The Boy with Her Eyes

Chapter 10

Sleep doesn't come, so I stop pretending and give the ceiling my full attention from midnight to four. At four-twelve I get up, make coffee with water from the kettle Dennis never descaled, and start calling every letting agent within fifteen miles of Kettleworth.

Most go to voicemail. Two pick up, because apparently the rental market and insomnia share a demographic. By six I have a checklist on the back of an electricity bill, two viewings booked for after work, and that specific calm, as if busying myself can help me process the emotions.

What even are emotions? Useless and unhelpful.

The bus to Ashford & Hale takes thirty-eight minutes. I spend every one reorganising the list by urgency—independent lease, home inspection, liaison callback.

Item six says don't think about the bird on Blythe's pillow. I cross it out and write it again underneath, because my hand and my brain have different management styles.

Edmund is already in his office when I arrive. He doesn't look up when I pass his door—but his pen pauses over the page and resumes a beat too late. Between my first coffee and my third, a stack of folders appears on my desk with a yellow note on top.

Whitmore deadline pushed to next Thursday. Use the room.

No signature. His handwriting is neat and unhurried, each letter formed like he had all the time in the world to write six words that just handed me a week I didn't ask for.

I fold it once along the crease and slide it into my jacket pocket. My thumb traces the edge of the paper through the fabric twice before I make it stop.

James stops by my desk after lunch, folder under his arm, head tilted at the angle men use when they're about to ask something personal and pretend it's professional.

"Henderson file—did you send the revised copy?" He sets his coffee down on the corner of my desk.

"In your inbox since two." I pull it up on screen and turn the monitor toward him. "Flagged the margin discrepancy on page eight."

"Good catch." He doesn't leave. His eyes drift once toward Edmund's closed office door, then back to me. "How are you settling in? Everything going alright?"

"Perfectly." I smile with every muscle in my face that isn't currently holding my skull together. "Was there anything else on the Henderson file?"

He picks up his coffee, nods, and walks away with the look that suggests he got exactly the answer he expected and none of the information he wanted.

Through the glass wall, Edmund's eyes stay fixed on his laptop. The performance of not watching me requires more effort than watching would, and we both know it.

At five-fifteen I'm on a bus to Kettleworth. The first flat sits above a chip shop that's been closed long enough for the grease smell to become load-bearing. The letting agent, Trevor, opens the door with enthusiasm that could use a clinical intervention.

"One bedroom, kitchen-slash-living area, bathroom just through here." He sweeps his arm toward a door that opens onto a toilet sharing a wall with a hot plate. "Very versatile layout."

"Does versatile include a second bedroom?" I scan the mould climbing the corner above the one window. "Or is my sixteen-year-old sister sleeping in the kitchen?"

"We do have some two-bedroom listings further out—"

"How far out?"

"Lewisham, Catford—thirty, forty minutes by bus." He brightens, shuffling papers. "Lovely areas, really up-and-coming."

"I need Kettleworth or bordering." I'm already moving toward the door. "Thanks, Trevor. Versatile isn't going to cut it."

Back on the pavement in under three minutes. I delete the listing from my phone and check the time—forty minutes until the second viewing, one bus change, enough time to sit at a stop and stare at a checklist that hasn't gotten shorter.

My phone rings on the second bus. Unknown number, official rhythm—I answer the way you answer a door when you know what's behind it.

"Miss Whitfield, this is Karen Liu, foster care liaison office." Warm, measured—the professional kindness that she’s been taught during her studies. "I'm calling about Blythe's placement."

"Where is she?" My hand locks around the overhead pole. "Is she okay?"

"She's being processed into emergency foster accommodation. She's safe." Papers shift on her end. "A visitation schedule will be approved once she's settled—could be a few days."

"Days." The word scrapes going down. "What do I need to do?"

"Honestly? Get your paperwork airtight. Stable income, a lease in your name, a home environment that passes inspection." She pauses. "The panel reviews cases based on documentation. The stronger yours is, the faster this moves."

"Tell me exactly what you need and I will have it on your desk."

"Employment verification, three months of bank statements, the lease, a personal statement." She lists them and each one is a rung on a ladder I'm building while standing in mid-air. "Bring everything to the next review meeting."

"When is that?"

"I'll confirm within the week."

"Within the week isn't a date, Karen." My thumbnail digs into the rubber grip of the bus pole. "My sister is sleeping in a stranger's house."

"I understand." Her voice stays level in a way that costs her nothing and costs me everything. "I'll push for the earliest slot."

I hang up as the bus brakes at my stop, shoving the phone into my pocket with fingers that refuse to unclench. The second flat is on a street the council forgot—cracked pavement, one working streetlight, a skip that's been there long enough to sprout dandelions.

Priya, the letting agent, meets me at the entrance with keys and no small talk. She pushes the door open and stands aside.

"Two bedrooms, one bath, kitchen's tight but it works." She leans against the doorframe while I walk through. "It's not luxury."

"I'm not shopping for luxury." Both bedrooms—small, bare, functioning doors. The bathroom has cracked tile and a lock that turns. The kitchen fits two people if they coordinate their elbows. The second bedroom has a window facing a brick wall, but it has a window. And enough space for a desk.

Blythe could draw here. Not comfortably—but she could sit at a desk and put pencil to paper, and the door would close, and nobody would come through it screaming.

"I'll take it." The words come out like a woman signing a ceasefire. "What do you need from me?"

"First month, holding deposit, references." Priya pulls a form from her bag and clicks a pen. "Twelve hundred total."

Six hundred in the account. Wages on Friday. My pen hovers over the deposit line and writes a number borrowed from a version of myself who gets paid in four days and doesn't eat until then.

"Emergency contact?" She taps the bottom of the form.

I write Blythe Whitfield in letters that dent the page beneath. Priya tears the receipt from the pad and hands it to me with two keys—front door and flat. I close my fist around all of it on the pavement outside.

Two keys. Two bedrooms. A lock that works from the inside.

I grip the receipt hard enough to crease it permanently and walk toward the bus stop, each step heavier and more certain than the last, my jaw set against everything standing between this pavement and the moment my sister walks through that door.