Chapter 15 #2
“Trying to freeze yourself awake?” Pippa asks.
I turn.
She is standing in the doorway with a jacket hooked over one arm and two mugs carefully balanced in her hands.
For a second, I cannot think of anything clever to say.
This is becoming a problem.
She crosses the yard and holds out the jacket.
“Put this on.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re in a sweatshirt in the middle of the night in a wet yard.”
“I was aiming for tough love.”
“Waking up is fine. Hypothermia is inconvenient.”
“Inconvenient?”
“Paperwork.”
“Of course.”
I take the jacket because I am not stupid, despite some evidence to the contrary. It is warm from inside and smells faintly of station laundry and smoke that has soaked into the fabric over years rather than hours.
She hands me the mug too.
“Tea.”
“You brought me tea?”
“Don’t make it sound like a declaration.”
“I wouldn’t dare.”
Her mouth curves. “Drink it.”
I obey.
The tea is strong, hot and sweet enough to make my teeth reconsider their life choices.
I cough once. “That is aggressive.”
“You looked like you needed aggressive tea.”
“I was unprepared.”
“You often are.”
“And yet I keep turning up.”
She looks at me over the rim of her own mug. “Yes. You do.”
The words should be nothing.
They are not nothing.
We stand side by side under the station lights, close enough that the sleeve of the jacket brushes her arm when I shift.
“Board games were a good idea,” she says.
I glance at her. “Don’t sound so surprised. I’m known for good ideas.”
“Don’t get carried away.”
“Too late. I’m emotionally dependent on your approval now.”
She gives me a look. “That sounds exhausting.”
“You have no idea.”
Something flickers in her expression.
Not amusement this time.
Something quieter.
“Maybe I do,” she says.
I do not answer immediately.
The words hang there between us, turning the air less playful by degrees.
She looks away first, out towards the dark edge of the yard.
I take another sip of tea, mostly to give my hands something to do.
“Last night,” I say, then stop.
Her shoulders tighten.
Not much.
Enough.
“I’m not going to talk about it if you don’t want to.”
She nods once.
The pause stretches.
Then she says, “Thank you.”
“For not talking?”
“For that too.”
I look at the wet tarmac.
“You really don’t have to keep thanking me.”
“I'm aware but we’ve already established I’m doing it anyway.”
“Right.”
“I meant what I said earlier.”
“That you’re somewhere between actual all right and professionally acceptable all right?”
“That too.” She turns the mug in her hands. “But mainly thank you for not making it worse.”
“That’s a low bar.”
“You’d be surprised how many people can’t clear it.”
“I didn’t know what to do,” I admit.
“You did fine.”
“I mostly stood there.”
“No. You let me be.”
I look at her then.
She is still staring out into the yard, jaw set, profile lit by the station lights.
Clean-shaven has made my own face feel too exposed for days.
Looking at her now, I wonder if this is what exposure really is.
Not skin. Not softness. The choice not to hide a true thing once it has already been seen.
“That didn’t feel like enough,” I say.
“It was.”
The simplicity of it stops me.
I do not know what to do with enough when it comes from her.
So I drink more terrifying tea.
She notices.
“Too sweet?”
“It’s medicinal.”
“It’s not that bad.”
“It may revive the dead.”
Her face changes.
I realise what I have said a second too late.
“Pippa—”
“It’s fine.”
“No, that was—”
“It’s fine,” she says again, and this time she looks at me. “I know what you meant.”
Still, I feel like an idiot.
A tired idiot with a borrowed jacket and tea that could strip paint.
“I’m sorry.”
“I gathered.”
She bumps my arm with hers.
Lightly.
It is the smallest possible contact.
It still rearranges my entire nervous system.
“Stop looking like I’m going to throw you into a hedge,” she says.
“Would you?”
“Depends how the night goes.”
“Fair.”
Her eyes narrow.
“What?”
“You say that when you’re trying not to argue.”
“I say it because I’m reasonable.”
“No, you say it because you’re storing up a point for later.”
I stare at her. “That is disturbingly accurate.”
“I observe too.”
“Yes, but when you do it, it feels threatening.”
“Good.”
There is the banter.
There is the easy edge of it.
But it no longer hides everything.
Maybe it never did.
She takes a sip of her tea. “Why do you do that?”
“Say fair?”
“No.” She looks at me. “Store up points.”
I lean back against the wall, jacket warm around my shoulders, mug hot between my palms.
“That is a bigger question than it sounds like.”
“You don’t have to answer,” she says after a moment.
That almost makes me laugh.
“I know,” I say.
She nods, as if that settles it.
“I think I got used to feeling like I had to be ready,” I say.
“For what?”
“To prove I belonged in the room. Or that I should be in a better one. Or that I wasn’t just making noise.”
She is quiet.
“My brother has always been impressive,” I say. “Not in an awful way. That would have been easier. He is kind. Supportive. Sensible in a way that makes you want to play a trick on him just to see him lose it.”
Pippa’s mouth curves. “Must be inconvenient.”
“Deeply. If he were a smug bastard, I could resent him cleanly.”
“But he isn’t?”
“No. He’s brilliant and decent, which is frankly selfish of him.”
Her smile lingers for half a second longer than usual.
I look down at the mug because saying this while looking at her feels increasingly like setting fire to my own dignity.
“He got the good marks, the good universities, the serious career. He walks into rooms where everyone already understands why he should be there.”
“And you don’t?”
“I can. Sometimes.” I turn the mug between my hands. “But I’m good in a different way. I’m good with words. Good at energy. Good at walking into a room and making people listen before they’ve decided whether they want to.”
“Useful skills.”
“Yes.”
“But?”
“But they can look like noise if I’m not careful.” I pause. “And sometimes even when I am.”
Pippa studies me.
There is no pity in her face.
No automatic reassurance either.
Just attention, which is becoming one of the more dangerous things about her.
“So you store up points,” she says.
“Yes.”
“For later.”
“For proof.”
“Proof of what?”
“That I’m not wasting everyone’s time.” I huff out a short laugh. “That I’m not just the entertaining one. The fast one.”
Her expression shifts, but she does not interrupt.
“That’s why I want to work for a London newspaper,” I say. “Or wanted it. Want it. I don’t know. National desk. Bigger rooms. Bigger byline. Something that says I’m not just a local reporter writing good pieces about bad things happening to other people.”
The words taste unpleasant the moment they leave me.
“And is that how you see it?” she asks. “What you do?”
“No.”
“Sometimes?”
I breathe out.
The cold turns it visible for a second before the night takes it.
“Sometimes,” I admit. “When I’m being honest and not trying to make myself sound better.”
She nods slowly.
Not approving.
Not condemning.
Just taking it in.
“The farm fire piece,” I say. “It was good. Technically. I knew it had a hook. I knew people would read it and think I’d found something others had missed.”
“And you liked that.”
“Yes.”
The word comes out rougher than I expect.
“I liked that.”
There it is.
The ugly little truth.
Not the whole truth. Not even the largest one, maybe. But one of them.
Pippa turns towards me fully now, shoulder against the wall.
“And now?”
“I keep thinking about what the article should be. Not the redemption tour of Anthony John Hodgson.”
“That title needs work.”
“Definitely too many syllables.”
“Very pompous.”
“Cruel but accurate.”
Her mouth curves again.
Small.
Real.
I cling to it more than is sensible.
“I think,” I say slowly, “I want to write about what people don’t see.
Not the flames. Not the big dramatic photograph.
The waiting. The checking. The tea. The way everyone knows when to talk and when not to.
The fact that getting someone out is not always the same as saving them, and people still have to get ready for the next call. ”
Pippa looks away.
For a moment, I think I have said too much.
Then she says, “That would be worth writing.”
The words hit me with embarrassing force.
I have had editors praise my copy. Readers comment. Colleagues tell me something was strong, sharp, well timed.
None of it has felt like this.
“Thank you,” I say.
She shrugs. “Don’t make me regret it.”
“I’ll do my best.”
“I know.”
The way she says it is quiet.
Certain.
It makes me want to be the sort of man she thinks might manage it.