Chapter 12

Glass

Ellen held her hands beneath the tap until the cold began to hurt, then lifted what water she could keep between her palms and splashed it against her face. Most escaped through her fingers. The rest struck her cheeks and forehead with enough force to make her gasp, bringing the sink, the tap and the pale backs of her hands into momentary focus. Water caught in her eyelashes. She blinked it clear and watched the drops fall from her chin, each one making a small, distinct sound in the basin.

The fluorescent tube above the mirror had developed a faint electrical buzz. Every few seconds the light faltered, so briefly that she began to blame her eyes. The corners of the room seemed to withdraw and return. In the mirror, her face endured each little interruption without improving: skin washed of colour, eyes too bright, a damp strand of hair stuck against her temple. She looked like someone who had been woken to identify a body. Given another hour, she might look like the body itself. Come on, Ellen. One more shift. Get through one more shift, and then you can sleep.

She pulled two paper towels from the dispenser and pressed them against her face. She held them over her closed eyes for a moment longer than necessary, enjoying the darkness and the absence of anyone requiring anything of her. Then she dried her chin, screwed the towels into a ball and dropped them into the bin. The door was heavier than she remembered. Or her arm was. Either way, it opened, and she went through it quickly.

Speed was useful. Walk fast enough and an absence acquired a purpose: a stockroom errand, a customer waiting for cutlery, some urgent little problem elsewhere. Nobody asked how often you had disappeared into the toilets if you came back looking as though you were already late for the next thing. There goes Ellen, in a rush again. She had learned that much about work. Being busy and appearing busy were different skills, and on a day like this she needed both.

The bar smelled of grilled food and hot fryer oil, with the sweet, stale undertone that lived in places where beer was spilled more often than anyone admitted. The kitchen staff had changed shifts while she was away, or perhaps earlier; she hadn’t seen the chefs arrive or leave. She rarely did. Behind the swinging doors they had their own hours, arguments and methods of getting through the day. Occasionally someone emerged carrying a plate or wearing an expression that suggested a plate had been thrown, but otherwise their world remained separate. Hers consisted of tables, drinks, food orders and the obligation to make people feel that whatever they wanted was entirely reasonable.

Usually only two people worked the floor during the day. Today those people had been Tracy and Seth until Ellen had turned up unannounced and offered another pair of hands for nothing beyond whatever tips she could earn. By evening, the thin afternoon trade had filled out into something approaching a crowd. The wall lanterns cast a warm light over the exposed brick, while the beer bottles somebody had converted into hanging lamps swayed on their ropes whenever a passing shoulder caught them. Their reflections moved across the boards underfoot. Pink and purple LED strips ran along the walls, lending the darker corners a bruised colour that the lanterns couldn’t quite soften.

The fruit machines were doing better business than she had. They flashed and chimed in the corner, offering little rehearsals of celebration to men who scarcely changed expression as they fed in another coin. Ellen knew that look: the concentration that had outlasted enjoyment, the faint hope kept alive because admitting it was gone would mean standing up. Elsewhere, conversation settled into a low, continuous sound beneath the clink of glasses, the rush of the taps and the occasional laugh loud enough to make her shoulders tighten. She took a tray from the bar and moved between the tables, collecting empties with the practised efficiency of hands that knew the job better than the person attached to them.

By the time she turned back towards the counter, she had crowded the tray and stacked several of the glasses. She adjusted her grip, looking towards the gap between two chairs, and walked straight into Tracy. The impact wasn’t much. On another day she would have recovered it without thinking. This time the stack shifted, her fingers slid against condensation, and the first glass struck the edge of another with a hard little click. She tried to catch both. The tray tipped, and the whole arrangement came apart.

The crash carried across the room. Glass burst against the wooden floor and scattered beneath a nearby table; a larger piece spun once before settling close to her shoe. Several customers turned their heads. Ellen was already crouching before she had finished saying, “Shit,” her stomach dropping with the absurd conviction that everyone had been waiting all evening for precisely this. She set the tray down and began picking up the larger pieces. Her face felt hot enough to undo everything the cold water had managed.

“Oh, sweetheart!” Tracy exclaimed, loud enough to carry to the nearest tables. “Are you all right?”

Ellen nodded without looking up. “Yeah. Sorry. I didn't see you.”

“Seven glasses, by the look of it.” Tracy surveyed the wreckage, her eyebrows rising with something approaching amusement. “Good thing we're not paying you for today. Otherwise you'd be costing us money.”

A couple of customers chuckled. Tracy rewarded them with a little smile, as though the accident had been a harmless piece of entertainment she'd arranged for their benefit. Then she lowered herself into a crouch beside Ellen, careful to keep her knees away from the broken glass.

“Seriously, though, honey. Are you okay? You've been all over the place today.”

“I'm fine, Trace. Just tired.”

“I know, sweetie. I can see that.” Tracy lowered her voice, although not quite enough to prevent the nearest customers from hearing. “And believe me, I understand. We've all had difficult times. God knows I've had my share.”

Ellen picked up the broken stem of a glass and placed it on the tray. Tracy watched her for a moment, then glanced towards the people who had turned to look. Her expression softened into one of practiced concern.

“I'm actually a little worried about you. You haven't slept, have you? I mean, not properly. And now you're dropping things. What if you'd hurt yourself? Or somebody else?”

“It was an accident.”

“I know that, honey. I'm not blaming you.” Tracy placed a hand against her own chest, looking almost wounded by the suggestion. “I'm just saying somebody needs to look out for you. You can't keep pushing yourself like this.”

Ellen continued collecting the glass. There was a peculiar helplessness in being lectured by someone who had already decided the conversation was an act of kindness. Anything she said in her own defence would sound ungrateful.

“And now I'm in an awkward position,” Tracy continued, sighing. “Because technically, I should tell Jack. I mean, you're here working without any sleep, and now this has happened. If I don't mention it and something else goes wrong, it'll be me he asks why nobody said anything.”

“You don't need to tell Jack. I'm fine.”

“Oh, sweetie, I know you don't want me to.” Tracy tilted her head sympathetically. “And believe me, the last thing I want is to get you into trouble. But I've got a responsibility here. Jack trusts me to keep him informed, and I can't just pretend I haven't noticed.”

She said it with the solemn reluctance of someone preparing to undertake an unpleasant duty. Ellen suspected that, given a few minutes alone with Jack, Tracy would manage to remember considerably more than seven broken glasses.

“Besides,” Tracy added, brightening a little, “he might be able to help. You never know. Sometimes these things turn out to be a blessing in disguise.”

Ellen doubted Jack would consider a waitress who wasn't being paid a particularly pressing concern. Nor could she imagine what assistance he might offer beyond suggesting that she go home, which would leave her exactly where she'd started.

“Thanks, Trace. I'll clean this up.”

“That's what friends are for.” Tracy gave her arm a reassuring squeeze, then leaned a little closer. “Oh, and Ellen? Just a little advice, between us girls. If Jack asks why you're so exhausted, I'd come up with something better than that locksmith story.”

Ellen stopped moving.

Tracy noticed. Of course she noticed.

“I mean, honestly, honey. I can't believe you lied to poor Seth. He's such a kind boy.” She shook her head with an expression of genuine disappointment, although there was something almost cheerful about the way she delivered the words. “You don't want people thinking you're taking advantage of him, do you?”

Before Ellen could answer, Tracy stood, smoothed her trousers and glanced towards the stage. One of the musicians was looking in her direction.

“Anyway, don't worry about Jack. I'll have a quiet word with him. Just leave it with me, sweetie.”

She gave Ellen one final smile, the kind that suggested everything had been settled to everyone's satisfaction, and walked away.

Ellen remained crouched among the broken glass, staring at a small triangular fragment resting between the floorboards. She hadn't told Tracy about the locksmith. Seth must have mentioned it, perhaps in passing, without understanding how the information might be used. He seemed incapable of imagining that an ordinary conversation could be turned into something unpleasant. She wondered what Tracy had asked him, and how much of the story he had supplied without realising there was a reason for the questions.

The worst part was that Tracy hadn't actually threatened her. Not directly. She had offered concern, advice and the reluctant possibility of involving their employer. Every word could be repeated in front of Jack without sounding especially unreasonable. Ellen could almost hear the explanation if she complained. I was only trying to help. She's obviously exhausted. Somebody had to say something.

She took the broken glass to the bin beneath the counter, letting the pieces slide off the tray without putting her fingers near their edges. Then she fetched the brush and pan for the splinters she couldn’t safely pick up. A few glittered between the boards; one had travelled farther than seemed possible and lay beneath a chair. She checked the patch of floor twice before putting the brush away. Her hands were trembling. Exhaustion accounted for some of it. Tracy accounted for the rest. Keep moving, she told herself. There were still whole glasses in the building. Presumably she could find something useful to do with those.

On the small stage, the band were connecting cables and checking levels. A speaker crackled, followed by a low hum that seemed to settle behind her teeth. There were four of them, thin men in their early twenties with such a family resemblance that she kept having to look again to establish which one had moved. Perhaps they were brothers. Perhaps they came from one of those towns where a family tree could be drawn without lifting the pencil. It was an uncharitable thought, and she knew it, but something about them made her stomach turn. She couldn’t have said what. She was tired enough for an ordinary face to look wrong if she studied it too long.

Tracy had no such difficulty. She stood near the stage, smiling up at them, and the attention seemed to straighten her back and brighten every part of her. One of the men leaned down to say something. Ellen couldn’t hear the words beneath the room’s noise, but she recognised the exchange well enough: the glance passed between the others, Tracy’s knowing smile, the answer that made them laugh. Whatever she had said, it had bought another few seconds of their interest. She would know exactly how much it was worth.

Ellen moved towards a table near the far wall, where a man in a business shirt had finished his meal and was attempting to attract her attention with a raised hand. He had been sitting there for the better part of an hour, occasionally checking his phone and ordering another drink whenever the previous one approached empty. His bill was substantial enough to make her hopeful.

“Could I settle up, please?” he asked, pushing his plate aside.

“Sure thing.”

She collected the bill from beneath his empty glass and glanced at the total. Eighty-four dollars and change. A decent tip on that would make a considerable difference to her evening. She brought the card terminal over from the bar and set it beside him.

He looked at the screen, then reached into his wallet.

“You've been running around all night,” he observed. “Place looks busy.”

“Getting there,” Ellen said, offering the sort of smile she could produce without consulting the rest of her face.

“Well, you've looked after me. I'll make sure you get a good tip.”

“Thank you. That's very kind.”

He selected the tip option on the terminal, tapped his card and waited for the approval. Ellen saw the amount briefly before the screen changed. Twenty dollars. More than she'd expected, and more than she had earned in cash over several hours of working the afternoon.

“There you go,” he said, returning the card to his wallet. “You deserve it.”

“Thank you so much. Have a lovely evening.”

She meant the gratitude, or at least she wanted to. Twenty dollars was twenty dollars, and she'd worked hard for it. The trouble was that it existed only as a figure inside a payment system, attached to a transaction that would have to be processed and reconciled before anyone could put the money in her hand. Card tips went through payroll. They would appear on her payslip, eventually, alongside her wages and the deductions that seemed to grow more inventive every month.

Tonight, the man might as well have tipped her with a promise.

She watched him leave, his good deed completed, and felt ashamed of the resentment rising inside her. He had been generous. It wasn't his responsibility to understand the difference between money she'd earned and money she could actually use. He had probably gone home believing he'd made a tired waitress's evening a little better. In a fortnight, perhaps he would have. Tonight, she couldn't buy so much as a sandwich with his twenty dollars.

She cleared his table, wiping a circle of condensation from the wood and gathering the cutlery onto the plate. There was a time when tips had meant folded notes slipped discreetly into her palm, a few coins left beneath an empty glass, money that belonged to her the moment a customer walked away. Now everything seemed to pass through a machine, and the machines had developed the peculiar ability to turn an immediate kindness into a future accounting entry.

By the time she returned to the bar, she was thinking about food again. Not anything elaborate. A bowl of soup, perhaps, with enough bread to make it worth the price. She put a hand in her pocket and brought out her tips. The coins lay in her palm in a dispiriting little heap, cold despite having been against her leg. She counted them once, although she had already counted them in the toilets and nothing had happened since to change the total.

Not enough for a meal.

Tracy had been right about the day shift, at least. Most of the afternoon customers were old veterans or widows who made one drink last for hours, sitting with their coats beside them and sometimes nothing much to say.

She understood why they stayed. A drink bought more than what was in the glass. It bought a warm room, voices, the possibility that someone might remember your name without consulting a bill. At home there might be a cold kitchen and a television that talked to nobody in particular. Here, a person could take an hour over the last inch of a beer and postpone going back. Ellen hated taking their coins. She hated needing them more. She closed her fingers around the money before she could start calculating which of the people who had given it to her could least afford to.

“Ellen, are you okay?”

Seth’s voice made her flinch. He stood a few feet away behind the bar, so quiet in his approach that she hadn’t registered him at all. She pushed the coins back into her pocket, keeping her hand there, her thumb moving over their edges.

“I will be finishing my shift soon,” he said. “I wondered if you had taken any time to consider renting the other room at my apartment?”

Having asked, he turned to the coffee machine and began preparing a cup.

For a moment she simply watched his back. Who wanted coffee at this hour? More to the point, who offered you somewhere to live and then turned away before you answered? With someone else it might have felt dismissive. Seth somehow made it seem as though the question had been left safely within her reach and he didn’t intend to hurry her. He was strange in ways she found difficult to explain. Too polite, too still, his words chosen with a care that made ordinary conversation sound faintly unfamiliar. Occasionally she had the impression of a man learning how to be a person from instructions that had omitted all the easy parts.

There was confidence beneath it, though. He never seemed embarrassed by a silence or tempted to fill one for the sake of everyone else’s comfort. He waited as if he knew something would eventually make sense, even if the rest of them needed longer to arrive there. Ellen had been thinking about his offer much more than she wanted to admit. A spare room. A bed. The possibility of putting her belongings somewhere and finding them in the same place when she woke. Of course he could be a serial killer; that remained an option with almost anybody. At present, her exhausted mind had reduced the objection to a practical question. If he killed her in her sleep, would she at least get a few hours first?

“Yes. I was going to ask you about that.” She shifted her weight and glanced across the room before lowering her voice. “I haven't got much money right now. But I can pay at the end of the month. I promise. I've just finished my training, and between that and everything else, my savings are pretty much gone.”

She hadn't meant to sound apologetic. It came out that way regardless, an explanation prepared for a criticism he hadn't made.

Seth turned his head slightly. “What kind of training?”

“Patient Care Technician. It's a healthcare qualification. Similar to being a nursing assistant, but with additional clinical training.” She rubbed the back of her neck, trying to decide how much explanation was necessary. “I've been studying at the community college for the best part of two years. Working nights here, going to classes during the day. Sleeping whenever I could squeeze it in.”

“That sounds rather demanding.”

Ellen gave a small, humourless laugh. “That's one way of putting it. There were weeks when I genuinely couldn't remember what day it was. I'd finish here, get a couple of hours' sleep, go to college, come home, study, then come straight back to work. Rinse and repeat. For nearly two years.”

She paused, realising how miserable she'd made the whole experience sound. It hadn't been miserable. Not all of it. There had been mornings when she'd sat in a lecture theatre with a coffee growing cold beside her notebook, listening to someone explain the human body, and felt an excitement she hadn't experienced in years. There was something deeply satisfying about understanding why things happened, about discovering that symptoms and treatments were connected by principles rather than guesswork. Even the difficult subjects had given her a sense of direction. She was learning something useful. Something that might change the shape of her life.

“The last part was a clinical placement at the hospital,” she continued. “That was actually my favourite bit. Terrifying at first, mind you. It's one thing practising on equipment in a classroom. It's another when there's a real person in front of you, trusting you to know what you're doing.”

“What sort of work did you perform?”

“Oh, all sorts. Helping patients wash and dress, checking observations, assisting with mobility, making sure people were comfortable. We learned about infection control, taking blood samples, ECGs, things like that. Obviously, there are limits to what you can do without supervision or the right authorisation, but that's part of the training too. Knowing what you're responsible for, and when something needs to be passed to a nurse.”

She found herself smiling at the memory of the placement. There had been patients who barely spoke and others who seemed determined to tell her their entire life stories before she'd finished taking their blood pressure. Some had been frightened. Some had been angry. A few had simply been lonely, and those were often the ones she remembered most clearly. She had discovered that there were occasions when sitting beside somebody for five minutes accomplished more than anything she could have written on a chart.

“The nurses were brilliant,” she said. “Well, most of them. A couple were absolute nightmares, but I suppose you get that everywhere. By the end of the placement they were trusting me to do things I'd been terrified of a few weeks earlier. I actually felt like I belonged there.”

“And you have now completed the programme?”

“Yeah. Finished just before...” She stopped, catching herself before the rest of the sentence escaped. “A little while ago. I've got the qualification now. I just need somebody to give me a job.”

The distinction between finishing her training and finding employment had become painfully important. For almost two years, Ellen had organised her life around the assumption that the qualification would lead to something better. She had paid tuition fees, bought textbooks, completed assessments and sacrificed more sleep than she cared to calculate. The hospital placement had provided experience and encouragement, but no guarantee of employment. Applications had to be submitted, vacancies had to exist, interviews had to be attended, and employers had their own requirements. A certificate was evidence that she had completed her training, not a promise that somebody would hire her.

It had all seemed so reasonable when she began. The extra money from working nights would cover her expenses while she studied. Once she qualified, she could apply for hospital work, earn a better wage and finally establish something resembling a normal routine. She'd even imagined having evenings free. Eating dinner at a table rather than standing beside a kitchen counter. Going to bed at the same time as everyone else. Small luxuries that had acquired the grandeur of distant ambitions.

Then her relationship had fallen apart, her living arrangements had gone with it, and the savings that were supposed to support her through the transition had proved nowhere near sufficient. Nearly two years of careful planning had been undone in a matter of days. The qualification remained, tucked safely among her belongings, but it couldn't pay for a room tonight.

“That's quite a change from bartending,” Seth said.

“Tell me about it.” She looked around the bar, at the customers calling for drinks and the coloured lights crawling across the walls. “I don't hate this place. Not really. But I can't do it forever. The late nights, the drunks, the noise. I think I've hit my limit.”

She glanced at him and shrugged, suddenly uncomfortable with how earnest the next part sounded.

“I wanted something where I could actually help people. Something that mattered.”

“Are you planning to work in a hospital?”

“Hopefully. Or a clinic, maybe. Whatever I can get with my qualification. I'd love to go back and train as a nurse one day, but that's a whole other mountain to climb.” She smiled faintly. “One thing at a time, eh?”

She didn't know why she was telling him so much. Usually she rationed this part of herself. Tell the wrong person what you hoped to do and they could make you ashamed of having hoped it. Seth hadn't interrupted or made a joke. He had simply asked another question, as though her answer deserved to occupy a little of his time. Perhaps that was all it took when you were this tired.

She drew her shoulders back.

“Anyway, the studying's behind me now. I'm still working here while I apply for jobs, so I've got wages coming in. Once payday comes, I can pay the rent. I just can't manage anything upfront at the moment.”

Seth returned his attention to the coffee machine. She watched him make a small adjustment with the same unhurried precision he brought to everything else.

“The room is empty,” he said. “You could use it whenever you're ready.”

His voice was smooth, almost level, and yet the words reached her with a warmth that made her throat tighten. She had braced herself for conditions. He had told her the room was empty.

“I can arrive early tomorrow and show you the apartment,” he continued. “When you have finished your shift. I will be, of course, starting mine. We will be like ships in the night, as it were.”

She had been considering the arrangement in terms of money, strangers and whether a bedroom door would have a lock. A doorstop beneath it might help; she had already pictured buying one. It hadn't occurred to her that their hours would leave them with very little opportunity to bother each other. He worked while she slept. She worked while he was elsewhere. Ships in the night. There was something almost indecently wonderful about the simplicity of it.

“Yes,” she said, too quickly and too loudly. She brought her voice down. “Please. Only if it's okay with your landlord. I can pay him at the end of the month, if that's all right?”

Seth turned towards her with a steaming mug in his hand. His eyes creased slightly at the corners. The smile looked carefully made, a courteous approximation of something other people did without thinking, but she felt comforted by it all the same. Tomorrow there might be a bed. After tomorrow there might still be a bed. She hadn't realised how little of the future she had allowed herself to imagine until she found herself imagining a place to put her things.

The relief was slow and almost painful. She distrusted it even while it spread through her, searching automatically for whatever she had overlooked. Things tended to go right just long enough for her to believe they might stay that way. Please, she thought, with no particular confidence that anyone was receiving the request. Just this. A room, a bed, a place where I can shut my eyes.

Her fingers moved over the last few coins in her pocket, and she was preparing to speak again when she realised Seth was looking past her.

“Is everything okay, Tracy?”

Ellen turned.

Tracy stood close to the bar, watching them with her usual smile still in place and nothing resembling pleasure in her eyes. Ellen wondered how long she had been there, then wished she hadn't wondered. Tracy opened her mouth, but before she could speak a hand settled lightly on her shoulder.

“Good evening, Tracy,” said a voice worn rough by years and scotch, still substantial enough to carry without being raised.

Jack stood beside her in jeans and a jumper that would have looked ordinary on a shop mannequin until you touched the fabric or saw the price. There were no conspicuous logos. There didn't need to be. A gold watch showed beneath his cuff, catching the light when he moved his hand from Tracy's shoulder.

He looked past her towards Seth.

“How was your first day, Seth?”

Something changed in Seth's expression, although Ellen couldn't have named it. A pause, perhaps, or an adjustment too slight to be called surprise.

“Hello, Dad,” he said, with the expectant calm of someone continuing a conversation rather than beginning one. “It has been very enjoyable. I believe I will like it here. Ellen has been kind enough to teach me the amazing art of making coffee.”

He offered the mug across the counter with a small, precise smile.

Dad.

Ellen looked from one to the other, trying to fit that into the day she had just spent with him. Seth hadn't mentioned that his father owned the bar. It explained the job, at least; she had wondered how somebody with no bar experience had managed to get it. It also explained the coffee, which left her with the unpleasant little sensation that he had known who would want it before Jack appeared.

That was ridiculous. Jack was probably due in. There were plenty of things she didn't know because nobody had thought to tell her.

“Erm. Thank you, Seth. That's very considerate of you.” Jack accepted the mug almost absently, his attention remaining on his son. “And you say you've enjoyed the work?”

Before Seth could reply, Tracy moved smoothly into the conversation.

“Evening, Jack. Seth's been an absolute sweetheart. Honestly, you'd be proud of him. He's taken to everything so naturally.” She smiled towards Seth, then looked back at Jack. “I've been keeping an eye on him, making sure he's settling in properly.”

Jack nodded, although his attention remained on his son.

“And actually, while you're here, there's something I need to run past you,” Tracy continued. Her expression became a little more serious. “Nothing terrible. Just something I'm a bit concerned about. I don't really want to make a fuss, but I think you ought to know.”

Ellen felt her stomach tighten.

Jack glanced at her, then returned his attention to Tracy.

“Right. Well, let's hear it.”

“Probably better in your office, sweetheart. It's a little delicate.” Tracy lowered her voice, adopting the discreet manner of someone entrusted with another person's confidence. “We can do the handover at the same time. Won't take a minute.”

Ellen kept quiet. Seth continued smiling at his father, apparently untroubled by the interruption. Jack exhaled with the weary patience of a man recognising a familiar complication in familiar clothes.

“C'mon then, Trace,” he said, and moved towards the office.

Tracy followed him, turning to give Ellen one last look before passing through the door he held open. It was nothing anyone else would have remarked on. Ellen felt it settle beneath her ribs all the same.

The room she had been picturing seemed suddenly less certain. Tracy was in there with Jack, and Jack was Seth's father, and somewhere in those facts was bound to be a way for this to go wrong. Ellen could almost hear the reasonable voice Tracy would use. Concern, of course. She was always concerned when there was an opportunity to explain Ellen to someone who could make her life harder. A few minutes ago there had been a spare room. Now there was an office door, closed.

“My dad, he's not a bad guy, Ellen,” Seth said.

She looked back at him, startled less by the words than by how neatly they had found the thought she hadn't spoken. She was about to answer when his attention moved away from her, towards the band.

One of the men onstage shifted beside a microphone stand. Ellen noticed the movement only because Seth was watching it. Then she noticed that nothing about Seth was moving at all.

He had been still before, in the ordinary way of someone waiting. This was different. His face, shoulders and the hand resting near the counter seemed to have stopped together, leaving him so completely motionless that she became conscious of the activity around him: a customer lifting a glass, a cable dragged across the stage, the minute trembling of a hanging lamp.

His right hand rose towards his stomach. He pressed his palm there and curled his fingers inward, as though holding something in place beneath his shirt.

“Seth?”

He didn't answer. She followed his gaze but saw only the four young men and their equipment, nothing that explained the look on his face. It wasn't quite fear. She wasn't sure it was any expression she knew.

Slowly, he took his hand away from his stomach and looked down at it. His fingers opened, flexed, then closed again. He appeared to be checking for something that should have been there. Ellen heard him draw a shallow breath.

“Seth, are you all right?”

She reached across and took his wrist. His skin was warm. Beneath her fingers she could feel his pulse, the small, persistent movement of blood that should not have felt as reassuring as it did. Of course he was warm. Of course he had a pulse. Still, for an instant she was grateful for the ordinary physical fact of him, something she could touch and understand while his face remained so far away.

He blinked several times and let his breath out unevenly. A word escaped with it, too quiet for her to be certain, although she thought it was sorry. Sweat had appeared along his cheeks and at his temples, catching the dim light. She hadn't seen it gathering. His face had lost colour, and she tightened her grip just enough to keep his attention if he could feel it.

“Seth, what's wrong?” she asked softly.

He seemed on the point of answering when Tracy spoke behind her.

“Ellen. Jack wants you in his office. Now.”

Ellen stiffened, and Tracy's eyes moved from her face to Seth's, then down to the hand around his wrist. For a second she simply took in the arrangement. Her expression sharpened.

“Oh, Seth, sweetheart. Are you all right?”

She moved closer, placing herself beside him and looking at Ellen with an expression of sudden concern.

“What's happened? Has he been feeling unwell?”

“I don't know. He just went a bit strange. I was trying to see if he was okay.”

“Well, give him some space, honey.” Tracy's voice was gentle, but she had already reached between them, guiding Ellen's hand away from his wrist. “The poor thing looks overwhelmed. It's his first day, after all.”

Ellen released him, irritated by how quickly the movement made her feel as though she'd been doing something wrong. Tracy had turned towards Seth before she could say anything else.

“Don't worry, sweetie. You're going to be absolutely fine.” She offered him a reassuring smile. “You've had a long day, haven't you? All these new faces, so much to take in. How about I walk you home later? Make sure you get back okay.”

Her hand settled lightly against his upper arm. Ellen noticed how naturally Tracy had taken possession of the situation, supplying both an explanation and a solution without waiting to hear whether either was necessary.

“Seth?” Ellen tried again. “Are you feeling sick?”

He looked towards her, but before he could answer, Tracy spoke.

“Ellen, honey, Jack is waiting for you.” Her smile remained patient. “I've got this. You go and sort things out with him. We'll be fine here.”

Ellen hesitated. Seth was still pale, his breathing shallow. The training she'd completed had taught her to take sudden changes in someone's condition seriously, especially when they were accompanied by sweating and discomfort. There were questions she wanted to ask, simple observations she wanted to make, but she couldn't very well begin examining the owner's son across a crowded bar while Tracy stood beside him insisting everything was fine.

“Well?” Tracy asked, glancing towards the office. “We can't finish our shifts until somebody takes over. And Jack's already waiting. You don't want to keep him hanging around, do you?”

There it was again. Nothing overtly cruel, nothing Ellen could reasonably object to. Just a series of perfectly sensible statements that somehow left her with no choice except to do precisely what Tracy wanted.

Ellen looked at Seth once more. He didn't meet her eyes. Whatever had happened on seeing the band hadn't finished with him; she could see that much in his face, though she couldn't tell whether he was trying to understand it or trying to keep it hidden. She wanted him to say something, even if it was only that he was all right.

Instead, she swallowed, drew her hand back against her side and went around the end of the counter towards Jack's office. Her legs knew the route. The rest of her followed with the familiar, sick reluctance of someone going to hear what had already been decided.