‘When Mark tells you to run, you run. It’d take a very resilient—’

‘Shut up, Jack!’

For about five seconds, Jack took his advice. The silence was welcome, and for a moment Ewan felt the cold breeze, and the wet grass wiping against his boots. If he cared enough to look upwards, he could have seen the sky lit up with stars, and remembered that all his worldly troubles were just a tiny speck on the vast expanse of reality, or some crap like that.

Apparently, five seconds was enough for Jack.

‘You need to stop being nasty to me, Ewan. If you didn’t want that chat about your parents earlier you could have just said so, rather than hate me for the rest of the night. Take a moment to yourself, and leave Gracie alone. I’ll call comms and break the news to Alex and Shannon.’

Ewan’s PDA came right to the surface, and Jack’s set of commands made his fists clench in a reflex action. The breath caught in his throat as his sense of control – the very last of it – vanished from his mind. But by the time he turned around, Jack already had his phone in front of his face. Ewan couldn’t start a fight while Jack was calling comms. Not with Shannon watching via video call.

Screw you, Jack… screw you and your advice and your dinosaur obsession and your love of machines and…

You’re right. But screw you anyway.

It had been the comment about his parents that hurt the most. Because Jack had been right about them too.

When Ewan made an effort to remember his mother, he had fond memories of who she had been. But his memory of her personality and his memory of their relationship were different things, and his strongest memories of their time together were best avoided. The good parts of his formative years had been spent with Dad, and the bad parts with Mum.

They had split their parental responsibilities pretty well, right down to Dad having the military job and Mum doing the housework. It seemed like an old-fashioned family set-up, but it was Ewan’s fault she had become a stay-at-home mum. His mainstream head teachers had dragged her into school so many times that it was easier to just sit at home and wait for the phone to ring, rather than take every afternoon off work and run out of holiday leave.