Chapter 13
AJ
By the time we get back to the station, the rain has found every possible way into me.
Down the back of my neck.
Under the collar of the high-vis.
Into my shoes.
Possibly into my soul, though that may be the night rather than the weather.
No one says much when we pull in.
That is the first thing I notice.
Not silence exactly. The station is never silent, not really. The appliance engine drops away. Doors open. Boots hit the floor. Kit moves. Someone coughs. A radio gives one last clipped murmur before it is switched down.
But the easy noise from before has gone.
Just movement.
Wet, tired, necessary movement.
I stay out of the way while they sort themselves and the appliance. I know enough by now not to hover in the middle of the bay looking concerned and useless, which is unfortunate because concerned and useless is exactly what I am.
Dan catches my eye as he passes. His hair is flattened with rain, his face tired in a way that makes him look older than he did two hours ago.
“Get yourself dry,” he says.
“Right.”
It is not an instruction I need explained. I know where my bag is. I know which corridor not to block, which door sticks slightly, which bench is least likely to make a noise that suggests it is about to collapse.
Day five.
Somehow, that makes it worse.
I am no longer new enough to be completely lost and nowhere near familiar enough to belong.
I take off the high-vis, hang it where I was told to hang it, and change into the spare clothes I was told to always have with me. Dry socks. Dry sweatshirt. Cargo trousers that are not exactly warm, but at least no longer feel as if they have been dredged from a lake.
My wet clothes go into a plastic carrier bag that immediately looks like evidence from a minor tragedy. I towel my hair as best I can, shove my feet into dry trainers, then stand for a moment in front of the lockers with one hand flat against the cool metal.
The changing room smells of damp fabric, soap and tired bodies.
Someone has left a deodorant can on the bench. There is a poster about lifting safely on the wall. My trainers squeak slightly on the floor.
Arthur had one slipper missing.
The thought comes so sharply that I have to breathe through it.
Not dramatically.
Not in a way anyone would notice.
Just enough to keep standing there instead of folding around the image like paper.
One slipper.
Grey hair plastered to his forehead.
His wife’s voice in the rain.
I close my eyes.
That is not useful.
I open them again.
When I step back out, the crew are changing into dry uniform with the weary efficiency of people who know the night is not finished just because the last call is.
Wet kit is sorted. Towels appear. Damp station shirts are swapped for clean ones.
Boots are dealt with. Everything checked, hung, shifted, reset enough that if the alarm goes again, they will go again.
That is the part that keeps catching me.
Arthur is dead, and they are still on duty.
Kev pulls a dry station shirt over his head, hair sticking up in wet, annoyed spikes.
Mish is by the kit area, efficient although exhausted, checking something with the kind of focus that makes interruption seem unwise.
Dan is near the office door, talking quietly on the phone, his voice low and practical.
The rest of the crew are doing their bit to bring calm to chaos.
And Pippa is still moving.
Not rushing.
Not flapping.
Moving.
She has changed too, into dry station trousers and a clean navy T-shirt, but somehow it does not make her look rested. Her hair is damp at her temples, her face pale beneath the fluorescent lights. There is a streak of something dark along one forearm she has missed when washing.
Soot maybe.
Mud.
I do not know.
I want to cross the bay and wipe it away with my thumb.
I want to put my arms around her.
The thought arrives so clearly, so physically, that I have to look down at my hands as if they might have moved without permission.
They have not.
Thank fuck.
Because Pippa Hart is standing in the middle of the station holding everything together with both hands and sheer will, and the last thing she needs is me making that about what I want.
“Crew room in five,” she says. “Get warm first. Tea if you want it.”
Her voice is steady.
Of course it is.
It is so steady I almost hate it.
No one argues.
No one asks whether the debrief can wait.
They all know it cannot.
I stand there for one useless second, then realise tea-if-you-want-it is the only thing in the room I am qualified to help with.
So I go to the kitchen.
The room is exactly as it was before we left. The mugs are still there. The kettle. The tea bags. The half loaf of bread by the toaster. Kev’s abandoned packet of biscuits sitting open near the sink.
Proof that the world is rude enough to keep existing in small domestic ways after something enormous has happened.
I fill the kettle.
My hands are steadier than I expect.
That feels wrong too.
I make tea because there is nothing else I can do. Because someone should. Because Pippa said tea, and every single person out there looks as if they have been peeled out of the night and put back together badly.
Ten mugs.
Then I stop and make an eleventh for myself, because apparently I am here too.
I do not know how everyone takes it.
This feels like a failure of observation.
I have noticed Pippa’s jaw, her arms, the shape of her mouth when she is trying not to smile, the exact low note in her voice when she says my name like a warning.
I have not noticed how she takes her tea.
I stare at the mugs.
Then Mish appears in the doorway.
She takes one look at the mugs, then at me, then at the kettle.
“Don’t do individual orders,” she says.
I pause with one hand halfway to the tea bags. “Sorry?”
“Urn of tea. It’s in the corner cupboard. Milk and sugar on the side. People can sort themselves out.”
“Right.”
“You looked like you were about to conduct a very emotional tea census.”
“It did feel important.”
“It is important. That’s why you don’t make it complicated.”
She says it without bite.
“Urn of tea,” I say.
“Look at you. Practically operational.”
“I’m putting that in my notes.”
“Don’t.”
She steps in, grabs the biscuits from beside the sink, then pauses with her hand on the packet.
For a second, she does not look like the woman who can reduce a room to sensible silence with one eyebrow.
She looks exhausted.
Then it is gone.
“You all right?” I ask before I can stop myself.
Her gaze flicks to me.
I brace for sarcasm.
Instead, she says, “No. But I will be.”
It is so plain it knocks something loose in me.
I nod. “Okay.”
She takes the biscuits and leaves.
I make the tea.
Not well, possibly. I have never made tea on an industrial scale before.
But I warm the urn because something in my grandmother’s voice rises from the dead to insist on it, add more tea bags than seems reasonable, and carry it through with milk, sugar and a stack of mugs balanced in a way that would horrify anyone with proper manual handling training.
By the time I get to the crew room, people are sitting.
Kev. Dan. Mish. Rob. A couple of others from the second appliance, damp hair, dry station shirts, faces drawn in the same quiet way. Lewis is leaning against the far wall with his arms folded. Sal is sitting near the window, staring at the table as if it has personally offended her.
No one looks settled.
No one looks relaxed.
They look as if their bodies have accepted the chair before their minds have caught up.
I put the tea down in the middle of the table.
“Cuppa?” I say, because apparently I have lost access to complex language.
Kev reaches for a mug. “Babyface, that’s a point to you.”
Mish deals with milk and sugar with the weary authority of someone who does not trust the rest of us with basic civilisation. Dan mutters thanks without looking up. Rob gives me a nod. Small. Tired. But real.
Then Pippa walks in.
And the room shifts towards her. Not dramatically. No one snaps to attention. No one sits up like schoolchildren. It is subtler than that.
Attention gathering.
Weight moving.
People turning towards the person who is going to tell them where to put the night so they can keep going.
Mish sets a mug on the table beside her as Pippa reaches the front of the room.
Pippa Hart stands there with the tea untouched and her pen in her hand, because apparently even grief is expected to queue politely until she has finished being useful.
“We’ll keep this short,” she says. “Not the full report. Just what needs capturing now, and anything anyone needs to say before we try to reset.”
Reset.
That word is doing a lot of work.
“Initial response was good,” she says. “Access was poor, but Dan got us in safely. Information from the neighbour was limited, but enough to confirm the main risks. Cylinder risk identified early. Exposure to the house managed. Search carried out as soon as conditions allowed. Casualty brought out as quickly as possible once located.”
Casualty.
Not Arthur.
I understand why she says it that way.
I still hate it.
Kev looks down at his tea.
Mish twists the biscuit packet once, then stops.
Rob clears his throat. “Visibility dropped fast once we were in.”
Pippa nods. “Agreed. We’ll log that.”
“Ground was worse by the gate than it looked,” Sal says. “Mud was shifting underfoot.”
“I’ll flag access.”
“The dog wasn’t inside,” Mish says quietly. “Neighbour found him after. Under their kitchen table.”
Something moves through the room.
Small.
Painful.
The sort of relief that has nowhere decent to land.
Pippa writes it down.
Her hand is steady.
I do not know how.
“All right,” she says after a moment. “I know the outcome wasn’t what we wanted.”
No one speaks.
The rain ticks at the window. Somewhere beyond the room, the building hums and settles and waits to be needed again.
“But the work was good,” she continues. “You got him out. You managed the risks. You gave ambulance what they needed. There are things to note, and we’ll note them properly, but no one sits here replaying the whole incident as if one different thought at the wrong second changes what happened. It doesn’t.”
Her voice is calm.
Not cold.
That is what I understand suddenly.
It is not coldness.
It is control, held so tightly it looks like something else from a distance.
“If you need five minutes, take five,” she says. “If you need food, eat. If you can rest, rest. If control turns us out again, we go again, so look after yourselves enough to be safe.”
That is it.
No speech.
No forced comfort.
No pretending any of this is fine.
Just enough truth to give everyone somewhere to put the night for now.
For now.
Pippa puts the pen down.
The room does not move immediately. Then Dan stands and says, “Toast?”
Kev exhales something that is almost a laugh. “If you burn it, I’m reporting you.”
“You report me every shift.”
“And yet standards continue to fall.”
Mish reaches for the mugs. “Toast and biscuits. Elite recovery nutrition.”
People slowly leave the room and head towards the kitchen.
I watch Pippa watch that happen.
She lets the small ordinary noises come back in. The scrape of a chair. The clink of a spoon. Dan arguing mildly with the toaster before he has even put bread in it. Someone pouring milk into tea. Kev saying he wants three slices because nights like this do that to him.
She lets them find the shape of normal without pushing them towards it.
Then she picks up her untouched mug and turns towards the office.
I stand before I have decided to.
Her gaze meets mine.
For a second, the room drops away.
Not completely. Nothing that dramatic. There is still toast, and rain, and a bunch of other people trying to keep themselves functional at one in the morning.
But there is also Pippa, pale and steady and still carrying more than anyone else in the room can see.
“You should drink that,” I say.
It is ridiculous.
Of everything in me, all the useless, aching things, that is what gets out.
Pippa looks at the mug in her hand as if she has forgotten she is holding it.
Then her mouth moves.
Not a smile exactly.
Something smaller.
Something I feel anyway.
“I will.”
She does not.
She turns and walks towards the office.
I should sit down.
I should let her go.
I should remember every rule, every complication, every reason my hands are staying exactly where they are.
Instead, I watch her walk away and think, with a force that almost knocks the breath out of me, that I would give anything to take that mug from her, close the office door and hold her until she stopped being the person everyone else needed for five bloody minutes.
I do none of those things.
I sit back down.
I pick up my tea.
And when Dan sticks his head through the door and asks, “Toast, babyface?”
I look away from the office door.
“Yes, please,” I say.
“Brown or white?”
“Whatever’s easiest.”
“Dangerous answer.”
“I’m learning to live on the edge.”
I pick up my mug, because that makes it look as though I am moving for tea-related reasons, which is probably the least suspicious reason available in this building, and head towards the corridor.
Mish looks up.
Of course she does.
Her gaze is tired, but still sharp enough to pin me to the wall.
I pause.
“Tea,” I say, lifting my mug slightly.
“That’s not the kitchen.”
“No.”
She studies me for a second.
I do not know what she sees. A journalist with wet hair and a borrowed place in the room.
A man who should probably sit down and wait for toast. A person who has just watched someone die and does not know what to do with the fact that the woman who held everyone else steady is now alone behind an office door.
Mish’s eyes flick towards the corridor, then back to me.
“She won’t like fuss,” she says.
“I know.”
“She definitely won’t like pity.”
“I know that too.”
“She might tell you to piss off.”
“That would be very on brand.”
Something almost like a smile moves across her face.
Then it fades.
“She does this,” Mish says quietly. “Looks after everyone else first.”
“I noticed.”
“Don’t make it a thing.”
“I won’t.”
She holds my gaze for one more second, then looks back down at her tea.
That is not permission.
It is not exactly warning either.
It is the narrowest possible space to do the right thing, if I can manage not to make an idiot of myself.