Work Text:
Did you find what you were looking for, Kate Fleming?
Did you do a good job?
Do you sleep better these days? You know, better than you used to?
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Kate isn't drinking white wine right now, can't stomach it. Not because of Jo, though, alright? She just overdid it lately, came home late after some beers with her team when they finally shelved Lighthouse, felt oddly indestructible, buzzed – and also – maybe – somewhat sad.
No. Anyway.
She had a bottle of white wine in, back of the fridge under a bag of salad that had turned to sludge. Okay, Jo had brought that bottle round once (“This is a nice one, so don't drink it with me” - back when Kate was naïve enough to believe that was just an innocuous joke and not Jo trying to tell her... tell her something...). But it isn't because of Jo.
And it wasn't even nice? It didn't taste nice, maybe Kate's uncultured palate or something - it was too sweet. And then she drank the whole thing and woke up on the sofa at 2.30am, with a dry and acrid mouth, the TV still playing. Some documentary about the 1989 San Francisco earthquake. She watched a clip of a bridge rippling – felt sick – went to bed.
All this to say –
She's not on white wine right now, that's all.
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Somewhere –
Jo's in the car and she's been driven in silence for hours now. Briefly, ill-advised, she entertains the idea that when she reaches wherever she's going (and did anyone tell her where? Did that happen?) that she might be able to pick up her phone and tell someone about it all.
There's a lot more roadkill around here, she might say. A stupid little joke to make things normal, so she doesn't have to worry.
Jo remembers her number, but she won't use it.
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The new DSU on The Hill is into Wellness (Wellness, Capital W) and every time Kate's eyes fall on the new juicer in the break room she remembers Jo scrounging a cigarette off a young officer by the vans after a long night. The way she raised it to her mouth and and then uttered a quiet, “shit.” when she realised he'd gone without a light.
How they'd huddled, conspiratorial, in Kate's car – hands cupped together around the busted old electric lighter, holding steady.
That was a memory that feels like it should belong in her childhood, to her reckless, rebellious teenage self. Where can that memory live now?
Kate never expected there to be so many tiny things that she'd still be uncovering after months, months.
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Somewhere -
Jo answers to a different name, cuts her hair, grows a wildflower garden. Sometimes the lady in the coffee shop has a little treat for her dog and sometimes the man who runs the newsagent asks how her girlfriend is.
Sometimes it's hard to believe this might've been there all along. There are people around her who gather a quiet warmth, holding. She learns to grow roots in something that actually feels good for her .
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When Kate was a kid, they used to move a lot – when her parents split, and then when rentals got too expensive. She was used to looking out of a strange new bedroom window and the jolt she used to get when the lace curtains of number 37 over the road weren't there anymore. That's the same dull ache that twists her stomach on tired days when she looks up from her desk and her new boss is in that office.
It's a been a year, though, so not that new anymore.
Is a year long enough to make yourself all over again?
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Somewhere –
It's April the 20th, and Jo pauses, sighs, on her way out to the corner-shop and frowns into the mirror, pulling at strands of hair, greys. There's a space here for this: maybe a voice calls from the kitchen - “Jo, don't! I'm baking you a cake, alright? We're going to do this birthday properly.”
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Somewhere -
There's a space here to learn that you can sleep better when you're not wondering if she's happy, if she's safe – when you're not wondering if you could be forgiven.
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Somewhere there's a narrow little channel where the blood that flows from “If you want to find me...” might meet the stuff that's running from “If you want to be found...”
Did you find what you were looking for, Kate?
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