Page 89 of Butterfly

“Why what?”

“I didn’t go with my brother.”

Rory joined him on the bed.

“It’s too far from Teddy. I didn’t want to appeal; I wanted to stay in there with him, but he didn’t like that. He wanted me to be free. We made a deal. I’d appeal if he promised he’d write to me and let me visit him inside. I didn’t actually believe I’d be released. I still don’t believe it.” He glanced around the room. “It feels like a dream…like a nightmare.”

“You and Teddy?”

“Me and Teddy,” Ollie admitted without adding any more detail.

Rory nodded. “Well…he can’t write unless he knows where he’s writing to…”

Ollie blinked. “Huh?”

“There’s paper and pens over there,” Rory said, glancing at the wooden desk opposite the bed. “You write him a letter now; I’ll be able to post it on my way to work tomorrow.”

Ollie shot off the bed, clattering into the desk. He yanked out the chair and sat down.

“I’ll find you a toothbrush and a few other bits you’ll need until your things arrive,” Rory said before leaving the room.

Ollie found a pen and a sheet of paper in the second drawer.

He wrote out everything that had happened that day, excluding his mini-breakdown in the courtroom and underlined the return address with a red pen he’d also found in another drawer.

I stuck to my end of the deal. Now it’s time to stick to yours.

Him getting out of prison would not be the end of them; Ollie would make sure of it.

He signed the letter ‘Your Butterfly.’

15

Roryhadbeenrightabout the curfew and community service. Ollie had to be back at the house by nine each night, which saved him from being pressurised to stay over at his auntie and uncle’s house. Sebastian and Rory kindly offered for Leo to stay at their place instead, and he did, but one weekend a month, Ollie felt he had to perform for his brother, act relieved in the face of his release.

Leo told him he was fixing up a motorbike with their uncle. He showed pictures to Ollie, smiling as he explained what they’d done and what they still needed to do. Ollie knew nothing of engines and motorbikes, but it was bittersweet hearing how Leo had been accepted as a son. Ollie hadn’t wanted that, but he couldn’t help feeling he’d been pushed to the sidelines. He was a watcher of their family dynamic, trying to work out where he fit with Leo.

He told Teddy so in his letter, hesitating before writing the only time he felt hefitwas in that cell with Teddy.

Baby, lover, soulmate.

Romantic nonsense of course.

But his heart hurt with it.

Ollie had been tasked with roadside litter-picking for his community service. The first few times, he’d jumped out of his skin when a truck honked at him. But then he got used to blocking the sound of the motorway out as he shoved rubbish into a bag. He found it almost therapeutic. One of the times he was picking, he saw a fox spying on him from a hedgerow. In one of Teddy’s stories, he told Ollie how he used to get up early, when the sun was cresting and the grass was covered in dew, and watch a family of foxes playing in the fields.

Ollie tossed his sandwich into the bushes, smiling as the fox gobbled up his lunch.

He drew a picture of the fox for Teddy that night, brow scrunched in concentration as he tried to get the fur just right. It was a new skill he had to master.

Ollie wrote to Teddy every week like he promised he would. He told Teddy when he got a job, working in a supermarket on the check-outs, he told Teddy when he found an art class, a weekly meet-up above a pub, and he even told Teddy when a guy hit on him and how he politely refused his advances and told him he was already taken.

He’d hoped that might spark some kind of reaction from Teddy.

But Ollie got nothing.

He’d sent twenty letters to Teddy, and not once did he receive a letter back.

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