Chapter 10

10

I don’t let go of his hand until Underground ticket barriers divide us, then he’s behind me on the escalator and still there on the way to a platform. A rush of warm air signals a train’s arrival, and we reconnect in a crowded carriage when his hand finds my hip.

No one else can see that connection, or how his hold tightens with the tilt of a train curving through tunnels underneath the city.

I curve too. Into him. And for once, I don’t hate being crowded.

I don’t even hate being jostled by tourists with bulky rucksacks. I lean closer to him to avoid them, and Reece widens his stance all the way between Knightsbridge, Hyde Park Corner, and Green Park stations, and this prolonged close contact?

While I hate it ending, I decide it’s almost worth it to emerge into everything I love about December in this city.

Piccadilly Circus is chaotic—busy and bustling as much at night as it is in daytime—and it doesn’t matter that those few flakes of snow Reece offered as a reason to spend more time together are long gone. The Christmas lights are enough of a reason. They sparkle, and so do his eyes when he points out the statue this spot is known for.

“Ever sent your gran a pic of this little guy?” He takes my phone to snap one for me, then takes another including himself this time. Reece crowds closer, and there we both are on my phone screen with a cupid between us, complete with a bow and arrow, and that statue might as well use me for target practice when Reece proves how hard he’s listened. “Regent Street next for the angels?”

Two weeks before Christmas, it’s carnage.

I love it.

Reece almost reels back at this clash of consumers and commuters, this collision of slow-moving window-shoppers with impatient workers wanting to get home in a hurry.

That’s okay. He kept me upright on the Tube. I do the same here, like I also did at a ball for bankers until he had his bearings. Tonight, he finds his feet even faster. Reece grins at babies bundled in snowsuits who stare open-mouthed with wonder at the angels hanging over their heads.

He still grins as he turns in a slow circle with my phone to capture a panorama of black cabs and scarlet double-deckers. He also secures shot after shot with all of me in frame instead of only my chin or forehead. For once, I don’t feel self-conscious for posing beside windows like a tourist. These photos spell that Christmas is coming and that it’s bitterly cold—my nose is as red as Rudolph’s in some shots. Less so in others after it starts to sleet and Reece insists on returning my scarf.

He won’t take no for an answer. “I’m used to being cold and wet.”

He takes more photos than I asked for, my laughter frozen forever in breathy images I send home once we’re somewhere warmer.

Reece and I sit in a tourist-trap pub decorated like an explosion in a tinsel factory and grab something to eat and drink together. After the food arrives, Reece uses my phone to take one more photo, this time of me doing a pretty good Sebastian impression, which he must drop into my housemate group chat.

One housemate replies in too much of a hurry for punctuation.

Sebastian: dont shove so much in ur mouth u will choke

That bossy order is quickly followed by a nosy question.

Sebastian: who u out with

I don’t answer—give Sebastian an inch and he’ll stage a mile-long inquisition. I do push my plate away. “That’s probably enough.”

“Enough food or enough photos?” Reece takes a last bite of an overpriced burger, his nose as red as mine in one of those breathy shots that gets me a rare response directly from Gran.

I get a heart-eyes emoji first followed by three sentences complete with punctuation Sebastian could learn from.

Gran: Who’s taking all these lovely photos of you, Jack? They’re so beautiful. Tell them thank you from me!

I’m not entirely sure how to answer her first question.

Who took these photos?

Should I say someone I work for? Or someone I’ve spent years getting to know, and would want even more time with if I didn’t feel obligated to keep finding bright lights for her?

No.

I can’t type that.

Like when I was a kid and feeling anxious about going back to school, she’s still a mind reader, only she doesn’t send Gramps to wrap his cloak around me. She mentions what I’ve tried to do for the last three years without him.

Gran: Thank your friend for all these wonderful reminders of places I went with Richard. You’ll have to find someone as kind in NYC!

No.

That would be impossible. Plus, I don’t want to. I don’t. Not when this is all I could ever want for Christmas.

It’s that complex and this simple.

We just saw babies stare open-mouthed in wonder at streetlight angels then wail at screaming police-car sirens, and that’s what I could do right here in a tourist-trap pub where Mariah Carey hits her high notes. For a second time today, I could wail just like her and those infants.

Reece stops that from happening by nudging my knee under the table. I assume he’s prompting an answer to his food-or-photos question. He actually asks, “Something wrong?”

“Wrong? No, no, no. I’m perfectly fine.” I pull on my coat but I’m not quick enough to reach for my scarf.

Reece knots it again for me, taking his time to straighten each tassel. He’s slow and careful. So is this observation. “You didn’t look okay about whatever you just read on your phone.” He offers me an out. “Want to call it a night?”

“No.” That shoots out so loudly that heads turn, chatter dying like I do inside at sounding this desperate in public.

I get quieter in a hurry.

“Sorry. I just mean, I’m not ready to stop. Unless you’re tired of?—”

“London?” he asks with a wink that reminds me of Calum. His next suggestion comes with all the warmth Patrick injects into our morning three-way cuddles. “How could I be tired with you as a tour guide?” His final comment is pure Reece Trelawney. “Might be therapeutic to keep going. For both of us, I mean, because neither of us have had great experiences with camera-obsessed people, have we? It’s been good to use one to send a little joy to someone special to you.” He tilts his head, and this sounds careful as well. “To open their window onto the outside world a little wider?”

I nod. That’s exactly what I do every single time I send home photos.

“Did she like what you sent so far?”

I nod again. “She loves them. All of them. Thank you.”

“Nothing to thank me for.” His smile is small, but if there’s anyone else in this pub, I don’t see them when he tugs on a tassel and asks, “What’s next on the list, Jack?”

I pull myself together, then show him.

This time, I take him to London’s biggest toy shop, where he doesn’t only snap a pic of me under its red awnings. He also proves that he’s play-centric, and that Christmas can be for big kids as well as little, which he does by asking, “Can we go in?”

Yes, we fucking can.

I hold open the door, then follow someone instantly in their element into a store designed for children. We move from floor to floor where Reece makes verbal wish lists of resources before he stops to explain why he’d buy more superhero action figures for the foundation if money were no object. “Kids don’t ask to be uprooted. It leaves them feeling powerless.”

“So you give them toys to take their mind off it?”

“No. The opposite. We reenact their worst moments together, only with these so they get to be more powerful.” He wiggles an action figure so its cape flutters. “Doesn’t change what happened to them. Just offers a chance to let it all out without feeling helpless. That’s what the team and I do. We face whatever made their families desperate. Reframe that disaster as part of their story, not their final chapter. Play is one superpower to help them do that. Art is another. Storytelling brings both together.”

He sets a caped hero down and selects a less impressive action figure. “I know someone who would love to add more of these to his arsenal.” He points out more figures the newest recruit to his playful team could use as prompts for art projects. “Doctors and nurses. School teachers and construction workers. If our kids can move on, these are their futures now they’re somewhere safer. They can be useful instead of unwanted.”

He pauses by a toy-speedboat reminder of someone I can’t help thinking made Reece feel the same way once his usefulness was over. Then he’s silent for a second time in a section of the store where Christmas ornaments smother the branches of a tall tree.

Maybe quiet isn’t the right word for him circling this display and selecting bauble after bauble before replacing each one. He’s torn, and that’s a new look on him. One that adds to his creases in a way that makes me pay attention when he says, “Sorry to take so long, Jack.”

“No hurry.” He’s spent plenty of time helping me this evening. I’ve got all the time in the world for him to do a little Christmas shopping.

I kill time by looking through the photos he’s taken for me, and so what if I add the one featuring us both to my lock screen. It’s festive. It also holds all of my attention right up until Reece gives me a little window into his own world away from London. This time, he mentions his family.

“We take it in turns to get an ornament for the family tree every Christmas. Bit of a tradition. For Mum, really. She’s the one who will open it. This year, it’s my turn to choose.”

“That’s nice.”

He’s silent as he cradles a bauble. I’m pretty sure it’s made from plastic, not from anything more fragile, but him holding it like it might shatter means I can’t help asking a nosy question.

“Isn’t it?”

Apparently not.

He’s got shoulders broad enough to carry the whole foundation whenever Rex is on banking business. I don’t like seeing them bow like this. Maybe that’s why I get busy talking.

“I could get one for my gran too.” I try to make what seems a surprisingly tough gift choice for Reece easier by hunting through this display for something symbolic of this city. “How about this one?” I’ve found a bauble painted with Big Ben and sprinkled with snowy glitter. “Gran would like it. Maybe your mum would too.”

He pulls himself together. I watch it happen like I’ve watched Patrick centre himself with yoga breathing. Reece takes the same long and slow breaths before admitting, “I always worry I’ll choose the wrong one for her.”

I’ve met his mum several times. Lynne Trelawney is the definition of laid-back. Come to think of it, she’s the teacher Patrick learned all his downward-dog moves from.

Reece isn’t half as zen-like. “Stupid thing to worry about, right? I’m an adult. One who wrote a whole thesis on perinatal and postnatal depression, not the little kid who woke up to find his mother missing on Christmas morning.”

This store is still full of shoppers.

They stop existing when Reece glances down at a bauble I now see features a haloed baby in a hay-filled crib.

“Give her this and risk reminding her of something she had no control over?” He shakes his head. “I gathered the data, Jack. Read article after article. I absolutely understand hormonal imbalances and treatments. How brains are complex, and how pregnancy adds extra layers. You know what none of those articles explored?”

I take a turn at shaking my head, and fuck anyone who notices or has an issue with what I do next. I pull him much closer. “Tell me.”

“Those research papers didn’t have anything to say about the children already in families where a mother needed inpatient treatment.” He ducks his head, studying the bauble. “They talked about genetic propensity, about the increased chance of repeat crises, without acknowledging there could be kids who got to witness their mother struggle not once but twice or more. Kids who were too young to grasp that their mother wouldn’t be away forever.” He meets my gaze. “She needed help after Calum and after Pat.”

I do a quick calculation. “You were six?”

“The first time?” He nods. “Eleven when she started to sink again. That was situational. Lots of extra stresses for her and Dad going on. Still kinda felt like sinking right along with her.”

His vocation comes sharply into focus.

He literally stops kids from drowning. Scoops them out of the sea and helps them play their way back to being happy.

My throat tightens. I have to loosen my scarf to ask this. “She’s good now?”

“Better than good. You’ve met her. She’s everything the textbooks describe about a healthy resolution. Even her yoga practice is exactly what experts suggest for mindfulness and self-care.”

This is rougher from him.

“She worked so hard for us, Jack. So hard . And for other families. After Pat, she set up a whole support network for new mums and dads in Cornwall.” He tells me what I already figured out. “And she’s why I made kids my focus.”

Everything fades again as he voices what has been my own mantra since I first came to London.

“I hate the idea of rocking the boat for her. Or of setting her back.”

“How?”

“By getting it wrong at Christmas.” He pauses for so long that I almost ask what the word wrong means in a Christmas context before he fills the gap for me. “You should see my old bedroom, Jack. I can almost guarantee it will be like Santa’s grotto when I get home. I’ve got a place of my own, but that bedroom at home is where I’ll wake up after our early celebration, surrounded by—” He gestures at the over-the-top decorations filling this toy store. “As if she needs to make up for something I don’t blame her for, but also that I don’t get a chance to leave in the past.”

That’s what he just described doing for foundation children.

He’s also uneasy.

“Fine play therapist I am. The thought of setting her back by saying no to all that razzle-dazzle?” He taps his temple. “Up here, I know it wouldn’t happen. Still gets to me right here.”

He rubs his chest, and my response is equally physical. I can’t help covering his hand and squeezing.

Cover his hand?

I thread us tight together, because when has anyone else explained how I feel every single day lately by describing their own situation?

I can’t explain what that does to me—how it shakes me to the core and yet makes me as strong as any of those caped heroes on his healing wish list.

All I can do is lead him through families until we’re outside, where streetlight angels watch me find somewhere sheltered.

The shadowed doorway of an employment agency probably isn’t a rom-com-worthy location, but that’s where I kiss him. Our mouths meet, and it’s mutual. Needed. Reciprocated, if brief.

Our lips barely brush again before I get brutally honest over the growl of passing traffic. “I get it. I know all about not wanting to rock boats.” I almost choke on admitting, “Can’t risk another capsize, right?”

Hearing that seems to help him.

We’re already linked by one hand. He catches hold of my free one, and I’m glad we exited that store too fast to put on our gloves, even if the breeze out here is bitter. It means I get to soak up his warmth while listening to his low rumble. “Didn’t mean to dump that on you out of the blue. If you ever need me to return the favour, I’ll always listen.”

Maybe I nod. All I’m conscious of is his mouth meeting mine again until he breaks off, although Reece doesn’t add too much distance between our bodies. His forehead pressing against mine spells consolation, even though he’s the one who shared a worry. And when he finally straightens, his eyes gleam—damp for a brief moment like mine were earlier—and I don’t only have to hug him again. Or kiss him. I reverse our old roles by making a single-word suggestion.

“Home?”

This time, neither of us lead nor follow.

We both hurry together.