I look towards the corridor where he disappeared.
Then I look down at the clipboard.
Work first.
Feelings later.
If at all.
The radio crackles.
Control’s voice cuts through the station.
And just like that, the night changes.
21
Chapter 20
AJ
By half past sevenin the morning, I have discovered there is a specific kind of tired that sits behind the eyes and begins quietly negotiating with the soul.
Night shifts are not simply days turned inside out. They are stranger than that. They stretch time, bend humour into unusual shapes and make a man emotionally attached to chairs he has only known for a week.
Also, they make goodbyes feel deeply unfair.
The final hour of shift passes in pieces. A last round of checks. A mug I am told twice not to wash because, apparently, I am “not leaving this station in a cleaning incident”. Mish confiscating the tape dispenser from the counter because she says my eyes have become too focused. Dan giving me a nod from the appliance bay that feels like an entire speech.
And Pippa.
Pippa at the briefing desk. Pippa in the corridor. Pippa talking to Kev. Pippa signing something off. Pippa moving through the station with the steady, practical certainty she had on my first day, only now I know what her flat lookslike in early morning light. I know how her laugh sounds when she is trying not to give it to me. I know what she sounds like when she comes and a mark just below her collarbone that she hid very effectively under her work clothes.
I know things that do not belong in this building.
That makes it difficult to behave.
I do behave.
Mostly.
Because this is her station, and because she has spent years earning the right to walk through it without anyone making assumptions about her. The absolute least I can do is not become one more man turning her workplace into evidence of something private.
So I keep my distance.
Not too much. Too much distance would be obvious. I am aiming for normal, which is ambitious because normal left the building somewhere between Cherry Pie Bakery and her hallway wall.
I manage professional.
Professional is close enough.
After handover, the station loosens around us. Day shift takes over. The night crew begin the strange ritual of leaving: gathering bags, checking phones, finishing tea nobody should have made this late, complaining about sleep they have not yet had but already resent for being insufficient.
Kev finds me near the kitchen door.
“Right,” he says.
I look at him. “That sounds ominous.”
