. “I’m Tristan.”
She ignored me completely and looked past me to Lennon. “I don’t want to go.”
“Babe, you have to.” Lennon stepped around me, sliding an arm around her shoulders as she shifted the gurgling weight of Maisie. “Rich wants this. He needs you safe.”
“Why can’t we stay here?”
“Because I don’t have room for all of you,” Lennon said gently but firmly. “And if you want him home, this is how we do it.”
“But all my friends are here.”
“And you can’t trust a single one of them not to mention where you are to Richie’s old crew.” Lennon didn’t soften that. “You know that.”
Keeley huffed, stamping her foot in frustration, but her eyes were already glassy. She sniffed. “What about Mum?”
I spoke before Lennon could. “She’s got a place at Hawthorn Ridge.”
“I’ll take her there after we drop you,” Lennon added. “It’s a good place.”
Keeley frowned. “What is it?”
“A private rehabilitation centre.” I reached into my bag and produced the brochure. She didn’t take it, but her eyes scanned the cover—green lawns, stone buildings, the careful promise of calm. “Ninety-day residential programme. Addiction and mental health.”
She looked back at me sharply. “Who paid for that?”
I slid the pamphlet back into my bag without meeting her gaze. “It’s covered. That’s all you need to worry about.”
Lennon met my eyes and gave the smallest nod.
It had cost more than I cared to calculate. A referral through Henry. Money moved quietly, cleanly, from a career-contingency fund built on personal investments I’d been guided into at twenty-one, into his account. Funds that had existed to soften the uncertain edges of my early career, now gone.
I would manage. I always did.
For me, it meant asking Father to increase the monthly allowance drawn from the trust he’d set up years ago. I doubted he would probe too closely. The cost of living. The cost of being a junior barrister. Both were true, if not the whole truth.
Henry, on the other hand, would know exactly what I’d done.
And he would have words.
Keeley turned back to Lennon. “What if she refuses?”
“She won’t.” Lennon eased Maisie from her arms with the competence of someone who’d learnt quickly how to handle babies. “Now go get your things. The sooner we do this, the sooner we get Rich home.”
“Home,” she scoffed. “We don’t have a home.” She stormed into the living room.
Lennon watched her go. Maisie tried to shove her fingers into his mouth, but he rescued himself before speaking. “She’s not always like this.”
“She’s Razor’s sister.” I glanced over to where she shoved things into a bag. “I’d be disappointed if she weren’t.”
Keeley reappeared; bag slung over her shoulder, and gave Lennon a look with those puppy-dog eyes that were so like Razor’s I could hardly breathe. “Can you come with me?”
He glanced towards the back of the house, where Amara wrangled twins, preparing to leave for her mother’s. He sighed, then nodded. “Course.”
I then loaded Keeley’s bags into the boot of my Mercedes while Lennon hugged Amara and the boys, murmuring reassurances, before climbing into the passenger seat. Keeley settled in the back beside Maisie’s car seat, wrapping her arms tightly around herself.
Then I pulled away from the kerb.
For a while, we drove with the radio playing quietly for something to sit between us. Every so often, I caught Keeley watching me through the rear-view mirror and tried for a small, neutral smile.
“I’ve seen you before,” she said after we’d made it onto the North Circular.
Lennon let out a low chuckle beside me, eyes on the road rolling past his window. He wouldn’t help me out here. I knew that. And I shouldn’t expect him to.
“Yeah.” I twisted my hand on the wheel. “I’m… on your brother’s legal team.”
Keeley snorted. “Man thinks I ain’t got eyes, Len.”
Lennon glanced over his shoulder at her. “He’s posh, babe. Thinks we’re all thick as shit.”
“That’s not…” I sighed, recalibrating. “That’s not what I think. At all. It’s… complicated. Right now, I’m your brother’s barrister.”
“But you were something else before.” She kept her gaze fixed on me as she passed raisins to Maisie in the back seat. “Weren’t you?”
I glanced at Lennon. He offered me nothing. No rescue. No warning.
“I think that’s something you should ask him,” I said carefully.
She tutted. “Yeah. When he lets me speak to him.” She shook her head. “You were at his place. Wick. Buttoning your shirt. He was defensive as fuck. Like he’d been caught out. Only seen him like that once before. When I saw Levi coming out his room.”
Lennon stiffened beside me but didn’t look round.
I kept my eyes on the road.
“And I ain’t ever known him to have a girlfriend.” Keeley glanced at Lennon. “Did he have any birds at school, Len?”
“Gemma,” Lennon muttered. “For a bit.”
“Mum used to say she reckoned he was bent.” Keeley shrugged. “I told her to mind her fucking business. Don’t matter to me. Shouldn’t matter to her.” She paused. “Though I get why he’d keep it quiet. With his work.”
The car felt suddenly very small.
“You his boyfriend?” she asked, blunt as a thrown stone.
“No.” I gripped the wheel. “Right now, I’m his barrister. That’s all I can be.”
It wasn’t quite a lie.
It wasn’t the truth, either.
But it was all I could give.
The car fell back into quiet, broken only by Maisie’s soft gurgles and her attempts at speech.
I watched Keeley lean close to her, pointing out things through the window—car, bird—encouraging her to mimic the sounds.
There was patience there. Focus. A steadiness contradicting everything she pretended to be.
Despite first impressions, she was a good mum.
And she deserved this chance.