Page 69 of Too Close To Home

Harrison himself.

Jake hadn’t meant to go inside the cottage. He’d only meant to fix the slipped tiles, make sure the rain didn’t get in before the next storm rolled through. Quick job. Twenty minutes tops. In and out. Except when he’d climbed down and pushed open the door to tell the man he was done, Harrison had been asleep on the sofa, a chipped mug slipping dangerously from his hand as his head tilted back on the cushion.

He’d looked exhausted. Yet somehow, content.

So Jake had stood there longer than he meant to. Long enough to notice the shadows under the man’s eyes. He could’ve left. Should have. Instead, he’d taken the mug before it dropped, rinsed it along with his own in the sink, shoved a couple of half-packed kitchen boxes further out of the walkway so Harrison wouldn’t trip over them, then rummaged through some boxes until he’d found a blanket. Then draped it over him.

As if he had any right to do that.

As if he was someone who looked after him.

Jake slowed for the junction lights. It meant nothing. That’s what he told himself, anyway. He’d known the man less than twenty-four hours. Whatever this strange pull was, this flash of recognition and awareness every time Harrison looked at him, it couldn’t mean anything.

Jake Whitton didn’t do relationships.

He’d tried. A couple of times. Blokes who lasted longer than a few nights, longer than the usual hook-ups filling the quiet hours after gigs or long weeks on roofs. But they all reached the same conclusion, eventually. Jake came with too much baggage. Too much anger. Too much history.

So they moved on.

And Jake stayed right where he was. Where hook-ups became the norm. Not getting to know the men he fucked became the norm. Not caring became his norm. Blokes like Brodie with no substance or sticking power became the norm.

The traffic lights turned green, and Jake drove onto his first job. Work. That was usually the answer to most things in his life. When Robyn disappeared, he’d searched the woods until his boots fell apart. When the police packed up the tape and the town decided it was time to move on, he’d buried himself in labour instead. Roofs. Scaffolds. Drums. Anything loud enough to drown out the noise in his head.

He could do it again.

The first job was a slipped slate on a narrow terrace off the high street. The owner was already outside waiting with a mug of tea.

“Y’alright, Jake. Won’t take long, will it?”

“Half hour.”

He fixed three slates and a rusted nail before the tea had properly cooled. From the roof he could see half the town waking up below him. Chimneys, delivery vans, a faint siren somewhere in the distance. And when he climbed down, he drank the tea, pocketed thirty quid cash, and moved on.

Second job was a chimney stack on the edge of the estate where the mortar had started crumbling between the bricks. Bigger job. Jake mixed fresh mortar in the back of the van and spent the next hour repointing the stack while the van blasted out the morning news. Emily Fisher’s name came up. He tried not to listen. And when he climbed down this time, there was another mug waiting. Coffee. Too sweet. Fifty quid folded into his palm.

Two drinks. Eighty quid.

The last job was gutters on a bungalow near the old school. Leaves and moss had clogged the run so badly water spilled down the walls. Ten minutes with a scoop and a hose and it ran clear again.

Another cup of tea.

No cash this time. He knew they couldn’t pay. So he took the tea and pretended he’d been gasping for it, then chucked most of it into the bush.

Three drinks. Still eighty quid.

That was the problem with small-town jobs. People paid in gratitude and hot beverages more often than they paid properly.

By late afternoon he’d run out of roofs he could pretend to concentrate on, and he wiped his hands on a rag, tossed the tools into the van, to head home along the back road skirting the woodland. The police tape was still there. Bright blue against the trees, fluttering between two fence posts. No search teams now. No uniforms.

Which meant they still hadn’t found her.

Jake slowed as he passed the path entrance. For a moment he considered pulling over, walking it again like he had a hundred times thirteen years ago. But the thought of that bend in the trees, the place Robyn had last been seen, sat heavy in his chest.

So he drove on.

Past his street.

Past the turning he should’ve taken.