Chapter 9
AJ
By the next morning, my legs are staging a protest.
Not a dramatic one. They are not refusing service entirely, but they have made their position clear every time I sit, stand, move, breathe, or consider having ambitions. My shoulders are worse. My shoulders have gone beyond complaint and moved into quiet, dignified betrayal.
The stairs at Rose Cottage nearly finish me before breakfast.
Not because there is anything especially wrong with them. They are perfectly normal stairs. Possibly even charming stairs, if you are the sort of person whose thighs have not recently been introduced to hose drills by Pippa Hart.
I make it down one careful step at a time, holding the banister with the grim concentration of a man descending from Everest rather than room six.
The owner, a cheerful woman called, very fittingly, Rose, asks if I slept well.
I tell her yes, because explaining that I was betrayed by my own legs while trying to reach toast feels too intimate before nine in the morning.
I arrive at the station anyway, because I am a professional.
Also, because I am certain Pippa would sense weakness from three streets away.
I am barely out of my car when she pulls in.
For one useful second, I forget about my legs.
She gets out of her car with a kit bag over one shoulder and a travel mug in one hand, wearing a green summer dress that moves around her knees in the light morning breeze.
Nothing dramatic. Nothing designed to ruin me.
Just soft green fabric, bare arms, practical sandals, and her short dark hair still a little sleep-messy in a way that suggests she has not yet put the day’s armour on.
Then she sees me.
“Morning,” she says.
“Morning.”
Her gaze flicks over me, quick but accurate. “How are you feeling?”
“Excellent.”
She waits.
It is surprisingly effective.
“Fine,” I amend. “Mostly fine.”
“Mostly?”
“My thighs have developed strong opinions about stairs.”
“That bad?”
“I made it down to breakfast without calling emergency services.”
“Good. Saves paperwork.”
“That’s exactly the compassion I was hoping for.”
Her mouth does something almost like a smile.
“Drink water today,” she says.
“Yes, Watch Manager.”
“And don’t try to prove anything.”
“I never do.”
She looks at me.
“I rarely do.”
She keeps looking.
“I will do my best not to do that today.”
“Better.”
Then she walks past me towards the station door, and the green dress disappears inside with her.
I stand in the yard for half a second longer than necessary, because apparently my brain has retained the image like evidence.
Then I remember I am here to write a thoughtful, professional feature about the fire service and not to develop opinions about summer dresses before nine in the morning.
By the time I make it inside, Pippa has vanished.
Five minutes later, she appears again in thin navy station uniform trousers and T-shirt, her hair a controlled mess, the summer dress entirely gone as if I imagined it.
Pippa points me towards the kitchen.
“I’ve got meetings with Josh for a while,” she says.
“Meetings?”
“Yes.”
“Plural?”
“Very observant.”
“I am here to learn.”
“Then learn to occupy yourself.”
“What should I do?”
“Hang out.”
I blink. “Hang out?”
“Yes.”
“That feels dangerously unsupervised.”
“You’ve been told where not to go and what not to touch.”
“True.”
“And I’m assuming you can survive in a kitchen for an hour without operational support.”
“That’s a lot of faith.”
“It’s a low bar.”
Before I can answer, Josh calls her name from the corridor.
Pippa looks at me again. “If anything happens, stay where someone tells you to stay. If nothing happens, talk to people if they’re free. Don’t get in the way.”
“Understood.”
“And, AJ?”
“Yes?”
“Drink water.”
“I said I would.”
“You also said you were excellent.”
“I’m learning honesty in stages.”
Her mouth twitches, and then she is gone.
I am left in the kitchen with my notebook, my coffee, my aching legs and absolutely no idea what hanging out is supposed to look like in a fire station.
For the first ten minutes, I do what journalists are supposed to do.
I observe.
The kettle boils twice. Someone has left a spoon on the counter in a small circle of coffee.
There are two mugs by the sink, one clean, one in a state of moral uncertainty.
A pile of leaflets sits at the end of the table, weighted down by a stapler.
The whiteboard says HOME FIRE SAFETY VISITS, SCHOOL VISIT PREP, PPE CHECKS, JOSH/PIP REVIEW, and, in larger letters, BUY TEA BAGS.
Underneath that, someone has written KEV DID IT.
Possibly an accusation. Possibly a confession.
I write a few notes.
Station routine: not downtime. Constant low-level work. Prevention. Checks. Admin. Supplies. Humour used as glue, not performance.
That is good.
That is useful.
That is exactly the sort of thing Marie Louise wanted.
I am still thinking about the dress.
This is less useful.
I take a sip of coffee and burn my tongue.
“Morning, babyface.”
I close my eyes.
Kev stands in the doorway, holding a packet of something and wearing the expression of a man who has woken up with a purpose.
“Morning,” I say. “I see we’re still doing that.”
“Doing what?”
“I’m not giving it oxygen.”
He grins and crosses to the cupboard. “Good idea. You’ll need it later.”
That is not encouraging.
He opens the cupboard, frowns into it, then looks at the worktop.
I look too.
The tea bags are there.
Beside the kettle.
In plain sight.
Kev picks them up.
I do not comment.
This restraint nearly kills me.
“So,” I say, reaching for my notebook. “Since you’re here and clearly not busy…”
“No.”
“You don’t know what I was going to ask.”
“Interview.”
“It could have been a personal question about tea storage.”
“It was interview.”
“Just a gentle conversation.”
Kev drops a tea bag into a mug. “I’ve seen gentle conversations in newspapers.”
“I’m not here to make anyone look bad.”
“No. You already did that bit.”
There is no heat in his voice.
I almost wish there were.
I put the notebook down. “Yes. I did.”
Kev pauses.
Not long. Just enough to show he heard the difference.
I try again. “Can I ask one question?”
“One.”
“What do people get wrong about the job?”
He stops stirring.
For a second, I think he is going to brush me off. Then he leans back against the counter, mug in hand, and looks towards the garage rather than at me.
“They think it’s mostly fires.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s the big one.”
I wait.
He sighs, as if I have tricked him into conversation by not speaking.
“It’s people,” he says. “Fires, crashes, floods, alarms, someone stuck somewhere stupid, someone scared, someone angry, someone having the worst day of their life. People think the job is running into flames. Sometimes it is. A lot of the time it’s figuring out what someone needs while everyone else is shouting. ”
I write that down, slowly.
Kev watches the pen move.
“Don’t make that sound poetic.”
“I won’t.”
He studies me for a moment.
“Can I quote you?” I finally ask.
“No.”
“Anonymously?”
“No.”
Then he is gone.
I sit very still for a second, because something about the brief exchange has stayed with me.
It’s people.
I write it at the top of a fresh page.
Then I underline it.
Then I look at the spoon in the coffee ring again.
For approximately thirty seconds, I resist.
Then I stand.
Cleaning someone else’s kitchen without invitation is, I know, socially risky. It suggests judgement, interference, possibly unresolved childhood issues. I am aware of this. I am not proud.
But there are dishes by the sink, crumbs near the toaster, three mugs that could be washed in under a minute, and a cupboard door open at an angle that is doing something unpleasant to the corner of my eye.
Also, Pippa is in a meeting, and I am still thinking about a green dress I saw for less than five minutes.
I rinse the spoon.
That seems harmless.
Then I wipe the counter, because the cloth is right there.
Then I wash the mugs, because leaving them once the sink is already wet would be inefficient.
Then I dry them, because I am not an animal.
By the time I realise I have entered a state of mild domestic fugue, I have cleaned the counter, straightened the leaflets, returned the stapler to the edge of the pile rather than the middle, closed two cupboard doors, discovered that the tea bags do in fact have a designated place, and removed something from the microwave that may once have been soup.
I do not reorganise the cupboards.
That would be too much.
I do look inside one.
Briefly.
There are mugs on three shelves in no recognisable pattern. Large ones mixed with small ones. Station mugs mixed with novelty mugs. One mug that says WORLD’S OKAYEST UNCLE, which raises several questions and answers none of them.
I close the cupboard.
Personal growth.
The door opens.
I turn too quickly and nearly hit my hip on the table.
Dan comes in, stops, and looks at the kitchen.
Then at me.
Then at the sink.
“What are you doing?”
“Nothing.”
He looks at the clean counter.
“Is this journalist nothing or normal nothing?”
“I wiped a surface.”
“You wiped several surfaces.”
“Several surfaces required it.”
Dan walks to the kettle, eyes narrowed. “Are you nesting?”
“No.”
“Because if you’re nesting, we should know. There might be forms.”
“I’m not nesting.”
“Is this a Carlisle thing?”
“It’s a stress thing.”
I regret that the moment I say it.
Dan’s expression changes, not softened exactly, but less entertained.
“Pip leave you alone too long?”
“She told me to hang out.”
He nods. “Rookie mistake.”
“I tried to interview Kev.”
“Another rookie mistake.”
“He answered one question.”
“Generous of him.”
“It was a good answer.”
Dan fills the kettle. “He does that sometimes. Accidentally, mostly.”
I hesitate, then say, “Am I overstepping? With the cleaning.”
Dan looks at the counter again.
Then he shrugs. “Depends if you start labelling shelves.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
The pause is too long.
Dan smiles.
I point at him. “I was not going to.”
“Course not.”
“I understand boundaries.”
“Do you?”
“Some.”
He laughs quietly and switches the kettle on. “Kitchen’s cleaner. No one’ll complain unless you move the biscuits.”
“Where are the biscuits?”
“Secret.”
I decide not to ask again.
Dan makes his tea and leaves before I can accidentally interview him too.
The kitchen settles.
I sit back down.
Write more notes.
Low-level humour as permission. Crew suspicious but not cruel. Kitchen as common space. Cleaning as possible social risk. Do not move biscuits.
I stare at the last line.
Good advice in most contexts, probably.
From somewhere beyond the corridor, Pippa’s voice rises briefly, clear but not sharp. I cannot make out the words. Josh answers, lower. A door closes.
I try not to imagine her in the dress again.
I fail immediately.
It was not even a particularly revealing dress. That is the problem. If it had been dramatic, I could have dismissed my reaction as standard male idiocy and moved on. But it was just green fabric and bare arms and a quiet, unguarded version of her in the car park before work had fully claimed her.
She had looked like someone on her way to buy peaches.
Or ruin a man.
Possibly both.
Then she had changed into uniform and become the person who told me not to be stupid, made me drag hose until my shoulders considered legal action, and looked at me like she could see every ridiculous thought before I had finished having it.
I put my pen down.
This is not journalism.
This is whatever happens to a brain when it is overtired, over-caffeinated and under-supervised.
The kitchen door opens again.
This time it is Mish.
She stops just inside and looks around.
“Oh,” she says. “You cleaned.”
“A little.”
“Was it dirty?”
“No.”
Her eyebrow lifts.
“Yes.”
She comes in, opens a drawer, takes out a roll of tape, then shuts it again with her hip.
“Pip know you’re doing this?” she asks.
“She told me to hang out.”
“And your version of hanging out is washing mugs?”
“I contain multitudes.”
“You contain anxiety.”
“That too.”
Mish smiles, but there is nothing unkind in it. “Careful. You’ll make yourself useful and then we’ll never get rid of you.”
I should have a quick answer for that.
Something neat.
Something self-deprecating.
Something that does not involve the strange little pull at the idea of being useful here.
Instead, I say, “There are worse things.”
Mish’s smile changes by a millimetre.
Then she lifts the tape. “Don’t move the biscuits.”
“Everyone keeps saying that.”
“Because we mean it.”
She leaves.
I look at the cupboard again.
The biscuit location has become mythological.
I do not investigate.
More personal growth.