Epilogue #2
Once with an estate agent called Martin who described the kitchen as “compact” in a voice that meant tiny and the bathroom as “full of character” in a voice that meant the tiles are a problem.
I loved it immediately.
Which is alarming.
I have not told Pippa.
Which is worse.
After dinner, the crew drift back into shift mode. Mugs are washed. Chairs scrape. Radios mutter. The evening settles into that waiting rhythm I know now, the one that still feels strange because it is never truly quiet.
Pippa walks me to the side door just after nine.
She has one eye on the station, one ear on everything, and still somehow manages to be entirely aware of me.
“I’ve left the heating on at the flat.”
“You spoil me,” I chuckle.
“A little.”
The answer is so simple and unguarded that I have to smile.
That part still gets me. The little moments when she stops pretending every kind thing she does is accidental. When she lets herself want me comfortable in her space. When she makes room and lets me see it.
I reach for her hand.
She gives it to me.
Only for a few seconds, because she is still on duty and the station is still the station, but her fingers curl around mine with no hesitation.
“I’ll call if we’re delayed,” she says.
“I’ll have breakfast ready either way.”
Her gaze softens. “I know.”
“I’ll see you in the morning,” she says, but her hand stays in mine.
I step closer.
She tips her face up, and I kiss her goodbye. Still station-appropriate. Still brief enough not to turn into a public incident. Nowhere near the way I want to kiss her after a week apart. My free hand settles at her waist for one second, and hers rests against my chest.
When we part, her eyes remain on mine.
“Stay safe,” I say.
“I will.”
Then she squeezes my hand once and turns back into the station.
I step out into the dark.
Pippa’s flat is exactly as it should be.
Quiet. Warm. Slightly cosier than mine ever manages to be. The blue sofa. The striped blanket. The books stacked by the chair. A new plant on the windowsill because I replaced the basil she finally admitted had died under suspicious circumstances.
I put the shopping bags in the kitchen, check the fridge, then spend ten minutes pretending I am not nervous by doing practical things.
I make sure there is bread.
I set the coffee ready.
I put clean towels near the bathroom radiator because she likes them warm after nights.
She admitted it last month, standing in this kitchen with damp hair, wrapped in one of those towels, looking slightly furious with herself and very pleased with me.
I have been quietly unbearable about it ever since.
I check the bedroom and change the pillowcases because we have fallen into a rhythm where she pretends this is luxurious and then sleeps better when I do it anyway.
Then I sit at her tiny kitchen table and take the property brochure out of my jacket.
The cottage looks harmless on paper.
That is how they get you.
A stone-fronted little thing with low windows, a blue-grey door and a roof that probably requires attention sooner than I would like.
The kitchen is ridiculous. The garden is not so much a garden as an outdoor question.
The second bedroom would fit a desk, bookshelves and the more optimistic part of my career.
But I can see it.
That is the dangerous thing.
I can see my laptop on the desk in the spare room.
Pippa’s boots by the back door. Her uniform drying on the rack.
My running shoes in the hall, muddy enough to make her sigh.
Amanda and Nour coming over with wine. Jamie and Samantha in the garden, complaining it is too small and then immediately finding seven ways to turn it into a battleground.
I can see Pippa coming home after nights and not having to drive anywhere.
I can see making her coffee in a kitchen too small for both of us, which means she would have to stand too close.
I can see us.
Not as a fantasy.
As a life.
That is what terrifies me.
Because for years, I thought wanting more meant looking away from wherever I was. The next byline. The next city. The next room where I might become someone impressive enough that nobody could dismiss me as noise.
But now, wanting more looks like a cottage with questionable tiles and a woman who will absolutely have opinions about where the mugs go.
At some point, I sleep.
Not much. Enough to wake stiff-necked on the sofa at six-twenty, with the property brochure on my chest and the horrible realisation that I have become the kind of man who sleeps under a striped blanket waiting for his girlfriend to come home from a night shift.
There are worse things to become.
I shower quickly, then make breakfast.
Nothing dramatic. Bacon rolls because she will deny being hungry until she smells them.
Coffee strong enough to qualify as a structural material.
A bowl of cut fruit because Amanda once told me Pippa forgets vitamins exist when she is tired, and I have retained this information with the seriousness of a man collecting intelligence.
At twenty to eight, my phone rings.
Pippa.
I answer before the second ring.
“Tell me the Fellsiders behaved themselves.”
“Mostly,” she says. Her voice is low, tired and warmer than she would probably admit. “One alarm, one drunk man who thought a wheelie bin was on fire. It wasn’t.”
I smile and turn down the heat under the bacon. “Are you on your way?”
“Leaving in ten.”
“Food will be ready.”
“I hoped it might be.”
That nearly finishes me.
Not because it is dramatic.
Because it is not.
Because once, Pippa would have told me she was not hungry, did not need anything, could sort herself out, was perfectly capable of operating a toaster. Now she lets herself come home expecting warmth. Food. Me.
“Bacon rolls,” I say.
“Good.”
“And coffee.”
“Better.”
“And fruit.”
“Ambitious.”
“Your sister says you need vitamins.”
“My sister talks too much.”
“She loves you.”
Pippa is quiet for half a second.
Then she says, “She does.”
No fight.
No deflection.
Just tired acceptance of being loved.
I lean one hand on the counter and close my eyes briefly, because this woman has no idea how effortlessly she can undo me.
“Drive carefully,” I say.
“I will. See you in a bit.”
She comes in at eight-oh-eight.
I know because I have become embarrassingly attuned to the sound of the blue door sticking, the key in the lock, the tread of her boots on the stairs. I am at the kettle when the flat door opens.
She steps inside and closes it behind her.
For a second, she just stands there.
Uniform. Tired eyes. Hair flattened slightly at one side. Shoulders held in that way she does when she has been responsible for too many hours and has not yet remembered she can put it down.
Then she sees me.
And she does put it down.
Not all at once.
Not dramatically.
But enough.
Her shoulders drop half an inch.
Her mouth softens.
“Hi,” she says.
“Hi.”
I cross the kitchen.
She meets me halfway, hands already lifting, and the kiss she gives me is nothing like the careful one at the station.
This one is tired and warm and relieved.
Her fingers curl into my sweatshirt. Mine slide around her waist. She leans into me as if the last twelve hours have been something she can finally stop carrying alone.
I kiss her slowly, because I can. Because she is home. Because she tastes like coffee from the station and night air and Pippa.
When she pulls back, her forehead stays against mine.
“Missed you,” she says.
It is soft. Almost sleepy.
“I missed you too.”
She lets me hold her there for a while.
Eventually, I press a kiss to her temple.
“Food,” I say.
“Then bed.”
“Then bed.”
She smiles faintly. “You’re learning.”
“I have an excellent teacher.”
“She sounds terrifying.”
“She is. I’m very fond of her.”
We eat at the little kitchen table, knees brushing because the table is too small and because neither of us moves to fix it. She gets through one bacon roll, half the fruit and two coffees before she begins to look more human and less like a woman being powered by duty and spite.
I wait.
This is something I have learned with Pippa. Sometimes care is doing. Sometimes care is not pushing. Sometimes care is letting her eat in silence until she remembers she is allowed to be a person before she has to be a conversation.
Eventually, she looks at me over the rim of her mug.
“You’ve got something on your mind.”
“Yes.”
Her gaze moves to the brochure lying on the sideboard where I moved it while cooking.
“Is it that?”
“Yes.”
She sets down her mug and turns towards it, not wary exactly. Attentive.
“What is it?”
I stand and pick up the brochure, then sit back down and place it on the table between us.
“A cottage,” she says.
“Yes.”
Her eyes flick to mine.
“In Fellside?”
“Yes.”
For a moment, she says nothing.
“I viewed it this week,” I say. “Twice.”
She looks down at the brochure, but does not open it yet.
“You found a place.”
“I did.”
“And you liked it.”
“I loved it.”
Her face softens at that. Not much. Enough.
“AJ.”
“I know it’s soon,” I say. “And I know it’s a big conversation. I’m not asking for an answer this morning. I’m not even asking for a decision. I just need to tell you what I’m thinking before I talk myself into pretending I’m being sensible by not saying it.”
She nods slowly.
“All right.”
Two simple words.
I rest my hand beside the brochure. “You know that Marie Louise wants me doing more human interest features. This means I can work from home half the week now. Some weeks more.”
“Yeah, that was a good call from her,” she says gently. “You sound different when you talk about those pieces.”
“I feel different.”
She looks at me then.