My mother, actually. My father will take longer. But it’s a start.
Send.
The phone sits on the tray table. The train moves, outside: fields, pylons, Midlands.
The screen stays dark. Then.
Vibration, notification. His name.
I still can’t believe I have him saved asLaurencenow.
Not A. Not Haldrey. Not hidden behind initials or fake labels or professional distance. Just Laurence, sitting openly on my screen like we finally survived long enough to stop pretending.
I look.
When?
I stare at it, the cursor blinks. One punctuation rearranging everything.
He could have saidokay.He could have saidI’ll think about it.He could have written three paragraphs of caveats and conditions, and the Haldrey version of yes, which involves fourteen subordinate clauses and an ethical framework.
Instead:When?
The text glows small and bright on the screen. I read it twice.
The train rocks and the Midlands scroll past, and I’m grinning at a cracked phone screen like an idiot, my vision going a little soft around the edges, while the woman across the aisle pretends not to notice.
Let her look. I’m done hiding.
CHAPTER THIRTY
The key is in my letterbox on Tuesday. No buzz, no knock, no text saying anything. Just the brass weight of it at the bottom of the metal slot, on a folded note in handwriting I’d recognise in the dark.
It’s yours. It’s always been yours.
I hold the key in my palm.
But it sits differently in my hand now. Heavier. Last time it was a trophy. This time, I put it in my wallet—the slot where it used to live. The leather remembers the shape.
Green door. I put the key in the lock. Turn it, the mechanism catches, releases.
The hallway. Clean. The jumper has gone from the floor. The mugs are gone from the sink. Kitchen visible from here, counter wiped, surfaces clear. He’s cleaned everything. Methodical. How does he ready himself for war?
The heating’s on. Coffee in the air. He’s made coffee, and the flat smells of it again instead of being cold.
Laurence.
He’s standing in the kitchen doorway. Clean shirt, shaved sharp again. Glasses on, hair pushed back. He looks like the man from the first lecture and nothing like?—
That expression is?—
Nervous.
Laurence Haldrey is nervous. The man who lectures two hundred people without a note, who marks exams with the precision of a surgeon, who fucked me against a wall in his hallway without hesitation, this man is standing in his own kitchen doorway looking at me like he’s not sure if I’m going to stay.
‘Hi,’ I say.
‘Hi.’
