Kev pulls a dry station shirt over his head, hair sticking up in wet, annoyed spikes. Mish is by the kit area, efficient although exhausted, checking something with the kind of focus that makes interruption seem unwise. Dan is near the office door, talking quietly on the phone, his voice low and practical. The rest of the crew are doing their bit to bring calm to chaos.
And Pippa is still moving.
Not rushing.
Not flapping.
Moving.
She has changed too, into dry station trousers and a clean navy T-shirt, but somehow it does not make her look rested. Her hair is damp at her temples, her face pale beneath the fluorescent lights. There is a streak of something dark along one forearm she has missed when washing.
Soot maybe.
Mud.
I do not know.
I want to cross the bay and wipe it away with my thumb.
I want to put my arms around her.
The thought arrives so clearly, so physically, that I have to look down at my hands as if they might have moved without permission.
They have not.
Thank fuck.
Because Pippa Hart is standing in the middle of the station holding everything together with both hands and sheer will, and the last thing she needs is me making that about what I want.
“Crew room in five,” she says. “Get warm first. Tea if you want it.”
Her voice is steady.
Of course it is.
It is so steady I almost hate it.
No one argues.
No one asks whether the debrief can wait.
They all know it cannot.
I stand there for one useless second, then realise tea-if-you-want-it is the only thing in the room I am qualified to help with.
So I go to the kitchen.
The room is exactly as it was before we left. The mugs are still there. The kettle. The tea bags. The half loaf of bread by the toaster. Kev’s abandoned packet of biscuits sitting open near the sink.
Proof that the world is rude enough to keep existing in small domestic ways after something enormous has happened.
I fill the kettle.
My hands are steadier than I expect.
That feels wrong too.
I make tea because there is nothing else I can do. Because someone should. Because Pippa said tea, and every single person out there looks as if they have been peeled out of the night and put back together badly.
