Chapter 26
TWENTY-SIX
Ludo
I find Aidan in the middle of the fairy lake. He’s splashing around like a man possessed and I can’t help the laughter that gives away my position behind him.
He jumps a mile and whirls around, his crazy gaze taking a moment to settle on me. “Ludo? That you?”
I hop down from the tree. “Of course it’s me.”
He doesn’t say anything. Just stares at me, soaking wet, breathing hard. What he’s doing looks like fun. I start towards him, but he shouts to stop me.
“No! Stay there. I’m coming.”
Well, okay then. I wait at the water’s edge. It takes Aidan longer than I expect for him to reach me, and as he emerges from the water, I realise he’s limping, like really limping, as though he can’t put weight on his bad leg. “What happened to you?”
Aidan gets up in my personal space, grasps my chin, and stares down at me so hard it’s like he’s splitting me open to see inside me. “Are you okay?”
I duck out of his grip. “Why are you asking me that?”
“Because you’ve been out all day, you’ve got no shoes on, and your clothes are all ripped.”
“Your clothes are ripped too. And you’re the one swimming in your jeans.”
“I was looking for you.”
“Why?”
“Because I found your shoes and I was worried.”
He’s not making any sense, and I remember that I’ve been worried about him all day. It’s why I went for a walk in the first place—to calm myself down. Because everything was too bright and loud and moving way too fast.
Yellow.
So much yellow.
“You should go home,” I say. “Get the weight off that leg.”
“I’m not going anywhere without you. Come with me . . . come on. We can go to your place and finish cleaning the kitchen. There’s loads of leftover pizza.”
“What?”
“Pizza,” he repeats. “We, uh, bought too much yesterday.”
“I don’t like pizza.”
“Then we’ll get something else. Come on, mate. You’ve been out for hours. Even if you’re not hungry, you’ve got to be thirsty.”
I wonder how he knows my tongue is stuck to the roof of my mouth. Then I remember that Aidan is clever and super intuitive. And he knows me because he cares.
You care about him too. If you go with him, you can make sure he rests.
Works for me. I take Aidan’s outstretched hand and help him up the slope to the gate. He’s moving slow, and when I look at him, his face is as pained as I’ve ever seen it. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
“Just walk, Ludo.”
Damn, he’s in a mood. Aidan is so sweet with me most of the time I forget it’s not his baseline.
I try and keep quiet as we navigate to the path, but it’s hard.
I feel like we’re on a momentous journey, and despite how much pain Aidan is in, I don’t understand why he’s so cross. “I think we should go on holiday.”
“That right?”
“Yeah. Somewhere with waterfalls and stuff. And lots of trees.”
“That sounds nice.”
“Does it?”
“Yeah.”
“Would you come with me then?”
“When are you going?”
Now there’s a question. There’s an airport ten miles away, but it’s a small one, and I don’t think the flights it handles go anywhere interesting. “I don’t know yet. Maybe tomorrow.”
“Okay, mate.”
We keep walking. And I keep talking. Aidan doesn’t answer me much, but I try to ignore how annoying that is and fill the silence so it doesn’t suffocate us.
The gate that takes us to the road appears in front of me. My feet hurt. Aidan hands me my shoes, but I can’t figure out why they’re not already on my feet.
“I found them by the water,” he says. “Maybe you wanted to go for a swim and forgot about it.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“If you say so.”
We reach the road and cross it. Aidan opens my front door and tugs me inside, and instantly the walls of my house feel like a prison. The door shuts behind me and I want to scream. “I don’t want to stay here.”
“You want to go to my place?”
“No.”
“Then you have to stay here.”
“Says who?”
“I do. Just have some water, okay? Then if you want to go out again, we’ll go wherever you want.”
He’s not going anywhere. He’s leaning on the wall as though it’s the only thing keeping him upright, and his gaze is pleading. Desperate. He needs something from me, but I don’t know what.
I take a breath. Open my mouth. “Aidan—”
His phone rings. “Hold on,” he says, and steps right back out of my house again.
Aidan
The woman who phones me is Rita, Ludo’s community psychiatric nurse. His key worker. Somehow Michael has tracked her down.
“Where are you now?” she asks. “Where’s Ludo?”
“We’re at his house. He’s somewhere inside, I think, unless he’s escaped again.”
I tell her about his woodland adventures. She doesn’t seem surprised. “Is he hurt?”
“I don’t really know,” I admit. “I only just got him inside when you called, but he had no shoes on when I found him, and I don’t think he’s eaten or drunk anything since yesterday.”
“Get some water down him if you can. Dehydration will only heighten any delusional thoughts he might be having.”
Delusional. The word is terrifying, and I still have a lump the size of a small bungalow stuck in my throat. I swallow thickly. “What else should I do?”
“Keep him safe,” she says. “I know it’s hard when everything he wants right now is reckless and dangerous, but until we can assess him and administer treatment, it’s all you can do. Have you been monitoring his medication?”
“What?”
“His medication. It sounds to me like he might’ve missed a few doses if his routine has shifted around.”
“I—I have no idea. I’m so sorry.”
Rita clicks her teeth. “Don’t be sorry, Aidan. Ludo is lucky you’re with him, and he’ll appreciate that as soon as we get him back.”
Get him back. Three words that only serve to remind me that right now, Ludo is lost. “When can you assess him? How does that work? Do I need to bring him somewhere?”
“It’s probably best if we come to you,” Rita says. “If patients are safe at home, we always try to keep them there. A familiar environment is far more comforting than a psychiatric facility.”
I close my eyes. “When can you get here?”
“An hour or so. Hang tight, Aidan. I’ll get to you as fast as I can.”
I have to keep Ludo occupied until Rita gets here, but by the time she ends the call and I go back inside, he’s nowhere in sight.
Cursing, I hurry through the house, half expecting to find he’s slipped out the back gate and into the woods, but I find him in the kitchen, rummaging in the freezer.
“There’s nothing to eat in here,” he says without looking up.
I take a cautious step forward. “Are you hungry?”
“No.”
“Then what does it matter?”
It matters a lot. He chewed the crust from a single slice of pizza last night and barely had a sip of water, but I’m terrified of pissing him off. Or making him think he can’t trust me.
Ludo shoves the freezer drawer back in and shuts the door with a bang. “It matters because you’re hungry, and I can’t cook anything decent because the kitchen is such a mess. Why did you get all this stuff out?”
He gestures at the saucepans and baking trays littering the countertop and table.
The stacked plates and piles of cutlery.
For a moment I honestly think he’s joking; then I realise that he has no memory of the chaos I walked into yesterday.
“Um . . . we were going to clean the cupboards out, but we didn’t get round to finishing. We can do it now if you like?”
“Now?”
“Yeah. Then we can figure out food. There’s pizza in the fridge.” So much fucking pizza. “But we can have something else.”
“I don’t like pizza.”
“Okay, well, let’s clean up, then we’ll sort something else.”
Ludo frowns, but his gaze shifts from me to the piles of pots and pans and the open cupboards. “Do you think the saucepans would be better over there?”
“Maybe. Try it.”
It’s all I have, but for ten whole minutes, it works. Ludo blurs around the kitchen, stashing his things in all the wrong places. When that no longer holds his attention, we move on to the living room and put it back together in a totally different fashion to the way it was before.
Ludo eyes the sofa. “This looks weird. Do you think I should get a new one?”
Thankfully I’m saved from having to answer by a knock on the front door.