For a moment, Jodi was lost again.Who the fuck is Henry?But then the hoover appeared in his brain, neatly put away in the cupboard ... directly below the bottle of Shake n’ Vac. “I didn’t use it today. Forgot it was there. You can do it for me next time, if you like?”
Yeah, ’cause that’s every little girl’s dream, isn’t it? To help her dad’s broken boyfriend destink the pit he calls home?
The venom lacing the errant thought caught Jodi off guard. Did Rupert see him that way? Did Indie? Two days ago it hadn’t mattered; now it mattered more than anything.
Indie hadn’t answered Jodi’s question, or, if she had, Jodi had missed it in the ramblings of the devil on his shoulder. He looked down, but she was asleep, the wolf squashed under her arm and her thumb jammed in her mouth. Jodi smiled and pushed her fine hair off her forehead. Her innocence was a balm to the riot playing everywhere else he turned, and it wasn’t long before his own eyes felt heavy.
“Still awake in here?”
Jodi opened his eyes to find the TV had switched itself off and the room was in darkness, something that didn’t bother him with Indie safe in his arms. Or perhaps it was the fond smile Rupert was treating him to from the open door. “I think so.”
Rupert snorted and ventured closer. He reached under the covers and deftly plucked Indie from Jodi’s grasp. He tucked her against his chest and padded out of the room, presumably to put her to bed, though Jodi had no idea what the time was.
A few minutes later, Rupert returned to his leaning post in the doorway. “You okay?”
“Me?” Jodi sat up. “I’m good. What about you? How did your phone calls go?”
Rupert grimaced. “I could do without taking any more days off work, but it is what it is. Indie—and you—you both come first. Who needs money, right?”
Money wasn’t something that had occurred to Jodi in a very long time, and the bolt of common sense that struck him felt, as ever, like a sledgehammer. Tottenham wasn’t an exclusive area of the capital, but Jodi remembered enough general knowledge to know that London property prices were insane, especially compared to a firefighter’s salary—a firefighter with a child to support. “How the hell are we managing?”
“Managing? You mean financially?”
“Yeah. How much is the mortgage on this place?”
Rupert frowned. “A thousand, plus bills, food, and everything else, but I don’t want you to worry about that. You took out a critical-illness policy when you got the mortgage. It doesn’t cover it all, but we’re doing okay.”
“I should go back to work.”
“No, you should concentrate on your recovery. That’s what insurance is for. And anyway, do you honestly feel up to spending eighteen hours a day staring at a computer screen, like you used to?”
“Eighteen hours a day?” Just the thought of it was enough to turn up the volume on Jodi’s perpetual headache. “Did I really work that much?”
“Sometimes. We both used to work a lot.”
Rupert didn’t have to explain why he’d cut his hours down—even Jodi could figure that. “That insurance policy won’t pay out forever. What are we going to do if I can’t go back to work?”
“Nothing,” Rupert said. “Allyouneed to do is get better, and not worry about things I’ve got under control.”
“But—”
“But nothing. You looked after me for years. It’s time you let me return the favour.”
Rupert left the room again. Jodi thought about following him and forcing him to talk about the whole new can of worries they’d somehow opened. Jodi couldn’t comprehend going back to a life he couldn’t remember, but, more than anything, all he wanted was to throw his arms around Rupert and kiss him—kiss him until both of them believed everything was, eventually, going to be okay.’Cause it will be okay, won’t it?
Jodi had no idea. His heart screamed at him to force his tired body from the bed and chase Rupert down so they could close the door on the doubt that had hurt them both so much, but he didn’t move. Rupert loved him, of that Jodi was certain, but loving him and wanting—desiring—him weren’t the same thing, and as Jodi drifted to sleep, the courage to find out how Rupert truly felt deserted him.
Sixteen
“I just don’t get it.” Rupert walked out of the fire station and turned his face into the drizzle, letting it refresh his scratchy, sleep-deprived eyes. “He says he still doesn’t remember anything, but he keeps doing all this shit that he used to do, like he does remember. It doesn’t make any fucking sense.”
“Hang on.” Sophie closed a door at the end of the crackly phone line. “Since when has anything about this made sense? He recalibrated my MacBook for me when he came over yesterday, but he doesn’t remember learning to use the one he bought himself two years ago.”
“You should see the living room too,” Rupert said. “Remember he was on about moving the couch to the back wall last summer?”
“Don’t tell me he’s gone and done it?”
“Yup. I came home to find he’d moved the whole room around—the furniture, the TV, everything. Thought I’d walked into the wrong flat.”
