“Every half hour. Before if anything changes.”
Calum didn’t miss the fact that Kim offered no reassurance or promises that everything would be okay. He wondered if the Porthkennack boat had lost men before, or if the crew who’d perished in the next bay along had been friends. Everyone seemed to know everyone in Porthkennack. Who knew how far that stretched.
Calum nodded farewell to Kim and followed Brix to the footpath that led back to the main town. The cottage was a ten-minute walk away, but it seemed to pass in a flash, and he barely noticed that they were both soaked to the skin . . . again.
Inside, they peeled off layers of damp clothes and hung them by the fire. Brix poked at the embers, his gaze distant. Calum left him to it and went to the kitchen. He was far from hungry, but if Kim’s prophecy proved true, Brix needed to eat.
He rummaged in the fridge, sorting through the plates and tubs that people seemed to drop into the studio for Brix on a daily basis: Pies, cakes, preserves. There was even a whole cheese—yarg, if Calum remembered rightly, which was doubtful. He’d yet to master Cornish dialect.
A couple of pasties seemed the easiest option, though Brix had informed him the night before that they weren’t strictly Cornish. “They’re Devon ones—see the crimping’s all fucked up?” Calum had yet to get to the bottom of that either.
He warmed the pasties and took them and a jar of Branston through to the living room. Brix looked up and managed a thin smile. “You made dinner?”
“Nah, Mrs. Kimberton did. Probably just as well, eh?”
“Bollocks. You cook like you ink . . . like you mean it.”
“If you say so. Wanna cuppa?”
“I’d rather have a whiskey.”
“Easily arranged.”
Brix shook his head as Calum set the plates on the coffee table. “Don’t reckon I’d stop at one. Sit down, mate. I’ll make the tea in a bit.”
They ate in silence. The pasties were good, but they were lost on Calum as he forced them down, and he imagined it was ten times worse for Brix. Unable to watch Brix struggle, and despite Brix’s spiritless glare, Calum got up and made the tea anyway, adding an extra sugar to Brix’s to make up for his half-eaten supper.
“Thanks.” Brix accepted his mug and pushed his plate away, letting the cats do their worst. “I don’t know what I’d do without you these days.”
“Whatever you did before, I imagine,” Calum said. “It’s me that needs my arse wiped.”
Brix snorted, but his humour quickly faded, and for the umpteenth time since Kim had thumped seven bells out of the front door, Calum saw how tired he was.
“Kim told you to get some sleep.”
“Who died and put him in charge—” Brix shuddered. “Don’t answer that.”
He got up and stomped to the foot of the stairs, peeling off his T-shirt as he went and tossing it in the vague direction of the kitchen.
Calum prepared himself to let him go, his gaze lost in the web of intricate ink on Brix’s back, then Brix turned, his hand on the bannister, and fixed Calum with a stare that set his every nerve on fire. “You coming, or what?”
Or what never crossed Calum’s mind. He hung his own damp T-shirt over the bannister and followed Brix upstairs. On the landing, he hovered briefly by Brix’s door, but Brix’s impatient sigh pulled him forward.
“You look like you’re being lured into the lion’s den.” Brix flopped down on his neatly made bed. “It ain’t scary in here, I promise.”
Calum glanced around the ordered room. “It doesn’t feel like you.”
Brix shrugged. “I’m not in here much, eh?”
That wasn’t it, but Calum let it go. What business was it of his? “Do you want another cuppa?”
“Nah, but Cal?”
“Yeah?”
“Sit down. You’re making me nervous.”
Yawning, Calum sat on the edge of the bed. Brix sat up and mirrored his pose, their shoulders touching. “I know it don’t make no sense to you, but this room is my perspective. Tidy space, tidy mind? It’s the only way I can cope sometimes.”
