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I trail off, trying to find the right words. I think about all the diagrams he’d redrawn and annotated, the notes he’d left. Costs he’d highlighted. The way he dismissed the collaboration between Arrowmile and Mum’s company. Will, saying that he’d seen Lloyd looking up courses for Chemical Engineering at uni. The way he tried to play it cool when he tagged along to our labs visit, but was so obviously interested in it.
Something slots into place, and I take a guess.
‘It’s all the thingsyou’ddo differently, isn’t it?’
Lloyd scoffs, starting to protest, but he falters quickly. A breath shudders out of him and he meets my gaze this time, green eyes shining, looking so oddly vulnerable for a guy who’s always been so sure of himself. His shoulders hunch as he draws his file closer to his chest, shrinking in on himself until he looks physically smaller. Without the big smile or the swaggering attitude, he looks so young. More like his age.
He looks like a kid who’s been under way too much pressure for way too long.
‘You can’t tell anybody,’ he says quietly. ‘You have topromise me, you won’t tell them about this. They can’t find out. Especially not my dad.’
‘But I thought you and your dad talked about everything going on at Arrowmile? I thought that was, like, the wholepoint. That he wanted you to be involved?’
‘Not like this. Not …’
Lloyd drags a hand through his hair, rattled and unsure – and entirely unlike himself. The closeness that’s built up between us since the start of summer suddenly seems so much bigger than the recent distance, than the lingering tension from our fight – and I don’t think twice when I take him by the elbow and gesture for us to leave the station. Lloyd relaxes, breathes a little easier, at my touch, looking at me like he’s thinking the same thing: whatever else has happened between us, we know each other in a way other people don’t. And that still means something.
‘Come on, Fletcher,’ I tell him. ‘Let’s get breakfast, and talk.’
Lloyd and I manage to get a quiet corner table inside one of the restaurants along the South Bank. We bothplace orders for some breakfast without really paying much attention to the menu, and then Lloyd starts talking, the words spilling out of him in a rush. He trips over his words and fidgets with the cutlery, occasionally losing himself in the excitement of talking about something he loves, or else abruptly turning to quiet, stilted stammering as he tries to explain himself.
He explains that this file is something he’s been working on for a couple of years, but he’s really been focusing on it in earnest while spending his gap year at Arrowmile. It started out as just a fact-finding mission, something to help him prepare for the inevitable day his dad decided he should get involved in the company in a more real way, with a more concrete role. It was part pet project at the beginning, too – he had a real interest in the development work going on in the labs, did some research in his own time for fun, occasionally found something from one project that could be used somewhere else, ways to make things more efficient.
‘Like with Phoebus III,’ he tells me, fishing some diagrams out of the file to show me. I notice the one on top is a patent application for something, but I couldn’t even begin to guess what. ‘They were applying tech from racing cars to try and improve the battery life of our electric vehicles, but the technology wasn’t quite there at the time so it got expensive and then Dad cutoff the funding and it got scrapped – butnow, see, if we used that in the new car, in the Phoebus IV, there’s a real chance it could work! But nobody’s even considered it – or if they have, they’re too scared to try to approach my dad about it after it failed the last time.’
Sometimes, he explains, it was more of a revenge mission. Rooting out all the rotten parts of Arrowmile, debunking some of their eco-friendly claims or the positive ‘spin’ they’d put on something.
‘The thing they’re working on with your mum – it’s a nice idea, but it’s all just to get some good publicity. They’ll pourmillionsinto it, for nothing. They don’t plan to actuallydoanything beyond a few prototypes they can show off, you know? They don’t care enough. Maybe your mum does, I don’t know, but Dad definitely doesn’t. It’s a gimmick.’
Whatever this research project is, it’s been his outlet. Something to channel his frustration and passion and determination into, all this time.
He pauses to take a breather when our food is brought over.
Lloyd’s eyes are shining again, but this time not with the threat of tears. Now, it’s pure exhilaration. The shallow heave of his chest isn’t anxiety, it’s adrenaline.
I can’t help but admire him, even as I’m still getting my head around this.
And I can’t believe I ever thought he was just throwing his weight around, enjoying exerting his authority as the boss’s son and never actually doing any real work, when all this time he’s been dedicated tothis.
‘I still don’t understand,’ I say, pulling my poached egg and avocado toast towards me. ‘Why don’t you want your dad to find out about all this? Wouldn’t he be proud? I mean, if this is stuff that could help the company …’
Lloyd scoffs. ‘Some of it would. Some of it wouldn’t look so great if the press got hold of it, or shareholders found out, I bet.’
‘Which was why you were always naggingmeto find out what the updates to all the managers were. So you could see how people were talking about stuff, or what kind of spin they put on it.’
‘Yeah. Besides, I’vetriedtalking to my dad. He doesn’t care.’
‘He – what?’
‘He doesn’t care,’ Lloyd repeats, and pulls a face, his mouth twisting up on one side as he shrugs, all,What can you do?‘I’ve tried to talk to him about everything in this file, but he’s never interested. Just says,Leave it to the grown-ups.Don’t worry about it, it’s all in hand. Or he tells me he’ll deal with it, but he neverdoes. You said a while ago that nobody would tell me that my work doesn’t hold any weight – but as far as my dad’s concerned, it doesn’t. He reckons I don’t understand what they’re doing in the labs, but I understand a lot more than he does. I’ve been living, sleeping, breathing this stuff since I was little. Ilikethe science of it, so I’ve learned about it – unlike Dad, who just defers to the experts.
‘If he knew just how much stuff I’ve collected on Arrowmile … I mean, this whole thing –’ Lloyd lets out a short chuckle, gesturing at the file. ‘This is basically a catalogue of everything he’s donewrongfor the last couple of years. He’d be furious if he found out. And … And I don’t want to put that on Will, you know? If Dad loses it with me, he’ll just start trying to rope Will back into Arrowmile, and …’
Breakfast forgotten, all I can do is stare at this boy who wears his heart on his sleeve, who loves so fiercely and fully and is so full of compassion, and wonder how I ever thought so little of him.
I kept calling him golden boy, not realizing he had a heart of gold to match.
Reaching across the table, I take Lloyd’s hand.
