Fliss bundled him into the back, then got in the front and started the engine, flooding the car with heat that Charlie barely felt. Didn’t want to feel while Leo was still out in the cold. “I don’t understand. Where’s Dad gone? How can he know where Leo is when he didn’t even suspect that he’d be here?”
“I don’t know, kid. Perhaps there’s something in that damn fucking file that I didn’t see.”
“Thought you only skimmed it?”
Fliss shrugged. “I did, but I thought I’d absorbed everything that mattered. Serves me right for snooping.”
“I’m glad you looked. You’d never have been so nice to Leo and Lila if you hadn’t.”
“You think?”
Charlie opened his mouth. Shut it again. He didn’t think anything. Couldn’t. He just wanted Leo.
“So this is your tree, eh?”
If Leo had possessed the energy, he’d have jumped a mile. As it was, he merely gazed at Reg as he loomed out of the darkness, and tried to find the will to berate himself for not running straight for the train station. Damn his tired legs that wouldn’t work.
Reg took his coat off and offered it to Leo. “Come on,” he said when Leo looked away. “Whatever you do from here isn’t going to be any easier if you get hypothermia.”
Leo had forgotten about the cold until that moment, but as he stared at the thick anorak Reg was dangling in front of him, it seeped into his bones again, travelling up his spine from where he was sitting at the foot of the tree, and out into his fingers and toes, his lips, his ears. Even his eyelids stung from the bitter wind that had sprung up in the brief few minutes he’d been alone in the woods.
The coat was tempting. Leo felt its warmth oozing out of it, but it wasReg’scoat. Stuff that.
Eventually, Reg put the coat back on and crouched gingerly on the damp ground for a moment, before giving in and sitting down. He was wearing beige trousers. The thought of him traipsing back to his equally beige car with a damp patch almost made Leo smile.
Almost, because he didn’t have the energy for that either. Or to push Reg away when he leaned a fraction closer.
“Your arm’s in a bad way,” Reg said quietly. “How long has it been like this? Did you hurt it when you were fighting today?”
“Fighting?” For a blissful beat of emptiness, the events of the day eluded Leo, but then, like every memory he tried to ignore, the crunch of the boy’s bones against his fist returned, the scent of his blood too. His howls of pain as Leo stamped on his ribs.
Leo shuddered, and Reg’s presence beside him faded away as the true reason he’d run all the way to Swindon laid new roots in his soul. Fliss didn’t need to trick him into believing that Lila was safe with Kate and Reg—heknewthat, damn it, even if he didn’t like it. It washimthat she needed protecting from.Because I’m Dennis.As playground fights he’d had over the years flashed through his mind like a horror film show reel, it occurred to him that perhaps he always had been Dennis. That a monster lurked inside him too.
“Leo.” Reg’s palm was scalding on Leo’s good arm, and it was clear by his insistent tone that he’d said Leo’s name more than once. “Why did you do it?”
“Do what?”
“Any of it. Attack that boy, run away from home . . . I’m not sure I want to know how you got the money for your train ticket.”
“I didn’t use a ticket. I jumped the barriers.”
“Oh . . . well, that’s better than helping yourself to Kate’s handbag, I suppose.”
“I’d never do that.”
“Why not?”
Leo blinked. “What?”
“Why wouldn’t you steal from Kate?”
“Because—” Leo’s brain and tongue failed him. He wouldn’t steal from Kate, though he’d helped himself to the purse of his previous foster mothers, but . . . why? What was different about Kate?
“Would you steal from me?”
“I—” Leo shook his head. “No, I wouldn’t, but what the fuck does that matter?”
Reg shrugged, like the answer was obvious, and Leo belatedly remembered that Reg would know that he’d lifted cash from his previous homes, because Reg knew every bloody thing about him.
