Chapter 20
Mark
By the time I get Heath into the car, he has already rejected the travel cage, the emergency cardboard tube, and one perfectly good sock.
The sock was desperation, not strategy.
He is currently asleep in the breast pocket of my shirt.
This is not how hamsters are meant to travel.
I know that.
I have Googled enough in the last month to qualify for an informal qualification in rodent anxiety management. Every sensible source says travel cages, bedding that smells familiar, quiet environment, minimal disturbance.
None of them mention putting the hamster in your shirt pocket like he’s a Victorian watch.
But Heath likes the pocket.
More accurately, Heath likes being close to my chest, wedged into warm fabric, occasionally twitching his whiskers against me as if I exist solely to provide regulated body heat and transport.
Which, apparently, I now do.
He has not shit himself once.
That feels like success.
Possibly my standards have shifted.
I pull out of London just after six on Friday evening, because I am an optimist and an idiot. Traffic moves in fits and starts, brake lights stretching ahead of me in a red line of collective regret.
At a standstill near the Blackwall Tunnel, I glance down.
Heath stares up at me.
“Don’t start,” I tell him.
He blinks, then tucks himself lower.
Good talk.
It is stupid how calm he is.
The first time Philip brought him to Whitstable, Heath arrived in a state of full biological protest. Cage ruined. Tiny nervous system in pieces.
Now the same hamster is asleep against my heartbeat like this is routine.
Like I am routine.
The thought sits there longer than I want it to.
I look back at the road.
Whitstable is only meant to be a weekend.
A check on the house. Some sea air. Time away from London and the office and the parts of my life that have started feeling too full of things I’m not saying.
That’s what I told myself.
Not that I wanted to come back because I have been thinking about the place too much.
Not that every room in that house still carries Philip in it.
Not that I want to know whether it feels different now.
Worse.
Better.
Anything.
Heath shifts in my pocket.
“Yeah,” I mutter. “I know.”
The M2 finally opens up.
By the time I reach Whitstable, the light has gone soft and low, the sky brushed pink over the rooftops. The sea is hidden from the road, but I smell it before I see it. Salt, damp, fish and chips, warm tarmac cooling after the day.
The house is quiet when I unlock the door.
Too quiet.
Not in the usual way.
In the way it was after Philip left.
I stand in the hallway with my overnight bag in one hand and a hamster in my shirt pocket, and for a second, I don’t move.
Then Heath pokes his nose out, looks around, and yawns.
Actually yawns.
Tiny pink mouth.
“Look at you,” I murmur. “World traveller.”
He ignores the praise and burrows back into my pocket.
I carry the bags through to the kitchen.
Same pale wood. Same glass looking out towards the darkening garden. Same line of sea beyond, barely visible now except for the faint gleam where the last light catches it.
I set Heath’s cage on the island and get everything arranged. Fresh bedding. Water. Food. The blue beanie in the corner, because this is his legal residence now.
When I ease him out of my pocket, he resists for one second, gripping the fabric with both front paws.
“Come on,” I say softly. “You can’t sleep in there all night.”
He releases me with obvious reluctance and lets me place him in the cage.
He sniffs.
Turns once.
Climbs straight into the beanie and disappears.
No drama.
No shaking.
No frantic dash.
Just gone.
Safe.
I stare at the small fold of wool.
Something loosens behind my ribs.
“Well,” I say. “That’s new.”
The house settles around us.
I unpack without thinking much. Clothes upstairs. Wash bag in the bathroom. Phone charger by the bed.
In the bottom of my bag, wrapped in a T-shirt, is the frame.
I take it out carefully.
Plain black. Nothing showy.
I don’t unwrap it. Not yet.
I just stand with it in my hands for a moment, then set it face down on the chest of drawers in the bedroom.
That is enough.
For now.
Downstairs, I make pasta because I don’t really care what I’ll have for dinner.
I eat at the island.
Heath rustles in the beanie.
My phone stays beside my plate.
Philip doesn’t message.
Which is fine.
Obviously.
People are allowed to have evenings.
People in Toronto are also five hours behind, probably still working, probably having actual plans with actual Canadians who know where to buy normal-priced sandwiches.
I eat another mouthful.
It tastes like cardboard.
At half nine, I take a photo of Heath’s cage because he has arranged the wood shavings into a shape that looks vaguely like modern art.
I do not send it.
At ten, I go outside and stand on the patio.
The sea is a dark, moving sound beyond the garden. The air is cool against my skin, carrying that damp edge Whitstable gets at night. Somewhere down the front, people are laughing. A seagull shrieks like it has been personally wronged.
I look towards the place where one of them nearly traumatised Heath into an early grave.
And I think of Philip saying the wellness retreat has suffered a minor predatory interruption.
My mouth curves.
Then doesn’t.
I go back inside.
The night stretches.
I sleep badly.
Not dramatically. No tossing and turning. Just broken sleep. Too aware of the house. Of the room. Of the chest of drawers with the frame turned face down on it.
At five-thirty, I give up.
Morning is barely there.
Grey light at the edges of the blinds. The kind of quiet before other people arrive and start ruining it with dogs and optimism.
I pull on joggers and a T-shirt, check Heath, and find him still awake, sitting in the beanie like a grumpy tenant waiting for maintenance.
“Morning.”
He twitches his nose.
“Good chat.”
I open the cage and offer him a seed.
He takes it, shoves it into his cheek, and climbs onto my hand without much prompting.
That still feels strange.
The trust.
I settle him against my chest while I top up his water, and he does not try to escape. Just presses into the fabric, warm and small and calm.
I should take a photo.
That is all I mean to do.
A photo for the account.
Or for Philip.
No.
For the account.
Probably.
I reach for my phone with one hand, Heath tucked against me, thumb clumsy because I’m trying not to drop either of them.
The screen lights.
Philip’s contact is still near the top from last night.
My thumb slips.
The phone starts calling.
For one frozen second I stare at it.
Then my brain catches up.
“Shit.”
I jab at the screen to end it.
Too late.
The call connects.
There is silence.
Then a rough, sleep-thick voice says, “Mark?”
Everything in me stops.
Not because of the word.
Because of how he says it.
Soft. Confused. Barely awake.
Like my name has slipped out of him before any of his defences have had time to get dressed.
I watch the world outside the kitchen window.
Grey morning. Sea beyond. Heath warm against my chest.
“Sorry,” I say. My voice comes out lower than expected. “That was an accident.”
A pause.
“What time is it?”
“Half five here.”
Another pause.
Then, more awake, “Mark.”
“I know.”
“It’s half past midnight here.”
“I know.”
“You accidentally rang me at half past midnight.”
“Yes.”
“That’s either very clumsy or very concerning.”
I huff a quiet laugh.
“Heath was involved.”
“Of course he was.”
“He’s fine,” I add quickly. “No emergency.”
“I didn’t think there was. Although with Heath, one never knows.”
I glance down.
Heath is sitting calmly against my shirt, entirely unconcerned by the havoc he continues to create.
“He’s good,” I say. “Really good.”
“Yeah?”
The softness in Philip’s voice cause my stomach to flip.
I lean against the kitchen counter.
“Yeah. He travelled in my shirt pocket. Slept most of the way.”
There is a small silence.
“In your shirt pocket.”
“Yeah.”
“You are aware he is a hamster, not a handkerchief.”
“Worked though.”
“He didn’t panic?”
“No.”
“Not once?”
“Not once.”
Philip is quiet for a second.
When he speaks again, his voice is different.
“That’s good.”
Just two words.
But I hear what sits underneath.
Relief. Fondness. Something else he probably does not want named at half past midnight.
“He feels safe with you,” he says.
I look down at Heath.
The tiny weight of him against me.
The way he doesn’t flinch when I move.
“Maybe.”
“No maybe.” Philip’s voice is still rough with sleep, but certain now. “He does.”
The kitchen feels very still.
I have to look away from the cage.
From the island.
From the space where Philip stood making breakfast, performing to vegetables, wearing my shirt like it didn’t do permanent damage to my common sense.
“You sound tired,” I say.
“I was asleep.”
“Right.”
“Not complaining.”
That makes my heart skip a beat.
I shift my grip on the phone.
“I should let you get back to it.”
“You could.”
Neither of us says anything.
There it is.
That small open space.
The kind that texting lets you avoid.
On a call, silence breathes.
I hear the faint rustle of bedding on his end. Him moving, maybe sitting up. I picture him in the dark of his Toronto flat, hair messed, face soft from sleep, one hand dragging over his eyes.
The image is not helpful.
“Where are you?” he asks.
“Whitstable.”
The word sits between us.
He does not answer immediately.
Then, “Oh.”
I close my eyes briefly.
“Came down for the weekend.”
“Right.”
“House needed checking.”
“Of course.”
We both hear the lie.
Or not lie.
The technical truth.
The house did need checking.
Philip’s voice is careful when he says, “How is it?”
The room seems to narrow around the question.
I look out through the glass doors.
Morning beginning to silver the garden.
“Quiet.”
Another pause.
“I remember that.”
“Yeah.”
The word comes out rougher than I mean it to.
Philip breathes out softly.
For a second I think he might say something else.
Something that would change the shape of the call.
Instead he says, “Has Heath forgiven the seagulls?”
I chuckle, grateful and disappointed in the same breath.
“He’s building resilience.”
“Is he?”
“No.”
Philip’s laugh comes quietly through the phone.
Sleepy.
Warm.
Close in a way he is not.
I close my eyes and let myself have it for half a second.
Just the sound.
Then he says, “I miss that house.”
It is so soft I almost don’t hear it.
But I do.
My grip tightens around the phone.
“Yeah?”
“Mm.” A pause. “It was a good house.”
Coward.
Both of us.
“The house misses you,” I say before I can stop myself.
Silence.
Heath shifts against my chest, tiny claws catching in the cotton.
Philip’s voice comes lower.
“That sounds like something you should not say to a man at half past midnight.”
“I know.”
Neither of us laughs.
I can feel the edge of it now.
The place the conversation is drifting.
The same place the messages keep circling and refusing to name.
I want to say I miss you.
It is right there.
Ridiculously simple.
Three words.
Not even difficult ones.
I have said harder things to boardrooms full of men trying to convince me I didn’t understand my own patent.
But this is Philip.
And Philip is quiet on the other end of the line, breathing carefully, like he can hear exactly what I am not saying.
“I should go,” he says.
I nod, even though he can’t see it.
“Yeah.”
“Work tomorrow.”
“It’s Saturday.”
“Emails, then. Some of us are tragic.”
“Yeah,” I say. “I know.”
A tiny pause.
Then, softer, “Send me a photo of Heath later?”
My chest pulls.
“Yeah.”
“And maybe the sea.”
“Yeah.”
“And…” He stops.
I wait.
The line hums faintly.
“And what?” I ask.
“Nothing.”
Coward, I think again.
This time softer.
This time at both of us.
“I’ll send the sea,” I say.
“Good.”
“Philip.”
“Yeah?”
I look down at Heath, at the phone, at the morning light.
“Glad you answered.”
Silence.
Then, barely above a murmur, “Me too.”
The call ends a second later.
I stand in the kitchen long after the screen goes dark.
Heath climbs from my chest back into my hand and starts sniffing for another seed, apparently unmoved by the fact that he has just nearly detonated my entire life.
“Tiny menace,” I mutter.
He takes the seed and turns away.
I make tea because coffee feels wrong for some reason.
Too loud, maybe.
Too normal.
Then I stand by the glass doors while the kettle cools behind me and watch the morning come in properly.
The house is still quiet.
But it is not the same quiet as last night.
Something has shifted.
Not enough to call it anything.
Not enough to act on.
But enough.
When I go upstairs to change, the frame is still face down on the chest of drawers.
I stop in front of it.
For a second, I think about turning it over.
Instead I touch the edge once, just lightly, then leave it where it is.
Not yet.
Downstairs, Heath is asleep in the beanie again, calm as anything.
I take the photo Philip asked for.
Heath first.
Then the sea.
And after standing there for far too long, I take one more.
Just the kitchen in morning light.
The island.
The glass.
The space where Philip once stood barefoot in my shirt, singing like the world had briefly forgotten to be complicated.
I don’t send that one.
Not yet.