Chapter 2
2
JOE
I didn’t come to Cornwall expecting to meet Isaac Webber. The heat of his final comment is still on my mind the next morning, even after I shower and then pat dry the ugly ropes and ridges left by a different kind of burning. It lingers when I check out, and the manager of a harbourside pub asks if I’ll need my room for another evening.
“Potentially.” I adjust my hold on a laptop where court reports wait for me to fill them. “Depends on my client. I might be heading home this evening.”
“No problem,” he promises. “But if you aren’t back tonight, do visit us again soon. You’ll be welcome.”
Not by Isaac.
That certainty follows me along a harbour and up a narrow alley leading to a village car park, and Isaac is still on my mind when I drive the coast road high above the beach where he told me to fuck off and mind my own business.
That kind of reception is nothing new. I got used to having doors slammed shut in my face in my last school support role. Plus, I’ve had plenty of practice at not being welcome—in my family, my brother Josh is the only white sheep.
Guess what that makes me.
I don’t bear any ill will for our dad having a clear preference. Josh made that easy by not being a teen lawbreaker who went off the rails like me. Not that Dad ever said so—he’s old-school strong and silent—but he’s got to be proud of my brother for following in his police-adjacent footsteps. Besides, it’s hard to hold grudges when Josh and I are essentially the same person.
All that time squashed together in Mum’s womb means he is the version of me who makes good decisions. I’m the version of him who pushed each and every boundary. Keeping it plain and simple—when it comes to rules, Josh lives by them. I did the opposite until acid ended my black sheep era. That was years ago, which doesn’t stop Josh from keeping tabs as if he expects a repeat. My phone ringing now is a good example.
This call starts the same as always, and his voice on speaker is like hearing myself during the dark years when we weren’t in contact. Josh sounds hollow.
“I need the car.”
He’s abrupt, all business from the get-go, and I’ll take it as long as it means we’re still talking.
I never want to go through life without him in it again.
Perhaps that’s why what Isaac shouted last night punched me right in the heart. Not the part where he said I wasn’t welcome. I’m used to that. Isaac also yelled, “Someone’s gonna miss you,” and missing my own brother during my wilderness years is as fresh now as ever. I’m relieved to hear him, even if he’s blunt.
“I said I need the car.”
“Good morning to you too, Joshua. I’m very well, thanks so much for asking.” Sure, he absorbed all the law-abiding genetics that made it through Mum’s placenta, God rest her, but my latest line of work relies on relationships, so I mention someone we both love.
“How’s Meera doing?”
My brother’s wife deserves a medal, and not only because her marrying Josh helped to bring us back together. I know what it’s like to live with someone who needs reminders of how to function outside of data analysis and computer programs. Fuck knows how she ever convinced him to do anything as chaotic as make a baby with her. A medal isn’t a big enough reward. She deserves a trophy for loving the kind of person who now rattles off pregnancy facts like they’re crime statistics.
“She’s on track for thirty-two weeks. The baby measured forty-two centimetres at the last scan and most likely weighs around four pounds. If that sonographer knew what he was doing.” He’s suspicious. He’s also annoyed about pregnancy behaviour that doesn’t fit any of his black-and-white metrics. “I came home last night and found her trying to repaint the nursery.”
“Again?” My grin flashes in the rearview mirror. “What colour this time?” The mirror also reflects a van driving way too close behind me. Whoever is behind the wheel must have a death wish; they’ve already tried to overtake my car twice, and another glance back shows the driver craning his neck as if looking for another opportunity to pass me.
Fat chance on this coast road. It’s too narrow for easy overtaking, so I refocus on what Josh tells me.
“She was up a stepladder slapping on another shade of grey. The third one, Joe. They all look the same to me. I don’t get it.”
I snort. Josh doesn’t get much if it isn’t work-related. Give him data to track back to the cash made via crime and he’s in his forensic-consultant element. Dealing with shades of grey isn’t his skill set. Neither is caring that, without my kind of early intervention, a whole new generation of kids will feed into the criminality he chases via computer and phone records. That kind of chicken-and-egg thinking makes his brain short-circuit, the same way paint shades seem to. “How about I come over at the weekend to paint the nursery with you?”
“First tell me why you’ve got the car. You never use it.”
Plenty of people don’t keep cars in London, but I grin again at Josh refusing to be diverted by baby talk or nursery decorating. “I needed it for work.”
“What work?”
“Why are you so interested?”
“Because if you’re actually in Cornwall to see the Emerson kid before he gives evidence, I need you to do me a favour.”
“No.” I’m not black and white about much. Give and take is my usual motto. In my new role, this is the one subject I can’t give an inch on, even for Josh. “Because if the kids I support through the court process think I share their secrets with someone who works alongside law enforcement, they won’t trust me, will they? That’s why we don’t talk about work.”
“That’s your rule, not mine. Just because?—”
“Shit!” I cut him off. I have to when that van driver behind me makes his move, and none too safely. He only just makes it past me. Any slower and he’d be pancaked by the milk tanker rumbling past in the other direction. “Fuck, that was close.”
“Close? What was close?” Josh makes a long-distance guess. “Don’t tell me you’re driving. Pull over. Now.”
I don’t always do what my twin tells me, but that was too close a shave for comfort. “Hang on. I’m almost at a lay-by.”
I head for it, the sea glinting to my left and sheep grazing to my right as Josh spits facts about mortality rates caused by distracted drivers, like the one who cost us our always-laughing mother.
“I wasn’t distract?—”
“Shut your yap and keep your eyes on the road.”
My phone spews penalties for driving without due care and attention. Josh recites sentencing guidelines chapter and verse, and I don’t interrupt how he shows his version of care. Snapping at me like this is one example.
So is him finishing up by grumbling, “I already told you all of this, you bellend. Yes, taking hands-free calls is legal, but do you know how many calls were connected during road traffic accidents last year? Or how many of those ended in fatalities?” He tells me in precise, if grisly, detail and finishes with, “That can’t be coincidental. Nothing is. Those fatalities were due to?—”
“PPD,” I finish for him once I’ve pulled off the road. “Piss-poor decision-making.” That’s what Dad used to say in the ring down at the local boxing club if I didn’t raise my guard fast enough, or when I couldn’t make myself take a swing at Josh while sparring. I’m resigned to being a lover, not a fighter. And when it comes to my brother, I’m resigned to another lecture as I pull up in that lay-by and come to a stop behind a different van.
The driver of this old Transit can’t be in as much of a hurry as the vehicle that just overtook me. He’s taken the time to get out of his rust bucket to admire the sea view while I do a little admiring of my own, but I’ve always been a sucker for long and lean men built like Isaac. For heavy biker boots combined with painted-on jeans. For wild, black hair that today’s sea breeze teases as he turns to stand in profile, and?—
It’s him.
Again.
Fuck whatever my brother thinks about coincidences. Here’s a second chance to get an answer to what really left me burning last night. Because if Isaac is here, where’s his little brother?
I can see the irony of an ex-school dodger like me trying to keep kids in education, but if there’s anyone better to prove that kids going off the rails early only leads to a world of pain in their future, I’ve yet to meet them.
My brother is another reminder of why early intervention matters as soon as he switches our call to video. Josh fills my screen to bark, “Don’t ever answer a call when you’re driving. I want you around to be an uncle.”
I nod at my almost double. Yes, Josh and I still share the same dark stare and thick, black headful of hair as all da Silvas, but Josh is only scarred by frown lines.
If he rolled up his shirt sleeves, his forearms wouldn’t be my own melted nightmare, and if he took off his shirt, his back and midriff would be as unmarked as Isaac’s, who can’t have any idea I’m right here watching him shoulder out of his T-shirt.
Surely he isn’t planning to swim like I did last night. It’s one hell of a drop from this cliff.
Again, another question niggles.
Where the fuck is his brother?
I reach for my door handle, about to go find out, when a wasp buzzes. Or at least my brother does, just as annoying and persistent. “Promise me, Joe. About not using your phone when driving, yeah?”
I look away from a compelling view of gold-toned skin to nod at my phone—at Josh, who won’t quit until I answer aloud. “I promise, I promise. Listen, I’m parked up, safe and sound, so calm your tits and tell me what you really want. I’m running late, so spit it out already.”
Beyond my dashboard, Isaac has swapped that T-shirt for a slim-fitting button-up shirt. He bends to unfasten his boots next, and hello . His arse is a whole lot more appealing than listening to my brother.
I tilt my head, studying what I couldn’t let myself notice back when his brother was on my caseload. Maybe I study him peeling down his jeans for too long. A wasp buzzes again. “Sorry.” I drag my eyes away to focus on my brother’s face on my phone screen. “I missed that, Josh. Say again, will you?” Paying attention is tough when Isaac kicks out of his jeans. He also glances back, and I remember this kind of chin-raised challenge. Before he realises it’s me, this narrow-eyed stare asks a silent question.
What the fuck you looking at?
Then I catch a glimpse of the same expression the moon showed me last night. Surprise comes first. Then hurt. It fills doe eyes so like his little brother’s. Anger comes last. The proof is right there in his chin lifting even higher before his jaw clenches. And it’s visible in him turning his back on me like he must have thought I turned mine on him when I had to add the name Lenny Webber to another welfare officer’s list of kids at risk.
Isaac reaches into the side of his van to grab a pair of suit trousers that he pulls on in a hurry. Over the phone, my brother speaks just as quickly.
“Listen. I know you’re in Cornwall.”
I can’t blame that knowledge on some spooky twin prescience. Him knowing my location is down to the tracker in this car we share, a joint restoration project set by our father. It was a wreck, like our relationship after acid burned me. Now it’s an enduring link between us, a reason to break a silence I never wanted, although on days like this, it’s tempting to wish I could press mute on Josh.
“Why did you drive all the way down there?” He answers his own question. “Ah. The train strike.”
“Got it in one. Came down last night. Might stay a few more days. Cornwall’s pretty.”
“No. I need the car.” He doesn’t have time for any more small talk. “Just tell me if you’re seeing the Emerson kid, then bring it back.”
Him mentioning the name of my client is either a lucky guess or proof he’s accessed the court calendar I use now that I advocate for minors. Finding backdoors into systems is Josh’s skill set. Mine is counting back from ten as he spits more questions. “You are seeing him, aren’t you, so don’t try to give me any cobblers about being down there for some other reason. Noah Emerson needs to give evidence?—”
Right now, I don’t care about my brother’s crime obsession. At least, I don’t care until he finishes speaking.
“—in the latest Wintergreen case.”
Hearing the name of where I earned my black wool as well as my scars does make me pause. It also makes me rub at what was etched into my skin in the stairwell of one of the Wintergreen housing estate’s brutal tower blocks. The whole place is as ugly as the sin that fills it these days, run by gang lords known as top boys. It is also where I came close to making a lapse of professional judgement I haven’t repeated since leaving the role that brought Isaac and his brother into my orbit.
What a mess I made of that by falling for him.
No wonder Isaac laces his shoes quickly, yanking hard like he can’t wait to get back in his van and roar away.
From me.
I guess that’s what I did to him, if for different reasons. For once, Josh’s voice buzzing again is a welcome distraction from reliving a night I bet Isaac doesn’t remember fondly. “Listen, Joe. I’ve been digging into phone tower signals. For a few minutes, I can place?—”
“Stop. We agreed not to do this, remember?” Josh demanding intel from me only ever hurt us, and I’m a burns-ward old-timer, so I already have a painful metric. Maybe that’s why I can’t drag my eyes away from Isaac, who has also had to face life while missing a loved one. Now Isaac wrestles with knotting a necktie, whipping it off for a second try only to make an even worse hash of tying a neat knot. “Josh? I need to go.”
I don’t say that because I’m late for my meeting. I need to get him off my back because Isaac and I have unfinished business.
Isaac can’t think so—the minute I kill my call and get out of my car, he shouts, “Stop.” He also casts a quick glance into his van, and lowers his voice. “Turn around and walk away, Joe.” His tone turns icy. “Again.”
I don’t— can’t— not after how things ended between us. And not after I witness a repeat of pain I wasn’t sure I saw last night at midnight. There’s no avoiding it in this bright late spring sunshine as I crunch over lay-by gravel to reach for that dangling necktie, and I won’t lie, it hurts when he flinches. That stings like a real wasp. So does him glancing sideways again, then issuing an instruction so bitten off that each word sounds punctuated.
“Walk away now.”
“I will. But listen to me first, will you?”
“Listen to you?” His chin rises again, his stare that pretty amber I told myself to forget. It used to be warm and trusting. Today’s ice suggests his trusting days are long over, and his statement confirms it. “You’re the last person in the world I’d listen to, believe me.”
I nod because I do. Believe him, that is, which doesn’t stop me from saying, “At least let me help with your tie.” I hold out a scarred hand, and apart from last night, Isaac is one of the few people who never stared or asked, What the fuck happened to you? He only ever focussed on one thing—doing whatever it took to keep his brother. That’s who I can’t stop myself from asking after.
“Where’s Lenny?”
“None of your business.” That once soft gaze flicking sideways for a third time is a telltale. I might have given up my school welfare officer role, but old instincts mean I take another step to look into the van’s open side door, and those instincts pay off.
Lenny.
Isaac’s little brother is bigger than the last time I saw him. Of course he is. That was about a year ago. He’s got to be seven years old now. That’s too old for daytime napping when he should be in school and learning. Instead, he’s out for the count on a mat in the back of what it takes a beat too long to realise is a mobile library crowded with what looks like all of their possessions.
They didn’t have much when I first met them, but that’s definitely Lenny’s superhero bedding. I know because I bought it. He’s hemmed in by the suitcases I helped Isaac carry into emergency accommodation when everything they owned became part of a crime scene.
“What’s going on?” I meet eyes that were icy a moment ago. Now they’re panicked.
Isaac tenses, and I’ve been around more than my share of violence in and out of boxing rings. This is the first time I’ve seen the potential for it in someone I only ever knew as gentle. Now Isaac’s jaw clenches again, his gaze as stony as this cliff we stand on, and for a long, drawn-out moment, I wonder if he’s about to give me a shove to send me over its edge.
Part of me wouldn’t blame him. Another part of me must be more like my brother than I realised. I spit facts, sounding just as black and white as Josh about piss-poor decisions, only my facts relate to life chances instead of accident statistics. “Kids like Lenny need to be in school. You know how many strikes he already has against him. You promised not to add to those strikes when you became his official guardian.”
“Oh, we’re talking about promises, are we?”
Isaac still whispers, but Lenny stirs, dislodging a book he must have fallen asleep reading. It’s dog-eared, as if well-loved and read often. And fuck me, it’s the exact same book I asked another welfare officer to pass on to Lenny for me.
Every Scar Tells a Story.
My surprise is the only reason Isaac gets close enough to punch me. Only he doesn’t lash out. Instead, he fists the lapels of my suit jacket, and I’m yanked away from the van and hustled back to my car. That’s a sign he’s stronger than when we first met, that he’s worked hard to toughen up. I see it in neat biceps bunching when he resumes knotting his tie.
Isaac loops it around his neck, yet it’s my throat that tightens at this truth bomb exploding. “Because if we’re talking about promises, how about the one you made to Len? You promised him you’d see him again soon. You wrote it inside that book.”
I did. Back then, I honestly thought I would get to see the Webbers again, only not in my support role.
“You know what’s worse?” Isaac sounds cool, calm, and collected even though the way he fucks up knotting that tie suggests he isn’t. So does his audible tremor. “Y-you promised me everything would be okay.”
“I thought it would be. I was told—” I stop myself and swallow. I’m older than Isaac. Not quite daddy material at almost thirty, but I should be mature enough to explain this without stuttering in front of someone younger.
Not by much.
He’ll be twenty-five this summer.
Why the fuck I memorised Isaac Webber’s birthday is a puzzle for future me to piece together. Right now, I need him to hear me. “I truly believed everything would be okay. I got that wrong.” He shakes his head as I keep going. “I had to pass Lenny on to someone else on the welfare team.”
“He’s a kid, not a game of pass the fucking parcel.”
Now isn’t the time to tell Isaac that his protectiveness still blows me away. That him stepping up without hesitation to be a stand-in parent always impressed me, which only makes it all the stranger to find him not taking good care of his little brother.
Here go my welfare officer instincts butting in where they’re not welcome.
“Why isn’t he at school? And why is he asleep now?”
Isaac blinks slowly. “Like I already said. That’s none of your business.” This smile is small and tight instead of the too sweet to survive in Wintergreen version I remember. Isaac whispers again, which should sound equally soft and gentle. It doesn’t. “You got rid of him, remember?”
“I didn’t get rid of either of you.”
“Passed him on, then. Whatever. Lenny isn’t your problem anymore. Hasn’t been for ages. He’s mine. And if you must know, his school is closed today or he’d be there. And I didn’t pick that happening right before a last-chance job interview, or for there to be a fucking train strike. Driving through the night wasn’t ideal, but I’m making it work. For him.”
Isaac drags a hand through hair this sea-salted breeze makes even wilder, a move I’d forgotten until I see him repeat it, and his hand shakes. The last time I saw it do that was after his mother was arrested.
He’s exhausted, like he was then.Wiped out, like those first few weeks when Lenny landed in his lap with no warning and I checked in daily. I didn’t need to keep visiting as often once I saw that protectiveness of his in action, and in any other case, I wouldn’t have. Under normal circumstances, Lenny’s mother would have been bailed and home within days. When that didn’t happen, I ended up having months of contact with someone who could have been a poster boy for caring. Now Isaac’s chin lifts as if he assumes I’m judging.
“He thinks we’re on an adventure. That us driving through the night was all part of a story.”
That’s what I used to find Isaac doing whenever I made welfare visits during those first helter-skelter weeks when he was the only adult left for Lenny to lean on. I heard Isaac spin stories for his little brother. Listened to him turn a nightmare into a crusade for Lenny to play his way through. Looks like that hasn’t changed, given what he next confesses.
“Len fell asleep in the city and woke up as soon as I crossed the Cornish border. He saw the stars, Joe, and his eyes…” His own melt like they used to before he decided I was foe instead of friend, and fuck my life, he’s exactly as filled with magic as I remember. “So many stars. Never gonna forget showing them to him up on the moors, even if I don’t get the job.”
For an all-too-brief second, the Isaac I first knew has stars of his own in his eyes.
He blinks again, those stars winking out, and this is harsher.“Don’t ruin it, Joe. Don’t wake him up and scare him about not being in school today.” He swallows. “Don’t let him see you at all. He’ll only get his hopes up that you’re back to keep your promise.” He just as quickly adds, “The one you made to him. Not the one you made to me that turned out to be bullshit.”
“I didn’t?—”
He yanks at that knot in his tie and curses.
“Here.” I move without thinking, and we’ve only ever been chest-to-chest like this, so close our hips and hearts align, twice before. The last time was on a beach. This repeat is a reminder of the first occasion—the one and only time I almost crossed a line with the guardian of a kid on my watch.
“You told me Mum would be home soon.” His chin lifts. “So I told him the same. You made me a liar.”
I look directly into eyes filled with pain instead of starlight, and the title of that book I once gave to Lenny tells no lies. Every scar does tell a story, and from where I stand, Isaac can’t hide that his is nowhere close to healing.
I can’t make that any better.
Worse than that, he wouldn’t let me.
All I can fix is his tie, like Dad taught Josh and me to do for each other before school every morning, acting as each other’s mirror. The only difference is that Isaac keeps his hands fisted at his sides, so tense he almost trembles the same way now as the night before his mother became another Wintergreen crime statistic. And what for?
I bet if I asked my brother, he’d struggle to explain how locking up a single mother with no previous convictions for this long before trial can be justice. Besides, I’m pretty sure Isaac wouldn’t listen if Josh tried to justify a legal no-bail loophole designed to keep high-risk gang lords off the streets between arrest and conviction.
Isaac is as closed off now as the very last time I saw him. And as brokenhearted. I hear it in his voice cracking.
“I swore I’d do my best for Len. So did you, Joe. I gave up on you when you walked away. I had to.”
He backs away, his tie perfect, but I don’t expect thanks from him for that. I can’t when he detonates a final truth bomb.
“I never broke my promise. You did.”