Pacifier

🍀Bob♠️

I wasn't sure what Blakes had told the hospital when he'd dropped his clothes off for Camille and Bondy. Lying seemed pointless to me because I knew just as well as Blakes did that we were infamous round these parts.

Those nurses should have recognised Johnny and they should have recognised Camille. They should have recognised me and Benji too.

And yet I knew benji had lied to them, I knew he hadn't told them he was her brother.

It was something I'd never understood, this unspoken rule of half truths. That even when we knew our identity was obvious we lied through our teeth. As if the only thing that really mattered was that no one kept a physical record of us.

Even now, when we were staying in the living room of a flat opposite the hospital car park, owned by a woman who knew us both and had done since we were children, we were lying to her.

She must have known why we wanted to stay on her living room floor. Why we were so interested in watching out her living room window, day in day out. She knew us, knew our family, who had provided protection for her family since she was a child, and she knew about the war. Everyone in the city knew what had gone down at Reds by now.

Everyone in the city knew that we'd set the fires that had burnt the Reid empire to the ground.

And everyone in the city had heard the rumours about John and Camille.

So Elena, whose house we were staying in, and her two little girls, must have been able to guess why Benji Blakeway was in their living room, watching the hospital car park across the road.

They must have been able to guess that he was waiting to see if his sister would come out alive.

And yet that's not what we'd told Elena, and when Carmella and Nino her two little girls brought me tea and biscuits and toast, when they sat on the end of the sofa and watched me with expectant eyes, and asked me what Benji was looking at, I lied every time.

I told them we couldn't say a word, that it was strictly confidential. It wasn't lying exactly but it was hiding the truth. But it was probably for the best.

If we told anyone about Camille and Johnny we were putting them at risk. It was already risky them being in that hospital. If a nurse on the ward recognised them and told the wrong person their whereabouts then their lives could be at risk.

That was one reason we were watching the hospital.
We were watching to make sure no one checked in that could be a threat.

But the main reason of course was the obvious reason.

We were just waiting, hoping they would come out alive.

"Anything?" I asked him with a sigh, rubbing my eyes lethargic, about to swap with him.

We had a pair of binoculars and a gap in the curtains and that was all. No hitech equipment like you see on TV, just the basics. We'd set up a little post and between the two of us we were watching 24 hours. Our own little surveillance system.

"Quiet night," he said yawning, not looking away from the window for even a moment.

Even turned away from me I could see he was tired. Not just tired with lack of sleep but tired like worn out, worn down a little more with every day that went by.

"Ben," I said clapping him on the shoulder, "cmon man go to bed, get some rest Ive got this," I said, hauling him from his perch in the window, my hand on the sleeve of his sweater as I tugged him up towards me. "Not helping her tearing yourself to bits over here are you," I said looking at him with a more stern set of eyes on me then.