Chapter Twenty-Four Breathing Space
Breathing Space
It took a few days before Jake saw Harrison again.
At least in the flesh.
He caught glimpses of him elsewhere. From a distance.
On the telly at his mum and dad’s, when the story broke properly, and the town seemed to inhale it all at once.
Harrison had stood outside the station. Giving enough to keep the press fed without letting anything slip.
And Jake watched it all from the edge of his parents’ living room, arms folded, pretending he wasn’t listening as closely as he was.
That he wasn’t watching him.
They’d had their FLO round as well. PC Murray.
Delivering careful, considered words about how, despite appearances, what had happened to Emily Fisher wasn’t connected to Robyn.
From what she’d said, and he’d picked up from the news and the bits his mum had repeated from online, the main culprit had been Emily’s dad.
With help from one of his employees at the steelworks.
Mick, Eileen’s neighbour. There’d been talk of money.
Debt. Of a man trying to hold on to the last thing in his life he thought he still had control over—his daughter.
Stopping her leaving him the way his wife had.
Jake didn’t know if that made it better or worse.
Probably worse.
Because it meant it hadn’t been random. Or related. Nothing branched out into the past or led anywhere he could follow it. It should’ve felt like relief. And part of it did. The rest of it, though…it made that hollow void in him that little bit deeper.
But as Jake walked PC Murray to the door while his mum clung to his dad in the kitchen, both of them crying in that quiet, exhausted way that came from hope being stirred up then ripped away again too quickly, with Teddy on the sofa, headphones on, staring at nothing, pretending not to hear any of it, he got given a lifeline.
“DI Black asked me to pass something on,” PC Murray said as she stepped out. “He’s tied up at the moment, but he has more information for you. He says he hopes you’re okay and he’ll come speak to you when he can.”
Jake nodded, as if that didn’t land somewhere it shouldn’t.
As if he hadn’t been waiting for it. As if he hadn’t kissed that man and thought about it far more than was useful.
Cause surely that had to mean something.
That in the middle of everything Harrison was dealing with, he’d taken the time to send word. That he hadn’t… forgotten.
Murray squeezed his arm. “See you at your next gig.”
Jake smiled, then got on with his life.
Or what was left of it, anyway.
Because he’d once again become the main attraction in Hartswick.
This time not for whispers in the pub, or the potential of making it big, but for anyone with a camera and a headline to fill.
It started with the local paper. Politely enough, knocking on his door, asking for a comment.
Then the regional lot picked it up. After that, it turned into people waiting.
Outside his flat. By his van. Across the road, with long lenses they didn’t even try to hide.
“Jake—a quick word.”
“How did you know where to look?”
“Do you think this links to your sister?”
“Was Andy Mitchell involved in both?”
He stopped answering his door. Started coming and going out the back when he could, timing it between when they’d drift off for coffee or a smoke.
It didn’t always work. Once they caught him halfway down the alley and followed him all the way to the van, shouting questions as if he owed them something.
He gave them nothing.
Only what he’d already given at the station.
His statement. Clinical. Factual. Missing everything that mattered.
The way his heart had nearly stopped when he’d seen a girl lying in the dark.
The desperate certainty that this time it had to be Robyn.
Then the relief of finding Emily alive colliding head-on with the brutal realisation that his sister was still out there somewhere...
or wasn’t. It left him carrying a guilt he couldn’t admit aloud.
Because Emily deserved to be found. She deserved every ounce of that relief.
And yet some selfish, broken part of him still mourned the girl she wasn’t.
But that didn’t stop the vultures. If anything, it made it worse.
Because they filled in the gaps. Online was worse.
Always was. People who’d never set foot in Hartswick suddenly had opinions.
Theories. Threads picking apart timelines, linking Emily to Robyn as if they were characters in some drama instead of real young women.
Some of them had him down as a hero. Others weren’t so generous.
Convenient, they said. That he’d found her.
That it was the same stretch of land. Same family name. Same story circling back around again.
He stopped reading it.
He told his mum to stop posting on the Facebook page and inviting comments. He knew she never would, though. She wanted to keep Robyn alive despite what everyone else thought had happened to her.
He kept a closer eye on Teddy through it all too, making sure the noise from it didn’t get under his skin.
Even if the police said it wasn’t connected, gossip didn’t care about that.
Townsfolk remembered what they wanted. And Robyn always came back up.
So Jake kept him busy. Dragged him along to jobs after school, showing him the basics, letting him feel useful.
Took him to rugby. Fed him Greggs on the way home. Normal things. Routine.
Deacon came round to the bedsit one night, too, Raff in tow after Jake finally bought himself a proper bedframe.
Deacon had practically forced the money on him as an advance from their next gig, then insisted he and Raff would help put the bastard together.
Which, predictably, ended with Jake doing the entire thing himself while those two sprawled across the floor with Teddy and giving him what had somehow turned into a proper guitar lesson.
Still, it kept the kid off his phone.
Jake would take the win.
“See?” Deacon glanced up as Jake tightened the last bolt. “Told you he had it in him. Just needed someone who knows what they’re doing.”
Jake sat back on his heels. “You volunteering for that, are you?”
“Always, mate.”
“You’ll charge me tuition.”
“Course.”
“Or I could charge you rent, seeing as you’re apparently moving in.”
“Fuck that. I’ve seen your bathroom.”
Raff looked around the bedsit. “Place is dead nice now, though. Bit more effort, you might even pass for a functioning adult.”
“Don’t encourage him.” Deacon nodded solemnly. “Next thing you know, he’ll cut his hair and buy a bedside table.”
Jake flipped them both off and wrestled the bedframe into the gap where his mattress had been dumped on the floor for longer than he cared to admit.
Half an hour later, they were all eating pizza on and around the new bed, because apparently buying furniture immediately meant inviting everyone to sit on it.
Teddy and Raff had gone back to arguing over bass lines at the other end of the room while Deacon sat beside Jake with a beer in one hand and a slice of pepperoni in the other.
Kept fucking looking at him, too.
Jake tried to ignore it. He knew that look. Deacon had been his mate far too long and had developed the irritating belief that this gave him unrestricted access to Jake’s head.
It didn’t.
Deacon apparently disagreed when he nudged Jake’s knee with his own, checked Teddy was still occupied, then lowered his voice. “So…What’s happening with the detective?”
Jake took a bite of pizza. “What detective?”
Deacon shoved him. “Oh, fuck off.”
“What?”
“Don’t give me what detective. The blond one you practically rearrange your entire face for every time he walks into a room.”
Jake swallowed the pizza. “I do fucking not.”
“You do. It’s disturbing.” Deacon nudged his knee again. “But you’re distracted, too.” He took another pull of his beer. “So? You shagged him yet, or are you still staring at him like you’re hoping telepathy might get his clothes off?”
Jake pushed a bit of crust around the box. “It’s nowt like that.”
Deacon’s eyebrows went up. “Mate. I’ve seen you look at men you wanna fuck. Usually lasts about twenty minutes, then you disappear and come back with your hair even more fucked than usual.”
“Cheers.”
“Anytime.” Deacon leaned back on one hand. “This ain’t that.”
Jake didn’t answer.
Because that was getting uncomfortably close to something he’d been trying very hard not to think about.
“He’s a copper,” he said eventually. “That’s all.”
“What’s all?”
“Why it’s…” Jake gestured vaguely with his pizza. “Complicated.”
Deacon went quiet for a second.
Fuck.
Jake realised the mistake approximately one second too late.
“Complicated?” Deacon repeated.
“Fuck off.”
“Oh, this is brilliant.” Deacon grinned. “Jake Whitton has complications.”
“Keep your voice down.”
“You don’t have complications. You have sex.
Sometimes you have arguments. Occasionally both at once.
” Deacon then pushed himself to his feet, stretched until his back cracked, and grabbed his guitar.
He slung the strap over his shoulder and he peered back at Jake.
“Like I said the other day, maybe it’s time we grew up a bit. ”
Jake looked at him. “Speak for yourself.”
“I am. But look at you. You’re already halfway there.”
“It’s a fucking bed, Deac.”
“Gateway furniture, mate.” He adjusted the strap across his shoulder. “Next thing you know, you’ll have matching towels and a boyfriend.”
Jake threw a crust at him. Deacon ducked it easily the answered by striking out a sharp riff, fingers sliding cleanly over the strings as the amp kicked it back through the bedsit.
He grinned at Jake through the noise. “We’ll see.”
Jake gave him the finger.
Then they played.
Jake behind the drums. Deacon on guitar. Raff beside Teddy, helping him fumble his way through the bass line until the kid finally caught it and lit up as if he’d just headlined Wembley.