“Subtext? Whatever. I called ’cause Brix gets stressed about family shit and I wanted to check you weren’t rocking in a corner, blaming yourself for any Lusmoore lunacy.”
Lusmoore lunacy? That was a new one. Calum rubbed his eyes. “Brix isn’t the crazy one in this house. He was worried, but who wouldn’t be?”
“Me. I couldn’t give two fucks if my dad drowned at sea.”
“Understandable. We’re not all the same, though, squirt.”
“I know. You don’t have to go big brother on me. I’m the one trying to be nice here, remember?”
“Fair enough.” Calum suppressed a sigh. He appreciated the sentiment lurking beneath the chip on Lee’s shoulder, but wasn’t entirely sure what she wanted him to say.
Perhaps sensing his bemusement, Lee let loose a sigh of her own. “Look, I’m just saying that Brix is weird, man. He’s the nicest guy in the world, but I guess sometimes he needs space to figure out his own bullshit. Get away from all of ours.”
And there it was. Lee’s words hit home, bombarding Calum with the unpleasant image of Brix shivering at the foot of the cliff the night before, listening with more patience than anyone deserved to Calum’s half-arsed explanation to why he’d run away from a simple phone call. “You think I should give him some space?”
“Me?” Lee snorted. “What the fuck do I know? Say what I see, and I’m usually wrong.”
That might have been true, but the first stirrings of a daft idea sprung to life in Calum’s fragmented mind nonetheless. “Can you do me a favour?”
“Providing it ain’t sexual.”
Calum rolled his eyes. “Twat. Can you get Lena to cancel my appointments today? I’ve got to go somewhere.”
“‘Somewhere’? Sounds mysterious.”
“Not really, but if I tell you where I’m going, I won’t be able to change my mind.”
“Is that likely?”
“Not sure yet. I’ll let you know?”
Lee grunted. “Good enough for me. I’ll sort your shit. Don’t worry about anything, just keep in touch, yeah?”
“Will do. Thanks, squirt. I owe you.”
“It doesn’t work like that in Porthkennack, Calum. Nice people are real, and you don’t owe me jack.”
Lee hung up, leaving Calum with a lump in his throat he couldn’t quite explain, but he didn’t dwell on it long. He pocketed his phone and keys, and went downstairs. The cats greeted him in the kitchen. Zelda took a swipe at his face, reminding him that he wasn’t going anywhere until she’d been fed.
He filled the cat bowls and ventured outside to check on the hens. Most were still in the nest box, laying or dozing, but Bongo was pecking around the run. Calum lifted the hatch and scooped her up with his good hand, folding her legs carefully beneath her so she didn’t kick mud all over him. Before Porthkennack, he’d had no idea that holding a chicken could be so soothing, but as he stood in the damp early morning, counting Bongo’s heartbeat and absorbing her quiet clucks, he reckoned holding Brix would be the only other thing better.
Brix. The purpose of Calum’s mission today returned full force. He set Bongo down and went back inside, patting his jacket pocket for his wallet. It wasn’t there, or in the bowl of crap in the kitchen table. Fuck’s sake. Calum jogged upstairs and checked his bedroom—grabbing his bag and a set of long-forgotten keys—and the bathroom, but he came up blank, which left only one place.
Venturing into Brix’s room felt like returning to the scene of a well-meant crime. Calum tried not to pay too much attention, but as he retrieved his wallet from the floor by the bedside table, the clear space caught his attention. Something was missing. The washbag—it had gone—and in the silence of the empty cottage, its absence seemed more significant than anything else.
But Calum didn’t have time to dwell on it if he wanted to sleep in a Porthkennack bed that night. He shoved his phone in his pocket and backed out of Brix’s bedroom. Downstairs, he gave Dennis a final stroke, then stamped into his shoes. Here goes nothing.
The bus stop was a five-minute walk along the seafront. On the way, Calum looked up each time a vehicle passed, half expecting to see Brix’s van rumbling back into town, but it didn’t happen, and as the bus left Porthkennack behind a while later, the pang in his heart was almost too much to bear.
Calum had little memory of Truro train station, save the smell of chicken shit seeping from the van that stopped to save him. He braved the ticket machine and bought a return ticket to Paddington. Just seeing it on the screen felt wrong; from the moment Brix had pulled him from that damn fucking bench, he’d truly believed he’d never go back. But he had to go back, because if he didn’t, a part of his soul would die in London, and the future, whatever it held, would be bleak without it.
On the train, he found a window seat and slumped down as the doors closed and the train moved off, settling in for the long haul. He’d caught a fast service, but it would still take more than four hours to reach the city. Thankfully, he’d had the foresight to stuff a pad and pencil in his bag so he could prepare for his upcoming appointments—all dot work now word had got out that he specialised in it. He drafted an elephant mandala, and then a tree of life. An hour or so later, he was shading around the trunk when his phone buzzed in his pocket.
Brix. Calum’s heart stuttered. He swiped the screen, but Brix rang off before the call connected. Calum frowned and pressed Redial, his stomach doing an uncomfortable flip, but silence greeted him as the train zoomed through a tunnel. He cancelled the call and glared at the screen, waiting for his signal to return. It didn’t. After some protracted staring, he gave up and tossed the phone on the table in front of him. His work forgotten, he sat back in his seat and closed his eyes. It was gone ten in the morning. If Brix had gone into work, he’d be at the studio by now, which meant he’d know Calum had cancelled his appointments.
Would he care? The cynic Rob had created doubted it, but Calum’s heart said yes.
Paddington Station was as hellish as Calum remembered. Worse. The smell, the crowds, and the cold draft that whistled around every corner, reminding him how much he’d grown to despise city life. The station’s saving grace was the bassoonist outside WHSmith, a busker who’d been there as long as Calum had lived in London. But you don’t live here anymore. The errant thought startled Calum as he pulled his gaze from the old man. He’d been gone from the city for months, and the bustling station around him was like another world—a world he needed to escape again as soon as possible.
