Michael

 

I should’ve called Carrie last night. Or I should’ve at least tried. Even better, I should’ve turned back up at Jack’s and told her I’m not going to be pushed away by her sticking her middle finger up to everyone trying to help. I should’ve told her that if things were different, if I was ten years younger and hadn’t spent the last five months with her on my books, that I’d be falling into bed with her in a heartbeat, for right or wrong.

I should’ve told her I care. That I care too much.

Jack’s right; this is a midlife crisis and it’s getting the better of me. I can’t get her out of my mind, and it takes every scrap of determination to stay focused on my meetings through the morning, knowing full well she’s at Jack’s getting up to Christ knows what.

If she’s even still there.

The idea she’s taken off again sends a chill up my spine.

I’m talking through career options with a kid called Brooklyn when I feel my phone buzz in my pocket. I hope it’s her calling. I hope it’s her who’s left a voicemail when I feel the second buzz go off.

I ignore it until Brooklyn’s session is wrapped up, of course I do, but my fingers are clumsy on the handset once he’s out through the door, racing to retrieve my call log.

My heart drops when I see Jack’s number appear on screen.

Shit.

I sigh as I press to hear his message, feeling like such an asshole for keeping him in the dark through this. His house isn’t a hostel, and his friendship is worth more than keeping secrets of this magnitude, even for the sake of just a few days.

His voice is gruff enough to take me aback. His message chills my blood.

You’d better get here. Now. I’m in my fucking living room with your missing fucking person. Get here, Mike, before I call the fucking police.

I check the call time. Forty minutes ago.

Fuck.

Holy fucking fuck.

I grab my jacket from the back of my chair and make a dash for it, hating how frazzled my explanation sounds when I ask Pam to please cover my appointments for the rest of the afternoon.

She looks worried, and I feel like more of an asshole by the second.

“Are you alright, Mike?” she asks, and I count on looking as fucked up as I feel when I tell her I think I’ve got food poisoning.

She nods. “You don’t look well.”

I don’t feel well, either.

I make a sharp exit, barely even offering her a goodbye in my haste to be out of there.

I jump into the car and speed off for Jack’s, drumming my fingers on the steering wheel all the way. Please, for fuck’s sake, don’t call the police. Please, for fuck’s sake, don’t let her run.

Every set of traffic lights conspires against me, and the usual five-minute journey takes over ten. My tyres screech as I pull onto his driveway, stopping just short of bumping his Range as I kill the ignition and bail out.

I don’t knock, just charge on in and expect to find a war breaking out, but it looks as though it’s already happened.

Muddy boot prints everywhere, and oh fuck how I cringe inside. I stare open-mouthed at the state of the living room, cursing as I spot the smashed frames on the mantelpiece.

I’m calling his name as I charge down the hallway, following the boot prints through to the kitchen and on through again to the dining room.

I take a breath as I find them, my heart thumping with the relief that she hasn’t gone running. Not yet, anyway.

“I can explain,” I begin, but Jack’s face looks like thunder. “This isn’t Carrie’s fault.”

“Which fucking bit of it?” he snaps, and I cringe again as I notice this room has hardly fared better than the others.

Carrie’s voice is breathy when she speaks. “I tried to save a crow. His leg was stuck in a fence. He freaked out, flew everywhere.”

I try to take in the story, breaking out in a cold sweat when I notice Jack’s sculpture is missing from the top of the display cabinet. I notice the brush and the pan full of glass at his feet and the furniture polish in Carrie’s hand.

No.

Oh God, no.

“I’ll pay for the damage,” I say, and Jack sneers at me.

“Yeah, just PayPal me your retirement fund, why don’t you?”

Carrie looks on blankly and I hope he doesn’t elaborate and tell her how expensive that ornament was.

He doesn’t.

“This is so fucking out of order,” he snaps and I nod because it is.

“I’m sorry,” I say, which is the truth of it. “I was in a corner. I was trying to do the right thing.”

“The right thing would have been to book her into a fucking hotel, Mike. The right thing would have been to let me know you’re using my fucking house as emergency accommodation. The right thing would have been to fucking tell me you found her in the fucking first place.”

I nod through all of it. Yes, yes and more yes.

I feel like a fucking idiot, more off the rails than even I fully realised.

“It isn’t his fault,” Carrie offers and her simple defence makes my heart pang.

“It is my fault,” I counter. “This was my decision, Carrie didn’t ask to come here.”

“The crow’s your fault,” Carrie tells Jack and I will her to shut up before she talks herself into a bigger hole than we’re in already. “You need to fix your fucking fence. It’s dangerous.”

It’s a three way stand-off, all of us staring and nobody speaking a word.

Jack’s pissed, his shoulders rigid and his eyes dark as he looks from one of us to the other, but he hasn’t called the police, and Carrie is still standing here, still staying put amongst the chaos.

I gesture her toward me. “I’ll book you into a hotel in Coleford. You’ll be safe there. Get your things and wait in the car for me, I’ll be out just as soon as I’ve finished up talking to Jack.”

She dithers, and it breaks my heart that she doesn’t want to leave here, not even with Jack on the warpath.

I hand her the car keys and she heads for the kitchen without argument. It’s a first.

“Wait,” Jack says, and we both look at him. “Coleford?! What the fuck is there for her in fucking Coleford?”

I shrug. “I don’t think it’s a good idea to book her a room in town.”

I’m thinking of her hobbling through the night on a mission to escape something. I’m thinking about her running when she bumps into Bill and Rosie, or drinking herself unconscious with Eddie Stevens just as soon as he realises she’s back.

“I don’t want to stay in Coleford,” she says and her eyes are wide as they crash into mine. “I want to stay with you.”

Jack groans. He turns a full circle with his hands in his hair and then he points a finger between us. “Is this a thing?”

“A thing?” I ask, but Carrie’s already nodding.

I forget what little filter she has.

“It’s not a thing,” I say, even though it pains. Carrie looks as though I’ve struck her all over again, and that pains worse. I sigh as I look at her. “I care about you,” I say. “Very much. But this can’t be a… thing, Carrie. It wouldn’t be right.”

Her cheeks flush, her mouth closed tight as she hugs her arms around herself. I’d give anything to touch her, but I can’t.

“Well?” Jack asks. “Is it a fucking thing or isn’t it?”

I shake my head. “Christ, Jack. You know me. Do you even need to ask?”

“Of course I need to fucking ask,” he says. “And I need to know what the fuck you’re planning on doing from here.”

It’s the tone of his voice – the edge of interest under the anger. The hair on the back of my neck bristles, my blood running cold.

His eyes flit to her and linger too long, and I notice the brush and pan again, notice Carrie’s pink socks and the speed in which Jack must have composed himself enough to clear up the glass from the floor.

He’s a good man. One of the best. But Jack’s hot-headed, it takes him an age to calm down when he’s riled up, I’ve seen it more times than I can count over the years. But not now.

Because he wants her.

I’ve never seen Jack all that interested in anyone, but he’s interested in Carrie.

My Carrie.

Only she’s not my Carrie. She’s just a girl who needs my help.

Our help.

Jack’s right about Coleford. It’s not fair to hole a girl up alone miles from anyone she knows. It’s not fair to shove her into an impersonal hotel room and expect her to stay cooped up there while you try to sort her life out around your day job.

Carrie’s still hugging herself. Her eyes are still all on me. A strange thrum of possessiveness threatens to eat me up even though I’ve no claim and I never will have.

“What do you want to do?” Jack asks Carrie and this time she shrugs.

I can’t believe he gives a shit about what she wants after she’s brought a one-woman wave of destruction down on his home.

The Carrie Wells effect.

If I’d have put money on anyone being immune, it would’ve all been on Jack, but it seems I’d have been wrong.

“You’ve really got nowhere else to go?” he asks her and she shakes her head.

“I’ll clean up my mess,” she says. “Just like I told you I would.”

I’m on the verge of uttering the unthinkable and telling her I’ll take her back to mine, Pam be damned, when Jack lets out a sigh.

“You can stay,” he tells her, then looks at me. “Just for a few days until you sort something out with the housing agency. But no more secrets, and no more fucking crows.”

My jaw flaps, stumbling over words that should be grateful but feel like glass.

“I can stay?!” Carrie asks and she looks so happy that all thoughts of bursting her bubble fade to nothing.

“For a few days,” Jack says, but she’s nodding. Smiling.

“No more crows,” she says. “I promise.”

She’s never promised me anything. I wish she would.

I thank Jack and I mean it. I force my stupid jealousy aside and push myself to be the better man. The man I should be. The image of conscience and professionalism that I’ve been holding myself to my whole adult life.

And then we get to cleaning up the rest of the terrible fucking mess in his house.

I wait until Carrie’s out of earshot before I give Jack my thanks for the second time, man to man.

He nods. Tips his head and there’s that edge again. The one that makes me feel sick.

“I’m not doing it for you,” he says, “I’m doing it for her.”