“Can I ask you something?”
“Shoot,” he said warily. In his experience, when someone asked if they could ask you something, it wasn’t something you wanted to be asked.
“What about your brother? He’s the earl, right? But the way you speak… He doesn’t seem to be involved with this decision. And your mother—that thing the cop said about needing help with him?”
He gave a curt grunt. “My mother hates this place. And talking about my brother isn’t conducive to an escapist vibe. Sorry.”
“Oh no, don’t apologize. I shouldn’t have?—”
“It’s fine.”
He felt like a pillock for shutting her down, but nothing was guaranteed to ruin a mood quite like his family sob stories. She took a gulp of water big enough to fill her cheeks, then caught him watching her and hurriedly swallowed.
He turned and opened the pantry. As he reached for the light switch, a memory came to him. A man, wearing a mask, standing over him. He couldn’t breathe. There was a hand over his mouth.
No. Nothismouth. It wasn’t his memory. It was Amelia’s—a story she’d told him last night. About waking in the night, knowing something was wrong. He could see it playing out in front of him. A figure silhouetted at the end of her bed—black clothes, black balaclava. A hand over her mouth—a second man, leaning over her.
He pulled the chain to switch the pantry light on, and the scene dissolved. But he remembered the rest of it. How they dragged her boyfriend from their bedroom and told her they’d kill him unless she gave up her bank log-in details. What was his name—Rory? How they held her at gunpoint while they transferred every last cent she and the ex had saved for their first home. Then they left, warning her to keep her mouth shut, because they knew where to find her. She crawled through theapartment, too scared to switch on a light in case it showed something she didn’t want to see. And then her ex had called her name.
Even now, Tom could hear her voice in his head, from last night, fighting the words to get them out:That was when I fell apart. And I still don’t feel like I’m back together, not to where I was.
“Tom?” said the present Amelia, the one behind him in the kitchen. “Is something wrong?”
“The robbery,” he said, turning slowly. “You told me about the robbery. God, Amelia, I’m so sorry.”
“I did? Oh.” She looked a little lost, a little broken. He’d seen that look now and then over the last twenty-four hours, in her unguarded moments. “I don’t usually tell people. Wait, were we sitting on a sofa in a drawing room?”
“Yeah.”
“You hugged me!”
“I guess I did. I mean, I would have. I don’t quite remember that far.”
“You did. You hugged me.” Her voice cracked, as if the hug was significant. “You hugged me like there was no end point. You didn’t pull away.” She straightened. “And then you told me that statistically I was safer now than before it happened.”
“Oh God, did I?”
She pushed away her mug and folded her arms across her chest. “You said the chances of the average person being a victim of a random violent crime once in their lifetime were relatively low. But twice? Almost impossible.”
“I tried to make you feel better by quoting statistics? I’m sorry.”
“No, you had a point. Risk is relative. Safety is relative. No one is ever truly safe, at any moment, no matter where they are or what they’re doing. It’s just … we need to be able tofeelsafe,to live our lives.” She pointed at him, recalling something. “You told me about being in Iraq, as a soldier.”
“Well, there you go—that’s not somethingIusually talk about.” No wonder he’d felt so connected with her, come morning.
“About wearing body armor and driving in armored vehicles and being surrounded by a literal army of elite soldiers, and yet it was probably the least safe you’ve been in your life.” He nodded, starting to remember. “‘Probably’ being the operative word, you said. Because you’re unsafe every time you hit the … M1?’”
“The motorway, yeah.”
“You said we’re incredibly vulnerable whenever we get behind the wheel, but it’s a risk we all take so we can do the stuff we want to do or need to do. ‘Every day,’” she said, air-quoting, “‘we put our lives in the hands of hundreds of strangers, trusting that they won’t veer over the center line, or plow into the back of us. We live our entire lives seconds away from oblivion—a freak natural disaster, a bee sting, a random heart attack—a thousand and one ways to die, every minute of our lives… ’”
“Gee, I sound like fun.”
“You weren’t wrong. The human body is fragile and delicate, and we’re all broken in our own little ways, but somehow most of us manage to live our lives. Every day, we have to trust that nothing horrible will happen to us, or we’d never leave the house.”
“And you’ve lost that trust.”
“I know that the fragility of life is supposed to make us value it more, but that doesn’t stop me being scared to properly live it.” She stared out the window, the morning light leaching the tan from her face. “People are always trying to get me to ‘put things in perspective.’ But that doesn’t help me see more clearly. It just makes me feel guilty for feeling the way I do. We can rationalizeall we like, but emotions don’t have brains. Like you saying, ‘Times have changed,’ as if that should make you feel okay about losing your family home. But does it really?”
