Chapter Three Camouflage and Cracks
Chapter three
Camouflage and Cracks
Freddie slammed the door of his battered Peugeot with more force than necessary. The metallic thunk echoed through the quiet police station car park, bouncing off concrete and steel. He slumped back, closed his eyes, and finally breathed.
It felt like the first breath he’d taken since stepping into that interview room.
Since seeing him.
Nathan Carter.
He rolled the name around in his mind like a mouthful of glass. Maybe if he kept it formal—Nathan, not Nate—it wouldn’t cut so deep. Wouldn’t sear like a brand right through his chest.
Who the fuck was he kidding ?
It didn’t sting. It scorched.
Worse than acid.
A wound straight through the heart that hadn’t had fifteen years to heal so much as fester.
Somehow, he’d made it through the rest of his shift.
Miraculous, really. He’d buried himself in paperwork, then rode out the last hours on patrol with Becca, who’d filled the silence with her usual unfiltered commentary on everything from cats with attitude to her latest string of Tinder disasters.
She didn’t notice his silence. Or if she did, she didn’t pry.
Bless her for that. The rest of the shift had been quiet.
A couple of nothing calls. The big Radley case was still with CID, and Freddie had a few days’ reprieve before being dragged into surveillance duty.
Now, finally, he could go home.
He let out a measured breath. Told himself to drive. Go home. Not think. Dwell. Or wonder why Nathan fucking Carter was back in Worthbridge.
It didn’t matter.
Meant nothing.
He cracked his neck to either side, gripped the steering wheel, and turned the key, only to remember the engine was already running. He swore under his breath, shook his head to clear it, then threw the car into reverse and almost flattened Becca.
“ Oi! ” She smacked the rear window.
Freddie closed his eyes. “Shit. Sorry.”
“Too busy wondering when things are gonna go down in history, huh?”
He gave her the finger without humour. She grinned and wandered off to her own car, humming some pop tune under her breath.
After giving himself a stern internal bollocking, Freddie pulled out of the space, away from the station, away from the ghost that had walked back into his life, and, as always, took the scenic route. More out of habit than intention.
Worthbridge rolled past his windows in shades of salt-washed blue and fading gold.
The narrow lanes of the old town gave way to the open stretch of coastal road running parallel to the sea, where the colourful strip of beach huts were opening up in the hope for an early summer.
The tide was out, leaving behind glistening mudflats and the skeletal remains of the pier.
Once grand, now rotting. The wrecked bones of it reminded him too much of himself.
Of him and Nate.
Soon the sun dipped below the horizon, the streetlights blinking to life in staggered succession.
He should’ve turned inland. Towards the new build maisonette he called home.
A modest shoebox bought on a shared ownership scheme.
It wasn’t much, but it was his. Well, half his.
The other half belonged to the local council or some faceless property group.
PC wages didn’t stretch far, not when he still mostly paid the rent on his mum’s house and slipped the occasional tenner to his sister.
But he didn’t turn. Not towards the practical.
Instead, he kept driving. Let instinct take the wheel.
The streets narrowed again as he passed into the old suburbs. Rows of terraced houses, each one slouched next to the other like tired old men, paint flaking, gardens wild with years of neglect or defiance. Here, dusk felt thicker, heavier, settling deeper into the bones of the town.
Then he was there.
Faraday Road.
He parked without really meaning to, opposite a line of houses that hadn’t changed in decades.
The one in the middle still had its red door.
Faded now, but still vivid enough to punch him in the chest. It looked exactly the same as it had the last time he’d stood in front of it.
Back when everything had been different.
When Nate still lived there. When they’d still been… whatever they’d been.
Freddie stared at the house, clenching his hands on the steering wheel, heart pounding.
He shouldn’t be here.
But of course, he was.
Because this was where Nate had said they were staying. For now, he’d said. Temporarily. His old man’s house.
The house Nate had grown up in.
And as Freddie sat there, staring across at the red door, it all came rushing back.
As if he’d opened a valve on a memory and let it flood him whole.
This was the place where summer had always tasted like grass-stained knees and laughter echoing from the back garden.
Where they’d spent hours booting a half-flat football around until it vanished into the hedge or Nate’s mum yelled that tea was ready.
Where the living room had once been a battlefield of video games and shouted insults, cushions flying like grenades.
Where Nathan had spent entire weekends under the bonnet of his dad’s car, engine grease on his hands and joy in his voice as he explained carburettors as if they were magic.
And where Freddie had slept countless nights on the floor of Nate’s tiny bedroom, curled up in a sleeping bag that always ended up halfway under the bed.
Until that one night.
The night Nate had grabbed his wrist in the dark, dragged him up onto the single mattress without a word, and held him so close it felt like his heart might beat through Nathan’s ribs instead of his own.
He swallowed hard, sinking lower in his seat, the worn upholstery creaking beneath him as he peered across the road at the shifting silhouettes inside the glass. Shadows of life still moving inside that house .
Then Nathan appeared.
He stepped into the bay window, tall and broad and unmistakable, stretching his arms wide to reach for the curtains. Freddie shrank further into the darkness, breath caught in his throat as the fabric swept shut, cutting Nathan from view.
There was no way Nathan could’ve seen him. The street was too dim, the car too nondescript. Nathan wouldn’t even know what he drove these days. Wouldn’t have any reason to expect to find Freddie Webb parked across the road like a ghost in a marked grave.
Still, Freddie’s heart thundered as if caught red-handed. As if Nathan had looked straight at him through those curtains and all the time and silence and distance in the world hadn’t been enough to bury what still lived inside him.
He blinked hard, forcing back the sting behind his eyes.
Get a fucking grip.
He’d seen him. That was enough. Nathan was here.
In Worthbridge. That was all Freddie had any right to know.
All he needed to know. Anything else—how long he was staying, who he was with, what the hell had brought him back into town—none of it belonged to Freddie anymore.
Not after learning to live without him. Of trying to forget how to miss him.
So he shifted upright, fumbled for the keys, and started the engine.
But the red door swung open and Freddie froze, blood hammering in his ears as Nathan stumbled out, half-staggering into the porch light. For a heartbeat, Freddie couldn’t breathe.
Fuck.
He must have seen him .
And any second now, he’d storm across the street, and in some cruel twist of fate, in a world flipped upside down, he’d be the one reading Freddie his rights.
But a second figure came into view. Shorter than Nathan now.
Wiry. With dusts of grey hair catching the light.
Ron Carter. Nathan’s father. Still built like a scaffold pole, with a permanent scowl he used to wear like a badge of honour.
He shoved a couple of bulging bin bags into Nathan’s arms, along with a recycling crate, then disappeared back inside.
Course. Bin day tomorrow.
As a kid, Freddie had been afraid of Ron Carter.
Mr Carter, back then. The name alone enough to make him stand straighter.
The ex-army man with a voice like gravel and a stare that could silence a room.
A veteran of The Troubles, Ron had a thousand stories from Northern Ireland, most of them told with a pint in hand and a far-off look in his eye.
But even as a kid, Freddie had sensed the fractured soul beneath the bravado.
A man who hadn’t just returned from war but brought the war back with him.
He’d always been a hard man. Unflinching. Iron-willed. But when Nathan’s mum died, when the cancer took her quick and cruel, Ron had unravelled. As if whatever glue had been holding him together dissolved overnight.
Nathan had been twelve.
He’d become a man far too soon.
Freddie remembered the funeral like a photograph etched into his bones. Grey sky, wet grass, the scent of lilies clinging to his coat. Nathan had held onto him in the churchyard, gripping Freddie’s jacket, face streaked with tears and grief too big for his twelve-year-old frame.
And Ron, Mr Carter , stood nearby like carved granite.
Arms crossed. Jaw tight. Eyes hard and dry.
When Nathan had tried to wipe his face with the cuff of his sleeve, Ron had looked at him with something close to disgust and said, flat and final, “ That’s the last time you cry, do you hear me? Men don’t cry. ”
Freddie hadn’t ever forgotten the way Nathan had gone still. How he’d swallowed his sobs as if they were poison, shoulders quaking with the effort of holding everything in. And Freddie, even in his own awkward grief, had felt something close to guilt. Because he’d realised then how lucky he was.