Cassian was not at home the next time the social worker came over to see them. The appointments were every Thursday afternoon at three thirty but earlier at lunchtime Cassian had left the apartment on a whim saying that he'd return with takeout food, a rarity since they had arrived because one meal usually cost as much as half of one week's shop. But he had put on his coat, mumbled out that he was getting her lunch and disappeared.

Ninety minutes later Jyn found herself sitting with Jenny, awkwardly sipping a cup of Twining's camomile tea wondering where to start with the small talk.

"Did your walk down here go alright?" she said, knowing already that it was a five minute walk from Jenny's cul-de-sac to the apartment block.

"Yep, it was great, always nice to do a house visit nearby, means I can go home and see the kids earlier in the day."

Jyn had managed to avoid the long chats about children so far. She knew Jenny had two boys, one seven and one three, and she had been told twice now that they were as boisterous as their father but had the eyes of their mother's mother.

Another fifteen minutes later and she was listening to Jenny launch into a story about their first family vacation.

" - so can you believe it, Arthur forgetting his passport like that! Absolutely mental. I mean it's just as well I like to plan three hours contingency time in case something goes wrong - can you imagine it otherwise! So we rush home, he runs up the stairs and then he's back down a couple of seconds later passport in hand ready to go."

"Oh wow," said Jyn, her mind actually piqued. Perhaps Jenny could give her a clue as to how they could get to this would-be Chirrut stuck in that place called Hong Kong.

She took a sip of her second cup of tea.

"And… then what happened?" she said cautiously.

"Oh gosh don't even get me started!" Jenny continued, taking large bite out of what was possibly her sixth custard cream since she had arrived. "So we get to Heathrow Airport and -"

The sound of keys in the door lock turned both their heads

"Oh, that must be him," said Jenny, through a mouthful of crumbs. "I sure hope that whatever he has brought back for you is worth it."

"Jyn - I'm sorry," Cassian blurted out the moment he was through the door, before he had even looked up to see Jenny sitting there. There were several plastic bags in his hands, far more than there ought to be for even the fanciest meal for two.

He strode straight over to the kitchen and put the bags behind the island and out of sight before lifting up one bag that emanated a delicious smell that Jyn couldn't place.

"Nightmare queues at the restaurant," he said, lifting up several brightly patterned cardboard boxes. "Brand new Italian place I saw the other day."

"Marisol's?" said Jenny, all of a sudden, her head perking up. "Gosh the opening for that is today, isn't it?"

Cassian met Jyn's eyes and one corner of his mouth twitched up in a smile.

"Yeah," he said casually, walking over with two of the cartons in his hands and some cutlery.

"Jenny was telling me about one of her family holidays," Jyn said pointedly, half of her head latching onto the dish he had placed in front of her. It was something called pasta, a slightly bouncy, chewy carbohydrate that she had taken to readily, especially when it was cooked fresh and not from those horrible instant packets that weren't nice no matter what jazzy flavour it claimed it would be.

"Oh really?" Cassian replied, walking back over to the kitchen counter to pick up another carton. "Don't let my lateness interrupt the story any more, then."


Jenny had finished almost all of the mozzarella garlic bread by the time she left an hour later.

Cassian lay propped against one arm on the floor as full of amusement, he watched the door shut.

"Say what you like, but I always find her stories quite interesting. It gets me through the tedium of all the stuff she has to check over with us," he said casually.

Jyn was about to reply when Cassian quickly got to his feet and strode over to the kitchen.

"I've been thinking about Chirrut, or would be Chirrut -" she began, arching her head up to see where he was going.

"Me too," Cassian replied, coming back round with a bag in his hand to sit next to her on the couch.

"I've been saving a bit every week with the food shop," he explained, as he lifted out a cardboard box featuring a picture of what looked like a phone, or at least a much more basic, depressing looking version of the 'mobiles' they had been given when they had moved into the apartment.

"But I was thinking about it this morning when you were looking up flight costs and all of that, all of these hoops that would have been so hard for us to jump through and I realised if we just found a way to call wherever he is at least we might be able to get to the bottom of things."

He pulled open the box haphazardly while he talked and Jyn sat watching him fiddle with the different leaflets and bits of spare packaging.

"I mean I don't know if the social workers, the council they work for - I have no idea if they're following or tracking us, but I wanted to be safe."

Jyn nodded.

"Of course," she replied quietly, taken by surprise.

He popped open a back panel in the brick-shaped item and produced a small card about the size of a fingernail to slot inside it. Cassian looked up at her as he closed the panel again.

"Can you look up where it said the mystery man was being held?" he asked her.

It took about three minutes of searching on the internet and a couple of turns on an online translator for Jyn to find the number from a local Kowloon bulletin.

She turned the laptop screen for Cassian to see and he passed the phone over to her. Jyn took the phone carefully and glanced back up at him, ready to dial the number. She took a deep breath.

"Shall we?"