Page 73 of Love and Loathing

“Out the way! Coming through!”

They stepped apart, making room for some guys carrying a large sheet of boarding to the pile in the corner. It had the Bluedeen logo on it, smeared now with mud from her friends’ hands, all the people who came the moment she called—her odd collection of comrades in arms, ragtag, young and old—because they believed, like she did, that this was worth doing.

She wasn’t mad, was she? To think this was worthwhile? To believe it might make the world a tiny bit better? It wasn’t for nothing that Eden was a garden. Paradise was a garden…

Zig waved her over, wanting to talk about railings. She walked over to his familiar face, recalling a hundred conversations, a hundred plans, all the ways that they had tried and failed to save the world. Maybe there was another piece of land just like this one with the Bluedeen logos going up, the bulldozers moving in. Another Evie cried somewhere else because a woodland was being torn down, all the living green scraped from an ancient field, an old orchard razed…

Perhaps she could have stopped it all. If she hadn’t lost her courage. Hadn’t doubted. If she’d got the evidence from Aubrey’s laptop, perhaps they could have brought Domnall down, sent a shockwave through the system that put profit before life itself… But that wasn’t the choice she had made.

Zig nodded at her as she stopped by him. His eyes went briefly past her shoulder to where Aubrey stood. He scowled.

“Is he worth it, then? Your man in the suit?”

“Yes,” she said, almost entirely sure it was true.

Evie was a mess by the time they finally gave up on the fading light and locked up the site. She apologised to Aubrey for the mud as she got into his car. She was dirty everywhere, damp, aching and bone-weary.

“How do you—” She sneezed, then sneezed again. “Sorry. How do you still look so clean?”

“Oh, I barely lifted a finger,” he said as they pulled out into the rush hour traffic.

That wasn’t true at all. He’d worked as hard as anyone, even after an early start helping Roscoe this morning, and then—

“Oh shit! How did I forget? You had a job interview today. How did it go?”

“It didn’t. It was cancelled.”

She turned in her seat, stared at his set jaw, his eyes fixed on the complicated traffic. “Cancelled? Why?”

“My name is mud right now.”

“My father’s doing? Because you had a fallout?”

“Yes.”

“But why…! That’s so unfair!”

“I said some things he probably can’t forgive.”

“Like what?”

Aubrey paused, let out a breath of dark laughter. “Oh… I can’t quite remember. Something along the lines of hoping he dies abandoned and alone because he doesn’t deserve the company of his children.”

“Oh. Wow.”

“Yes. Sorry.”

“Sorry? Why?”

“He’s your father.”

“Only in the most technical sense.” She laughed to herself, shocked, trying to imagine it. “Did you really say that?”

“I’m fairly sure I said he doesn’t deserve you.” He flashed her a look, no humour in it. “Which is true.”

Her heart gave a painful flip, and she swallowed, an ache in her throat. “I… Thank you. For saying that.”

“I should have said more.”

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