Why He Lets Her Stay

He texted on the second day, not the first, which told me Frankie had judged him correctly. Can you meet me somewhere that isn’t a warehouse. Somewhere with actual daylight in it, for once. I read it three times before I answered, the way I’d read everything from him since the Longshore, checking each sentence carefully for a shape I might have missed the first time.

Where.

The little café by Rotherhithe pier. Two o’clock. I’ll understand if you don’t come.

I came. There was never really a version of that day where I didn’t, whatever careful, professional distance I’d tried to keep intact since the office with the gloves in it. Some decisions get made long before the moment that seems to make them, in whatever quiet, unglamorous stretch of time nobody bothers writing down afterward.

I took the overground rather than the bus, partly because it was faster…