Page 91 of Refrain
“For real? This minute? What’s going on, Paul? Is this to do with Spook? Is he in Cornwall? Where in Cornwall? I’ll come.”
“No.”
He leaned in for a farewell hug, but she was too cross to accept it. Paul pulled on his jacket.
“I can’t believe you’re doing this.”
“I’m sorry, this is unexpected. I’ll see you around.”
“Bastard!”
He was gone into the night before she’d secured enough wits to follow him, and she wasn’t even certain why he’d left.
-33-
Spook
“You seem twitchy this morning,” Xane observed on the sixth day after Luthor’s arrival, morning being a relative term. It was six in the evening, but Spook had only just started eating his breakfast. He’d been awake approaching seventy hours, bar two cat naps, the latter of which Luthor had shaken him awake from because he was howling like—as Luthor described it—he’d been nailed to the World Ash by his nads and was about to have his entrails extracted through his urethra with a crocheting hook.
The man had a visceral way of looking at things.
He’d been dreaming about a certain flame-haired Valkyrie.
“I’ve been wondering,” Xane said, cuffing him affectionately on the shoulder, causing him to spill milk and granola down his shirt front, “Have you been in touch with your sisters at all?”
Spook irritably rubbed at the milk stain with his thumb.
“Spook?”
Xane bumped up on to the island next to him, so his legs were swinging right alongside Spook’s stool.
Spook avoided looking up and continued spooning baked oats into his mouth. Prior to the Valkyrie dream, he’d been having the make Xane come in a thousand different ways for a studio audience dream, and before that, the being buried alive and swarmed by spiders dream. He usually didn’t mind spiders, but they weren’t really the issue. It was the violation of his personal space that made him shudder. Of the three, he liked the Xane dream best. Mostly. Probably. But only because the Valkyrie dream tapped into areas of his psyche that were better left undisturbed.
“That’ll be a no then. Do you not think maybe you ought to?”
There were countless things he ought to do. It wasn’t that he was actively choosing not to do them—well, not all of them—it was just easier not to think about them. His soul was still scraped raw from the one phone call he had made. Talking to his family wasn’t likely to be any easier, worse in some regards. They, with the exception of Elin, didn’t have the full picture, and he wasn’t about to change that.
“Spook?”
He sighed in defeat, acknowledging he’d get no peace until he replied. “No, I haven’t contacted them. I know, I’m probably worrying them sick, but…” He shrugged, causing milk droplets to spray off his spoon and land on Xane’s thighs—revenge for the spills on his shirt. “What the hell am I supposed to even say? It’s not as if they’re familiar with all the ins and outs of everything that happened.” Two of the four had still been kids at the time of all the shit with Siv. One in college. Even Elin only knew that he’d been severely beaten by Bengt and Erik, not…not the full extent of what they’d done.
Although maybe she guessed. She was no fool. Regardless, he didn’t think she’d have shared that supposition with the others. He certainly didn’t want to call them and dredge over those memories just so he could explain the last six months.
“Are you asking for a reason? Are they being harassed?” He gave a frustrated huff. Why did journalists have to be such cunts? His sisters were regular people with regular lives. One was a graphic designer, another a teacher. He honestly wasn’t sure about the other two. Had they both graduated from university now? For a whole gamut of reasons, he wasn’t as involved with their lives as he ought to be.
“I’ve not heard that they are,” Xane hedged. “Look, to be honest, I’ve only spoken to one of them, and that was right after you vanished.”
“Checking to see if I’d flown home?”
“It was a possibility. Not a particularly likely one, but it seemed best to check every option off the list.”
His shoulders hunched to the point of pain. When he’d walked away, it hadn’t been with the intent of hurting anyone. “Will you call?” he asked. “Just let them know that I’m okay, but not okay. I can’t… I don’t want to cover that ground with them.”
“Sure,” Xane agreed. His hand landed between Spook’s shoulder blades and rubbed, releasing the knot of tension. “I think they’ll appreciate knowing that you’re safe.”
He wasn’t sure the bothy really felt that way anymore. He plonked his spoon in the bowl and pushed the rest of the cereal away. Xane’s lips twisted, but he didn’t comment. Spook was half tempted to point out he’d made progress having eaten over half of it, but he wasn’t a kid. He didn’t have to justify his choices. A quick glimpse of himself in the mirror spelled out what his poor appetite was doing to him, but a lecture wouldn’t bring back his appetite.
Xane pulled back his hand and began picking at the hole in the knee of his jeans.
