“Do you want me to come?” I ask.
He hesitates. “No. Better you’re not seen.” Then, gentler: “I know you want to fix this, Tom. I want to fix this too.”
I swallow the instinct to argue that “fix” is my middle name, along with “overthink.” I nod.
There’s a silence neither of us fills. I look at his cheeks—the faint fading of the bruises like storm clouds retreating. I want to cup his face and say,You don’t deserve any of this, but I’ve said versions of that and what good did it do?
“Emma messaged me,” I say, because my head is a tumble dryer and sometimes you have to take socks out in the order they appear. “Checking in.”
Pete’s mouth softens. “She means well.”
“She said the same about you,” I say. “That you’re a good person caught in a bad thing.”
He looks away. “Maybe.”
“Definitely,” I say, too quickly.
He smiles, sad but grateful, then glances at his watch. “I should go. James might be back this afternoon.”
My chest tightens. “Right.”
He stands, and I follow suit. Another hug—a little tighter. When we pull back his eyes shine for a second, like he’s about to say something else. He doesn’t.
“Thank you. For caring.” A pause. “Please be careful.”
“You too,” I say. It sounds inadequate and huge at the same time.
He leaves with the quiet urgency of someone carrying something fragile. I watch him go until the door shuts behind him, then sit back down because my legs have forgotten their purpose. My latte is cold. I drink it anyway.
The guilt eases… and then re-forms in a different shape.
Because the stick I gave back is not the only copy.
The files are on my laptop.
I tell myself this is safety—insurance. If James does go looking, there’s a version he can find and a version he can’t.
That sounds like sense if you tilt your head and squint.
Chapter 45
TOM
Craig’s flat smells like garlic, rosemary and faintly antiseptic competence. It’s how I imagine police stations would smell if more of them came with Le Creuset. He opens the door before I knock—classic Craig, pre-emptively in charge—and scans the street behind me like I might be trailed by an entourage of poor decisions. Which, to be fair, I am, but they’re all internal.
“Come in,” he says, stepping aside. “Shoes off, please. We’re not animals.”
I toe off my trainers and try not to look like a man hiding several crimes in his backpack. The guilt about the CCTV sticks to me like kitchen steam. I won’t tell him. I can’t. If I say the wordsI broke into James’s house,Craig will hear the rest—and I’m about to do more stupid things—as loudly as a fire alarm.
But that’s only the mini-secret versus the fact that I saw James and Phil together earlier. I’ve still not planned how I’m going to bring that one up, but I know I’ll have to.
I’ve never kept secrets from Craig before. It’s impossible to do so. He’s like the FBI, MI5 and Mystic Meg’s long-lost son combined.
“How’s Phil?” I ask, sounding casual in the way a man sounds casual while hiding a live grenade under a tea towel.
“Good,” Craig says, stirring something ambitious on the hob. “He’s out tonight. He’s on a date with some guy from Bath who makes miniature copies of famous buildings out of cardboard and sells them on the internet for excessive amounts of cash.”
“Oh, well, there’s definitely an opening in that market,” I say.
