I spend the next few minutes watching my mother weave her magic on my daughter. Nancy’s eyes are wide in delight at the hot chocolate piled high with whipped cream, shaved chocolate, and even a wafer biscuit. She’s looking up at my mum like she’s a magical creature, and Mum, for her part, just gazes at her granddaughter adoringly.
It’s not until we’re getting ready to leave that Nancy initiates touch. She gives my dad’s leg a quick hug but races over to Mum and holds her arms up. Mum can’t manage to lift her, and I’m about to intervene, when Mum gets down to her knees and wraps Nancy up in a tight hug. Ifeel a lump in my throat and look at Dad with a smile.
We both go wide-eyed when we hear Nancy’s quiet voice.
“Thank you for hot socolat, Nana,” she says, as though she’s testing out that word.
Mum doesn’t bat an eyelid, even though I know she’ll be a teary wreck the second the door closes behind us.
“You’re welcome, darling. That’ll be a special treat for you whenever you’re here, OK?”
Nancy nods, then comes back to me and grabs my hand.
I look at Mum before I leave, trying to show her, without words, how much this visit meant to me. She just closes her eyes and nods in understanding. Some things are so profound that words can’t convey the weight of them anyway.
As I drive back to Drew and Caitlin’s, I keep an eye on Nancy in the rear-view mirror, and it doesn’t take long before she’s nodding off, a calm, relaxed look on her face as she dreams with Wrinkles tucked up close to her chest. The warm glow in my heart lets me know that this – being a father – is going to be everything I hoped it would be, and more.
I just wish there wasn’t still a voice in the back of my head telling me that if I let Corey slip through my fingers now, I might miss my chance to be with him altogether.
I’ve just dropped Nancy off and am on my way home, having fallen a little bit more in love with her today after seeing her interact with my parents. I anticipate continuing to feel this way every day of my life with every achievement, every milestone, every moment, really.
If all goes to plan, Abigail will be getting a final move-in date approved later today, and I’m both ecstatic and apprehensive about the reality of Nancy being at home, with me, for good. Ecstatic as I’m so ready to fulfil the role of parent for her and apprehensive because… well, isn’t every parent apprehensive at some point?
At least I know my work demands are on hold until she’ll be starting school, as I officially went on parental leave at Christmas. My income streams are protected through my existing and pending patents, and I can still do some consultancy for urgent cases if I find I need to.
I’m just driving into Fenside Common when I get a text message from Wren through the dashboard system of the car.
Wren: Rain and Corey have been taken by their psycho exes. Aidan’s freaking out. Come over, now. He needs us. X
Considering how distant Wren has been recently, the abruptness of her message isn’t entirely surprising. What is surprising is the content of it. What the fuck does she mean they’ve been taken?
After Corey walked home from my house last night, we haven’t spoken, and I haven’t texted him, despite being desperate to check in with him. I’m trying to respect his request for time and space to process the reality of our situation.
In this moment, though, I think of how the last words we spoke to one another were words of regret and sadness. Words of friendship and ‘what if’. And I despise every single one of them.
Nausea hits me at the mere thought that Corey has been taken, presumably by his ex, back to the life he hated. A life of pain and control. A life he never chose for himself but accepted as all he could have.
I swing my car around in the next side road and make my way to my brother’s home at speeds I don’t look at too closely. When I arrive,my sister is in crisis management mode, giving me instructions on where to go and what to do, and updating me on what we know so far. Meanwhile, Aidan is both distraught and furious. He doesn’t know what to do with himself.
The police arrive shortly after me, the same detective who had investigated the fire on the yacht just before Christmas, DI Martin, and his colleague, Detective Matthews. DI Martin explains that he took the case when he saw the name and address of the incident were the same as the previous case, and he assumed they were connected.
Mum and Dad arrive, along with my brothers and even Sam, who attaches himself to Wren and stays by her side. She looks more settled than she has since before Christmas, and I make a note to catch up with her as soon as I can manage it once this shitshow is sorted.
Mum does what she does best – feeding everyone tea and biscuits in that time-honoured British way of handling stress.
The detectives explain that they’ve handed the names of Corey and Rain’s exes to their colleagues in London’s Met Police, and that is enough to set me off. My bitterness spikes so unexpectedly that I can’t stop myself from snapping at Detective Matthews and suggestingthat they might take the easy route and just let the Met Police deal with it. Before long, I’m outside on the porch alone, trying to cool my temper after she rightly put me in my place by explaining her very personal connection to cases involving intimate partner violence, stalking, and coercive control.
After the police leave, I’m in danger of wearing a trench into the porch as I pace up and down, my fear for Corey – and Rain, of course – driving my legs and preventing me from standing still. I feel impotent, useless, and completely unable to do anything to help Corey.
Jesus fucking Christ. The ‘not knowing’ is driving me insane.
The way I’m feeling as we wait for updates tells me one thing. Corey is mine. Or at least I want him to be mine. Mine to protect, mine to care for. Just… mine. He’s everything I could possibly want in a partner, something Shelley has been telling me not-so-subtly every time we’ve spoken these last few weeks, and I’ve talked non-stop about him. And if I missed out on the chance to try and make that happen because I allowed my need for control and my blind logic to make the decision for me, I will never forgive myself.
Right now, the fear of losing him in a waythat we can’t come back from is more powerful than any fear I have of not being enough for Nancy. I will be a good father, I know I will. But I also know that I could be a good partner to Corey. And he would be patient with me, I know that much about him. He’s too incredible not to be.
Time passes slowly, eking out this hellish evening beyond what feels reasonable. How can a day that started so perfectly go so disastrously wrong in the blink of an eye?
When darkness finally falls, Mum cooks dinner, as a distraction more than because anyone is actually hungry, I suspect. The family all leave soon after dinner, but I’m not going anywhere. I take a seat on the sofa, whisky bottle and two glasses in hand, and am mentally kicking myself for breaking the promise I made to Corey only last night – that he was safe here with me, and that I would protect him – when Aidan comes and takes a seat next to me.
