Chapter Sixteen
Ilove the Arts District. When you remove all the Vale jealousy bullshit and just look at it for what it is, the place is a haven. Sure, the predominant architecture is a wealth of abandoned factories, but the regeneration remade them, breathed new life into them. Clean brickwork, huge Crittall Windows, murals, meeting and eating places on every block. Where there was no room for swathes of parkland, the greenery lives vertically instead. Moss walls are set against glass walls. Cubism-inspired planters hang high above, overflowing with vines and creepers that brush your head as you walk by.
The ground floors of each building are outfitted as either commercial lets or community hubs. Coffee shops exist next to sculpture classes, mahjong meet-ups next door to Middle Eastern restaurants. There’s something happening everywhere you look. Colour, laughter, noise;life.
Amidst all this bustle, or perhaps at the crown of it, is the Marina. The place that was a sanctuary for me and the kids. Theplace we went to treat ourselves on good days and to hide behind facades of normality on bad ones.
The girls who work at the ice cream parlour know us by face and by order. Strange how a comfort becomes a liability. I remind Aiden of this fact, and we make a conscious effort to avoid it. There’s plenty more to do and see, especially with money. Or so I think.
It’s strange but now that I look, there’s nothing I want to buy. Everything I see looks like a waste. Like I’d be throwing cash away for the sake of it. What if something comes up in a few days and I don’t have enough to cover it because I splurged here? I keep my card firmly in my wallet and usher us to the farmer’s market we’ve come to see in the first place.
Aiden watches me subtly but doesn’t say anything. I sense his disappointment as clearly as I wear my own.
“You okay?” he asks. He kneels at a basket of old potatoes, ones that have begun to form roots.
“Yeah, fine.” I point at the potato in his hand, as good a distraction as any. “Surely, they’re too…uh…gnarlyto be tasty?”
“I’m thinking about the potato pots on the roof. I don’t haveKingfishers,and these make the best fries.”
“Oh.” It never occurred to me that you could grow potatoes on a roof, but thinking back there were four super-sized pots tucked in against the greenhouse wall.
Aiden buys four large potatoes, a range of salad vegetables and three heads of cauliflower, which makes my eyebrows raise into my hairline and Aiden laugh. I’m just hoping he has a plan because even the twins hate cauliflower, and they’ve eaten scraps out of the trash when pushed.Fuck Eric Feelan.
“Hey, where’d you go?”
“Eric.”
Aiden goes on immediate alert. His grocery bags hit the deck. His hand flits inside his jacket to reach for his gun. He scans the crowd. “Where!?”
“Jesus, sorry! No, I mean, I was thinking of the kids and food, and that inevitably led to the bullshit my…Ericpulled. It’s nothing.”
Aiden sighs with a whoosh of air. Removes his hand from his jacket and takes my face in both his hands. “It’ll take a while before the memories quiet. They’re all still fresh—just lived experiences right now. Eventually, they’ll fade and become replaced by better things. More so when the kids come home.” He kisses my forehead before stepping away and reaching for his abandoned shopping.
But what he said sticks in my head. “You think they’ll come back?”
“Whether they do or not, you’ll have the freedom to visit them or have them come stay with you for a while. Normal family stuff.”
What evenisnormal anymore? “New normal,” I concede, stifling my inner bitching.
“New normal,” he agrees. “I thought you might like to pick up a change of clothes while we were out.”
“That was my plan too, but I’ve not seen anything…” Aiden turns and points to each of the boutiques with perfectly nice clothes on the boardwalk. “…that I like,” I finish lamely.
“Then come with me; I might know a secret place,” he teases.
We leave the Marina, skirting the outside of the amusement park sprawled across the vast lot behind. Soon the buildings become shipping crates and wire fencing. The road ends at an unmanned gate and transforms into a thoroughfare of grooved highways that are as wide as airport runways. This must be the harbour; the port and shipping zones that most ordinary folk don’t see. You have to work here to gain access, and yet we just waltzed in.
“Shouldn’t that gate be closed?” I ask, nodding back towards the one we walked through.
Aiden chuckles. “It will be by the time we’re done here.”
“Is this Trevainne land or UACT land?” I guess it could be either, but I’m intrigued.
“Trevainne,” he replies. “UACT has no interest in owningland, but we do have a port-side base to keep an eye on imports and exports. It helps to be close in case of raids.”
It boggles the mind how UACT operates. They’re not clandestine in the slightest. They actively advertise that they’re working with Trevainne. “You’re not subtle about it; I’d have thought the bad guys would just drop contraband elsewhere.”
“Bad guys?”
