Page 16 of Dirty Rotten Love

And that, for now, is that, because there is no time, there is genuinely no time, we are already late and the only thing standing between us and the full force of MacLeod’s professional disappointment is moving very fast and not stopping for anything. We do the dance that we have somehow already perfected in less than a week, the two of us navigating the tiny cabin with the practiced efficiency of people who have learned exactly where the other person’s elbows are at all times. Tam at the sink first because he was up first, me waiting the twelve seconds it takes him to splash water on his face and drag a razor across his jaw, then swapping so fast there is no gap. The water from the stainless steel tap is cold and bracingly real and I hold it against my face for a second longer than necessary because I need something to anchor me to the present moment and cold water is doing a better job of it than my own brain is currently managing.

My brain is not managing particularly well, if I’m honest.

I catch my own reflection in the small rectangle of mirror above the sink. I look exactly like a man who did not get enough sleep for reasons he is absolutely not thinking about. My hair is doing something I don’t have time to fix. There is a mark on my neck that I notice and then very deliberately do not look at again.

I busy myself with frantic teeth brushing followed by a lightning quick trip to the loo. Then I step back into the cabin, trying so hard to be fast that I stand still while my mind whirls.

“Rory,” says Tam from behind me, pulling his boots on. “We have to go.”

“Going,” I say, and I am. Somehow I’m dressed and I’m pulling my own boots on, I’m grabbing my jacket, I’m following Tam out the door and into the corridor, and we are moving.

If parts of me are sore, then, well, I’m not thinking about that. Because there is no time.

We don’t have time for breakfast. This is a genuine tragedy, and I register it distantly, somewhere behind the much larger and more pressing chaos currently occupying the majority of my brain. Tam pulls out two cereal bars from his jacket pocket and hands me one without being asked, which is one of the nicest things anyone has done for me in recent memory, and I eat it in four bites while half-jogging down the corridor.

“You don’t have to tell me anything,” Tam says, also half jogging, also eating a cereal bar, the picture of casual. “Obviously.”

“Good,” I say.

“I’m just saying. You don’t have to.”

“I know.”

“The lads are going to ask though.”

“I know that too.”

Tam nods agreeably. We round the corner towards the briefing room. Through the door, I can already hear the low hum of the rest of Green Crew assembled and waiting, and my stomach does something complicated that has nothing to do with the missed breakfast.

“For what it’s worth,” says Tam, as I push the door open, “you came back in one piece. So I’m counting that as a win.”

I don’t have time to respond to this because we are through the door and into the briefing room, and every single face in the room turns to look at me with a unified and barely contained intensity that would be flattering under literally any other circumstances.

They are all here. Dazza has his arms folded and his eyebrows raised in a question that is doing a lot of heavy lifting. Frasier is wearing the expression of a man who feels personally responsible for a sequence of events and is not remotely sorry about it. Whelan looks like he has been awake since the CCTV footage ended and has spent the intervening hours with questions. Grigor is watching me with enormous, solemn eyes. Even Brockie, who is very young and very quiet and usually gives the impression of someone trying to take up as little space as possible, is watching me with wide uncertain eyes from the end of the row, as if he is not entirely sure what has happened but can tell it was significant.

Spanner, sitting beside him, is not looking at me at all. He is looking at Brockie, just for a moment, something quiet and unreadable in his expression, as if he has clocked that Brockie is unsettled by the room’s energy and is doing a quick assessment. Then his gaze moves to me and he gives me one small, unhurried nod. That’s all. Nothing more is needed.

I find my seat between Tam and Dazza. Dazza immediately leans in.

“Well?” he breathes.

“Briefing in a minute,” I say.

“Rory.”

“Dazza.”

“You were in there for three hours.”

I become very interested in the table in front of me. Three hours. I didn’t know it was three hours. That is. That is information I am going to put in the same mental box as the mark on my neck and the fact that I have no memory of getting back to my bunk, and I am going to close the lid on that box very firmly and not open it again until I am somewhere private and have had significantly more sleep.

“The door just closed,” says Whelan from across the table, unable to help himself. “It just closed and then nothing. We watched for twenty minutes.”

“You watched for twenty minutes?” I repeat.

“For welfare purposes.”

“Of course.”