Chapter 11 #2
“It has been educational.”
“Painful?”
“Also that.”
“How painful?”
“Yesterday I considered relocating permanently to the ground-floor kitchen because the stairs felt like an unreasonable demand.”
Graham laughs loudly this time.
It is warm and surprised and makes him sound less like someone who has a pass for secure buildings.
“I’m sorry,” he says, not sounding sorry at all. “I’m trying to be sympathetic.”
“You are failing.”
“Yes. I can hear that.”
“My thighs were not prepared for hose drills.”
“No one’s thighs are prepared for hose drills.”
“How would you know?” I ask.
“What?”
“About hose drills.”
“I don’t.”
“You sounded like you did.”
“I sounded like a man with imagination.”
“You have many qualities, Graham. Imagination has never been your brand.”
“Rude.”
“Accurate.”
“The fire station has also attacked my face,” I add.
“Your face?”
“They made me shave.”
There is a silence.
Then Graham says, with deep and unforgivable interest, “They made you shave?”
“For breathing apparatus.”
“Of course.”
“It was a safety requirement.”
“Naturally.”
“You sound delighted.”
“I’m picturing your chin. I haven’t seen it in years.”
“And you’ve coped admirably.”
“Send me a photo.”
“No way.”
“I could ask Mum.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“I work in diplomacy, AJ. I know how to apply pressure.”
“You are a terrible person.”
“I’m an interested stakeholder.”
The rain presses harder against the window. On television, someone has bought a chair with worrying confidence.
Then Graham clears his throat.
“I’m jealous,” he says.
I sit up straighter. “Sorry?”
“I said I’m jealous.”
“Of the beard loss?”
“No. Of the fire station.”
I stare at the muted television without seeing it.
“You’re jealous,” I say.
“I heard how strange it sounded the first time.”
“Of me?”
“A little, yes.”
“Do you need medical attention?”
“Possibly.”
“Graham, I have spent a week being publicly humbled by firefighters while wearing borrowed kit. At one point, a man called Kev referred to me as babyface while I was carrying equipment that appeared to have been manufactured by evil spirits.”
“And yet.”
“And yet what?”
Another pause.
Then he says, “I wanted to be a firefighter when I was younger.”
I sit very still.
This is not something my brother has ever said to me before.
“You wanted to be a firefighter?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“When I was younger.”
“That is not an answer. That is a time period so vague it could include the invention of agriculture.”
He makes a quiet sound, almost a laugh. “When I did my A levels.”
“You never said.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because you would have been insufferable.”
“I am wounded.”
“You once told me my attempt at a fringe made me look like a nervous estate agent.”
“You did look like a nervous estate agent.”
“And there it is.”
I grin, then let it fade, because beneath the joke there is something I do not quite know what to do with.
Graham wanted to be a firefighter.
My brother. Graham. The man who owns more suits than I own plates. The man who once referred to a badly chaired meeting as “a preventable failure of structure”. The man who has spent his adult life in rooms where people say things like “bilateral engagement” with a straight face.
“You really wanted it?” I ask.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
He is quiet for a second. Outside, the rain throws itself at the window with renewed commitment.
“I think I liked the directness of it,” he says eventually. “Someone needs help, you go. You train for it, you prepare for it, you know your role. No ambiguity.”
“That is the most Graham explanation of wanting to be a firefighter I can imagine.”
On screen, someone is pretending not to regret a purchase.
“Why didn’t you?”
“Because I was not remotely built for it.”
“You could have trained.”
“I could have improved. I could not have become a different person.”
“That sounds dramatic.”
“It’s accurate. I was bookish, slight, asthmatic when I was younger, terrible at team sports and worse at pretending not to be terrible at team sports. The whole thing required a body I didn’t have.”
I think of the kit dragging at my shoulders. The hose burning through my hands. The way my thighs turned a B&B staircase into a moral test. The sheer physical force of the work before the dangerous part even begins.
“Yes,” I say, quieter. “It does.”
“And I was sensible.”
“You were seventeen. No one is sensible at seventeen.”
“I was. It was unbearable for everyone.”
“That is true.”
“I looked at the requirements, looked at myself and chose something else.”
“You chose the Foreign Office?”
“Not immediately. There were a few stages between failed firefighter fantasy and controlled diplomatic disappointment.”
“Put that on your LinkedIn.”
“I will not.”
“You should. It would humanise you.”
“I am sufficiently human.”
“That remains under review.”
I am glad I cannot see his face. It would make this stranger somehow. Easier to mock, maybe. Harder to hear.
“You’d like them,” I say.
“The firefighters?”
“Yes.”
“What are they like?”
I look towards the rain-smeared window and picture the station as if I am already there.
Kev at the kettle. Dan pretending not to watch everything.
Mish with tape in one hand and an entire filing system in her head.
Josh’s calm. Pippa’s voice carrying through the garage, direct and steady, making people move because they trust her.
The crew of the other appliances equally amusing and equally committed.
“They’re blunt,” I say. “Funny. Tired in ways they pretend not to be. Kinder than they make themselves sound. Less impressed by me than any group of people has ever been.”
“Excellent.”
“Thank you.”
“You needed that.”
I cannot even argue convincingly.
“And the Watch Manager?” Graham asks.
I go still.
Unfortunately, there is a version of stillness even siblings can hear through a phone.
Graham does not jump on it.
He does not tease.
He just waits.
Which is worse, obviously.
Because when Graham waits, he does it with the calm patience of a man who has spent his adult life letting other people talk themselves into diplomatic incidents.
“Pippa is the subject of a professional assignment,” I say eventually.
“Of course.”
“She is very good at her job.”
“I imagine she is.”
“And this is complicated.”
“I imagine that too.”
I rub a hand over my face, then remember I no longer have a beard to make the gesture feel properly thoughtful. Still annoying.
“She’s…” I stop.
There is no neat way to say it.
Sharp, but not cruel. Funny when she forgets not to be. Tired in places she hides well. Capable in a way that makes everyone around her settle. Tall, strong, steady, with dark blue eyes and a mouth that knows exactly how little it needs to move to destroy me.
And sexy.
That, too.
She is sexy in a way that has become genuinely inconvenient.
Not vague hot. Not abstractly attractive.
Not the sort of good-looking a man can acknowledge and then put away in a sensible mental drawer.
Pippa is six kinds of physical distraction in steel-toe boots, and I have spent four days noticing things I should not be noticing at work.
Her arms when she lifts equipment.
The line of her back when she bends over a desk.
The way her thighs look in uniform trousers, which I have most certainly not thought about while trying to fall asleep.
The way she says my name when she is warning me not to do something stupid.
The way she said it after the call-out, lower and quieter, when she was making sure I was still breathing properly.
That one has been particularly unhelpful.
“She’s difficult,” I say.
Then he says, “That sounded like it took you a long time to reduce her to one word.”
“I preferred you when you were being reasonable about my article.”
“I can do more than one thing.”
“Show-off.”
He makes a small, amused sound, then gives me a second longer than I deserve.
“Do you want me to tell you to be sensible?” he asks.
“Yes.”
“All right. Be sensible.”
“Thank you.”
“And don’t confuse sensible with detached.”
I close my eyes.
This is precisely why Graham is unbearable. He says things calmly enough that they become harder to dismiss.
“She’s supervising me,” I say. “I’m there for one more week. I made her life harder before I even properly met her. It is not exactly the cleanest foundation.”
“No.”
“I’m glad we agree.”
“But people are rarely clean foundations.”
“That is disgusting.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Unfortunately.”
“And I didn’t say do anything about it.”
“You implied.”
He laughs quietly.
Someone speaks on his end, muffled and distant. A door, maybe. Movement. Real life continuing somewhere full of glass, security passes and people saying “cross-departmental” as if language has done something to offend them.
“I have to go in a minute,” he says.
“International incident?”
“Budget discussion.”
“Worse.”
“Significantly.”
“Try not to start a war over stationery.”
“No promises.”
He pauses, and when he speaks again his voice is gentler. “I’m glad you’re doing this.”
“Being punished?”
“Learning.”
Bargain Hunt continues silently in the corner, offering absolutely no useful guidance. I glance at the window. At the notebook on the bedside table, full of things I did not know four shifts ago.
“Me too,” I say.
“And AJ?”
“Yes?”
“There is a time after the feature publishes. Your connection doesn’t have to end after these two weeks.”
I have no come back to that so we say goodbye, and the call ends.
For a while, I sit in the quiet room with the phone still in my hand.
Outside, the rain keeps falling. On the television, the auction has ended and someone is pretending not to be disappointed by a seven-pound loss.
I unmute it, then mute it again almost immediately.
What if he is right and there could be a time after?