He underestimated how long everything took when you were compromised. It wasn’t just getting out and about. Putting on his coat should’ve been a five-second job, but he’d ended up having to sit down to do it when he stumbled. Putting on his shoes went in a similar vein. Then he’d forgotten a key, and getting from front door to kitchen took longer than usual, especially when hiscrutches caught on the coffee table and sent a mug flying. Luckily, it was empty.
Eventually, he opened the front door to the bracing December winds and set off down the path.
At the end of the street, he rested at the bench. Two young women walked past and he knew they were checking him out – he’d seen that same look from women when he was out on a job. They saw the uniform, they knew what was underneath – strength, stamina, bravery – all the things he hoped he still had, but right now, he felt as though he wanted to dress in a costume which was no longer custom-made for him. It didn’t fit, and he hated that.
He carried on to the end of the road. He wishedMerry Christmasto passers-by, and nodded to a guy who every year put a nativity scene on his front lawn for local kids to appreciate. Who was he kidding? Gio always stopped and gawped at the nativity scene for ages – it wasn’t only for the kids. When he was four and Marco nine, they made their own nativity scene at home using a cardboard box, their Lego figures, and straw from the guinea pig hutch at the foot of the garden. He remembered it as a good Christmas, and the boys hadn’t had that many.
Gio crossed the road, walked parallel with a field and acres of countryside beyond. Every now and then, he stopped, pretended to look across and admire the Christmas lights on houses, when really he was stopping because he was pushing himself more than he should.
But nothing good ever came from sitting back and doing nothing. He had to work hard at this.
There was no other choice.
12
Bess had just come off shift. She’d finished late after a job and the paperwork it entailed. As she drove out of the airbase, the skies had taken on a rich cobalt blue and the air was crisp with a promise of the upcoming festive season.
Today had been busy – four jobs in Hilda and one in the rapid response vehicle to finish up with. But no lives had been lost so despite the exhaustion, she’d take it as a win.
Inside her bag, her phone bleeped. It would be her mum. Again. Since the day Bess had fled after overhearing her mum and Malcolm talking, she had come up with every excuse in the book to avoid seeing her mother – extra shifts at work, a Christmas party, a seasonal dinner with friends, a head cold, going to a Christmas light display. Because the truth was, she was embarrassed: embarrassed at having to ask for money, that Malcolm knew, and mortified at what her dad would say if he was here to see the mess she’d got herself into. Bess had used the £500 from her mum to cover a credit card payment and a payday loan repayment but as soon as one thing was dealt with, it seemed another appeared in its place, leaving her no closer toclimbing out of the quagmire. Her debts continued to loom over her like the huge, threatening, black clouds that sometimes prevented The Skylarks from getting airborne to save lives.
As she drove away from the airbase, she wondered what Malcolm thought of her. Did he think she was a sponger? An adult acting like a kid when the chips were down? She didn’t usually pay much attention to what other people thought of her personal life; she was forever telling others to do the same, that their personal life was their business and nobody else’s. But in this situation, she was finding it nigh on impossible to take her own advice.
She stopped at theStopsign before signalling and turning right. She approached the next junction but slowed as a person on crutches tried to cross to the other side the best they could. Which wasn’t exactly quick.
When she saw the man’s profile illuminated by a nearby house bedecked in what had to be hundreds if not thousands of fairy lights, she realised it was Gio. She must’ve been too focused on her own problems to recognise him at first.
She wound down her window. ‘Gio!’ she called out but he didn’t stop and so she drove on and pulled in on the left where he was ambling along the pavement the best he could.
Crutches still fixed underarm, he stopped level with her car and bent his head so he could see in the passenger side to where she’d leaned across and opened the window.
‘Good to see you on your feet,’ she told him.
‘I needed the fresh air. And I needed to move. I’m getting better with these.’ He lifted one of the metal crutches ever so slightly.
‘Want a lift the rest of the way home?’
‘Now that would defeat the object of getting out for some exercise.’
As he shifted his weight, even his high-wattage smile didn’t hide that he’d pushed it tonight and was trying not to admit defeat. It was the sort of smile she’d seen when they were sharing a house, when his mother had called him or he’d paid her a visit, a smile that said there was plenty going on in his life that he wasn’t about to divulge.
‘I’m thinking you’ve been out a while already, am I right?’ Bess persisted.
‘I did a lap around the block, first time.’
She flipped the catch on the passenger door to open it slightly.
Still he resisted. ‘I’m quite capable of going the fifty metres or so that it is to my house; I’m not an invalid.’
She sighed. ‘Would you put a sock in it, Gio, and let me help. We’re friends; friends are there for each other. And besides, it’ll make me feel good about myself.’
He gave up the protest when she climbed out to go around to the passenger side and help him negotiate getting in the car.
She was holding the crutches, their bodies almost touching, they were in such close proximity. He had one hand on the top of the car, the other on the door frame. And suddenly, he looked upwards to the sky.
‘Breathtaking.’ The single word made her look up too. ‘I’m still getting used to the beauty of Dorset.’
‘Told you you’d love it.’ She followed his gaze to a cluster of sparkling stars. Bess had grown up in Dorset but even when she lived elsewhere for a while, she’d never forgotten the county’s big, open skies, the incredible beauty of the scenery all around them.
