Page 9 of Fierce Family

“I still want to go and stay with him and Peter, mum. I can still go, can’t I?” Kieran pleads from the backseat.

Who the fuck is Peter?

Sheila must sense my confusion because she explains, “Nicholas and I are divorced. He lives with his boyfriend in Lancaster.” Not sure that cleared up a lot, but what I heard was that she’s not married anymore.

“Mum! I still can go, right?”

“We’ll see what the doctor says.”

“Fuck,” he swears and hits the upholstery of the backseat.

“Kieran!” Sheila admonishes him before a voice at the other end of the phone draws her attention. “Oh, hey, sorry to call you at work but Kieran had an accident. We think he broke his leg.” She is silent for a minute. “No, one of the firefighters is driving us to Keswick.” Silence again.

Is there anything more annoying than listening to one side of a phone call? I’m a naturally inquisitive person... some might call it nosy.

“Okay thanks, we’ll see you there,” Sheila puts her phone away before turning back to Kieran. “Dad’s coming to Keswick. He suggested that you and Gregory can then both go straight to Lancaster with him for the weekend, saves him having to come up again on Monday,” she gives him a small smile, and despite his pain, this news puts a grin on Kieran’s face.

“Wicked!” Kieran cheers before flinching as his movement dislodges his leg.

“Not long,” Sheila tries to reassure him.

She wasn’t wrong, because twenty minutes later we pull into the hospital car park. A young nurse helped me get Kieran into a wheelchair and now he and Sheila are sitting in the waiting room. There are at least ten people ahead of us, so I went to the coffee shop next door to fetch us some tea.

“Here,” I hold out a takeaway cup to Sheila and pass a bottle of Ribena to Kieran.

“Josh, you don’t have to wait,” Sheila tries again to send me on my way as I take a seat.

“Hey, this happened on my watch so I want to make sure Kieran is okay,” I wink at her.

“Have you ever fallen off the pole?” Kieran asks.

“No, but when I was in training I burned my hands because I used the wrong technique.”

“Oh.” I’m not sure if that is a good or a bad “oh,” but he keeps asking me questions about work and seems genuinely interested. When he was with the Scouts he hung around quietly in the background but now he’s a more animated, interested boy.

We fill an hour with my stories of life as a firefighter. We see all sorts and not everything is tragic, we have some funny moments, and Kieran seems to love hearing about them. And I even made Sheila laugh out loud; a first for me and I think it’s my new favourite thing about her. My mission from now on has to be to make her laugh more often.

“There they are.” A well dressed, short guy in his thirties points at us whilst a taller, dark-haired guy, roughly my age, stops behind him and turns his head in our direction.

“Dad!” Kieran cheers up a little from where he was slumped over in his wheelchair.

“Kieran, how are you?” The tall guy kneels down in front of him. The ex, I guess.

“I’m okay,” Kieran mumbles with little conviction.

“Thanks for coming Nico. It shouldn’t be much longer… I hope,” Sheila sighs as her ex places a kiss on her cheek.

“I could kill those firefighters. How could they let children slide down the pole?” Nicholas huffs, causing Sheila to flinch.

“The kids sneaked away from the group and decided to give it a go on their own,” I speak up. All eyes turn to me, and Nicholas at least has the decency to look embarrassed.

“Oh, it’s nice to meet you. I’m Peter, and this protective papa bear is Nicholas,” the shorter man introduces themselves in an attempt to diffuse the situation.

“Josh,” I reply, then glance at Nicholas again. “I can assure you, when we let them slide down the pole, we have someone at the bottom and at the top ensuring their safety. This incident was beyond our control.”

“I’m sorry, that was uncalled for.” He holds out his hand, and I accept his apology. “And thank you for bringing them here.”

“No problem.” I feel Sheila’s eyes on us.

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