I have eaten three excellent breakfasts, two average pub dinners and one packet of crisps I pretended was dinner because there was an apple near it on the bedside table.
I have not thought about Pippa.
Well hardly. Actually all the time.
Even if there is no reason to think about her. We are not friends. We are not anything. She is the watch manager of the station I am embedded with, and I am the journalist who spent four days learning, with increasing physical discomfort, that fire service work is harder, stranger, funnier and more human than I had understood.
But, she keeps arriving at the station in clothes that make it extremely difficult to behave like a normal professional adult.
That is not relevant.
It is definitely not relevant that, aside from the green dress that still haunts my dreams, on one of the days she turned up in jeans, boots and a black T-shirt that clung to her chest and shoulders just enough to make me brieflyforget the difference between looking and staring. She had been carrying a coffee, frowning at something on her phone, completely unaware that I was standing three metres away having the sort of thought that would have got me removed from the station if anyone had been able to hear it.
Or that on the third day, she came in with rain in her hair, cheeks pink from the cold, her jacket half-zipped, and I spent several seconds thinking about warming her up in ways that had nothing to do with central heating.
None of that belongs in the feature.
None of it is useful.
None of it is appropriate.
And yet here I am, lying on a bed in a B&B while Bargain Hunt happens in the background, thinking about the exact sound she might make if I kissed the side of her neck.
So, yes.
The days off are going brilliantly.
Bargain Hunt moves into the auction section. Someone overpays for a mirror.
I stare at the ceiling.
The problem with these days off is that they should feel like a break.
They do not.
They feel like being put on pause halfway through something I do not understand yet. Four shifts is not long enough to belong anywhere, but it is apparently long enough for my brain to start expecting certain things. The sound of the kettle in the station kitchen. Kev calling me babyface with the grim commitment of a man who won’t let go of his most favourite joke. Mish watchingme near stationery as if I might laminate myself. Dan pretending not to be helpful while somehow being helpful.
Pippa walking past in uniform, focused and quick, making the whole room feel as if it has found its centre.
Four days.
That is all it has been.
Four days, and I am lying in a B&B room with rain on the window, missing a place that still considers me a health and safety concern.
This is not ideal.
I pick up my phone.
Marie Louise will be in the newsroom. I could call. Ask if there’s anything she needs. A council follow-up. A court mention. A quick piece on the weather trying to drown Cumbria. Something useful. Something with facts and deadlines and absolutely no emotional content.
My thumb hovers over her name.
This is fine.
This is professional.
This is not avoidance.
