Chapter 11
AJ
On the last day of my four days off, the rain is so heavy it turns the window of my room at the Rose Cottage B&B into a grey, miserable waterfall.
Not drizzle.
Not atmospheric Lake District mist.
Actual, committed rain. Rain with opinions. Rain that has looked at the hills, looked at the tourists in waterproof jackets, and decided everyone has been getting above themselves.
I am lying on the bed in my room with one knee bent, my laptop closed beside me and the television on low.
Bargain Hunt is happening in the corner, though I have lost track of who is buying what and whether anyone has made a profit.
A man in a bright fleece looks deeply optimistic about a ceramic jug.
I respect him for that. We all need dreams.
Mine, apparently, is not thinking about Pippa for longer than four consecutive minutes.
So far, the dream remains aspirational.
The sensible thing would have been to go back to Carlisle for my days off.
Sleep in my own flat. Do laundry. See Chloe and Ava.
Pretend I am a normal man with a normal job and not a journalist temporarily living in a B&B two hours from home because his editor decided humiliation was best served with breakfast.
But Marie Louise said staying in Fellside would help me “absorb the rhythm of the place”, which is editor-speak for I am not paying your mileage twice a day because you upset a watch manager and now you can sit with your choices.
So I have sat.
I have walked when the rain allowed it.
I have taken notes.
I have eaten three excellent breakfasts, two average pub dinners and one packet of crisps I pretended was dinner because there was an apple near it on the bedside table.
I have not thought about Pippa.
Well hardly. Actually all the time.
Even if there is no reason to think about her.
We are not friends. We are not anything.
She is the watch manager of the station I am embedded with, and I am the journalist who spent four days learning, with increasing physical discomfort, that fire service work is harder, stranger, funnier and more human than I had understood.
But, she keeps arriving at the station in clothes that make it extremely difficult to behave like a normal professional adult.
That is not relevant.
It is definitely not relevant that, aside from the green dress that still haunts my dreams, on one of the days she turned up in jeans, boots and a black T-shirt that clung to her chest and shoulders just enough to make me briefly forget the difference between looking and staring.
She had been carrying a coffee, frowning at something on her phone, completely unaware that I was standing three metres away having the sort of thought that would have got me removed from the station if anyone had been able to hear it.
Or that on the third day, she came in with rain in her hair, cheeks pink from the cold, her jacket half-zipped, and I spent several seconds thinking about warming her up in ways that had nothing to do with central heating.
None of that belongs in the feature.
None of it is useful.
None of it is appropriate.
And yet here I am, lying on a bed in a B&B while Bargain Hunt happens in the background, thinking about the exact sound she might make if I kissed the side of her neck.
So, yes.
The days off are going brilliantly.
Bargain Hunt moves into the auction section. Someone overpays for a mirror.
I stare at the ceiling.
The problem with these days off is that they should feel like a break.
They do not.
They feel like being put on pause halfway through something I do not understand yet.
Four shifts is not long enough to belong anywhere, but it is apparently long enough for my brain to start expecting certain things.
The sound of the kettle in the station kitchen.
Kev calling me babyface with the grim commitment of a man who won’t let go of his most favourite joke.
Mish watching me near stationery as if I might laminate myself.
Dan pretending not to be helpful while somehow being helpful.
Pippa walking past in uniform, focused and quick, making the whole room feel as if it has found its centre.
Four days.
That is all it has been.
Four days, and I am lying in a B&B room with rain on the window, missing a place that still considers me a health and safety concern.
This is not ideal.
I pick up my phone.
Marie Louise will be in the newsroom. I could call. Ask if there’s anything she needs. A council follow-up. A court mention. A quick piece on the weather trying to drown Cumbria. Something useful. Something with facts and deadlines and absolutely no emotional content.
My thumb hovers over her name.
This is fine.
This is professional.
This is not avoidance.
My phone rings before I can press call.
I stare at the screen for half a second, because I have been thinking about work and Pippa and the station and apparently forgot I have a brother who sometimes appears in my life like a well-dressed audit.
I answer. “Are you dead?”
There is a pause.
Then my brother says, “Lovely to hear your voice too.”
“I assume if you’re calling on a Tuesday afternoon, either you’re dead or there’s been an international incident.”
“I work at the Foreign Office, AJ. There are always international incidents.”
“Then why are you calling me? I have no transferable skills.”
“That has never stopped you having opinions.”
“True. I could provide remarks.”
“Please don’t. Some of us are trying to keep the country functioning.”
I smile and roll onto my side, propping the phone between my ear and the pillow.
Graham’s voice always sounds as if he is calling from a room with thick carpets and people using acronyms near flags.
He is two years older than me, which he has managed to turn into a lifelong air of responsible disappointment.
He is also, annoyingly, a good brother.
“Where are you?” I ask. “Somewhere terrifying?”
“Whitehall.”
“As I said.”
“I had ten minutes between meetings. Thought I’d check in.”
“On me?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m your brother.”
I look at the rain moving down the window. “I’m touched by your concern.”
“You sound odd.”
“I do not.”
“You do.”
“How?”
“For one thing, I can hear the telly.”
“No, you can’t.”
“I definitely can. What are you watching?”
“News.”
“That is not the news.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know exactly what Bargain Hunt sounds like.”
I sit up. “Why do you know exactly what Bargain Hunt sounds like?”
“I broke my leg three years ago and spent six weeks in bed discovering daytime television. I have strong feelings about antique fairs now.”
“Of course you do.”
“And that is definitely Bargain Hunt.”
“It might be research.”
“Into what?”
“Ceramic jugs.”
There is a brief silence.
“Are you okay?” he asks.
“Because of the ceramic jugs?”
“Because it’s Tuesday afternoon, I can hear Bargain Hunt, and I can’t hear a million people shouting news things in the background.”
“News things?”
“You know. Phones. Keyboards. Someone yelling about a deadline. That strange collective panic you people call a newsroom.”
“We don’t yell about deadlines all the time.”
“No?”
“I’m not at the newsroom at the moment.” I sigh and I’m not sure why. “I’m embedded at Fellside Fire Station for two weeks. Four day shifts, four off, then four night shifts.”
“You’re what?” Graham says.
“Embedded. With the fire station.”
“I heard you. I’m just trying to understand why you said it as if that’s normal.”
“It is for the feature.”
“What feature?”
I hesitate and use the moment to mute the telly.
There is no reason not to tell him. It is not classified. It is not even especially complicated. And yet saying it out loud to Graham, who has always had the unnerving ability to hear the ugly hinge inside a sentence, feels riskier than it should.
“The follow-up to the farm fire piece.”
There is a pause.
“The one I texted you about?” Graham asks.
“Yes.”
“The good article?”
“No.” I rub a hand over my face. “Or yes. I don’t know. It was a good article in the technical sense. Clean structure. Strong angle. Enough tension to keep people reading. Nothing I couldn’t defend.”
“But?”
“But it put the wrong spotlight on a woman. And I should have known better.”
Another pause.
“Ah,” Graham says.
“Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Diplomatic ah.”
“It was a normal ah.”
“There is no normal ah from you. There are only categories.”
“Fine. Concerned ah.”
“That’s worse.”
“What happened?”
I lean back against the headboard. The room smells faintly of rain, old wood and the lavender sachet Rose seems determined to hide in every drawer.
I tell him not all the details but I give him enough that my brilliant older brother, the diplomat, the man who speaks three languages well and two more well enough to be dangerous, the man who once turned a university debate into an internship offer, the man who can find the weakest point in a sentence without raising his voice, understands exactly what I did.
Another failure, presented neatly for Graham’s review.
There should be a loyalty card by now.
When I finish, he is quiet for a moment.
Not in the way he goes quiet when he is judging a sentence into submission. Not even in the way he goes quiet before saying something wise and irritating.
This is different.
“I’m not sure I’d have seen it either,” he says.
I blink. “What?”
“The connection. Not at first. Not if the article was technically sound and the angle worked.” He pauses. “I’d like to think I would, obviously, because I enjoy being morally superior to you.”
“Obviously.”
“But I don’t know that I would have. Not if I wasn’t looking for it.”
That catches me off guard.
I was ready for a lecture. Not a brutal one. Graham is not brutal. He is too careful for that. But I have spent most of my life being the younger brother with the messier path, the less impressive job title, the louder mistakes.
“Did you apologise to her?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
“And Marie Louise decided I should spend two weeks at the station learning what I was writing about.”
“That sounds like a spectacularly appropriate consequence.”