"Mum? Where's Enoch?" Olive frowned slightly as she stared around the room and slowly walked up behind the chair her mother was sitting in. Not wanting to draw much attention she leaned down over the back of the couch and kept her voice down. "He came in didn't he?"

"Not in here, I assumed he was still with you?"

"No..."

"Well I wouldn't be too surprised if he's off on his own. I'm sure he hasn't gone anywhere."

Unsurprisingly, getting the Christmas present her grandparents always insisted on giving individually took longer than she'd anticipated and by the time Olive was back with the rest of the company, Enoch wasn't anywhere in sight. But if he was off by himself, which she had no doubt he would prefer, there were only so many places he could be and she'd already walked through half of those.

She felt terrible, though admitting it would only make her boyfriend say "I told you so" for dragging him here. He really hadn't wanted to come and she'd made him and now nobody liked him anyway.
Then the last person she would have expected to care that Enoch had disappeared spoke up as if he'd read Olive's mind.
"If you're looking for him," Her dad piped up and Olive's head whipped around to face him with raised eyebrows. "I thought I saw him go up the stairs awhile ago."

"...Why would he go upstairs?"

Enoch might have limited social skills, which were just part of who he was, but he was hardly the type to snoop around an elderly couple's home uninvited and all that was upstairs were a few bedrooms and a bathroom anyway. Had he so desperately wanted to get away, despite what he said about not caring, that he was just leaning in the empty upstairs on his phone? Actually...put that way, it was less unlikely.

"Don't ask me. Why does that boy do anything?"

Olive sighed. The goodwill could only extend so far. She had a strong feeling that if it weren't for her, her father couldn't have cared less whether Enoch was in another room or on another planet. Oh well. It was a jolly good thing Olive refrained from mentioning that Enoch sometimes visited her in Cambridge whenever she talked about school to him. Theo Elephanta would have exploded.

"Thank you, Dad." She said pointedly and was quite thankful for the tutted
'Theo...' she heard from her mother as she sidled past him and into the hallway.

"Enoch?" It was worth a try, despite making a few heads turn curiously to look at her through the doorway. She smiled sheepishly before taking to the stairs at a quick little trot.
Despite what she had been expecting, Enoch was not just around the corner in the darkened hallway brooding and keeping to himself. This was silly. Enoch wouldn't be up here, it was more likely he would have grabbed his coat and gone back outside than snuck around up here.

Olive had just turned around to go back downstairs when Claire's bell-like laughter sounded down the corridor from a room whose door was slightly ajar and streamed a streak of light across the floor. Claire. That's who was up here. It was a longshot, but she might know if Enoch had slipped by unnoticed.
She had just laid a hand on the door and opened her mouth to say something when an extremely unexpected and delightfully Cockney accent stopped whatever she had been about to say.

"I am not namin' a blood-bloomin' doll."

There was no way. Olive's ears had to be deceiving her. That was not Enoch talking to Claire. She wasn't sure which was more unlikely, who he was speaking to or the fact he was minding his words.
She had heard it, but Olive absolutely did not believe it. She needed to be certain it was Enoch talking. Placing a palm flat on the door, she gently pushed it. It opened silently, mercifully, and just far enough to show Claire smiling and sitting down at a child's pale mauve tea table. Across from her, cross legged on the floor with half his face visible to Olive, was indeed Enoch.

Hell had frozen over. Pigs were flying and, as Enoch would say, the dead must have been walking because the impossible had just happened.

Ask anyone who had ever known Enoch and they would all tell you without a doubt that Enoch was more likely to pirouette into ice water in an Arctic winter than he was to ever have anything to do with amusing small children. Yet that's exactly what he was doing and he didn't look entirely miserable about it. Olive liked to think she knew all his expressions by now and that was definitely the barest hint of amusement on his face.

"It's your toy name it yaself."

"She is my toy but I want you to like the name."

"...why?"

"Because I like you. Not like Olive does. But I think you're nice."

"Well ya wrong. I ain't nice."

Olive's hand flew to her mouth to mask the smile that was threatening to break right off her face and become a separate entity. If it were possible, she might have just fallen a little more in love with Enoch.

Claire was the one member of the family today who hadn't taken Enoch on face value even a little bit. He didn't exactly exude friendliness in his hard looks and stiff posture. If only her parents could see him now. There was a sweetness there that was usually only reserved for Olive and, she wasn't going to lie to herself, this was without a doubt the single most precious thing she'd ever seen.
Maybe it was something about expecting the unexpected or simply because he was strangely good with a kid and that was an extremely redeeming quality, but it touched her heart more than she could say. Yet, the second she revealed herself she knew he would stop it immediately and pretend he didn't give a damn again, like he hadn't been being nice at all.

But as sweet as this was, Enoch would probably like even less that Olive was just watching him. The last time she'd done that they'd very nearly fallen out over it.
Better just to walk in now.

She drew in a breath and pushed on the door. The movement actually made Enoch jump and turn his head so quickly it looked painful. Of course, how terrible it was to be seen being a nice person.

"There you are...look at you getting along."

"...oh come on..." Enoch sighed and immediately the softer look he'd had in his eyes a minute ago hardened and he pointedly avoided making eye contact.

"Claire, I think you've stolen him from me." Olive couldn't stop herself from beaming as she stepped into the room and knelt on the carpet beside Claire who smiled shyly.
Enoch's mood, as Olive predicted, had quickly soured and he was muttering something she couldn't quite hear under his breath.

She ignored him for a second and smoothed out her dress over her legs as she smiled at her blonde curled cousin and her new doll.
"She's very pretty. Did you give her a name yet?"

"I want Enoch to. But he says he doesn't want to..."

"No way."

"Aww..." Olive turned to him then and Enoch looked like he'd been caught out in some terrible plot for as much as he was refusing to look at her. "But she wants you to, Enoch."

"I said no."

"You know..." She sighed and turned back to Claire who was frowning in such a comically grown up way it made her even more adorable. "Don't worry. Enoch's not very good at giving things names anyway. He's just being a great big grump now because he was having fun playing and I've interrupted-"

"Uh...what?"

"-but I'm sure he'll love whatever name you pick for your doll."

"Okay, time ta go."

There was movement behind her and she turned to see Enoch on his feet and frowning at her. If that was supposed to be displeased, it wasn't working quite as well as it usually did. Clearly, he was too off guard right now for that.

xxxXxxx

"I'm sorry I made you go, Enoch."

It was the first time in the first twenty minutes of the drive back to London, that either of them had spoken. In the dark, Enoch's face was illuminated only by the reflection of headlights from the road and the lights from the dashboard as he stared blankly at the road.
Whatever it was that was on his mind, Olive couldn't quite tell but there was something distracting him, there almost always was.

"What? Oh. Whateva."

"It could have been worse at least."

That got his attention. Enoch's eyes briefly glanced over at her and his brow furrowed a little.
"That's a change'a tune from a couple hours ago...what 'appened ta desperately wantin' me ta be liked?"

Olive smiled to herself and tore her eyes away from Enoch's profile to the road. "I found someone who does like you."

She had refrained from causing Enoch further embarrassment by talking about Claire earlier but now they were alone, who was there to be embarrassed in front of?

Evidently, Enoch did not share her mindset.
"Bloody 'ell...can we not?"

"Why not? Claire really likes you, how is that a bad thing?"

"Do I look like someone 'oo wants anyfin' ta do wiv a kid?"

"Before today? Not at all. But if you were having such a miserable time, you wouldn't have stayed there and humoured her."

"...shut up..." He grumbled and once again refused to look at her.
Olive didn't often get to tease him about anything. Enoch's jealousy was one thing, but that was hardly something to tease him about in good humour because he was never in a good enough mood to take it when he was jealous. So to have something, a little soft spot in his otherwise steel armour, exposed, was quite fun...and extremely sweet.

"Come on, honey-"

"...ya know I 'ate that."

Yes, she did know. Enoch was not into pet names, so she very rarely used them for him but she could hardly shorten his name to anything that made sense.

"At least it was only me and not Granny or anyone who walked in, Enoch, it's okay to let yourself have fun you know?" With that she reached over to cover his unmoving hand on the gear stick with her own and felt his fingers twitch under hers.

"Not my idea of fun. Can we stop it now?"

"I thought it was adorable."

"Olive..."

"Why are you so embarrassed? I love that side of y-"

"Bloody 'ell, I said stop it, Olive!"

Enoch was like a highly sensitive mousetrap. All it took was the slightest movement to make it come crashing together with a snap. It took a delicate balance which Olive was usually so careful of, to walk that line. But this was different, somehow she'd stepped too far on a topic she would never have thought he would be sensitive about...or care about at all.

His hand had wrenched away from her and the knuckles of both hands were now clenched tightly on the steering wheel.

Olive swallowed a lump as she stared at him with wide eyes. She didn't expect him to apologise for snapping at her, and he didn't. So she did instead.

"I'm sorry...what did I say?" Her voice came out a little quieter than she'd wanted but if he had gone back into one of those moods and something was genuinely bothering him talking about Claire than she had pressed too much and the blame was at least partly on her.

Enoch did not answer at first and for several moments Olive thought he was just ignoring her until eventually he did.

"Ya don't know everythin' 'bout me, okay? There's more reasons than one I don't play 'appy families at 'ome."

She wanted to ask. Olive knew very, very well that Enoch knew more about her than she did about him. He was private, he would always be private and she respected that. But she loved him, she wanted to know him whenever he wanted to tell her.
This was a sore spot she had a feeling he'd kept closed for the best part of twenty years and, unwittingly, she had touched it so if he was going to say anything, it was going to come from him first.

"I..."

She watched the muscle twitch in his jaw like it always did when he was tense but aside from that there was no emotion whatever betrayed by his face.
Then as if Enoch hadn't surprised her enough already for one day, out came another sentence she never expected to hear.

"I wasn't always an only child."