Alexia Era @alexiaputellasera - Tumblr Blog

The Past

Summary - Jays past comes back to haunt her.

Word count - 11.2k

Requested by @pb1fan but with my own twist.

The call came on a Wednesday evening while Jay was standing between Alexia's thighs in the kitchen, kissing her with the dedicated concentration of someone who had already decided dinner was an administrative problem for another department.

Alexia had been trying to make soup. She had begun with respectable intentions, had chopped vegetables, softened onions and built the base slowly while Jay moved around her in a loose orbit of unnecessary interference. Jay had stolen grated cheese from the bowl, opened the fridge four times without removing anything, tested the bread by squeezing it until Alexia slapped her hand away, and then abandoned all pretence of helping when Alexia sat briefly on the edge of the island to check a message.

That had been eight minutes ago. Since then, Jay had settled between her knees with one hand resting beneath Alexia's shirt, thumb drawing idle circles over the warm skin of her waist, while the bread remained uncut on the board behind them and the soup simmered with increasingly independent ambition.

"You were meant to slice that," Alexia murmured against Jay's mouth, although her fingers were buried in the back of Jay's hair and one of her legs had tightened around Jay's hip in a way that weakened the authority of the complaint.

Jay kissed her again, slow enough to make Alexia forget the exact shape of the sentence she had been preparing. "I was going to," she said, her mouth brushing the corner of Alexia's. "Then you sat there looking domestic and fit. There was a clear change in priority."

"I am making soup bebe."

"Exactly. Dangerous."

"Soup is not dangerous."

"You making soup is. You've got the little serious face on, your sleeves are rolled up, and you keep tasting things with that spoon. It's basically pornography for people with stable childhoods."

Alexia's mouth twitched, which Jay noticed with the speed of someone who had spent years studying every microscopic change in her face. She smiled triumphantly and leaned in again, but Alexia caught her chin before she could kiss her.

"You are supposed to be helping."

"I am helping. Your morale is excellent."

"My morale would improve if we ate."

"You said that like you don't currently have both legs around me."

"One leg."

"Emotionally, it is two."

Alexia laughed despite herself, and the sound changed Jay immediately. The flirtation remained, because flirting with Alexia was less a habit than a permanent physical condition, but the expression beneath it softened. Jay always looked faintly astonished when she made Alexia laugh, as though each time were proof of something she still had not completely accepted. Alexia saw the shift and pulled her back in, kissing her properly this time, both hands cupping Jay's face while Jay stepped closer and let herself be held.

The kitchen was warm with garlic and rosemary. Evening light came through the balcony doors in long gold bands, catching the edges of Jay's damp hair and the ink along her arms. The television in the living room remained paused on a crime drama neither of them had followed for more than ten consecutive minutes because Jay kept accusing the wrong person and Alexia kept correcting her logic in increasingly irritated Spanish.

It was an ordinary evening, full of all the small things they had built together without ever formally deciding to build them. Jay's water bottle beside Alexia's mug. Alexia's training top hanging over the back of a chair. Jay's keys in the bowl she had once insisted she would never use and now used almost every day. Their bodies touching whenever they passed in a room, as if distance had become something they only tolerated when work required it.

Jay's phone began vibrating on the island behind her.

She ignored it.

Alexia did not. She broke the kiss and looked past Jay's shoulder towards the screen, where Julia's name glowed against the worktop.

"Answer it."

Jay kissed the underside of her jaw. "Could be work."

"It is Julia."

"That is how work disguises itself now. As women I trust."

The phone stopped, then began again almost immediately.

Alexia ran her fingers through Jay's hair and tugged lightly until she lifted her head. "Answer, bebé."

Jay sighed with theatrical suffering, although she stole one more kiss before turning. She did not step away completely. One hand remained on Alexia's thigh while she reached for the phone with the other, answered and pressed the speaker icon without looking.

"You're on loudspeaker," she said. "Alexia is here, and you have interrupted something culturally important."

Julia's voice came through with the dry patience of someone who had known Jay too long to ask for clarification. "Dinner?"

"Potentially."

From farther away, Clara said, "Tell her to put her clothes back on before we speak."

Jay looked down at herself. Her black vest remained fully in place, though Alexia's hand was still resting beneath the hem at her waist. "My clothes are on. Alexia is carrying out a private inspection."

Alexia smacked her lightly on the stomach, and Jay caught her wrist, brought it to her mouth and kissed the inside of it with a grin.

Julia sighed. "Can either of you behave for five minutes?"

"Sí," Alexia said.

"No," Jay said at the same time.

Jay looked at her with exaggerated betrayal. "You've changed."

Alexia slid down from the island and moved into Jay's side, looping one arm around her waist. Jay adjusted immediately, turning enough to fold Alexia against her body and resting her chin near her temple. Even while joking, she held her close automatically, thumb moving beneath the back of Alexia's shirt in a slow, absent stroke.

"There," Jay said. "We are behaving."

"You are kissing her hair," Clara replied.

Jay paused halfway through doing exactly that. "How do you know?"

"Because you always kiss Alexia's hair when you are pretending to listen."

Jay kissed it again, deliberately this time. "Continue."

There was a silence on the other end that did not belong to the teasing. Julia had a particular way of going quiet when she had information she did not want to deliver badly, and Jay recognised it before she spoke. The change in her was small but immediate. Her mouth stopped moving against Alexia's hair, and the hand at Alexia's waist went still. Alexia felt it happen and turned within her hold so she could see her face.

Julia said, "We were contacted this afternoon by an organisation in London."

Jay's eyes shifted towards the phone. "Which organisation?"

"The organisation that runs Ashdown House."

The name entered the kitchen and altered it.

Ashdown House sounded gentle if a person did not know what it was. It sounded like a large family home with old windows and a garden at the back, somewhere children might return to after school and complain about dinner. In reality, it had been a red brick residential care home in south London with flaking paint around the upstairs windows, radiators that clanged through winter and a narrow strip of uneven grass where Jay had spent years kicking the same battered football against the same wall until the seams split.

Alexia had never seen it. She knew it through fragments Jay had released reluctantly over the years, usually late at night, usually after turning something painful into a joke first. She knew the upstairs corridor had smelled of bleach and old carpet. She knew the garden flooded near the drain every winter. She knew Jay had once climbed onto the roof of the laundry shed to avoid meeting a prospective foster family because one of the adults had called her "spirited" before speaking to her. She knew that when Jay said home in relation to Ashdown, there was always a small, sharp cruelty in the word.

"What do they want?" Jay asked.

"The home is closing."

Jay did not react immediately. "Closing for repairs?"

"No. The building is being demolished."

A faint shrug moved through Jay's shoulders, too quick to be casual. "Good. It was ugly."

Alexia studied her face. Jay had already withdrawn slightly, not physically, because she still had an arm around Alexia, but internally. The warmth had gone from her expression and been replaced by that careful blankness Alexia had learned to fear more than anger.

Clara's voice moved closer to the phone. "They are clearing the archives and storage rooms before the site is handed over. They found several boxes connected to you."

Jay's brow tightened. "What kind of boxes?"

"Photographs, school reports, placement records, medical notes, social care assessments, incident forms and correspondence. The records cover the years from when you arrived at four until you left care at seventeen."

Jay's arm loosened around Alexia. She turned towards the worktop and reached for the bread bag, though there was no longer any pretence that she meant to make dinner. Her hand disappeared inside it, found a slice and held on until the bread bent beneath her fingers.

Alexia took it gently from her and set it down before it tore. Then she threaded their fingers together.

Jay allowed it, but did not return the pressure.

"How many photographs?" she asked.

Julia hesitated. "Hundreds, apparently. Some are group pictures, but there are individual photographs as well. Birthdays, school trips, Christmases, sports days, outings. They retained much more than any of us realised."

Jay stared at their joined hands. "I don't remember anyone taking hundreds of photographs."

"You were there for thirteen years," Clara said softly. "Some of the photographs may be from days that did not seem significant at the time."

"There were no ordinary days there."

Her answer was immediate, the words flat enough to end the thought rather than continue it. Alexia moved closer until their shoulders touched, but she did not speak. She knew better than to fill every silence around Jay's pain. Sometimes affection meant holding her. Sometimes it meant refusing to turn her history into something easier simply because the truth was uncomfortable to witness.

Julia continued carefully. "They contacted me because your name is publicly recognisable now and because you are entitled to decide what happens to the personal items. They want to know whether you would like the photographs and whether you want the files released before the remaining archive is transferred or destroyed."

"No."

The answer came so quickly that Julia had barely reached the end of the sentence.

Clara said, "You do not have to decide tonight."

"I have decided."

"Jay."

"No. I don't want them."

Julia's voice softened. "Some of those photographs may be the only images that exist of you as a child."

"Then there is a reason I have never missed them."

"That is not necessarily true."

Jay pulled her hand from Alexia's and turned fully towards the island. "I said no."

Alexia watched the line of her shoulders sharpen. Jay reached for the bread knife as though beginning the abandoned task might restore the room to where it had been ten minutes earlier, but Alexia took the handle before she could and moved it away.

Jay looked at her. "I'm cutting the bread."

"No, you're not."

"I know how to use a knife."

"I know you do."

"Then why are you moving it?"

"Because you are not looking at what you are doing."

Jay's gaze flickered briefly towards hers, then away again. "I'm fine."

Alexia did not answer the lie.

On the phone, Clara said, "The organisation sent a small sample of the file to verify that it belonged to you."

Jay looked back sharply. "You read it?"

"Only the pages they sent."

"What did they say?"

Clara paused, and the pause gave Jay everything she needed.

Her mouth curved, but there was no warmth in it now. "Right. There it is."

"Jay," Julia said.

"No, tell me. What was I? Aggressive? Difficult? Unstable? Unplaceable? Did they use problematic? They liked problematic."

Clara answered with care. "Some of the language is old and some of it is unfair. The reports describe behaviour without understanding what caused it."

Jay laughed once, quietly. "That sounds like a sentence you charge by the hour for."

Clara did not rise to it. "A frightened child behaving badly is not the same thing as a bad child."

"Don't."

"Don't what?"

"Make it sound kind."

The words altered Clara's breathing on the other end. Alexia heard it, but Jay had already moved away from the island, scrubbing both hands over her face and dragging them back through her damp hair.

"They wrote what everyone thought," Jay said, her voice lower now. "I didn't settle. I fought. I ran. I broke things. I wouldn't speak to people, and then when I did speak, I said something that made them wish I'd kept quiet. Families took me for weekends and brought me back. Foster placements lasted a month, maybe two. Six if they were particularly committed to suffering."

Alexia stepped towards her. Jay noticed and shifted sideways, only one pace, but the movement was enough. Alexia stopped where she was.

"They didn't want me," Jay continued. "That will be the recurring theme, won't it? You do not need three boxes and a social work degree to understand it. They tried to place me, I made it difficult, and they returned me."

Julia said quietly, "You were a child."

"I was a problem."

"You were traumatised."

"I was still the one they brought back."

The room went still around the sentence.

Jay looked at the phone as if Julia and Clara could see her. Her face had lost the sharp smile now. What remained was worse, a tired certainty that had been built over years and reinforced too often to be dismissed by reassurance.

"They can write attachment disorder, poor emotional regulation, oppositional behaviour, whatever language made it easier to explain at meetings. The ending was always the same. Nobody wanted to keep me."

Alexia felt the words like a physical impact. Every instinct in her wanted to close the distance and tell Jay she was wanted now, that she was loved so thoroughly it had reshaped the daily lives of everyone around her, that Alexia's own body reached for her in sleep. But this was not about now. It belonged to a child who had waited by doors, studied adult expressions and learned the exact tone people used before telling her a placement had not worked out.

Love could not change what had happened by arguing with it.

Julia said, "That does not mean there is nothing in those boxes worth keeping."

"It means exactly that."

"There are photographs of you."

"I know what I looked like."

Clara spoke gently. "Do you?"

Jay's eyes lifted.

Clara continued before she could shut the question down. "Not the version of yourself you have assembled from reports or from the way adults responded to you. You. Four years old. Seven. Ten. Fifteen. There may be moments in those photographs that nobody described correctly."

Jay's jaw tightened. She picked up the phone, and Alexia knew the conversation was over before Jay spoke.

"Do not send them. Do not ask me again. I do not want the photographs, I do not want the files, and I do not want thirteen years of strangers explaining why I was impossible to love."

"Jay, wait," Julia said.

Jay ended the call.

The kitchen fell silent except for the low bubbling of the soup.

Jay placed the phone down with too much care and braced both hands on the island, head bowed. Alexia remained where she was. It hurt not to touch her, but she understood the difference between giving Jay space and leaving her alone, and she would not confuse one with the other.

After a long moment, Jay said, "The soup is burning."

Alexia reached behind her and turned off the heat. "It isn't."

"It smells burned."

"It smells like rosemary."

"Same emotional category."

Alexia waited.

Jay pushed away from the island and went to the sink. She filled a glass, drank half of it and lowered it too quickly. Her hand shook once. It was a small tremor, almost nothing, but Alexia saw it, and Jay saw her see.

The bright, defensive smile appeared immediately.

"Good news about the demolition, though. Maybe they'll build flats nobody can afford and call them Ashdown Gardens."

"Jay."

"Or another care home. New Ashdown. Very innovative."

"Bebé."

Jay set the glass down and looked at her. "No."

Alexia softened her voice. "No what?"

"No face."

"What face am I making?"

"The one where you love me so much it becomes a medical emergency."

Alexia stepped closer. This time Jay did not move away. "It is always a medical emergency. You are exhausting."

That pulled something more genuine across Jay's mouth. It was barely a smile, but it belonged to her rather than the armour.

Alexia took another step and opened her arms. "Come here."

"I am already here."

"You know what I mean."

Jay looked at her for several seconds. The joke arrived first because it always did when the alternative was surrender. "Is this a customer service hug or a premium one?"

Alexia did not smile. She simply waited with her arms open.

Jay's expression changed gradually. The resistance left her shoulders, then her jaw, then the set of her mouth. She crossed the remaining space with the resigned, wounded look of someone pretending she was only agreeing because refusing required more energy than she possessed.

The moment Alexia's arms closed around her, Jay folded into the hold.

She did not cry. She did not speak. She simply became heavier, forehead dropping against Alexia's shoulder while both arms wrapped around her waist with enough force to press their bodies together from chest to thigh. Alexia held the back of her head and felt Jay breathe against her neck.

Jay kissed her skin.

Once, then again.

Small, instinctive touches that were not really seduction, though desire lived inside almost everything Jay did with Alexia. These kisses were different. They were proof. Alexia is here. Her body is warm. Her arms are closed around me. This moment has not disappeared.

"I don't want them," Jay said into her shoulder.

"I know."

"I mean it."

"I know."

"I don't want to read adults discussing me like I was a broken appliance they kept trying to repair."

Alexia's hand moved slowly through her hair. "You were a child."

"I was a nightmare."

"You were a child."

"I bit a social worker."

Alexia paused.

Jay lifted her head just enough to see her expression. "She deserved it."

Despite everything, Alexia's mouth moved.

Jay noticed at once. "There. Better."

"You cannot make biting funny."

"I can make most things funny."

"Why did you bite her?"

"She tried to take my football."

Alexia stared at her. "What?"

"It was raining. I wouldn't come inside. She grabbed the ball, I panicked and bit her."

"You bit someone over a football?"

"I was six. Tiny teeth, limited judgement, very strong principles."

Alexia shook her head, though her hand had already slid to the back of Jay's neck, thumb stroking the soft skin beneath her hairline. Jay rested her forehead against Alexia's, and for a while they simply stood there, breathing the same air.

The tension had not gone. Alexia could feel it in the rigid line of Jay's spine and the way her fingers remained caught in the back of Alexia's shirt. The humour had loosened it enough to make room, but it had not removed the hurt underneath.

"Amor, can I ask you something?" Alexia said quietly.

Jay narrowed her eyes. "That is never a safe opening."

"I am asking anyway."

"You always do."

"Can I see them?"

Jay went still against her.

Alexia did not remove her hands or rush to explain. She let Jay search her face.

"Why would you want to see that?"

"Because it is you bebe."

"No. It is strangers writing about me."

"And there are photographs."

"Of a child you never knew."

"Of you, bebé."

Jay looked away, but Alexia kept one hand at the back of her neck and stroked her thumb beneath her ear.

"I know you now," Alexia continued. "I know how you take your coffee and that you sleep with one foot outside the duvet even when you complain you are cold. I know when you have forgotten to eat before you do. I know when you are flirting because you are happy, and when you flirt because you are frightened and trying to make the room easier."

Jay's mouth tightened.

"I know the woman you became, but I do not know the little girl with the football. I want to know her too."

Jay gave a short laugh without amusement. "You'll hate what they wrote."

"I might hate them."

"They will say I was aggressive and attention seeking and manipulative. They will say I could not form attachments, that I sabotaged placements and made people uncomfortable."

"Then I will know what they said."

"And what will that do?"

"It will let me see what they missed."

Jay looked down between them. "Why?"

"Because somebody should."

For the first time since the call began, Jay had no joke ready. Her fingers loosened slightly in Alexia's shirt.

Alexia brushed her nose against Jay's. "I am not asking you to read any of it. I am not asking to bring it here. I am asking whether I may look at it with Julia and Clara."

Jay shrugged, making the movement careless because the decision was not. "Do what you want."

Alexia's expression changed immediately. "No."

Jay frowned. "You asked."

"No bebe... I asked for permission."

"I said fine."

"You said do what you want. That is not permission. That is you being tired of the conversation."

"Ale..."

"I will not take your history because you are too exhausted to guard it."

Jay's eyes sharpened, but Alexia held her gaze.

"I want a real answer. If the answer is no, I will never ask again."

Jay breathed out slowly. "You are very intense."

"Sí."

"Extremely Spanish about consent."

"Good."

That made Jay's mouth twitch.

Alexia waited without speaking, and eventually Jay looked towards the darkening balcony doors before looking back.

"Yes," she said. "You have permission."

"To see the photographs and the files?"

"Yes."

"With Julia and Clara?"

"Yes."

"To discuss what is inside with them?"

Jay's jaw tightened, but she nodded. "Yes."

Alexia kissed her forehead slowly.

Jay closed her eyes beneath the touch, then opened them again almost at once. "But nothing comes into this house."

"Nothing will."

"I mean it. Not a box, not a file, not one photograph left on a table because someone forgot."

"I understand."

"I do not want to walk into the kitchen and see myself at six."

"You will not."

"And Mapi cannot know."

Alexia looked genuinely offended. "Of course she will not know."

"She would build a presentation."

"She would never see anything."

"She senses secrets through concrete."

"That is unfortunately possible."

A small laugh left Jay, and Alexia felt some of the tension finally begin to loosen beneath her hands. She kissed her then, softly at first, her palms holding Jay's face as though she could keep every version of her safe simply by being careful enough. Jay answered immediately, hands sliding around Alexia's waist and pulling her closer. The kiss deepened, not with urgency but with familiarity, the kind of intimacy that said more than reassurance could without forcing either of them to explain it.

When Alexia finally drew back, Jay followed her mouth and stole another kiss.

Then another.

"The soup," Alexia murmured.

"Gone."

"It is not gone."

"Emotionally deceased."

"You are hungry."

"I could eat you."

Alexia gave her a look.

Jay's grin returned, faint but real. "Too soon?"

"Always."

"You love it."

"Far too much."

That answer delighted Jay enough that she kissed her again before finally agreeing to eat.

They took the bowls to the sofa. Jay solved her objections to soup by adding enough bread and cheese to transform it into something that required chewing, then stretched one leg across Alexia's lap while they attempted to continue the crime drama. Alexia rested one hand around Jay's ankle, thumb moving over the bone beneath her sock, while Jay accused two additional innocent people and changed her theory every time a new character entered the frame.

Neither mentioned Ashdown again.

Later, in bed, Jay became even more affectionate than usual. She pulled Alexia beneath her the moment they climbed under the duvet, kissed her until the last of the evening seemed to disappear from the room, then settled with her face tucked into the curve of Alexia's neck and one hand spread over Alexia's ribs beneath her shirt.

"You are very clingy tonight amor," Alexia whispered, stroking the length of her back.

"False."

"You are lying on top of me."

"Efficient use of space."

"You have an entire side of the bed."

"I do not need an entire side. I need approximately one Alexia."

"There is only one."

"Terrible supply problem."

Alexia smiled into her hair and kissed her temple.

Jay went quiet after that. The room was dark except for a thin line of city light around the curtains, and Alexia could feel that Jay was not sleeping despite the deliberate rhythm of her breathing.

"Estas bien bebe?" she asked.

Jay kissed the skin above her heart before answering. "Yeah."

Alexia did not challenge the lie. She slid her hand under Jay's shirt and rested it between her shoulder blades.

Jay's body eased gradually beneath her palm.

"Are you going anywhere?" Jay asked, so quietly that the question almost disappeared into the dark.

"No."

"Good."

Jay kissed her once more, directly over her heart, then closed her eyes.

She was asleep before ten.

That was how Alexia knew the call had hollowed her out more than she had shown. Jay did not sleep early unless something had exhausted her from the inside.

A week later, the boxes arrived at Julia and Clara's house.

There were three of them. Two deep archive boxes held files and records. A shallower third box contained photographs, envelopes and a collection of personal belongings the staff at Ashdown House had found in long term storage.

Julia sent Alexia a message just after lunch.

They have arrived. We have not opened anything.

Alexia read it twice before replying.

Vale... I will come this evening.

Jay already had plans. Lucy had become obsessed with a new television series about wealthy strangers trapped in an underground medical facility where nobody trusted the lights, and through a combination of bullying, persistence and a group chat that had become impossible to mute, she had recruited Jay and Patri into watching it with her.

Jay claimed the programme was "psychologically dishonest but visually committed". Patri claimed she understood none of it. Lucy claimed that was because Patri spent every important scene asking whether one of the women was secretly gay.

That evening, Jay stood in the hallway pulling on a hoodie while Alexia searched for her keys. She had been louder than usual since dinner, flirting relentlessly, commenting on Alexia's jeans, kissing her whenever they passed one another, and insisting that the show would probably improve if the underground facility contained "one competent lesbian and a working fire exit".

"You are still going to Clara and Julia's?" she asked, working one hand through the sleeve.

Alexia looked up. Jay's tone was casual, but she would not meet her eyes.

"Si."

"Right."

She found the cuff and tugged it into place. Alexia crossed the hallway and stopped in front of her.

Jay leaned down for a kiss immediately.

Leaving required kissing. Hallways required kissing. Keys, coats and practical conversation only existed in the spaces between contact.

Alexia kissed her once. Jay followed when she pulled back, so Alexia kissed her again.

"Greedy," Alexia murmured.

"Devoted."

"You are going to Lucy's to watch a terrible programme."

"I contain multitudes."

Alexia smoothed the front of Jay's hoodie, then let both hands settle at her waist. "You do not have to pick me up. I can walk home."

"Absolutely fucking not."

"It is ten minutes guapa."

"I don't care if it's ten hours babe."

Alexia touched her cheek. "I will message you when we are finished."

"I will still pick you up."

"You will complain about parking."

"I complain beautifully."

"You always do."

Jay leaned into Alexia's palm before she seemed to realise she was doing it.

Alexia searched her face. "You sure about tonight?"

"About the show? No. Lucy has promised the lights are symbolic, which means she has no idea either."

"The files."

Jay's expression closed slightly. "I'm not going."

"Lo se."

"I do not want updates while you are there."

"Vale."

"Do not send photographs."

"I won't."

"Do not call unless something is wrong."

"Nothing will be wrong amor."

Jay finally looked at her. "You do not know that."

Alexia held her gaze. "No. I don't."

They stood close in the quiet hallway, Jay's thumb moving beneath the edge of Alexia's jumper at her waist.

"You still want to see them?" Jay asked.

"Si."

"Why?"

They had already had this conversation, and Alexia understood that Jay was not asking because she had forgotten the answer. She needed to know whether it remained true now that the boxes existed.

"Because it is you," Alexia said. "Because other people wrote a story about you before you had the words to write your own, and I want to know what they failed to understand."

Jay's mouth tightened. "It will take hours."

"I have hours."

"There are hundreds of pages."

"I have more hours."

Jay studied her for a long moment, then kissed her without a joke first. Her hands rose to hold Alexia's face, and the kiss carried an intensity that felt almost angry, as though Alexia's answer had reached somewhere words could not touch safely.

Alexia kissed her back with the same certainty.

When they separated, Jay kept their foreheads together. "You are disgustingly lovely."

"You like me."

"Unfortunately."

"Liar."

Jay kissed the tip of her nose. "Text me when you are done."

"I will."

"I'm picking you up."

"Vale."

"And baby?"

"Si?"

The flirt returned, softer now but familiar enough to steady them both. "If the files say I was exceptionally attractive at seven, preserve that page."

Alexia laughed. "I expect you were very thin, furious and badly dressed."

"Strong cheekbones, though."

"You were seven."

"Charismatic cheekbones."

Alexia kissed her once more. "Go and watch your strange programme."

Jay opened the door, then turned back before stepping through it. "You know I love you, yeah?"

The question sounded casual, but it was not.

Alexia smiled. "I know."

Jay waited.

"You know I love you?" Alexia asked.

Jay's face softened. "Yeah."

Then she left.

The walk to Julia and Clara's took eleven minutes. Barcelona remained warm, though evening had softened the heat and drawn people into the restaurants lining the streets. Couples sat outside with wine and small plates, leaning into one another over low tables. Scooters moved through the intersections. Light glowed behind apartment windows, offering glimpses of dinners, televisions and lives continuing with no awareness of three cardboard boxes waiting in a quiet living room.

Alexia walked with both hands in her coat pockets.

She needed those eleven minutes. Needed the boxes to remain closed a little longer while Jay's childhood still existed only in fragments she already knew.

Four years old when her parents died.

Care.

Placements.

No adoption.

No permanent family.

Alexia knew the facts, but Jay had given them to her in pieces, usually late at night and wrapped in humour so carefully that the pain only became visible after the sentence had passed.

She did not know the child.

That was what frightened her.

Clara opened the door before Alexia had knocked twice. She did not greet her with words. She simply stepped forward and hugged her. Alexia accepted the embrace, holding Clara briefly before looking past her into the house.

Julia stood in the hallway behind them with a glass of water in one hand and none of her usual polished composure.

"They are in the living room," she said.

Three boxes sat on the low table.

They were ordinary cardboard, sealed with brown tape and marked with printed archive labels. A white envelope had been fixed across the top box with JAYCEE JONES written in block capitals.

For a moment, Alexia could not move.

She had expected something older or more dramatic. Leather folders, perhaps, or dust, or some visible evidence that the contents had waited through decades.

Instead, the boxes looked like any delivery. They might have contained books, glasses or kitchen equipment.

Thirteen years of a child's life had been compressed into something one person could carry.

"We have not opened anything," Clara said quietly after closing the door.

"Not even the envelope," Julia added.

Alexia nodded. "Gracias."

They entered the living room, though nobody sat immediately. Alexia remained standing over the boxes while Clara disappeared into the kitchen and returned with tea none of them had requested. Julia placed tissues on the table, then seemed irritated with herself for anticipating tears and moved them slightly to one side.

"Jay is with Lucy and Patri?" Clara asked.

"Si."

"How was she when you left?"

"Flirting."

Clara's mouth softened. "So, normal."

"No... More than normal."

Julia understood first. "She was nervous."

Alexia nodded. "She asked why I still wanted to come."

"What did you tell her?" Clara asked.

"That someone else had written her story before she was old enough to write it herself."

Clara looked at the boxes. "Yes."

Alexia sat on the sofa. Julia joined her but left enough space between them that Alexia could choose whether to close it.

Clara remained opposite them. "Before we begin, I need to say something. These records were written by adults observing a child through systems that often failed to understand trauma. Some observations may be accurate. Others may be biased, and some may be cruel without intending to be. Language becomes dangerous when it is treated as an explanation rather than a description."

Alexia's jaw tightened.

"They may describe Jay as manipulative when she was trying to control an unpredictable environment," Clara continued. "They may call her aggressive when she was frightened, detached when she was protecting herself, or attention seeking when she needed attention."

Julia rested her hand near Alexia's on the cushion, close but not touching. "We stop whenever you want."

Alexia looked at the name on the envelope. "No. We start."

Julia reached for it, but Alexia stopped her.

"May I?"

"Claro."

Alexia lifted the envelope. The paper had yellowed along one edge, and someone had sealed it years later with clear tape. The handwriting was neat, administrative and impersonal.

Personal belongings and photographs retained from Ashdown House residential record. Resident: Jones, Jaycee.

Resident.

Not child.

Not Jay.

Alexia peeled the tape carefully and removed three inventory sheets.

Photograph albums.

Loose prints.

School reports.

Health records.

Placement summaries.

Incident forms.

Behaviour plans.

Contact records.

Adoption assessments.

Her eyes stopped on the last entry.

Adoption assessments.

Plural.

Julia saw where she had paused. "We can leave those."

Alexia swallowed. "No. We look."

They opened the photograph box first.

It was almost full, thick envelopes stacked by year and labelled in different handwriting. Some carried only a date. Others were more specific.

Christmas party.

School sports day.

Summer outing.

Jay, individual.

Alexia reached for the earliest envelope and hesitated with her fingers beneath the flap. Clara and Julia remained silent, allowing the choice to belong entirely to her.

The first photograph showed a group of children standing beneath a paper banner painted with uneven stars. Most faced the camera. One little girl stood at the edge.

She was painfully small.

Blonde hair had been cut bluntly around her chin, one side tucked behind an ear. An oversized jumper swallowed her narrow shoulders, and her hands were hidden inside the sleeves. Her cheeks were pale, her eyes too large and too watchful in a face that still carried the softness of early childhood.

Alexia knew her immediately.

The child did not yet look exactly like the woman. Her face had not sharpened. Her body had not grown into its strength. But the stare belonged to Jay. Direct, guarded and far too aware.

Alexia stopped breathing.

Julia leaned closer. "Oh."

Clara lifted one hand to her mouth.

Alexia touched the edge of the photograph with one fingertip. "She is tiny."

Her voice broke on the words.

Jay stood half a step away from the group. Not fully excluded, but not included either. Close enough for an adult to say she had been in the photograph, far enough that nobody touched her.

The other children leaned into one another. Arms lay across shoulders. Fingers were linked. One child rested against a member of staff.

Jay stood alone.

The next photograph had been taken outside in the strip of garden behind Ashdown House. A brick wall filled the background. A rusted metal goal stood without a net.

Jay sat on the wet looking grass with a battered football between her knees. She was five, perhaps. One shoelace was undone, dirt marked her cheek and the knee of her trousers had torn open. She was not smiling, but one hand rested possessively over the football.

Julia turned the image over. A staff member had written in blue ink.

Jay refused indoor activity. Remained outside for ninety minutes with football.

Alexia's face changed.

Clara saw it. "The report and the photograph tell different stories."

"She is playing."

"Si."

"She is alone."

"Si."

Alexia looked again at the child. Jay's head was tilted slightly, as though listening for something beyond the camera. The football sat under her hand like the only object in the world whose behaviour she understood.

They continued slowly.

Jay at six, wearing a paper crown at a Christmas table and regarding a slice of cake with deep suspicion.

Jay at seven, standing in goal despite being the smallest child on the pitch.

Jay at eight, holding a school certificate marked MOST IMPROVED READER, pride visible beneath an expression that seemed determined not to show it.

Jay at nine, kneeling beside a football trophy while every other child crowded around the adult holding it.

Again, she was at the edge.

Again, no one had an arm around her.

Alexia began recognising the pattern before she wanted to. Jay was present in every group but belonged to none of them. Trips, celebrations, school events and Christmas parties had all been recorded, yet she seemed to occupy the narrow space between inclusion and distance, close enough to be counted and far enough not to be held.

Sometimes she smiled.

Those photographs hurt differently.

The smile was bright, crooked and unmistakably Jay's, but it appeared almost exclusively when football was involved. A ball at her feet. Mud on her legs. A shirt hanging too large from her shoulders.

In one photograph, Jay was ten and grinning so widely that two uneven front teeth showed. Her hair had grown to her shoulders and was tied back with an ordinary elastic band. She held a football beneath one arm and a small medal in the other hand.

Alexia turned it over.

Local schools five a side. Jay scored all six goals. Became distressed when informed medal could not be worn during sleep.

A sound escaped Alexia, half laughter and half grief. "She still does this."

Julia looked at her. "Sleeps with medals?"

"Only when she pretends she has put them away."

Clara kept her eyes on the photograph. "The medal proved the day had happened. For a child whose life changes without warning, objects can hold memory more reliably than people."

Alexia looked back at ten year old Jay, muddy and triumphant, her fist closed tightly around the ribbon.

The same fierce possession appeared in the woman she knew now whenever Jay held her hand in crowds, as though some part of her still believed that anything not physically held could disappear.

They opened the first file box.

The earliest folder was thick, its front labelled JONES, JAYCEE. Beneath her date of birth and date of admission, someone had typed:

No suitable immediate family placement identified.

Alexia felt the words before she fully understood them.

She turned the page.

Initial presentation: withdrawn, watchful, reluctant to engage with adults. Highly protective of personal belongings. Displays distress when doors are closed. Difficulty sleeping. Repeatedly asks whether staff will remain overnight.

Alexia's vision blurred.

Julia moved the tissues closer without speaking.

The next page was an incident report from Jay's first months at Ashdown. She had hidden beneath a table for three hours after a member of staff finished a shift without saying goodbye.

Refused comfort. Kicked and scratched when approached. Repeatedly shouted that adults were liars.

In the margin, written with a hurried pen, were two words.

Problematic behaviour.

Alexia stared until the writing blurred.

"She was four."

Clara nodded. "Yes."

"They called her problematic."

"Yes."

"She was under a table because someone left without saying goodbye."

"Yes."

Alexia's jaw tightened until it hurt. Julia touched her hand, and this time Alexia turned her palm and held on.

They continued.

At five, Jay was described as possessive around football and aggressive if the ball was removed.

At six, she frequently isolated herself and appeared content to play alone, though staff noted that she became distressed when watching other children leave with visiting families.

At seven, a prospective placement ended after two weekends. The carers reported that Jay was unable to settle, rejected affection, hid food beneath the bed and damaged the bedroom door.

The following report stated that Jay was returned to Ashdown House at 19:40 and refused to enter the building. She remained outside with her football until 23:15.

No placement continuation requested.

Alexia read the final line three times.

The next assessment used softer language and somehow hurt more.

Jay presents as charming and engaging in short periods but becomes oppositional when routines change. Prospective carers found her difficult to reassure. Concern that her emotional needs may exceed placement capacity.

Alexia looked at Clara. "What does that mean?"

Clara's face had gone pale. "It means they believed she needed more support than the carers were able or willing to provide."

"They wrote that nobody could keep her."

"In professional language, yes."

Age eight.

Age nine.

Age ten.

The same facts recurred in different handwriting and increasingly formal language.

Jay struggled to settle.

Jay tested boundaries.

Jay rejected affection.

Jay demanded reassurance and then refused it.

Jay formed intense attachments and became distressed by separation.

Jay disrupted potential placements.

Jay required more than prospective families felt able to offer.

No adoption match progressed.

No placement continued.

No prospective carer willing to proceed.

The wording changed.

The ending never did.

Nobody chose her.

Again, and again, and again.

By eleven, the reports began describing Jay as self reliant.

Clara stopped Alexia there. "That phrase is often praised in older children."

Alexia looked at her. "It should not be."

"No."

The report continued.

Jay rarely requests assistance. Manages personal routines independently. Appears indifferent to lack of family contact.

Clara's voice broke when she spoke. "She had stopped asking."

Alexia closed the folder with more force than she intended and stood. "I need a minute."

She walked towards the window. Outside, the street was quiet, warm lamplight lying across parked cars and balconies. Somewhere nearby, Jay was probably arguing with Lucy about an impossible television plot, stealing food from Patri's plate and checking her phone every few minutes while pretending she was not worried.

Alive.

Loved.

Expected.

Alexia pressed one hand over her mouth.

Behind her, neither Clara nor Julia spoke.

She saw Jay at seven, returned after two weekends.

Jay at nine, watching other children leave with families.

Jay at eleven, praised for no longer asking for help.

Her shoulders shook once.

Julia reached her first and placed a hand between her shoulder blades. Alexia turned into her, and the grief came quietly, one sharp breath followed by another.

"She was a baby," Alexia said into Julia's shoulder. "She was a baby, and they wrote as though she was the problem."

"I know."

"No one touches her in the photographs."

"We do not know that nobody ever did."

"But nobody stayed."

The room went still.

That was the wound underneath everything. Individual members of staff might have cared. Someone might have comforted Jay after nightmares, tied her shoelaces or remembered the way she liked her toast. But their shifts ended. Placements failed. Assessments concluded. Adults went home to families of their own.

Jay remained.

Clara picked up a photograph of twelve year old Jay, already tall, thin limbed and holding a football under one arm.

"She survived by expecting the ending," Clara said. "If she rejected affection first, she controlled when it disappeared. If she forced a placement to fail before she became attached, she could tell herself she had chosen the outcome."

Alexia looked at the files. "Then they wrote that she caused it."

"Yes."

Julia's voice was quiet. "They recorded the behaviour. They did not always record the fear underneath it."

When they returned to the sofa, the later files changed in tone. Jay became more articulate and, according to the reports, more difficult. The school notes told another story.

At thirteen, she was suspended for fighting after another girl mocked a younger resident whose mother had failed to attend contact.

At fourteen, Jay disappeared for six hours and was found at a public football cage several miles away, playing alone beneath the floodlights.

At fifteen, a visiting coach wrote that she had unusual speed, excellent instincts and "a refusal to believe praise until it has been repeated several times".

A care report from the same year said:

Jay demonstrates significant football ability but resists praise and becomes hostile when future opportunities are discussed. States that adults "always say things and disappear".

At sixteen, the notes changed again.

Professional academy interest has increased. Jay displays anxiety around transition planning but refuses emotional support. Has asked repeatedly whether she may take the football from the garden when she leaves.

Alexia's hand rose to her mouth. "The same ball?"

Julia turned towards the shallow box and searched beneath the photograph envelopes.

Near the bottom lay a deflated football.

Its old leather had been scuffed almost white in places. One panel had split along the seam, and faded black marker remained visible on the side.

J.J.

Julia lifted it carefully. The ball collapsed slightly in her hands.

A label had been tied around the valve.

Recovered from rear garden equipment store. Believed to belong to Jaycee Jones.

Alexia reached for it.

It weighed almost nothing. The leather was soft with age and battered beyond use.

She rested it against her lap.

Clara began crying openly.

"She asked for it," Alexia said.

Julia nodded.

"They did not give it to her?"

"We do not know."

"She asked repeatedly."

Alexia looked down at the faded initials. Jay had kicked this ball against the brick wall for years, held it when families arrived, returned to it when they brought her back and asked if she could take it when she finally left.

Somehow, it had remained behind.

Of course it had.

A child in care left with what adults remembered to pack. Everything else became storage, evidence or archive.

Alexia's phone vibrated.

Jay's name appeared over a photograph of her laughing in bed, blonde hair wild and one eye half closed as she tried to hide from the camera.

Alexia could not answer immediately.

The phone stopped. Then messages began arriving.

Show is awful. Lucy is pretending it is clever because she does not understand it either.

Patri thinks the underground doctor is hot. We may lose her.

Alexia stared at the normalcy of the message then another arrived.

You okay, baby?

Alexia stared at the words.

Clara looked at the screen. "You can tell her you need longer."

Alexia typed carefully.

Still looking. I'm okay.

The reply came immediately.

Liar.

Despite everything, Alexia laughed through the tears.

Another message arrived.

Do you want me?

Three simple words.

From a woman whose childhood had been built around nobody wanting her enough.

Alexia closed her eyes before typing.

Always.

The typing bubble appeared, disappeared and returned.

Bit intense. I meant do you want picking up now.

Alexia laughed harder, a sob caught inside it.

Clara covered her face. Julia shook her head.

A second message followed.

But noted. Very fit answer.

Alexia held the phone against her chest.

She could picture Jay at Lucy's. Sprawled across the sofa with one arm over the back, pretending to watch the television while checking her phone every thirty seconds. Patri stealing her crisps. Lucy complaining whenever Jay texted through an important scene.

Loved in a room.

Expected there.

Someone saving her place when she left the sofa.

The ordinariness of it felt enormous.

Alexia looked down at the old football. "I want to take the photographs."

Clara shook her head gently. "Jay said nothing comes into your house."

"I know."

"You cannot."

"I know."

Alexia ran one hand over the split seam. "But this should be hers."

Julia sat beside her. "Not without asking."

Alexia nodded.

Permission.

Always permission.

Even when love wanted to rescue.

Especially then.

They continued through the photographs.

Not every image hurt.

Some surprised them.

Jay at twelve, laughing so hard her eyes had closed while another girl poured water over her head.

Jay at thirteen, carrying two younger children on her back.

Jay at fourteen, dressed as a shepherd in a school play and looking personally offended by the costume.

Jay at fifteen, standing beside a visiting football coach who had written on the back:

Fastest player here. Pretends not to care. Cares more than anyone.

There were notes the official reports had failed to absorb.

A birthday card signed by six children.

Jay, thanks for teaching me penalties. You are bossy but good.

A folded drawing showed Jay with impossible muscles and the words JAY WILL PLAY FOR ENGLAND written in thick blue pencil.

Alexia held it for a long time. "She told me nobody believed in her."

"Perhaps some of the children did," Clara said.

Near the end was a photograph of Jay at eighteen.

She stood outside Ashdown House wearing an Arsenal academy jacket, a kit bag over one shoulder. Her hair was long and tied back. She looked thin, all sharp cheekbones and guarded blue eyes, but the shape of the woman she would become was already there.

She was not smiling.

The front door stood open behind her.

No one else was in the photograph.

On the back, someone had written:

Jay leaving for supported accommodation. Refused farewell gathering. Said she had training.

Alexia touched the edge of the image. "Of course."

Julia leaned gently against her shoulder. "She left first."

"She always left first."

Clara nodded. "Because leaving first was safer."

Alexia looked at eighteen year old Jay, standing alone outside the building that had contained thirteen years of her life.

No family beside her.

No hand on her shoulder.

No one carrying a second bag.

Only Jay, already facing forward and pretending departure did not matter because staying had never been offered.

Her phone buzzed again.

Outside.

Alexia looked at the time.

It was nearly eleven.

Jay had arrived early.

She stood immediately, and the old football slipped against her lap until Julia caught it.

"We will keep everything here," Julia said. "Nothing moves until Jay decides."

Alexia nodded.

Clara hugged her before she left. "Do not tell her everything tonight."

"I know."

"She will read your face."

"I know."

"She may joke."

"I know."

Julia squeezed Alexia's hand. "Tell her one true thing."

Alexia looked back at the photograph of eighteen year old Jay.

"What?"

"That you saw her."

Jay was waiting across the street beside the car, one ankle crossed over the other and both hands tucked into the front pocket of her hoodie. Streetlight caught the pale edges of her hair. The moment Alexia stepped through the gate, Jay straightened and looked at her face.

The teasing smile vanished.

Alexia crossed the pavement.

Jay met her halfway and opened her arms without asking.

Alexia went into them hard enough to move her back half a step. Jay caught her immediately, one arm locking around her waist while the other cradled the back of her head. Alexia buried her face in the side of Jay's neck, breathing in the familiar scent of her skin, her shampoo and the faint fabric softener smell of the hoodie.

Jay kissed her hair.

Then her temple.

Then the side of her face wherever she could reach.

"What happened?" she asked softly.

Alexia shook her head and held her tighter.

"Baby."

Alexia did not answer.

Jay stopped asking. She stood in the quiet street and let Alexia cling to her, hands moving slowly across her back.

After a while, Jay whispered, "Was I really ugly?"

A broken sound left Alexia.

Jay's arms tightened. "Right. Bad joke."

Alexia pulled back and held Jay's face between both hands.

Jay looked startled by the force in her eyes.

"You were beautiful."

Jay's expression changed.

Alexia moved her thumbs over her cheeks as though the face beneath her hands belonged to every version at once. "You were so small. So serious. Your hair was terrible."

Jay laughed once, though her eyes had already gone bright. "Care home chic."

"You had a football in nearly every photograph."

Jay looked away.

Alexia guided her face back. "Mirame."

Jay did.

"They were wrong about you."

Her jaw tightened. "Which part?"

"All of it."

"That is ambitious."

"They wrote about your behaviour, but they did not write about your courage. They wrote that you could not settle, but they never gave you anywhere safe enough to settle."

Jay swallowed.

"They wrote that you played alone."

"You saw that?"

"Si."

Jay closed her eyes.

Alexia kissed one eyelid, then the other.

"They wrote that nobody wanted to adopt you," she said, her voice breaking. "Again and again."

Jay flinched beneath her hands.

Alexia kissed her forehead and held it there for a moment before pulling back.

"But you were not unwanted."

Jay opened her eyes.

"You were left."

The distinction moved through her visibly.

Her mouth parted, but no sound came.

Alexia pressed their foreheads together. "That is not the same thing."

Jay's breathing became shallow.

Alexia placed one hand over her heart.

"You were not too much. They had too little."

The first tear slipped silently down Jay's cheek.

Alexia kissed it.

Jay gave a small, embarrassed laugh. "Fuck."

"Do not apologise."

"I hate crying in streets. Very British."

"You cry everywhere."

"True."

Alexia wrapped both arms around her neck.

Jay folded around her.

This time she cried properly, though still quietly, her face hidden against Alexia's shoulder and her hands gripping the back of her coat. Thirteen years of carefully documented rejection pressed against the life she had built despite it, and Alexia held her through all of it.

She kissed Jay's hair and whispered into her skin until the words became rhythm.

"I have you."

Jay shook her head.

"Si."

Another kiss.

"I have you, bebé."

Jay's breathing broke.

Alexia tightened her arms. "I see you. I see all of you."

They stood under the streetlight until Jay could breathe again.

Eventually, she pulled back and wiped beneath her eyes with both hands.

"Did Lucy text you?"

Alexia blinked. "What?"

"She will want credit for emotional preparation. We watched six episodes of rich people lying underground."

Alexia laughed helplessly.

Jay smiled through the remnants of tears. "There she is."

"You are impossible."

"Still fit?"

Alexia kissed her.

Deeply.

Jay's hands found her waist immediately, pulling her close and answering with the familiar warmth that made affection feel less like reassurance and more like home.

When they separated, Jay kept their foreheads together.

"Did you bring anything?"

"No."

The answer came immediately.

Jay searched her face. "Nothing?"

"Nothing."

Relief moved visibly through her.

Alexia stroked the back of her neck. "Everything remains with Julia and Clara."

Jay nodded. "Good."

"There is something you may want one day."

Her expression closed slightly. "Not tonight."

"No."

"Maybe never."

"Okay guapa."

"You will not push?"

"No."

"Even if you think I should see it?"

Alexia kissed the corner of her mouth. "It belongs to you. Not to me."

Jay's eyes softened. "God, you are sexy when emotionally regulated."

Alexia stared at her.

Jay grinned. "Sorry. Difficult evening. Restoring balance."

Alexia kissed her again. "Take me home."

Jay opened the passenger door with an elaborate gesture. "Your transport, La Reina."

Alexia stopped before getting into the car and turned back, wrapping both arms around Jay's waist again.

Jay held her immediately. "What?"

Alexia looked up at her. "I wish I had known you then."

Jay's smile faded. "You would have hated me."

"I would have loved you."

Alexia looked at her for another moment. "I would have played football with you."

Jay's face opened into a small, broken smile. "You would have lost."

"I would have let you win."

"No, you would not."

"No."

Jay laughed softly.

Alexia kissed her. "I would have stayed after the game. I would have stayed when you were angry. I would have stayed after you bit the social worker. I would have stayed after everything."

Jay's eyes filled again.

"You cannot say things like that in car parks."

"We are on a street."

"Worse."

Alexia touched her cheek. "I stay now."

Jay leaned into her palm.

"Yeah."

"You know that?"

Jay nodded.

This time, she did not joke.

"I know."

A week passed before Jay asked.

In that week, she was not obviously upset. That would have been easier. She trained well, scored twice in a finishing drill, spent twenty minutes winding Mapi up about a misplaced shin pad and came home each evening with the same easy grin she always wore when Alexia opened the door.

She still kissed Alexia in the hallway before either of them had taken off their shoes. She still stole food from her plate, still slid a hand beneath the back of Alexia's shirt while they stood at the kitchen counter, still woke in the middle of the night and pulled Alexia closer with the sleepy, unconscious certainty of someone who had forgotten there had ever been a time when she slept alone.

But there was a restlessness under it.

It showed in the small things first. Jay checked her phone more often, though there was never anything on it she seemed to want. She opened the same cupboard three times while making coffee. She left half a film because she said she needed air, then returned ten minutes later with cold hands and no explanation. At training, she talked more when the session was easy and went unusually quiet when it was not.

Twice, Alexia woke to find her side of the bed empty and the balcony door open, Jay standing outside in bare feet with one arm folded across her stomach and the city spread beneath her.

Alexia did not ask the first time.

She knew Jay well enough to understand that a question pressed too early often became a wall.

The second time, she went out with a blanket, draped it around Jay's shoulders and stayed beside her without speaking until Jay leaned into her and kissed the side of her head.

The third time, Jay looked over and smiled before Alexia had even reached her.

"Caught me being mysterious," she said.

"You are never mysterious."

"That is cruel. I have layers."

"You have tattoos and poor impulse control."

"Those are two very strong layers."

Alexia had smiled and let her get away with it.

The fourth time, she did not.

It was late, almost midnight, and the apartment had gone quiet around them. The television was off. The kitchen lights had been dimmed. Rain had begun sometime after dinner, soft against the glass and steady enough to blur the lights across the city.

Alexia had gone to the bedroom expecting Jay to follow.

She did not.

After several minutes, Alexia found her on the balcony.

Jay stood near the railing in an old grey hoodie, hands tucked into the front pocket, shoulders slightly rounded against the damp air. She had no shoes on again. Her blonde hair had been tied into a loose knot at the back of her head, though strands had already fallen around her face. The rain had not reached the covered part of the balcony, but the air was cold enough to raise goosebumps along her bare legs.

Alexia paused in the doorway.

Jay knew she was there. Alexia saw it in the slight turn of her head, the way her shoulders shifted, but she did not look around.

Alexia went back inside, collected the blanket from the sofa and returned.

She wrapped it around Jay from behind, then slid both arms beneath it and around her waist.

Jay leaned back into her immediately.

That was the thing that always undid Alexia. Even when Jay did not want to speak, even when she was frightened or angry or caught somewhere inside herself, her body still recognised Alexia as somewhere safe to rest.

Alexia pressed a kiss against the back of her neck.

"You are freezing."

"I am English."

"That is not protection from cold."

"It is cultural training."

"You are barefoot."

Jay gave a small laugh, but it faded quickly.

For a while, they stood like that. Jay looking out across the city, Alexia holding her from behind, her cheek resting between Jay's shoulder blades. Cars moved below in long streaks of reflected light. The rain softened every sound until the city felt farther away than it was.

Alexia stroked her hands slowly over Jay's stomach beneath the blanket.

"Talk to me, bebé."

Jay's body went still.

Not tense.

Caught.

Alexia felt the exact moment the question inside her rose and stopped behind her teeth.

She did not ask again immediately. She kissed Jay's shoulder and waited.

Jay rubbed her thumb over the edge of the blanket.

"There's nothing to talk about."

Alexia pressed her mouth against the side of her neck. "You have been standing on this balcony four nights this week."

"Maybe I like the view."

"You complain that the opposite building blocks the view."

"Maybe I like complaining."

"You do."

Jay leaned her head back slightly until it rested against Alexia's temple.

Alexia turned and kissed the corner of her jaw.

"You do not have to tell me everything," she said quietly. "But do not stand out here alone pretending there is nothing."

Jay looked down at Alexia's hands around her waist.

The silence stretched.

Alexia let it.

She had learned that loving Jay often meant resisting the urge to rescue too quickly. Jay had spent too much of her life with adults deciding what she felt, what she meant, what she needed and why she had done something. Alexia would not become another person who spoke over her simply because waiting was painful.

Eventually, Jay said, "You saw all of it."

Alexia lifted her head.

"Not all."

"A lot."

"Si."

"The reports."

"Si."

"The photographs."

Alexia's arms tightened almost imperceptibly.

"Si."

Jay nodded once, gaze still fixed beyond the balcony.

"You said there was something I might want one day."

Alexia closed her eyes briefly.

She had known this was where the conversation had been moving, but hearing it still caused a sharp ache beneath her ribs.

"Si."

Jay swallowed.

The movement was visible in the line of her throat.

For several seconds, she said nothing.

Then, so quietly Alexia almost missed it beneath the rain, she asked, "Was my ball there?"

Alexia's face changed before she could stop it.

Jay felt it. She turned slightly in her arms, just enough to see her.

Alexia's eyes had already filled.

She tried to blink the tears back, but one escaped and moved down her cheek.

Jay stared at her.

"Baby."

Alexia shook her head once, then lifted a hand from beneath the blanket and wiped quickly under her eye.

Jay's expression had become painfully young.

Not childish.

Young.

For one brief moment, all the confidence, humour and hard earned ease left her face, and Alexia could see the girl who had sat in the wet grass with that battered ball between her knees.

Alexia nodded.

"Si." she whispered.

Jay's breath caught.

Alexia turned her fully within her arms.

The blanket shifted around them, falling loose at Jay's shoulders, but neither noticed. Alexia held her face in both hands, thumbs resting beneath her cheekbones.

"Si bebe... It was there."

Jay looked at her as though she needed the answer repeated and feared hearing it again.

"The same one?"

Alexia nodded.

"I think so. It had your initials on it."

Jay closed her eyes.

Her face folded inwards, not dramatically, but enough that Alexia's chest tightened.

"I thought they'd thrown it away."

Alexia stroked her thumbs over Jay's cheeks.

"They kept it."

Jay gave a broken little laugh.

"No, they forgot it."

Alexia did not argue.

Jay opened her eyes again, and this time they were wet.

"It was horrible by the end," she said. "Barely round. One side used to go flat every few days, and I had to keep pumping it up with this little hand pump that never worked properly."

Alexia smiled through her own tears.

"You wrote your initials on it."

"With marker."

"Si."

"Because someone kept taking it."

Alexia's mouth tightened.

Jay looked down between them.

"I used to sleep with it sometimes."

"I know."

Jay looked up sharply.

Alexia realised too late what she had said.

"It was in the file?"

"There was a note."

Jay's face changed with embarrassment before she could hide it.

"Great."

"Bebé."

"I was weird."

"You were alone."

Jay looked away.

Alexia turned her face back gently.

"You were not weird."

"I slept with a football."

"You still sleep with medals."

"That is different."

"It is not."

Jay almost smiled.

Almost.

Alexia brushed the loose hair from her forehead.

"The ball was important because it stayed," she said softly.

Jay's eyes filled again.

For a second, she looked angry about it.

Then tired.

Then open.

"It didn't leave," she whispered.

Alexia's throat tightened.

"No."

"It was always there."

"Lo se amor."

Jay's mouth trembled once.

"It sounds stupid."

"No guapa."

"It was just a ball."

Alexia shook her head.

"No. It was the thing that stayed."

The sentence broke what little control Jay had left.

She turned her face away sharply, but Alexia caught her and pulled her in before she could retreat. Jay folded into her, arms going around Alexia's waist as the first sob moved through her silently. She pressed her face against Alexia's neck, breathing unevenly, and Alexia held her with the blanket wrapped around both of them.

There will be a second part of this that is loosely linked but is another persons request.

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