* * *
Rhys didn’t call. For a week, Jevon stalked his phone like a teenage girl, but nothing happened, not even a text. One week stretched into two, and by the third, he’d given up hope.
“Why don’tyoucallhim,” Efe said when Jevon called her up to bend her ear.
Jevon rolled his eyes. He loved his cousin dearly, but listening to hisactual wordswasn’t her strong point. “I already told you—I don’t have his number. I gave him my card before he left and he said he’d call.”
“You can’t track him down on Facebook or something?”
“I don’t know his full name.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah,oh.” Jevon made a note on the paperwork he was wading through for his assessment of the surviving children from the detention centre fire. “All I know about him is his first name, his occupation, and that he doesn’t eat chicken.”
“Whoa, brother. Hold the bus. Man’dem don’t eat chicken? What kind of monster is that?”
“Shut up.”
Efe laughed. “Don’t blow up my phone if you don’t want to hear my chat.”
Jevon grumbled under his breath, but in truth, just hearing Efe’s voice had lightened his mood. He’d spent twelve hours with the fire children that day—his last session with them—and letting them go had hurt his heart.
Efe understood. She always did. “Come and see me,” she said when she was done ribbing Jevon’s forlorn love life. “I’m making patties tonight—sweet potato, beef, salt cod. All your favourites. I’ll give you a box for the freezer.”
It was a kind offer, but Efe’s Vauxhall bakery was a mission on the train from Bedford. As amazing as her food was, Jevon didn’t have the energy. “Nah, blood. Thanks, though. I’ll come see you soon.”
“You’ve been saying that since you got back.”
“I know, and I mean it, I swear. I’ve just been busy with work.”
“I thought you only did a few kiddie parties when you were over here?”
“I do, but something came up.” Jevon’s attention drifted back to his laptop screen as Efe said something else. “Sorry, what?”
She sighed. “There’s a type of man who don’t stop working, and it don’t do him no good. There’s a few of them round here, and it hurts me to see what becomes of them. Don’t let life suck you down, cuz. Put your work aside and get out there living.”
She hung up before Jevon could reply, and he absently set his phone aside. Haya—the little girl who’d attached herself to Rhys in the hospital—was next on his list. Last on his list, in fact, by design, rather than fate.
He spread his notes out on the coffee table. Social services hadn’t asked his opinion or even paid for his services beyond the interpreter fees, but he’d offered his assessments anyway in the hope that someone might read them. Haya’s most of all.
Jevon collated his notes into a document that made his chest tight and his eyes sting. Most of the children he’d seen over the last few days had, despite their grief and trauma, made progress, but Haya was different. The brother who’d died in Rhys’s helicopter had been her only living relative. She was alone in the world now, and the risk of her being deported was at an all-time high.
When his work was done, Jevon retreated to the kitchen to nurse the rum bottle. He was on his second shot when Efe called him back.
“Come over,” she said. “I can’t concentrate knowing that you’re so down, and I like having you around my kitchen. Please, Jevon? Gloria’s helping me out tonight, and she’d love to see you too.”
Jevon sighed. The prospect of facing two Jamaican women who wanted to be all up in his business was daunting, but he couldn’t deny the prospect of another lonely night was far, far worse. “All right,” he said eventually. “But you’d better have somewhere decent for me to kip when you’re done with me.”
Efe giggled gleefully. “Only the best flour-covered couch for you. Hurry yourself up, son.”
Seven
Rhys jumped off the helicopter as soon as it was declared safe to do so and charged across the roof to the second helipad. Another chopper was parked there, fixed and good to go when the next call came in, but he wasn’t waiting for the next call. Couldn’t because he’d been waiting for this chopper three long weeks already.
He hopped inside and scrambled immediately to where he’d been sitting when the chopper had returned to London from the Bedford job. It had gone out of service for essential maintenance half an hourbeforeRhys had realised he’d left something precious on board.
“Come on, come on, come on...” He rummaged between the seats and down the backs, praying that whoever had cleaned the chopper had done a piss-poor job. For long, terrifying moments, it seemed the maintenance crew had let him down, but then his groping fingers touched thin cardboard, and his heart threw itself against his ribcage.
