“That’s a complaint now?”
“That’s concern.”
I leaned back against the lockers. My hair still smelled like smoke, and that was after two washes. It always did. Smoke got into everything. So did grief.
“I did my job.”
“I know. But you can’t keep proving you’re fine by running into things other people run out of.”
The unfair part was that he wasn’t wrong. The more unfair part was that Brian would have said exactly the same thing, then handed me a terrible vending machine coffee and somehow made it sound less like a telling-off and more like a dare.
Ellis held out an envelope. “Take the leave. Three days minimum. Drive somewhere. Sleep. Stare at some water. Eat chips on a pier, I don’t care. Just be somewhere that isn’t here.”
I took the envelope, because refusing would only have meant forms, and nobody wanted that.
“Fine,” I said. “I’ll go stare at some water somewhere. Very healing. Extremely damp.”
“Good.”
“And if I come back with a souvenir mug, you’ll know I’ve processed.”
“That’s all any of us can ask.”
Two
DARCY
The next morningI drove south with no plan beyond salt air and distance.
London thinned out behind me as the rain came and went. The sky lowered as I reached the coast, gray folding into gray, and by the time Hastings appeared, I could almost breathe without tasting smoke.
Almost.
A banner flapped outside the seafront pavilion.
Antique Fair Today.
I parked, because I had nowhere else to be and needed to keep moving. For the first time in months, I walked into something without worrying whether I could get myself back out.
Inside, the fair smelled like mothballs, rain-damp wool, and tea. I should have turned around the moment I saw the first velvet-covered table sagging under silver fish knives, mourning brooches, chipped porcelain shepherdesses, and enough tarnished candlesticks to light half of Sussex.
Instead, I bought a paper cup of tea strong enough to strip paint, tucked my hands into the pockets of my waxed jacket, and let the flow of people carry me deeper into the maze.
The fair had taken over the seafront pavilion, a long glass-fronted building looking out toward the Channel, where gray water rolled under a gray sky and the gulls screamed as if they were plotting something.
Inside, the dealers had crowded their stalls together until the aisles narrowed into proper hazards, though I doubted anyone else in the building was mentally noting the blocked exits, the frayed extension leads, the wobbly stack of framed oil paintings, and the one brass lamp positioned exactly where an elderly man with a walking stick would take it down like a bowling pin.
I couldn’t turn it off. Not even on my day off. Not even eight months after the warehouse fire, when everyone at the station had started using those soft, careful voices around me.
How are you holding up?
Fine.
You know you can talk about Brian.
I know.
You don’t have to be all right.
