I didn’t dignify the devil on my shoulder with an argument. Just got my head down and serviced three motors in the time it took every other fucker to do one. I felt Lucky’s gaze on me all day, but I ignored him, and let my boss’s glee at my work rate wash over me. I felt like I was underwater, and only Rae could pull me clear, but I didn’t want him to, and I couldn’t let him. Rae’s life wasn’t mine anymore, and that couldn’t change.
At home, I avoided Dom and Lucky and lit a fire in the garden. Usually, Lucky would come outside to bug me while he smoked, but not tonight. Him and Dom went to bed early without dragging me in for dinner. Awesome. I’d finally pissed them off enough to get some fucking headspace.
Wanker.
I leaned forward and covered my face with my hands. The fire crackled and hissed until it burned low enough to smoulder. I peeked at it between my fingers, then let my hands drop as I realised I wasn’t alone in the garden. Shula had joined me, but she wasn’t collecting the hardboiled eggs and sugar-snap peas I’d left out for her, she was sitting beneath the birdfeeder, up to her elbows in wild grass, her eyes glowing amber in the firelight.
From the shadows, it was hard to tell if she was looking at me, but her stare pierced my soul all the same. Hunts with horse and hound weren’t an issue for urban foxes, but pest controllers were. I recalled the pest controller’s van that had broken down outside the garage and begged for an emergency repair. I’d fitted a rusty cam belt and charged the driver through the nose, but it wasn’t enough. Nothing was. The weight in my chest was suffocating and I couldn’t fucking breathe.
Shula stood and took a step towards me. For a moment I wondered if she’d venture closer, but a noise from a neighbouring garden spooked her. Her head jerked to one side, and then she was gone, disappearing into the bushes to wherever she’d come from.
Her departure shifted something in me, but it was intangible. Despair seemed melodramatic, but no other word seemed to fit.
I poured water on the fire, in every sense, and went to bed.
***
I woke the next morning to Dom swinging up through the attic hatch.
He never came into my room.
Alarmed, I sat up too fast, lurched forward, and banged my head on the bedside table. “Fuck.”
Dom’s eyebrow twitched. “Remind me never to give you bubblegum. Don’t reckon you could walk and chew at the same time.”
“Sod off. What do you want?”
“Not much. Just came to see what you were up to today.”
“Why?”
“Do I need a reason?”
“Unless you morphed into my long dead mother overnight.” I rubbed my head. “What do you care what I’m doing?”
Dom shrugged. “I’m heading out of the city to look at a possible site for a housing project. Thought you could come with me.”
He would’ve surprised me less if he’d got into my bed. Me and Lucky were like brothers, man, and I loved Dom for talking care of him and cooking the best veggie lasagne ever, but he rarely sought me out for company. We didn’t roll like that.
But…the idea of getting out of the city was tempting. I had the day off and nothing to do, a situation that scared me. “All right then. Can I drive your car?”
Dom didn’t give two fucks about his car. He tossed me the keys, and an hour later, we hit the road.
“Where am I going? North, south, east, west?”
“North.” Dom jammed his phone in the bracket so I could see the navigation app. “There’s a place in Stevenage I want to look at, and a village location in Buckinghamshire.”
Brilliant. A rural village that probably had a hunt problem all of its own was worse than staying in the city and driving myself up the wall, but we were on our way already, so there wasn’t much I could do but be grateful Dom hadn’t said the county next door.
The site in Stevenage was on the edge of the town, built-up on one side, green fields on the other. I didn’t know what Dom was looking for, but it seemed nice enough to me. “What would you build here?”
Dom spun in a slow circle, absorbing things I didn’t think to see. “Low-rise flats, a few houses, it’s not the right place, though.”
“No?”
He shook his head and pointed at an existing development. “That’s local authority housing. If the council can afford to build homes like that, they don’t need my money.”
“You think the Buckinghamshire council is worse off?”
