Page 110 of In Too Deep

He had.

He knew he had.

So he gathered the fish supper, handed over the cash, and drove home where he brought in the fish and chips straight to the kitchen and checked the cupboards. The fridge. Teddy hadn’t been wrong. The place was practically empty. Tea bags. Bread. A few tins. Not enough for a growing teenage boy who had a rugby talent and on track for an academy place. He needed food.

Christ.

It’d started happening again. The retreating. The silence. The slow collapse back into those first terrible months after Robyn vanished, when no one in the house had known how to function anymore and eighteen-year-old Jake had tried to hold them altogether through sheer stubbornness.

Tonight felt dangerously close to those days again.

Teddy disappeared upstairs for a shower while Jake unpacked the food across the kitchen counters, the paper growing translucent with grease beneath his hands. Salt and vinegar then filled the house along with the attempt at normalcy. Jake carried one wrapped parcel through to the living room and handed it to his dad, who sat slumped in the armchair staring at the television without really watching it. His mum stayed at the kitchen table, cardigan pulled tight, fingers scrolling her tablet open on Facebook and not touching the food Jake placed in front of her.

“Stop looking at it, Mum.” Jake swallowed down the frustration climbing his throat.

“I can’t, love. What if she’s still out there? What if she’s reading all this about her?”

Jake knew that was so beyond the realm of possibility, but it was the only hope his mum had left. And if deleting sick comments from her posts about her daughter kept her focused, then so be it.

He didn’t like it, but what could he do?

So he left her to it and dumped his and Teddy’s portions onto the coffee table in the living room. He sat heavily on the sofa opposite his father and for a while, no one spoke. The television muttered pointlessly in the background while Donnie picked mechanically at chips he clearly wasn’t tasting.

Jake scrubbed a hand over his jaw.

He didn’t know how to ease into conversations anymore. Not in this house. So eventually he just bulldozed straight through the middle of it.

“You need to keep an eye on Teddy.”

Donnie didn’t look at him. “We are.”

“No, you’re not.” Jake leaned forward, propping his elbows on his knees. “He came to mine this morning because there were nowt in the cupboards again.” He picked up a chip, dabbing it into the ketchup. “I know this is all fucking awful, but he’s thirteen, Dad. He still needs looking after. He’s got a real shot at summat good. He can’t play rugby on an empty stomach. Can’t learn at school when he’s hungry.”

A small, broken sound came from the kitchen.

His mum was crying again.

“Shit.” He tossed another chip back into the paper bag as footsteps sounded overhead.

Teddy wandered into the room fresh from the shower, hair damp and curling at the ends, oversized hoodie swallowing him whole above a pair of joggers. He dropped onto the sofa beside Jake with all the careless heaviness of teenage boys and immediately started tearing into his battered sausage and chips as if he hadn’t eaten properly in days.

It worried Jake that he might not have.

So he watched him for a while. Then he reached over and shoved a hand roughly through Teddy’s wet hair.

Teddy instantly ducked away. “Piss off.”

But he was grinning when he said it. All bravado. Jake knew the difference. The kid was starving for affection these days. Starving for attention. Maybe just starving.

The television abruptly changed from the quiz show into local news and Jake barely paid attention at first until the girl in the river came up. The police appeal. And of course Harrison appeared on screen. Suit jacket back on. Tie straight. Hair slightly dishevelled in that careful way Jake was beginning to recognise meant he’d been running on caffeine and stress for too many hours. His expression remained calm and professional for the cameras, but Jake could see the exhaustion underneath it now.

“…formal identification has now taken place following the discovery of a woman’s body near the Lancaster Industrial Estate earlier this week…”

Across the room, Donnie turned the volume louder.

They already knew it wasn’t Robyn. Murray had come by that morning to tell them officially before the news broke. Which was what set all this off again and Teddy bulldozing on him and Harrison that morning. But that didn’t mean they weren’t invested in the outcome.

Once again, this was all a bit too close to home.