Chapter thirty-eight
Freya
The children fall asleep in stages. First the shouting stops, which is a relief for everyone within a fifty mile radius.
Then the whispering fades into the occasional giggle, followed by the thin beam of torches flicking across the inside of tents like trapped fireflies until even those go dark one by one.
It is a strange thing, the quiet of sleeping children in the countryside.
At school the silence is sharp and contained, but here it feels softer somehow, the canvas tents breathing gently in the cool air, the forest beyond the clearing still swaying in the breeze.
By the time the final teacher finishes the last headcount, the fire has burned down to a low circle of embers.
Someone reminds us to keep an eye on it before drifting off toward the tents, shoulders hunched against the cold, boots crunching softly through the grass.
“Night.”
“Night.”
The clearing empties gradually, adults peeling away in pairs or small groups, voices dropping to quiet murmurs as they disappear into the dark.
I stay where I am. Partly because the fire still needs watching.
Mostly because moving would mean admitting that I am suddenly aware of the fact that Rory is still here too.
He’s standing a few feet away from the fire pit, hands wrapped around a metal mug, staring down into the glowing coals like they’re telling him something important.
The flames are gone now, replaced by that steady red glow that pulses gently when the wind moves through the clearing.
I rub my hands together and pull the thick blanket a little tighter around my shoulders.
It was handed to me earlier by one of the instructors who clearly took pity on the way I was shivering, and it smells faintly of smoke, laundry powder and damp grass.
“You’re still up,” Rory says after a moment, his voice quieter than it was earlier, like the night has softened it.
“So are you.”
He shrugs slightly. “Fire duty.”
“Very noble.”
“I’m basically the hero of this trip.”
I breathe a quiet laugh and shift on the wooden bench so the warmth from the embers reaches my legs.
The clearing feels different now the children are asleep.
The big oak tree that towered over their games earlier is just a dark silhouette against the sky.
The tents are small mounds of canvas scattered across the grass; their shapes barely visible in the starlight.
And above us the sky is enormous. I tilt my head back instinctively.
“God,” I say softly. “You can actually see the stars here.”
Rory glances up.
They’re everywhere. Tiny sharp pinpricks of light scattered across the sky in a way you never see back home where the streetlamps and houses wash everything out.
He lets out a quiet breath. “Yeah.”
The fire shifts with a small crack as one of the logs collapses inward. Rory crouches beside the pit and nudges the embers with a stick, pulling them together so the heat concentrates again. The movement sends a brief flare of orange light up through the ash.
“You cold?” he asks.
“A bit.”
He studies me for a second before sitting down on the bench beside mine. Not touching. But close enough that I can feel the heat from him through the blanket.
“Blanket helping?” he asks.
“Yes.”
“Good.”
For a while neither of us says anything.
The night has its own soundtrack. The soft rustle of wind through the trees.
The distant call of something in the forest that I choose not to identify.
The slow breathing of sleeping children beyond the firelight.
It feels oddly peaceful. Then Rory says something that pulls me straight back through time.
“Remember the woods behind Mrs Carters house?”
I turn to look at him. “Oh my god.”
He smiles slightly, still watching the embers.
“We used to build those ridiculous dens.”
“With the blue tarpaulin your dad gave us.”
“And the rope that absolutely wasn’t strong enough.”
I laugh softly. “And the biscuits.”
“Always biscuits.”
“Your mum packed those chocolate digestives.”
“And you ate half of them before we even started building.”
“That is slander.”
“That is fact.”
I shake my head, smiling. “I’d completely forgotten about that place.” I lie.
“Me too,” he says quietly. He’s definitely lying too.
I look around the clearing again. The trees. The fire. The quiet circle of darkness beyond the glow.
“It feels a bit like that,” I say.
“What?”
“The woods.”
He follows my gaze slowly, taking in the field and the forest beyond it. “Yeah,” he says eventually. “It does.”
Something about the way he says it settles somewhere deep in my chest. I tuck my chin into the blanket.
“Life was simpler then.” I sigh.
He huffs softly. “That’s one way of putting it.”
“No responsibilities.”
“No school trips where you’re responsible for thirty children with knives.”
“Supervised knives,” I correct.
“Obviously.”
The fire crackles softly between us. Then, after a moment, Rory says something quieter. “I miss parts of it.”
I glance at him. “The woods?”
“Just… that version of things. Of life.” His voice is casual but there’s something underneath it that isn’t. “Before everything got complicated.” The word hangs there. Complicated. He rubs a hand over the back of his neck like he’s just realised he said it out loud. “I didn’t mean…”
“I know what you meant,” I say gently.
The embers shift again, glowing brighter for a moment.
“When we were kids,” he continues slowly, “you were just there. I didn’t have to think about anything. We’d just end up in the same place after school.”
I can picture it clearly now. Mud on our shoes. The smell of leaves and damp wood. The ridiculous pride we took in building something barely held together by rope and optimism.
“No expectations,” I say. “No pressure. No history.”
The last word slips out before I can stop it. Rory glances at me briefly. But he doesn’t disagree.
“I liked that,” he says eventually.
“So did I.”
I pull my feet up onto the bench and tuck them underneath me, cocooning myself in the blanket. The cold brushes my face but the fire is still warm enough to make it bearable.
“Do you ever wish you could go back?” I ask quietly.
He thinks about it for a moment. Then he shakes his head. “No.”
“Why not?”
“Because I wouldn’t have Isla.”
The answer is immediate. Certain.
“That’s a good reason,” I say softly.
“And you wouldn’t have Theo.”
“Also a very good reason.”
The quiet stretches between us again. But it isn’t uncomfortable. If anything it feels easier than most of the conversations we’ve had lately. After a moment Rory leans back slightly, resting his arms along the back of the bench.
“You’re not doing the sarcasm thing tonight,” he says.
“What sarcasm thing?”
“The one where you deflect everything with a joke.”
I consider that. “Maybe I’m tired.”
“Maybe.”
I watch the embers glow and fade. “Or maybe I’m just not fighting it tonight.”
“Fighting what?”
“The fact that this is nice.”
The words sit there between us. Rory doesn’t respond straight away. But the air shifts and feels instantly softer.
“Yeah,” he says eventually. “It is.”
The blanket slips slightly off my shoulder and before I can adjust it he reaches out and pulls the edge back up. His fingers brush the fabric near my collarbone. He doesn’t touch my skin but he’s close enough that I feel the warmth of him anyway.
“Don’t freeze,” he says.
“I’ll try not to.”
We sit there a little longer, the fire slowly collapsing inward, the sky growing darker and deeper above us. Nothing happens. Just two people who have known each other most of their lives, sitting beside a dying fire while the world sleeps around them.
Eventually Rory stands and nudges the last of the embers together with the toe of his boot. “I should probably make sure this is safe before we go in.”
“Responsible.”
“I’m full of surprises.”
He scatters a little dirt over the edges of the fire pit before turning back toward me. “Night, Frey.”
“Night, Rory.”
He hesitates for a second like he might say something else.
Then he doesn’t. And I stay where I am for a moment longer, wrapped in the blanket, watching the final glow of the fire fade slowly into the dark.
Nothing happened. But the quiet humming feeling in my chest tells me something shifted anyway.