“To Carlisle?”
“No.” She opens her eyes. “To your car. Before you’re trapped in another biscuit incident.”
“Right.”
“And AJ?”
“Yes?”
“Text me when you get home.”
Everything in me goes quiet.
Not because it is dramatic.
Because it is ordinary.
Because it is the first ordinary thing after all that honesty, and somehow that is what makes it feel real.
“I will.”
“Good.”
I take one step back.
Then another.
This time, it does not feel like leaving.
Not properly.
Pippa turns towards the kitchen, shoulders squaring as she becomes Watch Manager Hart again in front of my eyes. Competent. Steady. Herself.
But before she goes, she glances back.
Just once.
Small smile.
Deepblue eyes.
Trouble.
My trouble, maybe.
If I am lucky.
I walk out of the station for the second time that morning.
The car is still where I left it. The sky is still bright. The village still appears completely uninterested in the fact that my life has just rearranged itself in a corridor beside an office and probably within hearing distance of a man looking for biscuits.
I get in.
Start the engine.
This time, I drive.
At the edge of the village, I glance in the rear-view mirror. Fellside sits behind me, stone and green and morning light, the station already disappearing around the bend.
