Skeletons in the Cupboard
There are things he doesn't tell her. Things he can't. Even now, side-by-side, facing her properly for the first time, parts of him recoil.
Simply put, there aren't words.
Long after Nina has gone he crouches down on his bedroom floor and levers the rucksack free. It's an old, worn cliché, of the sort every family knows; the suitcase under the bed, the emergency bag in the hall. Somehow that awareness merely serves to sharpen the reality. Though it has lain untouched since last month he can't resist checking the contents, just to be sure; counting the money stowed beneath his sleeping bag, ordering and re-ordering the clothes.
Then he zips the holdall shut and reaches for what was behind it.
Before this house it only took a few months for them to start arriving, no matter where he went. The parcels would be slipped through his door with the morning post, left on his doorstep or at work, and that would be his cue to run.
He fingers the collars, the tangle of toys that take the place of so many words.
Truth be told, he is bloody sick of running.
The next morning he puts the plastic bowl on the hall table, its black lettering facing outwards. He keeps his keys in it. Annie and Mitchell exchange an anxious glance, but he just smiles, surprised as how easy it is.
He's fine. He's more than fine.
He's home.