Chapter Text
“and then go explode the whole known world
which is like explore but with just one letter different
you know” – Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha
*
June 2011
It doesn’t feel real. That is the only thing John can think. He stands at the end of the driveway, looking up at the house. The sunlight glimmers off the big picture window and the fruit trees are shabby, crowded with white blossom. He’s dreamed of this moment for four long, aching years and now he’s here he doesn’t know what to do with himself. The next step feels like it is over a yawning abyss. It might not be his house anymore. Elaine might have moved or moved on. The thought makes his stomach turn.
“Go on,” Sayan says with an encouraging nip to the ear. Her claws dig into his shoulder through the coat he’d brought back from the other world. The detritus of his survival jangle in the pockets as he shifts his weight. “I want to meet her.”
His key still fits in the lock. He thinks about ringing the doorbell but it’s too late now, the door is swinging open. He recognises the shoe-rack, the rug, the mirror on the wall with the stair-rail curving above it. There’s a toy car abandoned under the radiator by the door to the kitchen. His son. He can’t breathe. The stairs creak and he looks up and-
“What the- John?”
Elaine is paused where the stairs turn. She’s thinner than she used to be, her collar bones like the wings of a bird. Her hair is in two thick braids rather than all the little ones he’s used to. She’s wearing the jumper he’d bought in Santiago that one time they’d got caught in a torrential rainstorm. Her eyes have gone glazed with shock. He catches the glint of her wedding ring, gold and shining against her brown fingers, and suddenly his vision is blurring. There’s a lump in his throat and he wishes he could see her properly but it’s all too bloody much…
Sayan caws softly and flutters to the ground.
“Elaine,” he manages, takes a deep, acidic breath that doesn’t reach his lungs. “I’m sorry I’m late.”
“You asshole,” Elaine says, but then before he knows it she’s flinging herself down the remaining stairs and into his arms. He’s crying properly now. She might be as well. He’s dimly aware of saying I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry into her neck. Her hand is in his hair, and he thinks if this is a dream, he’s not going to survive the waking of it. There’s just no way. This is the last bloody straw.
Eventually Elaine draws back a little, swipes at her eyes and then at his, rests her hands on his shoulders. John has seen three different suns by now and more constellations than he can count; her smile is brighter than any of them.
“Come on,” she says, pulling him after her into the sitting room. There are new books stacked on the shelves, a pile of blankets he doesn’t recognise, an old chest half open and full of toys and picture books. Everything else is just the same. The art they’d chosen when they’d moved in here, just married and full of joy and hope and disbelief that they could be this lucky, is still on the walls. His eyes catch again on the toys and he’s looking around for the tiny baby – little boy, now, four whole years old – he’d kissed goodbye in this room before he’d left and…
“Will?” he asks as Elaine pulls him down onto the sofa.
“Take your coat off, it’s boiling in here,” she says, then, “he’s out at the playground. They’ll be back soon. You’ll see him soon.”
“Ok.” He pulls his coat off, folds it over the cushions. She’s right. It’s warmer in here than houses in the other world. He’d forgotten about that, about the marvel of insulation and central heating. Sayan has hopped carefully up onto the back of the sofa. Elaine glances at her but doesn’t comment. She has folded her legs up beneath her the way she always does. Their knees are touching and she’s still holding both of his hands. She’s here. He didn’t think he’d be this lucky.
“I don’t know what to say,” she says after a long while of just looking at each other, drinking everything in. “Your hair’s longer.” Then, eyes dipping to the shaman tattoos dappled across his knuckles, “your hands…” and then back up to Sayan, “your pet osprey…”
Well at least she knows her birds, Sayan thinks in his direction.
She’s always loved birds, John thinks back, then, focussing on Elaine. “I don’t know where to begin,” he admits.
“At the beginning,” she says.
“You’re not going to believe me.”
“I trust you to tell me the truth.”
They sink into quiet. She’s running her fingers over the back of his hand, like she wasn’t the one left all on her own for four years with a little baby and no word and no hope. She waits, quietly, and he’s always loved this about her; how she waits for someone to be ready to speak.
“There was a storm,” he says. “A bad one. Came out of absolutely nowhere. Three of us got separated from the others. I thought we were going to die.”
“But you didn’t.”
“No. There was a patch of sunlight in the middle of this storm. Just a square of it. Like a window. Like those windows I wrote to you about, those myths about arctic other worlds we’d heard from the Inuit. The ones my colleague was obsessed with.” He pauses, “It was go through it or die. So we climbed through it, into the mountains of another world. We made a camp, decided to do some experiments, wait it out and go back, but we got attacked by these things, god, I’ve never seen anything like it. I…no, I can’t…” he breathes, slow, pushes the awful memory back down where it belongs, “I was the only survivor. I lost my way in the attempt to get away from them. Eventually I found another window. I was nearly dead by then, but a local Sami tribe found me and took me in. When I had recovered, I tried to go back and find the windows, to get back home, but they’d vanished.”
“John,” Elaine breathes. Her eyes are wide and shiny, her mouth set. He looks down at their hands, squeezes her fingers, chokes back more tears and breathes, once, twice, three times.
“I tried to get back for years. It’s the only thing I could do. I tried and tried – travelled, learnt, sought out experts, did everything…”
“But you’re here now. You did it.”
She doesn’t ask how, not yet. They both know that that story can wait. Instead, he says: “I’m scared I’m dreaming.”
“You’re not,” both Elaine and Sayan say at the same time, and Elaine startles, stares between him and Sayan.
“I definitely wasn’t expecting you to be able to talk,” she says.
“Sayan Kotor is the physical manifestation of my soul. A dæmon. It’s the natural state of things in the world I ended up in,” he says, heart steadying. “She’s the one good, beautiful thing to come out of this.”
Sayan ruffles her wings. “It baffles me that no-one realises what a hopeless romantic this man is.”
Elaine laughs properly. “So she’s the asshole side of you that no-one but me knows exists?”
“Sounds about right,” Sayan says. Elaine leans her chin on the side of the sofa, examines Sayan properly. After a second, Sayan hops closer and leans her face down against Elaine’s. John inhales sharply at the contact, at the feeling. He knows all about the taboos, had them explained to him in no uncertain terms by the people who’d taken him in, but this feels right. Like warmth and light dawning in his chest. Perhaps it’s different with someone you love. He wouldn’t be surprised.
“He is right, you know. You are very beautiful,” Elaine says after a moment.
“Evidently my incessant grooming pays off,” Sayan replies, and then, because she’s being an uncharacteristic sap, “you are too. I see why we fell in love with you.”
“You were there?”
“Not consciously,” Sayan says. “Not in this form. I wasn’t a giant bird hiding in John’s left ventricle. But I was something invisible and breathing, like your dæmon still is.”
“So you…”
“It took several months for Sayan to become corporeal,” John says gently, reading her mind. “I frightened the hell out of the tribe when I appeared with no dæmon, but they were kind. They helped me find her.”
“Good,” Elaine says, fiercely. “I’m glad they were kind. I’m…glad is such a weak word, I’m just…”
He doesn’t know what sentence she’s about to finish because just then, a key rattles in the lock. John freezes. Sayan turns her head one hundred and eight degrees to look at the door. There’s the sound of the front door rattling, a woman’s voice with a thick Irish accent.
“Ok, mud-monster, can you take your wellies off? You ok? Need a hand? Gosh, how are we going to explain to Mam how dirty you are?” she says, cheerfully.
A little boy’s voice piping back, “But mud is fun, Mary.”
“It is. But not inside our nice clean house. Give me your other foot, there’s a good boy. Are you going to go show Mam what you found?”
“Mummy!” the boy calls.
“In here, sweetheart,” Elaine calls back. A little boy with brown skin and a puff of curly hair skids into the room, clutching a stick with three blossoms on it. He has Elaine’s colouring, but his face is like looking into an old photograph; John can see his own nose, his eyebrows, his chin reflected right back at him. He can’t believe it, that the squealing baby he left has turned into this entire little person, standing stock still on the rug in a pair of stripy socks, dark eyes wide and curious. He’s missed so much. The weight of it hits him all at once, like a stun grenade to the chest, choking.
There is a red-headed woman in a denim jacket behind Will. She pauses in the doorway, uncertain.
“Um,” she says. “Elaine?”
When he looks back at Elaine, briefly, loathe to take his eyes off his son, she’s wiping fresh tears from her cheeks, smiling like her face is going to break apart with the force of it.
“Mary, this is my husband. He came back. He’s home.”
Then the woman, Mary, is crouching down. She taps Will’s shoulder, and he looks back at her.
“Look Will,” she says, very softly. “Looks like your Da has found his way back to you. You going to go say hello?”
“Hello,” Will says. He blinks and then scampers sideways across the room and climbs into Elaine’s lap, burying his face in her shoulder and then sneaking peeks over at John. John can’t look away.
He’s perfect, Sayan says in his head, wondering. Look at him, John. Look at him.
“I’m going to make tea,” he hears Mary say distantly. “How does…”
“Milk, no sugar,” Elaine says. “Thank you.”
“No worries.”
The kettle goes on and then Will cups his hands around Elaine’s ear, whispers something into it.
“Yes, you can go and draw,” she says. “Remember what we said about putting the mat down?”
“Yes, Mummy,” Will says and then slides off, tip-toeing in an exaggerated fashion past John and then sprinting for his chest.
“He’s usually more tired-out after the park,” Elaine says absently, and then back at John. “I’m sorry, he’ll…
“He doesn’t know me,” John interrupts gently, breathing through the ache, trying to be rational. “I didn’t expect anything different. I’m just…”
“I know, love,” Elaine says and shifts even closer as Mary brings the tea tray in and sets it on the coffee table.
“I can go,” she says, scooping a mug off the tray. “I’ll go.”
“You don’t have to,” both John and Elaine say at the same time. He has no idea why Mary is here, really, but right now he doesn’t care. She’s acting like she lives here. Maybe she does. Elaine doesn’t seem think anything is out of the ordinary, so John won’t either.
“Oh, ok,” Mary says, and sinks into the armchair opposite them. Will has got his drawing mat out by the fireplace and his pens and is lying on his stomach on the rug, scribbling away. His tongue is sticking out. Occasionally he looks up at John. He probably thinks he’s being subtle, John realises after a moment, turns his attention to Mary and Elaine to give Will enough privacy to check him out without feeling watched.
“Mary’s my best friend,” Elaine says. “My housemate, for the last few years. She’s just been wrapping up a PhD on dark matter, so she’s probably a good person to talk to about multiverses and things.”
“Multiverses?” Mary asks, looking between them, and then glancing to Sayan who is currently engaged in a silent staring contest with Will.
“Think they might be more real than we all realised,” Elaine says without a second’s hesitation. It tells John everything he needs to know; if Elaine trusts her with the truth, he will too.
“I was stuck in another world. That’s where I’ve been all this time,” he adds.
Mary’s mouth drops open, and then with some effort, closes. “Right,” she says, dazed. “Ok. That’s…unexpected.”
“I know it’s not particularly believable…”
“No, it’s…” she sighs, pinches the bridge of her nose. “I’m not…you know what? Not now. Science can wait. Now isn’t the time to be talking string theory.”
“Maybe not,” John says. “But we should, soon.” Then, his brain catching up with him, he turns to Elaine, “how on earth did you end up with a particle physicist as a housemate?”
“Blackwells,” Elaine says, too pleased with herself. John laughs because of course. He shouldn’t have considered any other option. Elaine’s kind of people always congregate in bookshops.
“I nearly mowed her and Will down,” Mary smiles, eyes crinkling at the memory. “And then she helped me find the right books.”
“And then she invited me for coffee to apologise for running into me,” Elaine says. “And I invited her to live with me.”
“As you do,” John says.
“It was maybe six weeks after it all happened,” Elaine says.
Mary catches the expression on his face, rushes to fill the sudden silence. “I needed better flatmates. Elaine needed adult company. Turned out a lot more permanent than either of us expected, but it’s been good.”
“Good,” John says, making sure he meets Mary’s eyes briefly, before turning back to Elaine. “I’m glad you weren’t on your own.”
“Chu and Davids have been keeping an eye on me too,” Elaine says. “And Mary forced me to find better friends.”
“Your old friends were crap,” Mary agrees.
John has only ever known Elaine’s friends briefly, for a dinner or a trip to the theatre here and there. They were interesting people one and all, but not the sort that could be trusted to stick around when the waters got rough. Fairweather friends, Elaine always used to say with a laugh. It hadn’t mattered much when he’d been here, when she’d had support that wouldn’t ever leave, but…
“It’s ok,” Elaine is saying, squeezing his hand again. “Well, it was awful. But we were doing ok. And you’re home now. That’s all that matters. That is all that matters.”
After another hour of catching up on the bare bones of everything he’s missed, they make dinner, all crowding into the kitchen to listen to the six o’clock news.
“The Tories got into power,” Elaine informs him. “Unfortunately.”
“Bet my father’s happy,” John pulls a face, and she smiles again, turns to pass Mary the onions. Will is on the floor, crawling after a small, patient tabby cat John doesn’t recognise.
“I’ll bet he is.”
“Did you…”
“Not today,” Elaine says. “I don’t want to ruin this by talking about them.”
“Ok,” he replies, pulling her back into a hug.
Dinner is cosy, homely, and wonderful. He’d forgotten how much he’d missed pasta. Sayan chooses to sit on the back of Elaine’s chair with an arch I like her in John’s direction. Will brings his toy plane to the table and swoops it in ever more complicated circles around his bowl, threatening to upend it. It feels so easy to be here, in this chair, in this world – to slip back into his place, to quiet his ghosts and be in the moment with his beaming, shining wife and Mary with her quick grins and quicker brain and Will’s shyness disappearing with each passing second. It feels easy to leave Mary to the washing up and take Will up to bed, to sit on his floor whilst Elaine sorts out bath time, to listen as she reads him a story and tucks him up under his covers, to lean over and kiss his forehead like it’s an every-night occurrence rather than the tiniest, most beautiful of miracles.
When they get back downstairs, Mary has disappeared.
“She’s got the spare room at the back of the office,” Elaine says as they sink back into the sofa, closer this time. She’s practically on his lap, her hands tracing the lines of his face like she’s trying to memorise it again after all these years. “Do you mind that-”
“Love,” John says, and Elaine’s smile broadens at the endearment. “Of course not. I’m just glad you weren’t alone. So very, very glad.” He sighs, “I just…I feel so awful for leaving you and…”
“You didn’t leave. It was an accident.”
“I left on the expedition in the first place.”
“But we agreed, John. We talked about it. It’s not like you went against my wishes.” She knocks her forehead against his. “Shit happens. That’s life.”
“Hmm.”
“I’m a poet. You’ve got to believe me. This is our thing.”
“You’re being flippant.”
“I am,” she says, then suddenly serious. “I did feel abandoned. Terribly so. We made the wrong decision about the expedition, evidently, but back then we didn’t have all the variables, as you scientists would say. And you can’t predict the world and you can’t force it to dance to your tune. It was circumstance, not you.”
“Yes,” John says, then, knowing he’s being counterproductive, half-expecting Sayan to interrupt but she’s in the windowsill, half-asleep, “I wouldn’t blame you if you blamed me.”
“But I don’t.” Her eyes are very close and dark, a whole night sky. “How many times am I going to have to repeat that?”
“Once would have been enough,” he sighs, cups her face. “But that was before. I’m less certain now.”
“You did have the actual fabric of existence ripped out from under your feet. You’re allowed to be uncertain, love. I know you struggle with feeling like you have to know all the time, but you don’t have to. And that’s ok. And I’ll repeat myself as long as I live, if that’s what it takes.”
He’s beyond words, pulls her even closer and wraps his arms around her ribs. She tucks her face into the side of his neck, and they sit there for what feels like hours, touching, breathing. He’s home. His home is in his arms and he is never leaving her again.
Eventually, perhaps hours later, he says: “I need a shower. God I’ve missed showers.”
Elaine blinks as though she’s only just realised how bad he smells, wrinkles her nose.
“Maybe that’s a good idea.” Then, “I could come with you if you wanted. Remind you how they work after all this time.”
Her face is very close in the dim lamplight and he leans forward, presses his mouth to hers. She kisses him back, long and lingering and slow, and when they draw apart he smiles, listens to her breath hitch.
“How could I turn an offer like that down?”
*
He wakes to dawn dripping gold and pink through the curtains, too-soft pillows, Elaine’s arm around his waist, and a distinct rustling noise. When he opens his eyes, he finds that Will has somehow got their door open and is attempting to climb up onto their bed. He’s wearing Star Wars pyjamas and his bed-head is something to behold. It’s not a dream. This is real. He knows this, now, but still has to keep feeling for it, checking the shape of it, making sure and sure and sure. Elaine makes a sleepy noise, and then says half-into John’s shoulder, “What time is it?”
John glances at the clock. “Half-seven.”
“Ok. I’ll get up in a minute, Will.”
“We’ll get up,” Sayan says from the headboard where she’s been dozing. Will’s eyes round.
“The bird talks? The bird talks!”
“She’s not a bird,” John says. “Come on, young man. Let’s let Mum sleep in for once, shall we?”
He kisses Elaine’s cheek and slides out of bed, tucks the duvet back over Elaine’s shoulders and finds a t-shirt from the wardrobe. She’d kept all his things, like she always believed he was going to come home. He doesn’t have the words to express how much that means. Will slides off the bed too and runs to the door; John follows him, closing it gently behind and heading down the stairs. From the lack of a pair of leather loafers by the door and a warm coffeepot, a note propped up against it, John surmises that Mary has already left for work. The note reads: made enough for everyone just in case John is as much of a coffee fiend as you, Elaine. Have a lovely day! M x.
“What do you normally have for breakfast?” he asks. He’s only ever been around local kids in warzones, and secondary school-age children before, doesn’t really know what he’s expecting of a four-year-old who is his responsibility.
“Hmm,” Will says, rocking back and forth on his heels. “Toast!”
“Toast? And what do you have on your toast?”
Will shrugs, and then tilts his head and chews on his bottom lip like he’s angling for something, or like he’s trying to make John guess. John doesn’t know which.
“Jam?”
Headshake.
“Butter?”
Will pulls a face.
“I could do eggs?” John says, hoping that Elaine and Mary haven’t trained Will into liking some ridiculously complicated breakfast only one of them knows how to cook.
“Yeah!”
“Ok, well if I do eggs, you’ve got to sit up here and help me because I don’t know where anything is. Deal?”
“Deal,” Will says, and lets John lift him onto the countertop.
Turns out that Will knows the kitchen pretty well and laughs a lot whenever Sayan opens drawers with her claws, so they have a fun time assembling all the things needed for scrambled eggs on toast. John shows Will how to crack an egg, and then whisks them together, tips them into the pan. Sayan takes up one of her favourite perches on his left shoulder. It still all feels dreamlike, uncanny, to be standing here in a wash of morning sunlight cooking eggs for his little boy, who is sitting right there, within touching distance, studying the scrambling process with intense interest.
“Are you my Daddy?” Will asks, very suddenly, and John looks up, tugs the eggs from the heat.
“Yes. I am.”
Will thinks about this for a bit as John butters toast, dishes the food up for both of them, finds juice for Will and pours coffee for himself. “Why did you go away?”
“I got lost. In the Arctic,” John says, not entirely sure how much Will is going to understand. “I never wanted to leave you and Mum. Did she tell you that?”
“Yes,” Will says, and then, practically, “It’s ok. You came back with a talking bird.”
John blinks at him, but Will is looking at him like coming back with Sayan completely absolves him of four years of painful absence. He doesn’t know what he was expecting but it wasn’t this.
“Can we eat breakfast now?” Will continues when it becomes apparent that John isn’t going to move.
“Yes we can eat breakfast,” John says, lifting him to the floor and taking their plates to the table. They eat, mostly quietly, Will humming to himself in between mouthfuls. Sayan flutters down to the table when they’re nearly done, and Will is all wide-eyed wonder.
“Do you know what kind of bird I am?” she says, moving closer. John watches her and she sends him a little, trust me, nonverbally.
When do I not, he asks back and she ruffles her wings, amused.
“A big talking bird,” Will says through a mouthful of egg, and then, contemplatively, “with big claws.”
“Talons,” Sayan corrects. “And I’m an osprey.”
“Osprey,” Will repeats, slurring the pronunciation a little. “Why do you have big claws?”
“Because real ospreys eat fish, and they use the claws to catch them.”
“Fish are nasty,” Will says. “They eat your toes.”
“Do they?” Sayan blinks.
“Yum yum, toe sandwich. I saw a lady at the shops.”
“There’s a shop doing fish pedicures in the Westgate,” John hears, and looks up to see Elaine leaning in the kitchen doorway, wrapped up in a faded dressing gown and still wearing the silk headwrap she sleeps in. She stifles a yawn in her hand. John looks between her and Will – who now has Sayan on his lap and egg smeared halfway across his face – and feels like his heart is swelling too big for his chest. “Will likes to watch them.”
“Mummy, Daddy made eggs for breakfast and I’m holding his bird!” Will says excitedly.
“How lovely,” Elaine tells him, coming over to drop a kiss on his forehead, and coming over to kiss John properly. “Morning, darling.”
“Morning,” John says, tugging her down onto the bench beside him where they both watch Will have a loud hissed conversation with Sayan about dragons and what Daddy saw in the Arctic that he evidently thinks they can’t hear. Sayan begins telling him a story about armoured bears which Will is listening to with wide-eyed delight.
“Are you ok?”
“I’m more than ok,” he says, not taking his eyes off Will. Elaine rests her head against his shoulder. “I’m so happy I think I could burst.”
“Yeah,” Elaine murmurs. “Yeah, me too.”
*
Mary has the radio on in the kitchen and is busy chopping things for the bolognese when Elaine slips in, glass of wine in hand. She hadn’t wanted to leave the boys, but she feels bad about leaving Mary all on her own. Today has felt like a fever-dream, like everything is too saturated. They’d taken Will to the playpark and then walked through Oxford together to get lunch. She’d held John’s hand, and Will had insisted on riding on his shoulders. She’s so glad that Will has taken to having John home with easy acceptance; in her head, imagining it all, she’d always been scared that Will would be frightened and John would be hurt, that John’s homecoming wouldn’t be as joyous as it has been. But even though the voices are doing their level best to convince her otherwise, she knows she doesn’t have to be worried anymore. Today, Will has figured out that his Dad a) makes great scrambled eggs, b) knows how to stick sword-fight, c) loves to build complicated dens for him, and d) has a talking bird who lets Will carry her around, and e) is therefore his favourite person of all time. Elaine would feel slighted if she wasn’t so goddamn incandescent. John is back after all these restless, worried, agonising years. He’s home. It’s almost too big a truth to get her head around.
She belatedly realises that Mary is grinning at her, half turns. “What?”
“You look so happy. It’s lovely.”
“I am happy.”
“You deserve to be happy.”
“Aww, shucks,” Elaine says in her best American accent and Mary whacks the dishtowel gently in her direction.
“Horrific.”
“I thought it was pretty good, actually.”
“Think again.”
“Cold, Malone,” Elaine laughs, takes another sip of her wine. They lapse into companionable silence; Mary humming along to the radio and Elaine listening to her son’s shrieks of laughter from the sitting room.
“I did want to ask,” Mary says after a while, the words ill-fitting and awkward. “Well. I was thinking of moving out. Maybe. Nothing’s confirmed, but…”
“No? What? You can’t move out. You’re my prisoner forever.”
Mary sighs. “I am serious, you know. Don’t you and John want space to be a family now he’s back?”
“You are family,” Elaine replies, stubborn. “And if you want to stay, you should stay.”
“And has he-”
“Yes. We talked about it. And whose bed would Will jump on every Saturday if you left?”
“Yours,” Mary says, and Elaine rolls her eyes, fond. “I don’t want to go, Elaine. I’ve loved living here. But I had to offer, you know?”
“I know. You’re too lovely for your own good,” Elaine says, shuffling closer to lean briefly against Mary’s shoulder. “It’ll be fine. There’s enough space for all of us. Your rooms are on the opposite end of the house from ours, so we’ve all got a bit of privacy…”
“Eww, gross,” Mary says, and Elaine pinches her.
“There are many things long-lost husbands are good for.”
Mary puts her hands over her ears, screws up her face in mock disgust and Elaine laughs. “I wouldn’t want to know about your sex life even if I weren’t ace, thanks. It’s like thinking about my sisters. I repeat, gross.”
“Suit yourself,” Elaine says. “I’m rather enjoying it, for my part.”
“I’m not surprised,” Mary wrinkles her nose. “Weirdo.”
“Like you can talk, scholar of the multiverse.” Elaine laughs. “Come on. Can you leave that for a few minutes? Let’s go see what havoc they’ve wreaked.”
*
Even by her admittedly-lax standards, it’s been a weird week. Mary contemplates both this and the board in her little home-office, which is covered in the last of the maths she needs for her thesis, chewing on her pen. About three days after John got home, some reporter at the BBC got wind of his survival and the entire press pack descended on the house to interview him about his miraculous return. After their slightly hurried war council as to what exactly the public story should be, she’d hidden in the office or at college, done tea runs and errands, and tried to make herself as useful as possible. Luckily, the press had believed the lie and after a couple of days seeing her best friend’s face plastered across the nightly news, the attention had shifted and normal life had resumed.
There’s a knock on the door, and Mary takes her pen out of her mouth. “Come in!”
The door creaks open and she turns to see John holding a tray. “Hi.”
“Um, hi,” she says.
“Elaine and Will are out,” he says, “and she said you were writing your thesis, so I thought I’d come and offer tea and moral support. If you want it, that is. I just noticed you didn’t come out earlier like you usually do.”
“Oh,” Mary says. She does usually emerge for a hot drink and a stretch break mid-morning, is surprised that he noticed she hadn’t today. “Yes. Tea and moral support would be nice. And an ear for this maths, if you’ve got five minutes. It’s driving me up the wall.”
His smile is wry. “My doctorate didn't really look at dark matter, but I can give it a go."
“Cracking,” she says and moves backwards so he can put the tray down, pour them both tea. He’s put some of the brownies Will was ‘helping’ with on the weekend on a plate for them too. She doesn’t know what she was expecting but it wasn’t this. John’s been perfectly friendly, but he’s got the kind of uncanny middle-distance stare of a person who has survived things no-one should have to. That, as well as Sayan, the weird tattoos across his knuckles and the scar on his temple make him feel slightly unapproachable, as though he only lets down his guard for a chosen few. In conclusion, it’s weird to see him sitting in the cluttered office that once belonged to him wearing a jumper she’s ninety-percent sure is actually Elaine’s, holding an Emma Bridgewater mug, and mouthing her equation to himself.
“Tell me about your whole project?” he says after a second.
“I’m working for the ZEPLIN-III,” she replies, tapping her pen against her fingers. “They’ve built a dark matter detector using xenon up in North Yorkshire, and I’ve been designing some of the experiments on weakly-interacting massive particles. I was getting interested in the intersections between dark matter and the theory of multiverses, which is what I’m trying to write on.”
“Which multiverse theory are you using?”
“Witten’s M-theory, currently. You know, the one with ten spacetime dimensions?”
“Yes, I’m familiar with that,” John goes back to her maths. “Talk me through it and I’ll see if I can ask useful questions?”
Several hours, cups of tea, and big sheets of paper later, they’ve made a small breakthrough. She sits back on her heels, traces her eyes over the calculations and notes one last time. John is a fantastic brainstorming partner; he speaks her language, sees her leap between theorems as a challenge to overcome rather than a presumption to pick apart. At one point, she prompted him into a fascinating tangent about what the Northern Tartar shamans taught him about consciousness, and Mary made a note in the corner of her notebook as an idea for further study after this project is wrapped up and submitted. Now, she adds ideas to it as her brain gathers speed, scribbling away and wondering absently whether research into the intersections between consciousness and dark matter is fundable.
“Mary,” John says after a second. She looks up, blinks equations out of her eyes. “Can I ask you something?”
“Um, sure,” she says, suddenly little bit apprehensive. The tone of his voice does not indicate physics. She wonders whether he’s going to ask her to leave, clamps down on the thought. If he is, it’s not the end of the world. It is his house after all and rent payments aside, a small part of her brain can’t come up with a good reason for why he’d want his wife’s best friend still under his roof. “Sure. What’s up?”
“I don’t want you to break any confidences, but…” he sighs. “Elaine’s not well.”
Mary exhales very steadily, a little surprised. She puts her pad down on the desk, untucks her knees and leans forward. She was wondering if he’d notice, is very glad that he has before she’s had to bring it up. “No. She isn’t.”
“I caught her counting the tiles in the kitchen the other day. She tried to play it off like it was nothing, but…”
“She’s always been a bit paranoid. And the post-natal depression really wasn’t helped by everything that happened,” Mary says. John’s eyes haven’t left her face, and she tries to meet them. “I think it might be OCD. She tries to hide it, but…well. She has to count tiles to keep Will safe or is convinced that picking up twigs the right way would bring you home. I’ve tried to tell her to get help but she won’t. I can’t force her, so I’ve just…been monitoring it.”
John breathes in, pained. Mary feels a pang of sympathy for him – lost, stuck, stranded, and now coming home to constant reminders of the pain his absence caused.
“And Will?”
“No idea that anything’s wrong. Not yet, anyway.”
“Ok. Good.” John sighs. “I’ll talk to her.” Then, “Thank you, for being with her. I know I haven’t said it yet, but I’m so…I don’t know what would have happened if she’d been on her own. I’m so glad she had someone here with her.”
“Don’t mention it,” Mary says, and then, at his raised eyebrow: “Seriously, I’m serious! This has been such a nice place to write my PhD. And Will feels like the nephew I never had.”
John smiles, bright and brief, like the photos Elaine showed Mary those first few months. In an abstract, logical sense, Mary can see exactly why Elaine fell for him. “Well,” he says. “You’re practically family to them. My coming home doesn’t change that. You know you can stay as long as you want?”
“I do now,” Mary says, feeling her shoulders loosen just an inch. She meets his smile and he inclines his head. “Thanks.”
“How about we go get lunch,” he says, standing and stretching. “And you can help me figure out which area I need to catch up on first?”