I know it's been about 3 weeks, so sorry for the late update. I have been quite busy, and have very limited internet for still another couple of weeks. But here we go! Back into it we go!

xxxXxxx

"How is your boyfriend?"

Olive heard the words, heard the voice that spoke them but nothing registered at all for several seconds as she just stared over her cup of tea at the kitchen bench. It had only been eight days since the funeral , and five since she had come back to Cambridge. Every evening she would call Enoch and every evening it would be the same. She would offer to come back the moment he said he needed her, the moment he relapsed into the panicking, terrified, grieving shell that she was growing too accustomed to seeing, and he would pretend he was okay.

It had been Enoch who had told her to go home in the end. After she'd spent over a week being right there the second he needed her. He had insisted she go, that she couldn't put her life on hold for him and take too long off her own course.

The whole ordeal had made her immediately tell her parents how much she loved them, that was for sure. The poor O'Connors had had far more loss heaped on them than any family should have to deal with in one lifetime. The already small family halved in size. If that was what it was anymore. Enoch had told her, they'd barely been a family in over a decade as it was. And just when it had seemed Enoch was finally, finally letting himself be happier, when he smiled for her more often, albeit still only in private, and even laughed. One look at his face now and years of progress had been set back.

"Olive?"

Right. Somebody had been talking to her.

"Hm?" She brushed a few strands of ginger hair back behind her ears and looked up from the milky brown liquid in her mug. Althea had looked almost pityingly at her since Olive had come back to Cambridge. As if it were Olive herself and not Enoch who had suffered the loss. Althea and Enoch didn't even like each other, both equally as cold and slate faced as the other that their dry sarcasm only annoyed each other even more. The fact that of all people, Althea rather than Millard was asking her how Enoch was, was pleasantly surprising.

"I said, how is your boyfriend?"

"Not coping very well." Olive shook her head slowly. She could hardly even concentrate on the assignments she was behind on for thinking about Enoch, and almost every night had been a particularly late one. "As you'd expect."

"I wouldn't expect any less. Strangely enough I know what it's like." Althea's voice was void of almost all emotion but the words alone made Olive sit up a little more alert and stare at her friend.

"What do you mean?"

'My mother died when I was seven. An accident ice skating."

"Oh...Althea, I'm...sorry, I didn't know."

The bespectacled girl shrugged her shoulders and pulled her long hair over one shoulder.
"That's alright. I don't usually find I can sympathise with someone I very much dislike." She said so matter -of-fact that Olive might have laughed in surprise had it been more pleasant circumstances.

The uncomfortable silence that fell into the room was cut short by Olive's phone ringing at her elbow. Althea, moving slowly and purposefully as ever, slunk from the room after an apologetic smile from her roommate and Olive sighed and reached for her mobile. So accustomed was she to calling Enoch around this time that she didn't even glance at the I.D before answering the phone.

"Hi, darling..."

"...Is that any way to address your father, Olive?"

She promptly gasped and cringed, pressing her tongue lightly between her teeth sheepishly.
"Sorry, Dad...I thought it was Enoch."

"Clearly. I'm going to go out on a limb then and say that you haven't spoken to this boyfriend of yours in the last hour?"

"...No, not today, why?"

"Because he's upstairs..."

"He's what?" For a second she was sure she had heard wrong. Both the fact that Enoch had willingly gone to her parent's house while she wasn't there and that he hadn't even so much as told her he was going...or indeed the fact he had left the house in the state he had retreated back to, went past surprise and straight to shock.

xxxXxxx

One Hour Earlier : Theo and Hope

"Do you think it's too soon to ask them around for dinner? I feel like it's too soon."

"Hope, I'm not convinced it ever won't be too soon in that...I was going to say "family" but I think I've seen more united father and sons when the kid set fire to his dad's house...than Owen and Enoch O'Connor at the funeral." Theo Elephanta muttered without looking up from the newspaper. "And that's a completely outside perspective."

His wife sighed and perched herself on the arm of his chair and shook her head down at him.

From the moment their daughter had told them that Enoch's mother had been the victim in that accident at the bridge, nearly in tears herself, nothing short of regret had hit Theo Elephanta like a train in the underground. Sure, he had never liked the boy, something which both his wife and daughter were getting increasingly frustrated with, but now, even if he still didn't like him, pity and guilt for being so hard on him were at the forefront.

"Apparently he has a tattoo as well."

Hope closed her eyes. Let it not be said that her husband was a man who knew how to bridle his tongue all the time. He was always going to be protective of their little girl, and probably never going to like Enoch no matter how long he was in Olive's life for, but sometimes, less so now, it was like he actively looked for more reasons not to approve. Even when it was hypocritical. The greying, red haired woman sighed and rolled up Theo's sleeve to his shoulder to reveal the small, flame on his shoulder.
"Need I remind you?"

Theo turned his head to look and huffed. "That is completely different. All the lads at the station got one years ago, you know that as well as I do."

"You might ease up on the boy now."

"I know...I know, believe me I feel sorry for the kid. More than I care to admit, he's too young to deal with that-" A knock on the door interrupted the rest of his sentence and as one the couple turned to look at the doorway of the living room.

"It's almost nine, who's coming around at this time?"

"I'll get that."

Hope sighed and made her way down the hall. The automatic light outside had turned itself on and through the frosted glass panes on the front door she could just make out a tall figure with dark hair. No sooner had she opened the door to the figure who had just turned his back, her jaw dropped.

Enoch O'Connor looked back over his shoulder and stopped awkwardly where he was.

"Enoch? What in the world are you doing here, dear?

The words that came out in the thick Cockney accent were every bit as surprising as his presence was.
"I 'ave nowhere else ta go."

The boy looked more worse for wear than Hope ever remembered seeing him around, and, as ever, his face was a blank slate. She looked from his emotionless expression to the bag on the top step behind him and frowned sympathetically.
"You come right in, Enoch, what exactly do you mean?"

"Did I hear-...I guess I did."

The young man couldn't have looked more uncomfortable in a ballet studio as Hope stepped to the side to let him in and Theo walked into the corridor. His expression at seeing Enoch mirroring Hope's own. There was no expecting a straight answer out of Enoch about exactly why he had just shown up on their doorstep when he would of course know that Olive was in Cambridge, but one thing was for sure, the fact he had come to them at all meant he really didn't have an alternative short of driving hours to Cambridge in the middle of the night.

"Enoch? What are you doing here? Olive's in-"

"Cambridge. I know. I ain't drivin' down there tonight. I didn't 'ave..."
The boy wasn't bothering to even look him in the face anymore, the defiance and lack of care in what Olive's dad thought of him was gone, and who could blame the kid? "I shouldn't'a come. I'll figure it out tomorrow."

"Then you're more than welcome to stay tonight, Enoch." Hope said quickly and elbowed her husband, who was still frowning in confusion, in the ribs.

Theo got the point, and immediately nodded slowly. One look at the kid and knowing what he'd just barely gone through, was enough to make anyone feel sorry for him. He stepped forward and offered a hand out to the boy.

"I'm truly sorry, lad. I really am. I think I've been less than civil to ya and...I regret that now."

After a few barely muttered civilities, and Hope's assurance that Enoch was welcome to stay the night if he needed, the boy slunk off towards the stairs. Any other time and Theo might have been more annoyed that he was so used to going to his daughter's bedroom but that...seemed less important now.

"I don't know why he isn't at home but..."

"Theo...he has bags..." Hope added in an unnecessary whisper as the boy was long out of earshot. "I think he meant it when he said he had nowhere else short of Cambridge."

xxxXxxx

"Enoch...what have you done? What's happened and when were you going to mention that you're at my parent's?"

Olive's eyes were wide as she closed her bedroom door for more privacy and sunk down on the foot of her bed.

"I would 'ave told ya but...I needed ta cool off. I was just drivin' round the city for hours..." Enoch's voice was strained and tired, and more worn out than she'd ever heard it. Even right after his mother had died, there had been the raw emotion in his voice that was terrible and miserable at the same time, now that was gone too.

"Enoch...tell me now."

He didn't really have to. Olive knew without him saying exactly what must have happened.

"I left. I didn't have anywhere else ta go to, Olive...I couldn't-"

"You left home..."

"Don't you try and convince me ta go back. That ain't my 'ome anymore and I made that bloody clear."

Olive closed her eyes. Whatever had happened to push Enoch over the edge of having anything to do with his dad for any longer, he meant it when he said he wasn't going back. Just now she hated that she had to go to school in Cambridge and he in London. If Enoch did ever plan to go back to university, and she dearly hoped he would because he genuinely loved what he did and he needed to be busy now more than ever, the idea that he could stay with her was out of the window for now.

"I know what ya finkin'."

"And what's that, Enoch?"

"I ain't stupid. I'll be 'right...That's why I didn' come right ta you. I can't...afford ta commute from Cambridge if I do go back."

"I just want you to be okay, Enoch...I'm..." She drew in a shaking breath. "I'm so sorry that everything is going this way for you... it's not fair..."

"Ya fink I 'aven't realised that. I'll work it out."

"Enoch-"

"If one more person asks if I'm okay...I'll go mad. 'Course I'm not bloody okay, Olive. I'm not even marginally better than I was two days ago. Ain't gonna change in an 'urry."

Olive said nothing for a minute. If she was struggling to take it in she couldn't imagine how Enoch was coming to terms with the severity of what he had just done. He worked for his dad and if he couldn't bear to be in the same house, there was no way he would go back to work with him...even if the funeral parlour reopened anytime soon. Thinking of it that way, it wasn't very likely. Maybe she worried too much. But to see the man she loved in such a dark, downward spiral scared her. She wanted more than anything for him to be able to be happy.

"I love you, Enoch." She said without realising at first until the tell tale huff of air from the other end of the phone told her she had said it aloud.

By the time she hung up the phone almost twenty minutes later, Olive knew exactly what she needed to do. Damn it all if she was going to let all this happen to her boyfriend. He'd had too much misfortune for several lifetimes. This much at least, maybe she could have a say about.