What Remains (21 page)

Fuck.

Jodi staggered to a nearby bench and sat down. His pulse—which had slowed while he’d attempted conversation with the ruddy-faced man—roared in his ears.
“Your old fella.” Jesus bloody Christ
. Rupert wasn’t Jodi’s father, which left only one feasible reality, a reality that up until now had seemed nothing more than a perverted, twisted dream. A fantasy forced on him by having his skull smashed into Tottenham High Road. Rupert loved him, of that he was certain, and the affection, attraction, and addiction Jodi felt in return was real.

So fucking real.

Another train rumbled out of the dark tunnel and stopped at the platform. Jodi stood and mechanically boarded, drifting to a vacant seat. The journey passed in a blur of whiplash-inducing emotions he struggled to name, but he couldn’t deny the relief flooding through him. Nothing had made sense to him in months. Nothing had been tangible, like it was really his to feel.

The tannoy called out for Tottenham. Jodi stood, moved to the door, and jostled his way above ground. The flat was a stone’s throw from the Tube station, and he found himself home before he could blink.

Inside, a flashing red light on the landline phone caught his eye. Jodi checked the log and saw he’d missed three calls and a voice mail from the same number. He pressed the Play button. Rupert’s soft Irish brogue filled the hallway. “Jodi? Pick up your damn phone, will ya? I called you a million times. Fuck’s sake—”

The message ended abruptly. Jodi frowned. Rupert sounded stressed.
“Pick up your damn phone.”
Jodi patted his pockets. Shit. He’d left his phone in the bathroom when he’d taken a shower that morning and forgotten all about it.

He found his phone by the sink, the screen jammed with missed calls and messages from Rupert and Sophie. Jodi fired off a text to Rupert, then deleted his messages without reading them. He did the same with Sophie, trying to ignore the guilt tickling his veins. House rules were that he stayed in touch with Rupert and Sophie when they left him alone, letting them know he’d made it through another few hours without stepping in front of a speeding car. Most days he remembered, but not today. Today, it had been hours since he’d last checked in and the fear that he’d worried them made him feel like a dick.

Sophie’s reply came through in minutes, but he found himself loitering, waiting for Rupert’s. And waiting, and waiting. He drummed his fingers on the countertop. His mind was abuzz with a million things he needed to say to Rupert, but, albeit briefly, for some reason a couple of electronic words felt like they’d be enough. If only he could think of anything coherent.

He stared at the phone, fixated. It was a while before he realised it had grown dark. Damn it. Some days he couldn’t care less if it was night or day, but the sensation of time disappearing while he languished in his chaotic thoughts was, at best, annoying.

At worse it was terrifying, but Jodi had too much on his mind to worry about the holes in his brain today. All he wanted—craved—right now, was any sign he was on Rupert’s mind as much as Rupert was on his.

Finally, Rupert’s name lit up his phone screen. Jodi swiped the message open, preparing himself for the subtle disappointment in him Rupert could never quite hide, even in the short messages they exchanged when he wasn’t around.

The whole-screen paragraph took Jodi aback. He scanned the message, and his heart sank. Far from the gentle admonishment he’d expected, Rupert had sent a list of things Jodi needed to do before he went to bed. Things Rupert usually helped him with. Things Jodi would have to do alone because Rupert wasn’t coming home.

The greasy, choking heat of burning oil came at Rupert from all sides. He crouched down and felt his way through the blazing chip shop, searching for any sign of the elderly owner who was still unaccounted for. His hand hit something that could’ve been a shoe. It wasn’t. Further inspection of the object revealed a chip scoop.

Rupert cast it aside and pressed on. He’d just searched the flat above the shop, but the smoke was thickening by the second and time was running out. Another few minutes and anyone still alive on the ground floor would be dead. And Rupert didn’t need a body on his hands. Not today. His crew had already attended a fatal industrial accident, and he wasn’t in the mood to lay another dead soul in the back of an ambulance.

So he pressed on, trying not to count how many chip-fat-based fires he’d attended over the last few months. Did people never learn?

He reached the service counter, creeping closer and closer to the heart of the fire. A window at the back of the shop blew. He ducked lower, dodging the surge in heat as the backdraft gusted through the burning shop. Adrenaline quickened his pulse. Six years on the job had dulled his fear of flames, but the thrill of dancing around them never got old. Running out of oxygen worried him more. His tank sounded its warning alarm. He didn’t have much left. Just another few steps—

The radio crackled. “Stand down, team one. Stand down. All persons accounted for. Withdraw. Repeat. Withdraw.”

Or not.

He picked his way out of the chip shop as the hose crews continued to tackle the blaze. It wasn’t the biggest the crew had seen that week, but they didn’t have long to get it under control before it spread to nearby homes. Rupert glanced back over his shoulder. Smoke still billowed from the roof and windows, but the flames were no longer visible. Green Watch had it covered.

At the rig, he stripped out of his breathing apparatus and scrubbed a clammy hand down his face. Briggs appeared from nowhere and passed him a bottle of water. Rupert took it gratefully. Whatever the weather, crawling through burning buildings was sweaty work. “So the old boy turned up then?”

Briggs grunted. “Old git, you mean. His daughter found him up the road in Corals. Reckons he probably left the fryers on in his hurry to catch the dogs.”

“Dickhead.” And Rupert meant it. He’d seen too many tragedies to forgive such blatant idiocy and knowing he’d risked his life searching for some twat who’d been in the bookies all along just about summed up his day.

Briggs moved off to check on the other crews. Rupert climbed into the rig and retrieved his phone from the dashboard while he waited for them to regroup. It had been a few hours since he’d had to tell Jodi a major incident with the station’s other rig meant he couldn’t come off shift until dawn. Jodi had replied with a flat
OK
, and with calls rolling one after the other ever since, Rupert hadn’t had time to check that he really was okay, that he felt well enough to be by himself all night when he’d already spent the day alone, a day Rupert had spent reminding himself how to put his worries for Jodi to one side while he got on with his job.

He swiped his phone. There was nothing from Jodi, but the screen was jammed with four missed calls from Jen. He called her straight back; she’d only keep calling otherwise until she’d got what she wanted.

She answered on the first ring. “What took you so long?”

“I’m on shift. What do you want?”

“My dad’s had a stroke. They don’t think he’ll be able to come home, so I need to drive up to Coventry in the morning to get things sorted.”

“Okay.” Rupert couldn’t find the words for sympathy he didn’t mean. His ex-father-in-law had made his life hell, even before the truth had come out. “Are you taking Indie with you?”

“I can’t really do that, can I? You know what that house is like. There’s nowhere for her to sleep, and she hates it. You need to have her for a few days.”

“I can’t.” Rupert cringed, hating himself for being caught between the two souls he loved so much. Since Jodi had come home, he’d been having Indie at Sophie’s place—the world’s girliest apartment in Primrose Hill—but Sophie had gone away and wouldn’t be back until the end of the week, leaving Rupert with no access to her apartment and no one to care for Jodi in his absence. He’d already left him for far too long. “I’m sorry, I just can’t. I have to—”

“I’m not asking you, Rupert. I’m telling you. You need to get over here and take care of your daughter. I don’t care if you have better things to do. I need you here tomorrow morning.”

She hung up before Rupert could respond. He called again, but she didn’t answer, and by then the rest of the crew were boarding the rig, ready to go back to the station. There was barely time for a piss before they were called out once more, and the calls kept coming. It was three in the morning before he checked his phone.

He activated the screen. Three messages, all from Jodi, and spaced three hours apart, the last one more than two hours ago.

Come home

Please

I need you

“Let me out here.”

The taxi jolted to a stop. Rupert threw the fifty quid he’d withdrawn for food shopping at the driver and jumped out. He dashed up the steps and jammed his key in the exterior door. The door stuck. He kicked it open, slamming it into the wall behind, and took the stairs two at a time.

He shoved his way through the flat’s front door. “Jodi? Jodi? Where are you?”

There was no reply. Rupert charged through the flat. Living room, kitchen, bedroom, bathroom. But they were all empty. Jodi was nowhere to be seen.

Rupert pulled out his phone and hit Jodi’s speed dial for the hundredth time since he’d read his messages, but it went to voice mail.

Panic swept over Rupert. He dashed back to the hall, heading for the front door. What the hell had happened? Had he fallen and hurt himself? Called 999 himself? Or one of the neighbours? With Sophie away, his ad hoc double shift had been badly timed. Fucking idiot. Why the hell hadn’t he told Briggs to do one, and come home?

He fell over Jodi’s feet, landing on his knees to face an expression he’d never seen on Jodi’s face before. “Jodi?”

Jodi didn’t blink. His bloodshot gaze remained bewildered, exhausted, and . . . something else. “You came home.”

“Of course I did. I would’ve come sooner, but I didn’t get your messages until I came off a job.”

“That’s why I didn’t call you. Because you were at work and you can’t answer the phone at work.”

Jodi recited the words, repeating the instructions Rupert had given him when he’d left the day before.

“That’s right,” Rupert said. “They let me carry my phone on silent and leave it on the rig, but I can only use it in an emergency. That’s why I left you the station number as well, so you could call for help if you needed it. What’s happened? Are you okay? Did you hurt yourself?”

“No. It’s not me. It’s her.”

“Her? Who? Sophie?”

“No. Her.”

Rupert followed Jodi’s gaze through the open doorway he was slumped in. Followed it into the pink and blue bedroom, all the way to the tiny humped body of Indie, curled up in the bed she hadn’t slept in since Jodi came home from hospital five long months ago.

A surreal calm came over Rupert. He stood and went to Indie’s bedside. She was fast asleep, clutching the battered wolf toy Jodi had bought her from London Zoo soon after Rupert had introduced them. She always slept with it when she came to the flat. In her absence, Rupert had stashed it on top of the fridge, unable to face his failure to give her a stable base while Jodi had been so unwell. Somehow it had found its way home.

Rupert touched Indie’s cheek, for a moment lost in its ethereal smoothness. He hadn’t seen her all week. Had she grown again?

“Rupert?”

Rupert closed his eyes to Jodi’s hoarse whisper. Something had happened in this room while he’d been at work, something huge, and he felt it in every fibre of his being, but he needed this quiet moment, the calm before the storm. And in this turbulent new world, only Indie could give him that. He needed her as much as he needed Jodi. More. But Indie was sleeping, at peace in her world of princesses playing football, or whatever it was she dreamed about. In all her eight years, he’d never known her to have a nightmare. No. The nightmares were his, and he’d take every one if he could spare her a moment of pain. He’d take a bullet for her, and Jodi. He’d die for them both.

Jodi
. Rupert breathed a silent sigh and turned away from Indie, treading noiselessly out of the room to Jodi’s side. He crouched down and tentatively brushed Jodi’s hair from his forehead. “What happened?”