Chapter Twenty-Seven
The baby bottle warming system that Diwa had purchased had six settings, a digital display, and a steam circulation feature that he was explaining as if he thought Lysander had at some point acquired a physics doctorate to go with Ryland’s.
“It pasteurises at the optimal—”
“It’s not a kettle.” Diwa held up a finger without turning around. “A kettle boils. This circulates steam at a controlled temperature to preserve the immunological profile of the donor milk.”
Diwa set Tala’s bottle into its slot, pressed two buttons in sequence, and watched the digital display climb.
The milk arrived weekly in insulated packaging via a volunteer on a motorbike, courtesy of a milk bank to which Diwa had made a donation so large that they’d named the industrial freezer they’d bought from the funds after Tala.
Diwa had been sent a photo of the sign stuck onto the freezer door with a magnet shaped like a star.
It was finger-painted by a former beneficiary of the bank, now four.
From upstairs, the thin, drilling cry of a newborn cut through the floorboards. Diwa glanced at the ceiling, then at the warming system’s display, running the maths on which would peak first: the milk temperature or Tala’s fury.
“She’s got lungs,” Lysander offered.
“Proper Huxley lungs.” Diwa pulled the bottle from its slot and tested a drop on the inside of his wrist.
Lysander waved him off and returned to his notebook. The pages were a mess of arrows, circled phrases and margin notes so dense they’d started colonising the gutters, all radiating outward from a central statement he’d underlined three times: THERE IS NO “JUST” ONLINE ANYMORE.
The podcast didn’t have a name yet. It had seven pages of mind-mapping taped together across the studio desk downstairs, a folder of test recordings backing up on Diwa’s rig, and Meredith Walton’s attention.
Hamish had made the introduction weeks ago, and Meredith had turned out to be exactly as terrifying as advertised.
Her first voice note had opened with “You’ve had millions of people paying to watch you come, which is entirely different from getting them to listen to you finish a thought, so let’s find out if there’s a show in you or just a following,” and closed with an offer to walk him through distribution, hosting platforms, and the specific hell of RSS feeds whenever he was ready.
He wasn’t ready. He was closer than he’d been a week ago, though.
Nine takes of his own story sat on the hard drive in Diwa’s studio, each one a fractionally better version of the same ugly facts.
His voice was still higher and thinner than he’d like on playback, but by the ninth take it didn’t matter; the story had found its shape.
His calls with Hamish had become the scaffolding of his evenings.
Lysander would finish a shift with Colin, retreat to the studio, and ring Hamish as he sprawled across the leather seat.
They’d talk for hours about structure and format, then eventually, the podcast talk would thin out and they’d just chat.
Hamish’s film on the Family of Light had already been doing well even before the assault, drawing a steady viewership and critical praise.
Then the news coverage over Uriel’s attack had detonated the figures overnight.
The inquiry into the Family of Light, announced two weeks later, had kept them climbing, and now the BBC had picked it up for a prime-time slot.
“Hamish and Cassian are coming over soon,” Lysander said, as Diwa bent to retrieve a tiny yellow sock with frilly edges from under the island.
Diwa set the bottle in the sink. “Can’t wait! Colin’s been wanting to meet them both for ages.”
“I’ll sort hotel bookings this week, then. Find somewhere nearby so they’re not in the way.”
Diwa turned around like Lysander had just insulted him. “This house has five bedrooms, Lysander. You’re family. My own mother would give me up as hopelessly westernised if I let you stay in a hotel. Colin, Tala and I want you here.”
“You sure?” Lysander asked.
Diwa laughed. “Lysander, I cannot wait to see Cassian and Ryland in the same room,” he said, as they moved towards the stairs together.
? ? ?
Colin had been awake for forty minutes, which was enough time for him to have insulted the tea, rejected the toast, and started a territorial dispute over the positioning of his daughter.
“You’ve got her shirt bunched up at the back,” Colin said, from the fortress of pillows that Diwa had propped him up on. “Pull it down. She’ll be cold, Sander.”
“She’s not cold. She’s radiating heat like a furnace. I think she might actually be solar-powered.”
“Pull it down.”
Lysander pulled his little sister’s shirt down. She lay in the crook of his arm with her legs drawn up and her mouth working in a slow, absent rhythm.
“And this is why Tala’s my favourite child,” Colin muttered. “She does as she’s told.”
“She’s eleven days old, Daddy. Give her time.”
Colin watched them from across the pillow.
His face was thinner than it had been even a week ago, the bones of his jaw and his cheekbones pressing closer to the surface, and the shadows beneath his eyes had deepened into bruises that no amount of sleep touched.
His hands lay on top of the duvet, pale and still, his veins showing blue-green through skin stretched too thin.
He was just out of hospital, and what remained of him was a version of Colin that ran at a fraction of the wattage Lysander was used to.
His father slept fourteen hours a day. He ate when Diwa brought food and stopped eating when the effort of chewing outstripped his interest in the meal.
He could get as far as the en suite with Diwa’s arm around his waist, but that journey left him breathless enough that he needed to sit on the closed lid of the toilet for five minutes before he could stand long enough to pee.
But at least his edge was still there. He was too tired to sit up without pillows propping him in place, but he could still find the energy to nag Lysander about the way he held his sister.
“Took you long enough to get our girl her feed,” Colin grumbled at Diwa as he approached. “What were you doing down there, Diwa? Have you set up your own screening lab in the kitchen?”
“No.” Diwa crossed to the bed, the bottle held upright in one hand. “The warming system takes a few minutes. It’s designed to avoid hot spots in the milk like a microwave would leave.”
Colin’s eyes narrowed. “The warming system.”
“I got us a medical-grade bottle warmer. It uses steam circulation.”
“I microwaved all of my twins’ milk, and they turned out fine.”
“Did we, though?” Lysander asked. “I did end up doing porn for a living.”
Colin hit him on the arm without tearing his glare away from Diwa.
Lysander shifted Tala across, settling her into the hollow between Colin’s arm and his ribcage. Colin’s hand came up to cradle her head.
His irritability fell away, and his voice rose into the high, musical register that Lysander remembered from his own childhood.
“Hello, my gorgeous girl,” Colin murmured, his thumb stroking the curve of Tala’s ear. “Hello, my little star. Are you hungry? Are you? Daddy’s got you.”
Tala blinked up at him.
“She looks just like you did,” Colin told Lysander, his eyes never leaving her. “You and Stevie. Same nose. Same cross little mouth. But with Diwa’s hair and his chin, I think. It’s a good chin.”
Diwa held out the bottle. Colin took it, adjusted his grip so that the teat angled towards Tala’s mouth, and waited for her to latch.
She rooted twice, her head turning left and then right, her mouth opening in a wide, searching gape that found the teat on the third pass. Her lips closed around it, and her jaw began to work.
“There she is,” Colin said, watching her drink. “There’s my girl.”
Diwa took a half-step closer. “Do you want me to —”
“No.”
“I can hold the bottle for you —”
“I said no, Diwa.” Colin’s jaw set, and the softness vanished. “I’ve fed babies before. Leave me to it.”
Diwa chose the chair by the side of the bed, giving Colin the space he’d demanded, even as he stayed close enough to swoop in the second Colin needed him.
For a minute, it was perfect. Tala drank steadily, her throat working in small, rhythmic swallows, her fist pressed against the bottle’s side. Colin’s mouth moved in a running commentary.
“Your alpha daddy’s an absolute soft touch, and you’ll figure that out right quick,” Colin said, his mouth close to Tala’s temple.
“So I’m going to have to be the bad cop.
That’s all right. I’ve had practice. I’ll be the one who makes you eat your vegetables and do your homework.
You’ll stomp off to your room, slam the door and tell me I’m ruining your life, like your big brother Lysander used to.
” His voice had dropped to barely a whisper, each word said into her hair like a shared secret.
“But until then, and even when you’re older and at your stroppiest with me, you are my absolute darling, Tala. My little star.”
Then the bottle tipped. Colin’s wrist dropped, and the teat slipped sideways out of Tala’s mouth. She lost the latch and made a sound of outrage, her fists flying up, her face crumpling into red, compressed fury.
His hand was shaking. The tremor ran to his fingertips, keeping him from holding the bottle still.
Colin gripped harder, his knuckles whitening around the plastic, and for a moment he held the angle.
Then his forearm gave way and the teat slid free again, trailing a thin line of milk across Tala’s chin.
She wailed. The sound split the quiet of the bedroom, thin and reedy, her legs kicking against the blanket while her mouth gaped open and searched for the teat.
Diwa leaned forward from his chair, slid his hand under Colin’s trembling grip, and bore the bottle’s weight without moving Colin’s fingers from it. His other hand lifted Tala, tilting her head until she latched on.