Chapter 15
AJ
Iarrive at the station with a bag full of board games and the unsettling feeling that I am bringing party supplies to a building that looked death in the face and made toast afterwards less than twenty-four hours ago.
It is not my most confident plan.
In the shop, it had made sense.
The little place in the town centre seems to sell everything.
Milk, batteries, birthday candles, wool, plasters, postcards, dog treats, three different kinds of jam and, apparently, a surprisingly aggressive selection of board games stacked between local walking maps and a display of novelty socks.
I went in for coffee and came out with Monopoly, Scrabble, Cluedo, a battered-looking pack of cards and something called Herd Mentality because the woman behind the counter told me it was “good for people who like arguing but don’t want to admit it. ”
Which, frankly, sounded station-appropriate.
Now I am standing outside the fire station at quarter to seven with a tote bag digging into my shoulder, wondering whether this is thoughtful or deeply weird.
The doors are open.
Inside, the building glows warm against the dark. It has stopped raining, finally, but the yard still shines with yesterday’s weather. The air smells cold and wet and faintly metallic, like the night has been rinsed and left out to dry.
I step into the bay.
Kev is already there, leaning against the side of the appliance with a mug in his hand. “Please tell me that’s snacks.”
“It’s board games.”
He stares at me.
I stare back.
“Right,” he says. “Could have been snacks.”
“I brought intellectual enrichment.”
“That sounds like a hate crime.”
Mish appears behind him, tying her hair back. “What sort of board games?”
“Monopoly, Scrabble, Cluedo, cards and something with a cow on the box.”
Her eyes narrow. “Monopoly is banned.”
“It is?”
“Kev gets emotional.”
“I do not get emotional,” Kev says.
“You tried to mortgage everything, accused Dan of economic cruelty and didn’t speak to Josh for half an hour.”
“Josh knew what it did.”
I look between them. “So… no Monopoly?”
“Hard no,” Mish says.
The knot in my chest loosens a fraction.
Not gone.
Not even close.
But looser.
I put the bag down near the kitchen door and see Pippa through the glass panel of the office, speaking to Rob with a clipboard in one hand. She is in uniform, hair neat, face composed. She looks exactly like she did last night before the call-out.
No.
That is not true.
She looks like herself.
Which means I know now that exactly like herself can contain a thousand things I did not used to see.
She glances up.
Our eyes meet through the glass.
There is no dramatic pause. No music. No sudden loss of oxygen.
There is only her looking at me for half a second longer than she would have five days ago, and me feeling it everywhere.
Rob says something. Pippa answers him, then gestures for him to go ahead. He leaves the office, nodding at me as he passes.
I walk over before I can talk myself out of it.
The office door is open.
“Evening,” I say.
“Evening.”
Her voice is normal.
That is good.
Probably.
I hover in the doorway because after last night the threshold feels more loaded than a doorway has any right to be.
“How are you?” I ask.
The question comes out quieter than I intend.
Pippa’s eyes move over my face.
For one second, I think she will give me the version for everyone else.
Fine.
Sorted.
All good.
Instead she says, “All right.”
It is still not much.
It is not nothing either.
“I’m glad,” I say.
Then, because I cannot help myself, “Actual all right or professionally acceptable all right?”
Her mouth moves.
Not quite a smile.
“Somewhere between the two.”
“I can work with that.”
“You don’t have to work with anything.”
I give a small shrug. “Maybe not.”
She looks down at the clipboard, then back at me.
There is a tiny pause.
“Thank you,” she says.
“For what?”
Her expression gives me a look I am beginning to recognise. It means do not make me spell out something we both know perfectly well.
I make myself hold still.
“For last night,” she says.
Two words.
No details.
No embroidery.
No mention of the office or her hands in my sweatshirt or the way she had cried into my shoulder as if she hated every second of needing it and needed it anyway.
My chest goes painfully tight.
“You don’t need to thank me.”
“I know.” She tilts her head. “I’m doing it anyway.”
“Then you’re welcome.”
She nods once.
Professional.
Contained.
But there is warmth under it now. A thread of it. Fine and dangerous and hard to ignore.
I lift the tote bag slightly. “I brought board games.”
That startles her.
It is worth it.
“You brought board games?”
“Yes.”
“To a fire station?”
“I panicked in the shop.”
“You panicked into board games?”
“It was either that or a tea towel with a sheep on it.”
“Difficult choice.”
“The sheep looked judgemental.”
Her mouth curves.
A real curve this time, small but unmistakable.
I feel as if I have won something ridiculous and important.
“Which games?”
“Monopoly, which I have now learned is illegal.”
“Correct.”
“Scrabble.”
“Risky.”
“Cluedo.”
“That could work.”
“Cards.”
“Safe.”
“And something called Herd Mentality, which I was assured encourages arguing.”
She looks past me towards the kitchen, where Kev is already peering into the bag with the air of a fox discovering bins.
“That might be the one.”
“I was hoping you’d say that.”
Her gaze comes back to me.
There it is again.
That small shift in the air.
I should move.
I do not.
“Are you all right?” she asks.
It catches me off guard.
“I’m fine.”
Her eyebrows lift.
I deserve that.
I sigh. “Somewhere between actual fine and professionally acceptable fine.”
“Good answer.”
“I learned from a terrifying woman.”
“Smart man.”
I absolutely should not enjoy that as much as I do.
The first half of the shift stays quiet.
Not easy.
Quiet is not the same as easy, which is one of the things I am beginning to understand. Quiet after a night like last night is its own strange thing. A held breath. A room waiting to see whether the world is going to ask for more.
But no alarm comes.
So the board games come out.
Herd Mentality takes over the main table first. Kev, Mish, Rob, Sal and Pippa sit around it with the sort of grim competitive focus usually reserved for televised trials and family Christmases.
I do not know the rules at the start, but apparently the aim is to think like everyone else, which makes it a fascinating failure for several people in the room.
“Name something you’d find in a shed,” Mish reads.
“Lawnmower,” Dan says from the next table without looking up from his cards.
“You’re not playing,” Kev says.
“I’m contributing culturally.”
Everyone writes.
Cards are turned.
Lawnmower. Tools. Paint. Tools. Lawnmower. One horrifying answer from Kev that makes Pippa stare at him for a full five seconds.
“What?” he says.
“A kayak?”
“I have a large shed.”
“That is not a defence,” Mish says.
At the smaller table, Dan, Lewis and two others play cards with a seriousness that suggests money may once have been involved and friendships may have suffered. Scrabble is opened, inspected and abandoned when Sal says she is too tired for vowels with consequences.
Cluedo lasts twenty minutes before Rob accuses everyone of withholding evidence.
“It’s the game,” I say.
“It’s suspicious.”
“You’re supposed to be suspicious.”
“I don’t like the structure.”
“This from a man who works in emergency services.”
“Exactly. We share information.”
Pippa is laughing.
Not much.
Not loudly.
But enough.
Enough that I look at her and forget, briefly, that I am holding a tiny cow token in a game I do not fully understand.
She catches me looking.
Her smile does not disappear.
It changes.
Softens at the edges.
Then Kev says, “AJ, stop staring into the middle distance and answer. Name something people pretend they understand.”
“Pension statements,” I say.
Everyone groans.
Pippa looks at me. “That is disturbingly accurate.”
“Thank you.”
“I didn’t say it was praise.”
“I heard praise.”
“You hear what you want.”
“Not always.”
The words come out lower than I mean them to.
Her eyes stay on mine for one second.
Two.
Then Mish says, “I’m writing parking restrictions.”
“Also valid,” Pippa says, and looks away.
But she is smiling when she does.
By half past eleven, the games begin to dissolve.
Not dramatically. The way things do on night shift, apparently.
Someone yawns. Someone stretches. Someone says they are going to close their eyes for twenty minutes and is immediately called a liar because no one closes their eyes for twenty minutes.
Dan and Lewis drift towards the rest room.
Sal claims one end of the sofa. Rob and Kev argue over what film to put on, eventually settling on something with explosions because Kev says subtlety is for daylight.
I try to watch.
I do.
The film starts with a car chase, a man jumping through a window and enough noise to keep any ordinary person awake.
I nearly fall asleep during the second explosion.
Night shift is not just staying up late. I had known that in theory. In practice, my body is baffled and offended. It does not understand why we ate toast, played board games and are now expected to exist through the dark as if this is normal human behaviour.
I stand quietly and take my mug to the kitchen.
It is empty.
I consider making more tea, but the thought of boiling a kettle feels like a commitment I am not emotionally prepared for. Instead, I step outside into the yard.
The cold hits me straight in the face.
Fuck, yes.
That is the point.
I breathe it in and let it scrape some of the tiredness off the inside of my skull.
The rain has stopped, but everything is still wet.
The tarmac glistens under the lights. Somewhere beyond the station, Fellside is quiet in the particular way small villages are quiet at night, with darkness pressed up against every lit window.
I walk a few steps away from the door and look up.
No stars.
Just cloud, low and heavy.
Typical.
I hear the door open behind me.