ilona

18+ | tpwk

[lowkeyharry]

SPACES MASTERLIST

content warning: drug use, sexual topics, divorce, found family

Harry Styles has everything—a thriving career as a London political consultant, a glamorous marriage, and a spotless reputation. But when a sharp-tongued teen shows up at his door claiming to be his daughter, his life unravels. What begins as a search for the truth turns into a fight to give her the home and love she’s never known, forcing them both to face the risks of loving someone deeply.

ACT 1

Part 1: Harry gets an unexpected visitor, and it’s more than he bargained for. [3.2k]

Part 2: Harry takes a page out of Arabella's book. [4.5k]

Part 3: Harry’s past catches up with him, shaking things up more than he expected. [5k]

Part 4: Arabella meets Harry's wife. It’s awkward, but something starts to shift. [4k]

Part 5: Harry faces the reality of Arabella’s past and what it means for their future. [2.2k]

Part 6: Arabella learns she's not as sly as she thinks she is. Harry makes an offer he thinks is irrefutable. [2.5k]

Part 7: Harry starts to realise it might be too late to mend the broken ties with his daughter. [5.3k]

Part 8: Arabella learns Harry is a man of his word. [5.9k]

Part 9: Harry becomes concerned for Arabella's safety, and he doesn't know how to help her. [3.2k]

Part 10: Harry and Arabella reunite, but it's under...questionable circumstances. [5.4k]

ACT 2

Part 11: Arabella settles in with Harry. [4.5k]

Part 12: Harry starts to feel in over his head. [7.9k]

[lowkeyharry]

Spaces - Part 12

✨ summary: harry starts to feel in over his head.

🍒 word count: 7.9k

🪩 masterlist

H A R R Y

I do not believe in fate or destiny, but I do believe in time. I believe, specifically, that time is elastic: it stretches and snaps according to the level of your anxiety, or the anticipation of something you’re not quite ready to experience.

Case in point: the council’s Family Therapy Centre. For reasons I can’t explain, I find myself jealous of whoever had the slot before us. At least their session is over. At least they can move on.

Arabella and I are on our second session. The first was a disaster, because Ruth, our therapist, tried to get us to do a feelings wheel. Arabella lost interest in under three minutes while I tried to remember if it was legal to bribe a child psychologist.

Today, we are back in the ring, facing off against Ruth’s latest innovation: a whiteboard divided into three columns—Me, You, and We. In theory, this is supposed to facilitate “transparent, shared reflection.” In practise, it is just another surface on which Arabella can demonstrate her indifference to the therapeutic process.

I sit on the left, Arabella on the right, Ruth at twelve o’clock, poised for whatever relational insight might emerge from the carnage. Everything about her says, “I see through you, but I won’t use it against you unless you really deserve it.”

“So,” says Ruth, after the requisite three seconds of silence. “Let’s do a check-in. How have things changed now that Arabella is permanently situated in the home?”

I’m supposed to go first. Ruth always sets it up that way, as if I’m the teacher’s pet, or the only one who ever raises his hand. I try to make it sound less like an announcement and more like an honest reflection.

“She’s… integrated really well, I think. Better than I expected, actually.” I glance at Arabella, whose eyes are fixed on a poster about mindfulness strategies. I force myself to keep talking, even though my instinct is to bail out and let her finish the thought. “Nothing remarkable.”

Ruth nods and takes a note. “Is there anything you’re concerned about? Any surprises?”

This is a trap. The correct answer is “no,” but the honest answer is “yes, I think my daughter may be nocturnal and I caught her sleepwalking into the living room at two in the morning, where she spent thirty minutes staring at the piano before returning to bed.” I decide to split the difference.

“Not really, but…” I glance at Arabella again. “I do think she’s been sleeping on the floor.”

Arabella makes a face, but it’s more of a “God, not this” than anything resembling shame.

Ruth looks at Arabella, then back at me. “On the floor of her room, or…?”

“In her room,” I clarify. “I thought it was a one-off, but then last night I passed by her door. She leaves it open sometimes, and—” I pause, because I know how this sounds, “—she wasn’t in the bed. I got worried she’d left the house, so I went in. She was asleep on the floor, between the bed and the wall.”

“Do you remember doing that?” Ruth asks Arabella.

“No. Must’ve fallen out, or something.”

This is the most absurd lie I’ve ever heard, but Ruth treats it with reverence, like it’s a confession of a secret world only available to those with master's degrees.

“I don’t think so,” I say, because I know what I saw. “You were curled up with your blanket, using a pillow. It looked…intentional.”

“That’s a lot more common than you’d think,” says Ruth. “Kids in care often sleep on the floor, especially if they’ve never had a bed that felt…secure. Sometimes the floor is the safest place they’ve ever slept.”

I feel the shame flush up my neck, because I should have thought of that. I should have known it from the start, but of course I didn’t. All my training, all my lectures about how trauma manifests, and still I managed to overlook the most basic thing.

“Can I ask what you like about sleeping on the floor?”

“I don’t,” Arabella replies quickly, “but it’s… I don’t know,” she pauses and resets. “If I did, hypothetically, sleep on the floor, it’d just be because I wanted to know if someone’s walking around. That’s all.”

I feel my stomach go cold.

“That makes sense,” Ruth agrees, as if this is a perfectly normal design feature of a child’s bedroom. “Is there a reason you’d want to know if someone’s up and about?”

“Not really.”

“Is it about feeling safe?” Ruth asks, and this time there’s a faint edge to the question, like she’s steering the conversation toward something we’ve not addressed yet. “Hypothetically?”

Arabella sighs. “I just don’t like surprises,” she gives me a sidelong glance. “Clearly it’s not a fool proof method.”

Ruth lets the silence breathe, then tries again. “Is there something about the bed that feels unsafe to you?”

Arabella shakes her head. “No.”

“Is this about Miles?” I ask. I feel the air in the room change the instant I say it. Arabella’s posture tightens, and Ruth’s pen stops moving. I’m aware that, at some point, Arabella will have to talk about this. But I also know there’s a right way to bring it up, and I may have just chosen the exact opposite.

“Who’s Miles?” Ruth asks.

Before I can respond, Arabella interjects in a rage. “What the hell do you think you know about Miles?”

I flinch, and so does Ruth, though she masks it with an intake of breath so subtle I’m almost convinced I imagined it.

“I’m not saying I know anything,” I reply carefully, but the moment the words exit my mouth, I know I’ve said the wrong thing. Ruth tries to steer us back to neutral ground, but Arabella is already bristling.

“You bring him up out of nowhere and act like you’re entitled to the backstory?” she grouses, looking straight at me with this glassy distance that makes me feel like a character in a TV drama she’s only watching to pass time.

Of course I don’t expect her to tell me everything. But also, yes, I’m her father and maybe I am entitled to some portion of her pain, even if I can’t do anything about it.

Ruth glances between us. “Arabella, if it’s alright, I’d like to hear a little about Miles, from your perspective.”

“There’s nothing to say,” she deflects.

“Harry mentioned something about a difficult placement,” Ruth continues, turning to me expectantly. “Would you be willing to clarify, so that Arabella doesn’t have to relive anything she’s not comfortable with?”

The pressure is on. I try to do it quickly, as if ripping a plaster off.

“Miles was her foster brother,” I say. “The one involved in the arrest. But before that, there were concerns about…inappropriate behaviour. I noticed some injuries, and her caseworker said Miles had been sneaking into her room. At night.”

I wait for Arabella to storm out, to punch a wall or deliver a closing statement about how nobody in this room is qualified to discuss her life, but she just glares at the whiteboard, which is now a referendum on her entire adolescence.

“Is there anything you’d like to add?” Ruth asks Arabella. “You don’t have to, but if there’s something you want us to know, now is a good time.”

Arabella’s face is unreadable. “I told Ashley that Miles was coming into my room, but I made it up.”

Ruth tilts her head. “Why did you say that?”

“Because I wanted to leave,” Arabella explains. “Lydia let Miles do whatever he wanted. If I said it was bad enough, Ashley would move me. That’s the only way you get out—if it’s an emergency.”

I shake my head. “Ashley told me she didn’t believe you were lying. And I don’t, either.”

Arabella’s eyes snap to mine, blazing. “She’s supposed to say that, isn’t she? That’s how she gets to sleep at night.”

“Arabella—” I start.

“No, seriously, you think they just…what, call up the new family and say ‘hey, we’re sending you a liar, but she’s less trouble than the others so you get her for the next six months?’” Her voice is a scythe. “Nobody cares what happens. They just shuffle you until you age out or get arrested.”

Ruth lets the moment hold. Then she lets out a deep sigh that makes it feel like she’s actually devastated by that. “That sounds exhausting.”

Arabella’s sarcasm stutters. She isn’t used to adults who don’t argue back.

“I guess,” she murmurs.

“Do you believe you’re safe, here?” Ruth asks. “With Harry?”

“I’m not saying I’m not.”

“Sometimes we do things that look odd from the outside, but they make sense for us. Maybe it’s a way to make sure you’re not caught off guard.”

Arabella does not react to this, but I do. There is a tension in my chest that I can’t explain, except that I feel it’s somehow my fault that the world has ever felt that unpredictable to her.

“Harry, you look like you have something to say.”

I do, but the words are all wrong. “I’m sorry” feels like a verdict, and “I’d never let anyone hurt you” is a promise for another timeline.

“I just want you to feel safe here. That’s all I care about.”

Arabella looks away, but not before I see the split-second tremor of something like gratitude. Ruth clocks it, too.

“There’s a difference,” Ruth says, “between being safe and feeling safe. Sometimes it takes a while for your brain to catch up with your circumstances. That’s especially true if you’ve had to rely on yourself for most of your life.”

Arabella frowns, as if the concept is somehow offensive. “It’s not like I’m living in the actual worst case scenario,” she says. “Harry is a control freak, but he’s not dangerous. I just…like to know what’s going on.”

“Right, and hypothetically, would it help if you could lock your door? Or if you texted each other before you went into the hall at night?”

This is so absurd that I have to stifle a laugh, but Arabella has less shame and actually does. “It’s fine. It’s not that deep.”

“Let’s try something different,” Ruth suggests. “What’s one thing Harry does that makes you feel more comfortable here?”

Arabella thinks about it, then rolls her eyes. “He doesn’t shout, like, even to get my attention when I’m upstairs.”

It’s the most basic observation, but I feel a strange surge of pride. At least I’m doing something right.

Ruth smiles, then turns to me. “What’s one thing Arabella does that makes you feel connected to her?”

I don’t even have to think. “She told me once she hates talking on the phone, but she always answers if I call her while I’m out. And if I tell her about a book I think she’d like, she actually reads it.”

Ruth writes “predictability” in the “we” column on the whiteboard. “That’s something you share. Maybe we can lean into that.”

I hum in acknowledgement, because the session is starting to slip into that haze where everyone is just waiting for the clock. I check my watch, then realise how transparent it is, and tuck my hands under my thighs.

“Before we finish, is there anything else you want to bring up?” Ruth asks.

Arabella shakes her head. “No.”

I almost say the same, but then Ruth looks at me with a kind of expectant, I-know-your-type patience that makes it impossible to do anything but blurt out the actual truth.

“I’m just—” I stop. “I feel…sad, I guess. Because I can’t do anything about the last fifteen years. I want to help, but it feels like I’m just a placeholder until she can do it herself.”

Ruth nods, giving us both a look like we’re toddlers who have just shared a toy without biting each other. “That’s honest.”

Arabella glances at me, then away. “It’s not like you had a choice, either.”

This is not what I expected her to say.

She looks at me again, this time with the full weight of her intelligence, and says, “I don’t hate you, you know. I only said that because I was pissed off. But you’re here now, and nobody else ever was.”

I can’t speak. I want to, but my throat refuses to cooperate.

Ruth gives us a minute, then finishes the whiteboard exercise with a flourish. “Homework for this week,” she says, writing it in the ‘we’ column. “Try to do one thing together, outside of the house. Doesn’t matter what. Just get out in the world and remind yourselves that you’re both still learning how to do this.”

Ruth stands, shakes my hand, then Arabella’s, and walks us out to the corridor. The door closes behind us with a hiss of sealed air, and for the first time in an hour, I feel like I can breathe.

I wonder if, in some alternate timeline, there’s a version of us that just goes home and makes dinner and doesn’t need to be constantly reminded that love is not a hostage negotiation. I wonder if I’ll ever find out.

.𖥔 ݁ ˖ .𖥔 ݁ ˖ .𖥔 ݁ ˖ .𖥔 ݁ ˖

It is a ten minute walk from our house to the Conservatory of Classical Ballet and Modern Technique, but I leave twenty minutes early. There is no logical reason for this except that, deep down, I am afraid of Arabella walking home alone in the dark. She’s lived in Chicago proper and made her own way in places that would terrify most adults, but I still imagine her getting tripped up by a traffic signal or waylaid by some loose dog near the park. I also can’t stand the idea that she might emerge from the studio expecting no one and see me running up the pavement, sweating and short of breath, like some sitcom dad. So I give myself a buffer.

The night is cold enough that my teeth start to hurt by the time I reach the gates. There are four corridors leading out from the central atrium, each marked with discreet gold signage labelling studios 1-8. I know from the emails—Chloe forwarded every last one—that Arabella’s placement exam is in Studio 4, so I follow the arrows and try to look like I belong, even though I am the only person not wearing a leotard.

There’s a window next to the door, two-way glass. On the other side, Arabella is moving through a series of steps that look like they would destroy my spine. She’s with Jennifer—the owner of the place, who has already informed me that Arabella is “something special” and “not to be wasted on your standard curriculum.” They are not speaking, just running through the same combination over and over with Jennifer watching and Arabella correcting and repeating.

Across the hallway, another studio is lit up, but empty except for a woman in a tracksuit who is videoing herself perform what I suspect is choreography for the next morning’s class. She notices me watching, offers a polite nod, and goes back to her routine, more self-conscious than before.

I turn back to Arabella, and I feel that weird sense of pride start to bloom in my chest, the one I get everytime I watch her dance. I have absolutely nothing to do with her talent; it was grown in someone else’s body, trained in someone else’s country, shaped by the bruises and nights spent avoiding men like me. Still, I feel the satisfaction anyway, and for a second I allow myself to think that maybe this is part of being a parent—wanting something for someone even if you are irrelevant to its outcome.

A few minutes later, the woman finishes filming, emerges, and glances at me with pure curiosity. I brace for her to ask me what I’m doing here, or tell me to leave, but instead she sidles up and gestures through the glass with her head.

“She’s good, isn’t she?”

I nod, because there’s no denying it. “Yeah, she is.”

“She yours?” Even though it’s a fair question, it lands with a soft jolt. I’ve never had anyone ask it before. It feels illicit, like I’ve borrowed someone else’s child for a day and am hoping not to get caught.

“Yes.” I stick out my hand. “I’m Harry.”

She takes my hand and gives a firm shake. “Meredith. I teach here—mostly ballet, sometimes contemporary if they’re desperate.” She keeps her eyes on Arabella, who has just pivoted into a leap that looks dangerous to both body and ego. “I taught her at the RBS summer intensive. I was surprised to see her name on the Conservatory’s schedule. She’s in London full-time, then?”

“Yeah, she’s just moved here.”

“Brilliant,” she exclaims. “I know her situation was a bit…complicated. Glad everything worked out.”

She says this like it’s a secret code, and I wonder just how much she actually knows. It wouldn’t take much to reduce me to an absentee father—which is fair, since I have been—but so far, the only judgement for it I’ve gotten has been from Chloe. I’ve yet to be subjected to the court of public opinion, at least, not to my face.

“Is she enjoying it here?” she asks. There’s a faint challenge in her tone, as if she’s prepared to escalate if I give the wrong answer.

“She seems to,” I reply. “Haven’t heard her complain much—that’s a good sign.”

“She’ll do well,” Meredith assures me. “Jennifer only takes the ones she really thinks she can push.” She checks her phone, then gives a little wave. “I’ll see you around, Harry.” She walks off, already tapping furiously at her screen.

I watch the rest of the lesson in silence. At one point, Jennifer pauses Arabella mid-spiral, corrects her by physically turning her upper body a quarter angle, and Arabella doesn’t even flinch. She repeats the combination, sticks the correction, and gets a nod of approval that could sustain her for a year.

The hour ends with no ceremony. Jennifer and Arabella both pack up, and Arabella opens the door and freezes when she spots me. She looks surprised to see me, though I suspect this is an act.

I stand, trying not to look too eager. Jennifer walks out behind her and gives me a polite smile.

“We’ll have her schedule for next week,” she tells me. “Arabella’s phenomenal technique-wise, but I’d like to see more confidence. She’s capable of more than she lets on.”

This feels like a direct accusation, but I take it as a compliment.

“Thank you,” I say, and she nods before vanishing down the hall. I turn to Arabella. “You ready to go?”

She shrugs on her coat and starts to walk ahead, but she’s not quite fast enough to lose me. There’s an immediate relief to being out of the building, as if the walls in there were pressing the truth closer and closer to the surface. Out here, it can disperse harmlessly into the dark.

“So,” she says, keeping her eyes forward. “What are you doing here? I thought you had some work dinner tonight.”

I lie so fluidly that I almost believe it myself. “I do, I just…wanted to make sure you got home all right.”

“You walked me here yesterday. And today. I don’t require an escort—I know how to walk three blocks around a city.”

Little does she know I’ve got a pathological terror of losing things before I even know what they are—but I suspect this would either make her feel sorry for me or mock me for weeks, neither of which I’m equipped to manage at the moment.

“There are dangers specific to South Kensington,” I counter. “Overzealous dog walkers. Luxury cars parked on the footpath. Also, you left your phone at home.”

She grunts, which I take as a concession. “I wasn’t planning on getting lost. Worst thing that could happen is someone mugs me for my pointe shoes.”

“That’s definitely a possibility,” I say, “especially in this economy.”

We walk home in silence, because we have nothing to gain from performing small talk, which is either a testament to our mutual understanding or a sign that neither of us particularly cares to impress the other. Arabella keeps pace with me, but every time we turn the corner, she makes a point of doing it first, just to prove she knows the way.

Chloe is waiting in the living room when we get back. She’s sitting on the sofa with her knees up, scrolling through her phone and pretending not to listen for the sound of the lock. The moment we step in, she lowers her feet and composes herself, as if there’s a camera recording her every movement for the custody review. Arabella clocks this and gives her a look so withering I’m briefly grateful I’m not the intended target.

“You’re back,” Chloe beams, and for a moment I can almost believe we are a real family, the kind that eats dinner together and watches bad telly and calls each other “love” without irony. “How was class?”

Arabella shrugs off her coat, managing to make it land perfectly on the banister without looking. “Fine,” she says. “Jennifer’s scary, but in a good way.”

“I’m glad you’re giving it a shot,” Chloe replies. “We’ve got reservations, just the two of us. Can you be ready in a half hour?”

Arabella gives her a thumbs up and heads for the stairs, bag over one shoulder, not bothering to look back.

Chloe waits until she’s gone, then leans in. “Are you ready for tonight?”

I make a noise that could be “yes” or “please kill me.” “Not really.”

“Don’t worry. They’re your parents, not the Supreme Court. Just…ease them into it.”

“That’s the problem,” I say. “There’s no gentle way to tell them they have a granddaughter and she’s already fifteen.”

“Try not to mention the court-mandated therapy, then.” She checks her watch, then glances toward the kitchen, where the sound of a kettle boiling drowns out any chance of a private argument. “You’re not going to be late, are you?”

I look at the clock. Half past seven. I need to get this over with, so the rest of my life doesn’t feel like I’m living in a witness protection programme.

“Not unless the Circle Line is on fire,” I quip. “And thanks for taking her out. I know she can be by herself, but I don’t want to feel alone…” I trail off, because I’m not even sure what I’m trying to say.

“I know, I know.” She kisses me, the way only a wife knows how to do, and hurts so badly because I’m not sure how much longer that’ll be true. “Don’t worry about rushing home. Just call me when you’re done.”

I kiss her again, because this seems like one of the few times I’m allowed to. “Goodnight, baby.”

“Night, Harry,” she muses, practically shooing me out the door. “Tell them I said hello.”

I head out and run through the scenarios on a loop: mum cries and dad goes into shock; my brother makes a joke about “illegitimate offspring” and then spends the rest of the evening talking about Brexit; everyone pretends it’s fine and then calls their solicitor to rewrite their will. There’s no clever way to do this. No matter how I spin it, it’s a car crash.

I arrive at my parents’ house in Chelsea five minutes early, which is an error in judgement. Their house is easily the largest on the street with two separate entryways for staff and family. I hate it, always have. The garden is perfectly clipped, the lights in every room set to the same impossible brightness, and as I approach, I hear the low drone of music from inside.

The door is answered by my mother, who hugs me so hard I nearly drop the bottle of wine I brought as an apology in advance. “You’re just in time!” she exclaims, and pulls me into the kitchen, where the clatter of cutlery and the smell of grilled salmon do nothing to steady my nerves.

Ben is at the counter, uncorking something expensive. He’s always been the family’s answer to a missing Labrador, because he’s friendly, overenthusiastic, and impossible to offend. He sees me and smiles. “Evening, mate. You look like death.”

“Work’s a shitshow,” I lie. “Parliament is eating itself alive.”

My father is nowhere to be seen, which means he’s either in his study or lurking in the sitting room, waiting for an opportune moment to make an entrance.

“Is Chloe coming?” mum asks.

“No, she’s got dinner with a friend,” I tell her, because it’s as close to the truth as I can manage right now.

“Shame,” she murmurs. “We haven’t seen her in ages. Things still rough between you two?”

“She’s fine,” I say, knowing full well that “fine” is not a real answer. “We’re still…figuring things out. She says hello.”

“Has she moved back in yet?” Ben asks, sensing blood in the water.

I sigh. “No, mate. She hasn’t.”

Mum gives a sympathetic smile and squeezes my hand as if she’s about to dispense the secret wisdom of the ages. “You know, darling, it’s perfectly normal to have a rough patch in marriage. Especially with your work being so…all-consuming.”

“Thanks, mum,” I say softly.

The three of us do the perfunctory small talk—how was the tube, did you see that dreadful business on the news, what’s the latest at work. My mother pours us each a glass of white, sets the table with a perfection I will never achieve, and herds us into the dining room.

Ben sits opposite me while my mother flits about lighting candles and adjusting the angle of the cutlery. There’s a faint, ghostly sense of ritual to the whole thing, like we’re actors in a period drama about my childhood and I’m about to tell them I’ve gambled away my entire inheritance.

Dad appears just as the soup is being served with the frown of a man who has seen the markets and does not like what he’s seen. He nods at me, then at Ben, and sits at the head of the table with a heavy sigh.

The soup is carrot, with a suspicious whiff of ginger, and the bread is cut into perfect slices as if by a laser. There’s a separate wine glass for every course, even though my mother only ever drinks half a glass before switching to tea. This is the kind of dinner where the tension arrives before the guests, then sits in your chair and starts working on the place cards.

Ben asks if I’ve seen the new press about the reshuffling at Downing Street. I haven’t, or I have, but I lie and say I haven’t because I don’t want to get into a pissing contest over who has the worst job. My mother, always the peacemaker, glances between us like a tennis umpire and then asks if I’d like to stay the night—code for “are you emotionally capable of taking the train home at midnight.” I say I’ll see how it goes.

My father is content to observe, which means the temperature in the room has already dropped a few degrees. After the salmon has arrived—accompanied by a white wine reduction and the crushing sense of impending doom—I realise that if I don’t do it now, I never will. I clear my throat.

“There’s something I need to tell you all.” I say it as lightly as I can, hoping it will sound like I’m about to announce I’ve won an award or, at worst, lost a minor appendage.

My mother freezes with her fork halfway to her mouth. Ben looks up from his phone. My father’s jaw flexes as he wipes the edge of his mouth with a linen napkin.

“I knew it,” says my mum. “You and Chloe—”

“No,” I cut in, before she can build the narrative. “It’s not about Chloe. I mean, in a way it is, but…not really.”

Ben frowns. “Then what?”

I swallow, because this is the point of no return. “I have a daughter.”

There is a silence so perfect, so symmetrical, it feels like someone has hit pause on the universe.

Mum’s fork clatters onto the plate, rolling twice before it stops. Ben, for once, is speechless, and my father’s lips purse so tightly they almost disappear.

“Wait,” Dad shakes his head. “Chloe’s pregnant?”

“No,” I say. “It’s not Chloe’s—”

“So, you’ve fathered a child with some other woman? That’s why Chloe’s leaving you?”

“Dad, please,” I plead. “It’s not like that. This was before I even met her. Arabella’s fifteen.”

This does not make it better. Ben’s face cycles through five distinct expressions—shock, dismay, awe, then back to shock. “No way,” he laughs. “Have you had a paternity test?”

“Yes. Two, actually. She’s definitely mine.”

Dad clears his throat, as if preparing to deliver a closing argument in a case he’s been litigating in his head for decades. “So you’ve just found out you’ve had a daughter out there in the world?”

“No,” I admit, already bracing for the cross-examination. “I’ve always known she existed.”

His face goes dark. “You mean to tell me you’ve known this whole time? Is this really who you’ve become? Running off, starting families you can’t even bother to tell us about?”

“It’s not that simple. I thought she was with her mum. I thought—”

“She’s not been with the mum?” he echoes, his patience wearing thin. “Where the hell has she been, then?”

“Arabella’s been in foster care,” I explain, and I keep going, because if I stop now I’ll never start again. “I had an affair with my professor at uni. Genevieve got pregnant during my last semester, and she was married to another man. She didn’t want to tell him about me, and I didn’t want to be a dad, so the plan was for her to tell him it was his baby.”

“Bloody hell, mate,” Ben chuckles. “Was she fit?”

I shoot him a look. “Not the point.”

My mum glances around the table. “How did she end up in foster care?”

I take a breath, wishing I’d rehearsed this even once out loud. “Arabella found me in July. She had said Genevieve put her up for adoption at birth—” I glance at my father, who looks like he is one standard deviation from flipping the table. “—which, I had no idea, that was not the plan—but when Arabella was eight, the parents lost custody and she was put back in the system.”

There is another silence, then Ben claps a hand over his mouth to contain his laughter. “Jesus Christ. I thought the worst you’d do is join a cult or embezzle funds from the government. This is actually impressive.”

Mum ignores him. “So she’s just…in America? In some random stranger’s home? Have you met her, like in person?”

“I’ve met her,” I confirm. “Arabella was in London over the summer, she showed up at my house, and we started getting to know each other. Then she went back to Chicago and got placed with another family, but there were some issues. And now…she’s living with me.”

“Issues?”

I nod. “She got arrested for assaulting her foster brother.”

My father, to his credit, manages not to spit his mouthful of wine onto the tablecloth. He sets his glass down, wipes the rim with a level of precision reserved for sociopaths, and levels a stare at me that I recognise from every public embarrassment of my youth.

“She’s been arrested? So she’s a criminal?”

“Her social worker said the preferred term is ‘justice involved individual'—”I stop myself, because the last thing I want is for this to turn into a debate about semantics and PC culture, “—but it wasn’t her fault. She was defending herself.”

Mum blinks as if she’s replaying the last thirty seconds of conversation, like a faulty tape. “You’ve… she’s been living with you?” The word living does not feel at home in her mouth.

“Two and half weeks now,” I confirm, because honesty is apparently the new family policy.

Dad shakes his head. “So let me get this straight. You go off to America for uni, sleep with your professor, she gets pregnant, you leave, and now the child—whom you have ignored for fifteen years—is suddenly your responsibility?”

“I didn’t ignore her. Genevieve and I agreed—she was going to raise Arabella as her own. I thought she’d be fine.”

My mother, who usually reserves judgement for people outside the family, looks at me like I’m a crime scene. “You didn’t think to check?”

“I was twenty-one,” I plead. “And I never heard from Genevieve again. She moved, changed jobs, everything.”

“So you just…” Ben gestures with his wine glass, “left the kid and never looked back? Are you keeping her?”

“She’s not a dog, mate,” I murmur.

“Are you adopting her, then?”

“It’s complicated,” I say, struggling to keep my voice from breaking. “She’s here on a special arrangement until her case in the States is sorted. But I want her here, as long as she’s willing to stay.”

My father stands, which is always the cue that the argument is about to escalate. “You really think you can just swoop in, rescue a child you abandoned, and that’s enough? Don’t you see how pathetic this is?”

Mum reaches for his hand. “Sit down, love, please. We’re not going to solve anything by shouting.”

But he doesn’t sit. “You let a girl get lost in the system and didn’t so much as send a Christmas card, and now you want to be congratulated for doing the bare minimum.”

“I’m not asking for congratulations. I just didn’t want to hide it from you any longer.”

“Hide what? That you’re a fraud? That you only ever do what’s easy? You were always like this, Harry, always. Never finished a thing in your life—”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” Ben interrupts, “He’s trying, Dad. Not everyone’s as perfect as you are.”

For the first time in my life, I want to hug my brother.

My father’s anger burns out, replaced by a cold disgust. “You’ll never make it work. You’re not built for it. Mark my words—six months from now you’ll have found a way to hand her off to someone else. It’s what you do.” He looks at me, and I can see the years of disappointment etched into every line of his face. “Is this the kind of man you wanted to be, Harry? Is this what we raised you for?”

“You raised me to believe every problem could be solved by writing a cheque,” I fire back. “So pardon me if I didn’t want to jump head first into raising a child—maybe I just didn’t want to be the type of father you were.”

There is a long, hot, electric silence. I think about every time I ever saw my dad apologise, and the answer is never. Not once. I’m not sure if I’m really much different, or if I’m just the same bastard, thirty years removed.

My dad scoffs, grabs his glass, and then he walks into his study and slams the door. The impact rattles every glass on the table.

Mum is actively trying not to cry, and as much as I want to hug her, I also want to run for the door and never look back.

“That went well,” Ben says after a while.

My mother wipes her face, then pats my hand. “He’ll come round. You know what he’s like. It’s just…a lot, all at once.”

“I know,” I say. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be silly. She’s family. That’s all that matters.” She pours me another glass of wine, as if it will heal the breach.

Ben looks at me, finally serious. “What’s Arabella like?”

It’s a question I’ve been dreading, because the answer is so thorny and so beautiful that I don’t trust myself to get it right.

“She’s stubborn,” I chuckle, “and funny. And smart. She doesn’t trust anyone, and I can’t really blame her for it.”

Mum squeezes my hand. “Do you have a photo? I want to see her.”

I’m about to tell her yes, but then I realise I don’t have a single picture. Not one. It occurs to me that, for all my desperate attempts to prove I can be a decent father, I have not even managed the most basic task of parenthood. I’m shocked by the fact Chloe and I went to her showcase and managed to walk away without experiencing her incessant need to document her existence.

“Not yet,” I tell them, feeling my stomach knot.

Ben laughs. “Unbelievable. The whole world’s got a phone camera now, and you’re the last man alive without a kid pic.”

I shrug, but it’s a bad cover for the shame that’s pooling in my chest.

My mother perks up again. “Can we meet her?”

The thought hadn’t even crossed my mind. Not once in the last five months had I even considered introducing Arabella to my parents, or Ben, or anyone outside the immediate crisis perimeter. It’s not just that she’s skittish, or that she might find it overwhelming. It’s that, for the first time in my life, I have something precious, and the idea of exposing her to the world—especially my world—feels like setting a butterfly loose in a wind tunnel.

“I’ll ask her.”

She gives a hopeful smile. “Do.”

We make it through the rest of the meal with only a handful of detours into the abject disaster of my personal life. Dad does not return. At the end, mum packs up leftovers and sends me on my way with a hug so long I’m not sure she’ll ever let go.

I call Chloe on the tube to tell her the dinner with my parents went exactly as expected (“catastrophically,” for anyone keeping score), and in return she gives me the play-by-play of her own evening with Arabella. “We ate sushi,” she says, “and watched a film about a robot who tries to save the world and ends up destroying it.” I sense she finds this symbolic.

I’m starting to suspect that Arabella prefers Chloe to me, which is fine. More than fine, if I’m honest. I’ve never known how to relate to teenage girls—I can barely relate to myself—and Chloe, despite having no biological imperative, seems to have cracked the code. I try not to let it bother me. I tell myself it’s a relief that Arabella has someone more emotionally adept to handle the subtleties of comfort and belonging, but the truth is, I am jealous. Not of Chloe, but of the possibility that, if things had gone differently, Arabella might have felt that way about me.

The porch light is off. I let myself in, then lock the door behind me, counting out the motions to remind myself that, if nothing else, I am competent at entering and exiting my own home. The lights in the front hall are dimmed; the only illumination is the blue halo from the digital clock on the oven, glowing through the kitchen archway.

I pour myself a glass of water, walk back to the sitting room, and sink into the sofa by the window. I check my email on the off chance that something urgent has landed while I was busy shattering the family tree, and then turn on the news. It is a mistake. The anchor is talking about a petrol shortage in the Midlands, and I spend five full minutes fixating on the way her lips barely move when she says “fuel crisis.” I mute the television, but the images keep flickering: angry commuters, empty shelves, some government official sweating under the lights. It’s hypnotic, like watching a car accident from far enough away that you don’t have to acknowledge the casualties.

I must doze off at some point, because the next thing I know, the clock on the wall says 01:42 and the room has gone arctic. I am half dreaming when I hear it: the sound of footsteps on the stairs. Not the measured tread of someone coming down for a glass of water, but the frantic, pounding rush of someone being chased. The steps hit the landing, then the tile, and for a split second I am convinced there is an intruder in the house until I see Arabella.

She barrels into the hall wearing a t-shirt and shorts that could be pyjamas or just the bottom layer of her wardrobe. She checks the wall with her shoulder—hard enough that I wince—and then pauses, staring at the front door like she expects it to open for her.

“Arabella, what’s wrong?” I ask, but there is no reply. She pads to the shoe rack, fumbles for her trainers, and jams her feet into them with the panicked sloppiness of someone being timed. Her hands are shaking, and I can see from the way her fingers are clawing at the laces that she is on autopilot.

I sit upright and try again. “What are you doing, sweetheart?”

Arabella doesn’t answer. Her eyes are glazed, but not with tiredness—the pupils are shrunk to dots, and the whites have a faint, searching agitation. She doesn’t register me, or if she does, it’s as an obstacle. This is the same look she had when I found her sleepwalking in the living room. Only, she wasn’t actually doing anything; it was more like she was looking for something than running from it. This time, there is a terrifying level of abject terror, as if there is something behind her that will destroy her if she stays still for too long.

In a movement so quick it almost gives me vertigo, she moves to door and unlocks the deadbolt.

That’s when the adrenaline hits me, but with a twist—it’s not fear for myself, but fear for her. I sprint from the sofa and catch her at the threshold, my hand slapping the door shut with a noise so loud I’m sure it’s cracked the wood. She recoils, but she’s still not awake. She grabs for the handle again, and when it doesn’t give, she pushes at my arm with a force that is, frankly, unnerving, and tries to open the door again.

I remember that you’re never supposed to wake a sleepwalker. Something about shocking the brain into panic mode, triggering fight or flight, or cardiac arrest if you’re unlucky. But you’re also not supposed to let them leave the house in subzero weather, so I place my hand on her shoulder and hold my ground, trying not to startle her further.

“It’s okay,” I murmur, stepping between her and the door. “You’re safe, you’re home, it’s just me.” I repeat it, softer each time, as if layering the words will make them true.

“Go away,” she says. She shakes her head and tries to edge past me, but I side-step, matching her movements until she stops. She’s trembling—actually trembling—and there’s a flush climbing her neck that makes me think she’s about to faint.

“Arabella,” I say softly. “You’re dreaming. It’s alright. Go back to bed.”

She shudders, staring through me as if I’m a glass door, and then her eyes skitter away. I think she’s about to turn around and head upstairs, but then she bolts for the kitchen, quick as a fox. She rattles the back door’s handle twice, then when it doesn’t give, she hammers on the glass with the flat of her palm. I reach her before she can escalate to breaking it, catch her hand in mine and wrap my arms around her from behind.

“Arabella, you’re home,” I say. “You’re safe. Go on—back to bed.”

She thrashes, not violently but with desperate, full-body effort, as if the thing chasing her is so terrible that even my arms are just another layer of threat. My instinct is to squeeze her tighter and hold her in place until she realises she’s safe, but the advice is clear: never restrain, never startle, just guide. So I loosen my grip and use the softest voice I can muster. “You’re alright, darling. You’re just having a dream.”

Her breathing is ragged, like she’s choking on each inhale. She says nothing, but I feel her muscles fluttering against my chest like a trapped bird. She’s so light, I could pick her up and carry her upstairs, but that would only make it worse, so I keep my hands gentle and steer her away from the exit with infinite patience.

At last, the storm subsides. Her hands fall to her sides. She stands there, unmoving, for ten, maybe twenty seconds, before turning her head slowly to look at me.

“Back to bed,” I repeat softly.

She shuffles past me, up the stairs, silent as a shadow, and I follow, keeping enough distance that I won’t startle her again. She climbs without looking back, but when she gets to the top, she stands on the landing as if she’s forgotten why she came here in the first place.

“Left,” I murmur. “Second door.”

She obeys, like the words have short-circuited her ability to resist. When I reach the door, she’s sitting on the edge of the bed, untying her trainers. Her hands are shaking so badly it takes her three tries to get the knot undone.

The room is neat, like a hotel room before you unpack. I go to the window and check the latch, as if I am performing some routine security protocol, and I see at a glance that the bed has not been slept in—the covers are pristine, the pillows perfectly arranged. Between the bed and the wall is a pillow and blanket. “I don’t sleep on the floor,” my bloody arse, Arabella.

“Lie down,” I tell her, and I drape the blanket over her and tuck it in around her back, the way I remember my mother doing for me when I was small and sick. She relaxes, just a fraction, and then, in a voice hoarse from tears I haven’t seen, she murmurs, “stop—I’ll scream.”

I freeze. I know what she means. Even asleep, the terror is never really gone.

I want to fix it. I want to make a deal with whatever gods are in charge: let her sleep, let her live, and I’ll never ask for anything again. But I know that’s not how it works.

“It’s alright,” I whisper. “You’re okay, Arabella.”

I sit next to her in the darkness, watching the steady rise and fall of her breathing. I do not move. I wait until her breaths have evened out, until the tension in her limbs dissolves. I wait, because I don’t know how else to help.

She will probably have no memory of any of this. She will probably say that she just had a weird dream, that she must have gotten up to get water and gone back to sleep. I’m not sure if I’m supposed to correct her, or if we’re just supposed to pretend that the only thing we have to worry about is schoolwork and the weather. The only thing I know is that, for now, I can sit with her and try to absorb the weight of her fear.

[nizzlekicks]

please don’t talk about one direction that’s a sensitive topic for me

[kaletastrophes]

Shabana just confirmed on a podcast that Supriya sent these tweets to Noah and he’s “been telling everyone he thinks the tweets are sooooo funny”

[harryisart]

LOVE ON TOUR | Toronto- 8/15

[becauseheartsgetbroken-hs]

Thinking never looked so adorable 🥹

[lowkeyharry]

SPACES MASTERLIST

content warning: drug use, sexual topics, divorce, found family

Harry Styles has everything—a thriving career as a London political consultant, a glamorous marriage, and a spotless reputation. But when a sharp-tongued teen shows up at his door claiming to be his daughter, his life unravels. What begins as a search for the truth turns into a fight to give her the home and love she’s never known, forcing them both to face the risks of loving someone deeply.

ACT 1

Part 1: Harry gets an unexpected visitor, and it’s more than he bargained for. [3.2k]

Part 2: Harry takes a page out of Arabella's book. [4.5k]

Part 3: Harry’s past catches up with him, shaking things up more than he expected. [5k]

Part 4: Arabella meets Harry's wife. It’s awkward, but something starts to shift. [4k]

Part 5: Harry faces the reality of Arabella’s past and what it means for their future. [2.2k]

Part 6: Arabella learns she's not as sly as she thinks she is. Harry makes an offer he thinks is irrefutable. [2.5k]

Part 7: Harry starts to realise it might be too late to mend the broken ties with his daughter. [5.3k]

Part 8: Arabella learns Harry is a man of his word. [5.9k]

Part 9: Harry becomes concerned for Arabella's safety, and he doesn't know how to help her. [3.2k]

Part 10: Harry and Arabella reunite, but it's under...questionable circumstances. [5.4k]

ACT 2

Part 11: Arabella settles in with Harry. [4.5k]

[twostepstyless]

And he’s petting dogs in pubs in tiny shorts! He’s the perfect man

[harryshouse]

AS IT WAS | BEHIND THE SCENES

[lowkeyharry]

Spaces - Part 11

✨ summary: arabella settles in with harry.

🍒 word count: 4.5k

🪩 masterlist

A R A B E L L A

Three days in and the walls are already closing in, but in a polite, gentrified sort of way. Harry’s house is not a house so much as a statement, a palace of diplomatic truce. It’s two floors of pale wood and off-white, populated by furniture that looks like it would turn the other cheek if you spilled juice on it. Every room smells faintly of vanilla and floor polish, and there are so many windows I’m convinced that somewhere, someone is watching us.

My room—technically “the guest room,” but Harry keeps calling it “your space, Arabella,” as if ownership can be willed into existence by repeated affirmation—is painted a lavender so soft it could be taken for a mistake, and there are two matching lamps with bases shaped like crystal or maybe just very convincing acrylic. The queen bed has six pillows and a duvet so plush I suspect there are entire sheep missing from the British Isles. There are blackout curtains, three different mirrors, and a wardrobe so large I could fit the bed inside.

I haven’t slept in the bed. Not once. The floor is hardwood, but if you line up two of the pillows and drape the spare blanket over them, it’s more than enough. I wedge myself between the bed and the wall, in the narrow strip where nobody can see me unless they’re specifically looking. This is not a protest; I like to know who’s coming.

It’s not rational, and it’s definitely not healthy, but it’s a big step up from sleeping with your shoes on so you don’t leave DNA on the carpet.

At 8:00am sharp, I hear footsteps. The walls in this place are not thick—Harry’s home is new money, not old, and old money believes in insulation—so every step on the landing is a telegraphed threat. I consider staying put, to see if he’ll open the door and catch me on the floor, but there’s something about being horizontal that feels like a disadvantage, so I get up and make a show of smoothing the duvet over the bed. I’m mid tuck when the knock comes, three polite taps spaced exactly half a second apart.

“Come in,” I say, before he can do it anyway.

The door opens. Harry is fully dressed, in a jumper and trousers, hair damp and aggressively tousled. He’s carrying a mug of tea, the steam coiling up into his face. His eyes flick to the bed, then to the floor, where there are two pillows and a corner of the blanket sticking out like evidence. He doesn’t say anything about it, just raises his eyebrows and smiles in a way that suggests he’s keeping a running list of my oddities but isn’t ready to confront any of them yet.

“Morning, love. Just wanted to let you know the social worker’s going to be here in a half hour.”

“I thought it was this afternoon,” I say, not because I have something better to do, but because I made an arbitrary schedule in my head and now the whole thing is thrown.

“He changed it,” he says. “Apparently it’s better to do these things early in the day. Less likely for people to back out.” He shrugs. “I don’t make the rules.”

I stare at him. “You could have said no. Social workers are obsessed with boundaries. It’s kind of their whole thing.”

“Could’ve, but he sounded determined.” He sips his tea. “You alright with it?”

I notice, for the first time, that he’s got bags under his eyes, and that his hands are trembling just a little when he raises the mug. I wonder if he slept at all, or if he’s spent the whole night reading up on trauma and attachment disorders, trying to build a cheat code for parenting someone like me.

“Why wouldn’t I be?” I deadpan, but I know it comes off too sharp.

He hesitates, then brushes it off. “Chloe’s downstairs, by the way. She made coffee, if you want some.”

This is surprising for two reasons. One: Chloe is still living with her sister. Two: Harry no longer wears a wedding ring and has not mentioned her since he told me they were separated. As if speaking her name brings bad luck.

“She’s here?”

He nods. “Yeah. Since she still technically lives here, he want to be present.”

I am trying to picture what kind of form Chloe could possibly fill out for me. Under “relationship to minor,” would she write ‘stepmother,’ or just ‘Harry’s ex, kind of’? But I just nod, pretending this is normal. “I’ll be down in a few.”

He smiles. “Take your time.”

I wait until I hear him go down the stairs before I move. I brush my teeth, pull on jeans and a black sweater, then spend two full minutes brushing my hair into a ponytail. I stare at myself in one of the mirrors, which is mounted above the fireplace for reasons I can’t begin to guess, and try to figure out if I look like a normal fifteen year old girl. The sweater covers the bruises on my arms and neck, but the cut on my lip is still healing, and it’s obvious that I have been hit in the face within the last two weeks.

The verdict: not really. But it’s the best I can do.

The kitchen is enormous, with marble counters and two separate islands. Chloe is at the counter, pouring coffee. She’s wearing a blue wrap dress and trainers, and when she sees me, her whole face transforms into a kind of sunshine that is so over the top it almost feels like parody.

“Hi, Arabella!” she says, and before I can react, she sets the mug down and pulls me into a quick, soft hug. She smells like rosemary and toast.

“Hey,” I say, then immediately regret it, because she’s looking at me like she wants to ask a thousand questions but is restraining herself out of etiquette.

“How are you?” she tries, but it’s not a question anyone actually wants answered. “You look well. Or—” she corrects, “as well as one can, under the circumstances.”

“Thanks,” I say. “I think.”

I notice there is a performative calm to both of them, like they’re extras in a film about a family that does not know what it is yet. Harry stands at the range, pretending to understand the function of an induction hob, while Chloe offers me toast and then seems startled when I actually accept it. She hovers with the butter knife, as if she’s worried I’ll weaponise it, then sets it on the plate and backs off to a “safe” distance—about three feet, give or take.

“So,” says Chloe, pouring herself a second coffee and keeping both hands on the mug. “You settled in alright?”

It’s a classic open ended, no fault question, and I know from experience that she’s trying to gauge the amount of damage I’ve inflicted on the new environment.

“Yeah,” I say, “It’s… nice.”

Chloe grins at me, pleased with this answer. Harry sets a pan on the stove and says, “You want eggs?” like it’s an inside joke. I get the feeling he only eats breakfast if there’s an audience, and then only for the bit.

“I’m fine, thanks,” I say.

“Suit yourself,” he says, and then cracks two eggs into a bowl.

The silence is so thick I consider cutting it with the knife after all.

Chloe slides into the seat beside me, and for a minute we just watch Harry move around the kitchen, carefully studious, like a man trying to remember which hand is dominant. He moves with a strange level of frantic intent, checking the time on his phone every minute, even though the clock on the wall is perfectly visible.

Finally, Chloe turns to me. “Do you know what they might ask?”

I’ve had social workers cycle through my life so often I could write their scripts in my sleep. “They’ll want to know about routines, boundaries, school, whether there’s been any… incidents.”

Harry snickers, then tries to cover it with a cough. “You’ve not even been here a week,” he says. “That’d be a new personal best.”

I ignore this. “Are you going to sit in?” I ask, because it hasn’t been made clear if Chloe counts as a family member or not.

“If that’s alright?”

I nod, even though I’m not sure it is. “It’s fine.”

Breakfast proceeds in slow motion. I take tiny bites of toast and watch the clock tick from 8:12 to 8:17. Harry’s eggs smell faintly of turmeric, which means he’s overcompensated for lack of skill with overconfidence in seasoning. He sets his plate down and then sits opposite me, like he’s moderating a peace talk.

“I read through the guidelines last night,” he says, as if this is a normal thing for dads to do, “and apparently we’re supposed to be ‘transparent but positive.’ So if they ask you how you’re feeling, and the answer is ‘rubbish,’ maybe… lead with something nice first?”

I laugh. “You don’t have to worry about me. I promise not to say anything incriminating.”

Harry grins, and I can see the relief in the lines around his eyes.

At 8:28, the buzzer goes. There’s a three second lag while Harry decides whether to race for the door or feign indifference. He opts for the latter, stands up slowly, and pads out of the room. Chloe and I sit in the kitchen, the silence now full of unspoken competition over who can seem least anxious. I watch her pick at her nail polish, then check her phone, then pick at her nail polish again.

“He seems nervous,” I say, just to say something.

“He gets like this with anything official,” she agrees. “You should have seen him when he worked under the Prime Minister. It was like living with a malfunctioning robot.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

There’s the sound of footsteps and voices in the hall, then the front door shutting. The man at the door is in his thirties, or maybe just clinging to the last sliver of them, and he has the haircut of someone who is either still single or was recently reissued to bachelor status. Harry brings him into the kitchen first, and when they round the corner and see me and Chloe at the island, there is a subtle moment where everyone recalibrates.

“Arabella, this is Oliver,” says Harry. “He’s from the council.”

Oliver smiles, extending a hand, but I pretend to be busy with the toast, so he gives a sheepish wave instead. “Lovely to meet you,” he says, with the accent of a Home Counties man who’s spent years training the warmth out of his vowels.

“Likewise,” I respond.

“Chloe,” he says, nodding at her with recognition. “Nice to see you again.”

There is a split second where Chloe seems to reconsider all her life decisions leading to this point, but then she smiles back, as if she’s won a prize for not blinking. “You as well.”

“Right,” says Oliver, already opening his little black notebook and flicking to a tab marked ‘Styles—Monroe.’ “Is there somewhere we can sit?”

Harry gestures to the living room, but not before I catch a warning glance from him—be good, or at least, don’t be memorable in a bad way. We all move as a unit, Oliver leading, then Harry, then Chloe, then me.

The living room is staged to perfection. There are magazines fanned on the table, a candle burning discreetly on the mantle, high up enough where I couldn’t possibly reach it, which was definitely intentional. Oliver sits in the chair with the highest back, the one that makes him look like a principal at an expulsion hearing. Harry and Chloe take the sofa, side by side, and I take the loveseat, so I can see everyone at once.

Oliver opens with a smile that is almost apologetic. “I just want to check in, get a feel for how everyone’s adjusting. This is a new situation for all of you, I know. Harry, tell me about these first few days.”

Harry launches into a speech about how well I’ve settled in, how quickly I’ve made the transition, how there have been no issues at all. I listen, silent, while he talks about school applications and how I’m finishing the term at my old school online. Oliver nods and scribbles notes, occasionally glancing at me as if to confirm that I exist.

He turns to Chloe. “And last we spoke you two were separated. Are you living here again?”

Chloe shakes her head. “No. I’m still with my sister for now.”

Oliver doesn’t seem to care, just ticks a box on his sheet. Finally, he turns to me, and there is a moment where I can feel both Harry and Chloe tighten, like they’re bracing for a collision. “Arabella, how are you finding it? The environment, I mean. New house and all.”

“It’s nice,” I reply, and I can tell he’s waiting for me to elaborate. “It’s very… I don’t know. I like the windows.”

He looks pleased by this, which makes me want to say something to ruin it. “Do you feel safe here?” he asks, tilting his head like a therapist in a television show.

There’s a pause. I can feel Harry’s eyes on me. I think about the locks, the smoke detector—that’s all nice, but really I appreciate the fact that nobody has shouted since I arrived.

“Yeah. I do.”

Oliver makes a note, then glances up. “You understand you can contact me or your caseworker at any time, right? If something changes?”

“Of course,” I reply.

Oliver nods, then pivots to the next question. “Have you had any trouble sleeping? Sometimes, in a new home—”

“I’m a light sleeper,” I say. “But it’s quiet here.”

He asks a few more questions: do you have your own space, do you feel comfortable asking for what you need, is there anything in the house that makes you uneasy. I answer every question honestly, because there’s not really anything to lie about.

Oliver flips through his folder, then turns to Harry. “Have you set up the counselling appointments?”

Harry hesitates, and for the first time since Oliver arrived, he seems off balance. “I haven’t actually talked to her about it yet.”

Oliver writes this down, then looks at me. “You’ve been assigned mandated therapy. It’ll be you and dad twice a month to manage the transition, and then you’ll see your own counsellor weekly.”

The word “dad” hangs in the air for a second. I don’t correct him.

I could pretend to be surprised, but I am not. You don’t usually get to commit a crime without having court mandated something, so I just shrug. “Yeah, I figured as much.”

He writes something, then underlines it twice. I catch a glimpse of the sheet: ‘compliant but disengaged.’

He asks a few more questions—what I do for fun, if I have any dietary needs, if there’s anything from my old life that I want to keep going—and I answer them as honestly as I can without tipping over into the realm of “overshare.”

Oliver writes something in his folder, then sits back. “May I have a look around? It’s just a formality, but the council likes to see where the child is sleeping, and the general state of the home.” He looks at me. “Would you like to show me your room?”

“Sure.”

We leave the living room, and I lead him up the stairs. The house is clean, almost aggressively so, and I wonder if they pay someone to do it or if it’s just a fun hobby Harry’s picked up. My room is exactly as I left it: bed made, nothing on the floor except the small collection of luggage in the corner.

Oliver scans the room, noting the windows, the en suite bathroom, the deadbolt on the door. He makes a big deal of checking the smoke alarm. “Everything as you like it?” he asks.

“It’s a lot nicer than most places.”

He nods, glances at the wardrobe. “Plenty of space for your things. And you have privacy, which is important.”

The cadence of his speech suggests he only knows how to regurgitate what he’s read in training modules, but I know it would be rude to point it out. So I just agree with him, even it sounds like I’m talking to a robot. “Yeah. Suppose that’s true.”

He checks the rest of the upstairs—Harry’s room, the guest rooms, the office with its shelf of unread self help books—then we head back downstairs. Oliver finishes in the living room, asking a few last questions about security and supervision. He checks the back doors, the garden gate, the locks on the windows. He seems particularly impressed by the alarm system.

“One more thing,” he says, squinting at my face before he turns to Harry. “Has she seen a GP?”

Harry nods. “We have an appointment Thursday.” This is the first I’ve heard of it, but I roll with it.

“Good,” says Oliver. “They’ll want to monitor, just to be sure. With children in transition, sometimes there can be…complications.”

Oliver gathers his things and stands. “I’ll file my report and schedule a follow up in four weeks. If you need anything before then, my number’s on the card.” He hands me a business card, which I promptly lose in my pocket. “Thank you for your time.”

He shakes Harry’s hand, nods at Chloe, and gives me a little nod as he heads for the door.

After he leaves, there is a five second silence, then Harry slumps against the kitchen island and exhales like he’s just avoided a police chase. Chloe sits back down, cradling her coffee.

“You’re both very bad at acting normal,” I say.

Harry laughs. “I’ve never been accused of that before.”

Chloe looks at me, then at Harry, then back at me. “He’s right. You make it look easy.”

I can’t tell if this is a compliment or an accusation, so I just nod.

Chloe glances at her watch. “I should get going. Maddie’s expecting me.” She stands, gives Harry a hug, then turns to me. “It was good to see you, Arabella.”

“You too.”

She leaves. The door shuts, and the house is quiet again. Harry stands in the kitchen, staring at the mug in his hands as if it holds the secret to everything.

“You want to go for a walk?” he asks, after a while.

“Sure,” I say, because there’s nothing else to do.

We put on our coats and walk out into the pale, early morning, the kind of weather that makes you feel like you’re in a dream and just waiting for the story to start.

.𖥔 ݁ ˖ .𖥔 ݁ ˖ .𖥔 ݁ ˖ .𖥔 ݁ ˖

It’s midday, which means I am supposed to be catching up on the three weeks of school I missed while my life fell off a cliff. The dining table is a war zone of spiral notebooks and red inked worksheets, two different calculators, and a print out of my entire backlog of online assignments, which I’ve stacked into a sort of reverse trophy, tallest to least soul crushing. In theory, I am supposed to finish all of this before the end of December so I can start school here in January, as if switching hemispheres and legal jurisdictions is just a matter of ticking a box.

In practice, I am still stuck on the same geometry problem I’ve been on for forty five minutes. I don’t even like geometry. The last time I was forced to think about “real world applications,” it was in the context of whether a brick could shatter a windscreen, or how far you could lob a can of beans before it’d be considered a weapon and not an accident.

I’m staring at the question, which is in bold and underlined and highlighted as “critical to mastering this unit,” but all I can see is the sentence: “Find the area of the trapezoid.”

I know the formula. I know how to substitute values. I even know why, in theory, anyone would care. The problem is that the answer I keep getting is negative, which shouldn’t be possible, unless the question is actually asking for a measure of failure.

Harry is sitting across from me, pretending not to look at the work but, in reality, monitoring every tick of my pen. He’s got his laptop open, emails on one half of the screen, my progress report on the other. He has not said anything in ten minutes, but every so often he leans forward as if to say, “I could help, but I don’t want to undermine your autonomy.” Then he sits back and sips his tea, the same way he did when Oliver was grilling us about “household cohesion.”

We’ve established a protocol for these sessions: if I get stuck, I have to ask. If I don’t ask, he’s allowed to give me “a gentle prod,” which means pointing out that I’ve drawn the same parallelogram five times in the margin.

“Can I?” he says finally.

I push the worksheet across the table. He scans it, bites his lip, and tries to look like he isn’t immediately seeing the answer. “What’s the trouble?”

“It’s stupid,” I say. “But every time I solve for area, it goes negative. I don’t know what’s wrong with it.”

He frowns at the page. “Let’s see… base one, base two, height.” He sketches a quick diagram, which, annoyingly, is neater than mine. “I think you’re using the wrong formula.”

“Are you kidding?” I ask, but he’s fully serious, eyes bright with the joy of correcting me.

“Show me your notes? Just to be sure.”

I flip to the geometry section in my notebook, which is mostly half formed equations and diagrams that look like a serial killer’s attempt at abstract art. I don’t want to hand it to him, so I just tilt it toward him, hoping he’ll get bored quickly.

He doesn’t get bored. He looks at the page for a full minute, and at first I think he’s just reading the problem, but then he flips through a few more pages, then stops and squints at my handwriting.

“Arabella, I mean this in the nicest way, but…is this in a language I’m supposed to understand?”

“What do you mean?”

He tries to smile, but it’s clear he’s actually confused. “I can’t read this. I can’t even make an educated guess.”

I look down at the page, and yeah, it’s messy, but it’s not, like, hieroglyphics. If you look long enough, the meaning emerges.

“I’m no calligrapher,” I say. “But it’s not that bad.”

He points at a line. “This is a sentence?”

I read it. It says, “find the average bases x h /2 or just count squares if time crunch.” The words are all squished together, but the meaning is obvious.

“I was trying to save space,” I defend. “The notebook is small.”

He looks at me. “You start new words before you’ve finished the previous one. Look—” he points at another page, where the words “polyhedron” and “polynomial” have hybridised into some new creature, “—it’s illegible.”

I want to be annoyed, but there’s something about the way he’s not joking that makes it funny. “Nobody’s ever called my handwriting ‘illegible’ before.”

“That’s a bit hard to believe,” he admits. “You’re telling me you can read this?”

“Well, yeah. I’m the one who wrote it.”

He pauses, then drops the subject, but I can see in his eyes that he’s filed it away for later. This is going to come up with Oliver, or worse, with Chloe, who will then decide I have an undiagnosed learning disorder and make it her personal mission to fix me.

Harry closes the notebook, then sets it on the table and changes the subject. “Next week, you’re supposed to go to some placement class at this dance studio across town.”

I freeze, because I know what this means. “What?”

He grins, because he loves this reaction. “Did you really think you’d just…stop?”

My mind goes blank, then explodes in a hail of panic: What if I’m shit? What if everyone there is better than me? What if it’s one of those places where everyone wears their tights over their leotard?

“It was offered at school,” I explain. “But it’s not really worth paying for because I’m not, like, going to go pro. The only reason I went to RBS was because I had a scholarship.”

He laughs. “You’re allowed to have hobbies, you know. Not everything is about social mobility. You can do it just because you like it.”

I look at him, then at the worksheet. “What if I want to quit?”

He pretends to think about it, but I have a suspicious he’s got an answer locked and loaded. “Since this is the first I’m hearing about it, I’d say no.”

“That’s fascism,” I say.

“It’s accountability,” he corrects, but he’s still smiling.

“What if I staged a protest?”

He folds his arms. “I’d tell you to shut up and finish your geometry.”

It’s not cruel. It’s the opposite of cruel, actually, and I’m so thrown by the normalcy of it that I forget how to argue. I stare at the numbers, then at the word “trapezoid,” which is now more of a personal attack than a maths term.

Harry’s quiet, but I can feel him watching me. It’s not in a creepy way, just in a “I don’t want to let you out of my sight in case you disappear” way. It’s oddly comforting. I solve the problem, write the answer (positive this time, not negative), and move on to the next one.

I do two more problems, then push the worksheet away. “This is the worst,” I say, “but thank you for the math help.”

He leans back. “Anytime. If you ever need help with handwriting, though, I’ll have to get you a tutor.”

I roll my eyes, which feels safer than saying anything else.

He laughs, and for a second, it feels like we could keep doing this. That maybe the rest of my life will be a series of incomprehensible geometry problems, with someone across the table who actually gives a shit about the answers.

[lowkeyharry]

Spaces - Part 10

✨ summary: harry and arabella reunite, but it's under...questionable circumstances.

content warning: mentions of drug use and abuse!

🍒 word count: 5.4k

🪩 masterlist

H A R R Y

The next time I see Arabella is the Tuesday after American Thanksgiving. This means nothing to me, except that every business in Chicago has decided to recover by pretending the world stopped turning for a week. What it means in practice is that the city is lit up in apology, trees dressed in fairy lights, streets full of slush and every café running on a skeleton staff.

The last I spoke to her was last week. The bruises were bad, but the silences were worse. When she finally stopped responding to my calls and texts, I told myself she was just busy, or perhaps she’d outgrown the need to keep me on a drip feed of catastrophe. I allowed myself a day or two of pretending she was fine. Maybe she was rehearsing. Maybe she had friends. Maybe she had managed to become a normal teenager, and I was the only one left pacing around the ruins of our relationship. Now, her absence makes sense, because as far as I know, you don’t get your phone in jail.

I am at the Juvenile Detention Centre, which looks almost exactly like an NHS clinic except all the signage is in Comic Sans. The security guard asks for my ID, runs it through a scanner that’s mostly for show, and waves me to the waiting area with a little nod of professional disappointment, as if I’m the one who has committed a crime. Ashley is already there, sitting on the edge of a stainless steel chair with a file in her lap and her phone in both hands. I realise, in this moment, she cannot possibly be more than twenty two, but here she is, social worker, case manager, and, for today, the closest thing Arabella has to a lawyer.

I wait for her to speak first, because I don’t trust myself to lead with anything that isn’t, “this is your fault,” even though I know, objectively, that it isn’t. I try not to imagine Arabella in a cell, or in an orange jumpsuit, or crying, because the only thing I know for sure about Arabella is that she would rather eat her own arm than let anyone see her like that.

“She’s not going to be happy to see you,” Ashley says.

“Because you called me?” I ask, though I already know the answer.

She nods. “She explicitly asked me not to. But I couldn’t…” she stops, then starts again, “I can’t convince her on my own. That’s why I needed you here.”

“Is she okay?” I say, and as soon as I ask it, I realise it should have been the first thing out of my mouth.

“She’s physically fine. No broken bones, no concussion. A few bruises, but nothing requiring hospitalisation. The officer on duty said she was ‘calm, but disrespectful.’ Which in this context means she was less than three standard deviations away from flipping the table.”

I want to laugh, but my face won’t do it.

We wait for a few more minutes. Ashley bounces her knee, glances at the clock, then at the door, then at the clock again. I can hear voices on the other side—a bored intake officer, a faint, nasal complaint, the sound of a file folder being snapped shut. I try to think of what to say when she walks in. Nothing comes to mind. Maybe that’s for the best.

The lock on the door buzzes. There’s a pause, then the door swings open, and two security staff shuffle Arabella inside. She’s wearing a grey jumper with matching sweats, branded with the County’s name. There’s a cut on her lip that wasn’t there last time I saw her, and the faintest remnants of a nosebleed under her left nostril. She looks thinner, but her eyes are as sharp as ever. The guards remove her handcuffs, then step out, shutting the door behind them.

She stops in the doorway, registers the two of us, and for a second I think she might try to leave. Then she just glares at Ashley and says, “This is the one fucking thing I asked you not to do.”

Ashley does not flinch. “You’re not allowed to use that language in here.”

Arabella rolls her eyes. “Fuck off.”

She will not look at me. I want to hug her, or at least let her know I see the blood, but I don’t know if that would help or make things infinitely worse.

Ashley gestures at the chairs. “Can we sit, please?”

Arabella takes a seat on the other side of the table, which is bolted into the floor, and looks at me. “You flew all the way here for this?”

“Yes,” I say, and my voice cracks a little. “You stopped answering my calls. I thought you might be dead.”

“Don’t you think that’s a bit dramatic?” she asks. “Even for you.”

Ashley opens the file, shuffles a few papers, and says, “Arabella, I’m not sure if you’ve been told, but you’re not being charged, since Lydia decided not to press.”

This seems to surprise Arabella. She narrows her eyes, then scoffs. “Of course she’s not. Because then I’d tell everyone the truth, and the NCAA doesn’t endorse students on special registries.”

A hot, greasy anger rises up in me. “What is she talking about?” I ask. I direct it at Ashley, because she’s supposed to have the answers, but she looks away and rubs her temple.

“Arabella, please,” Ashley says. “We’ve talked about this. You said you made the whole thing up.”

I want to reach across the table and shake them both, but I know it would only cement Arabella’s idea that adults are just slightly older fascists. “I’m sorry,” I say, “but I feel like I’m missing something. For weeks, you’ve both been telling me everything’s fine, but this—” I gesture at Arabella, “—clearly something has been happening.”

“Mr. Styles, I investigated your concerns. I didn’t find any signs of mistreatment, and Arabella was dismissive when I questioned her.”

Arabella picks at her cuticle, inspecting the damage. “Because last time I reported something, you transferred me all the way out of the county ‘for my safety.’ Like that’s not code for ‘I don’t want the paperwork.’”

The room is silent. I feel like I am floating above myself, watching the scene unfold from a great height. Part of me wants to apologise to her, to promise that I’ll never let anything bad happen again, but I know that’s the most useless promise a parent can make.

“I’m lost,” I admit. “Can someone please tell me what’s happened?”

“She and Miles were in the house alone with one of his friends,” Ashley replies, I can tell from the cadence that she’s said this line a hundred times already. “Lydia was working night shift. There was an argument—I don’t know over what, nobody will say. Arabella hit Miles first. A neighbour heard the commotion and called the police.”

“That’s what you said on the phone. But it doesn’t explain everything that came before that,” I tell her.

This whole thing is ridiculous. From what I understand, Miles is seventeen, a student athlete, and twice Arabella’s size. There is a clear disconnect between their capacities for violence, and this is obviously not the first time something has happened between them, just the first time the police have been involved.

“Arabella never reported—” Ashley starts, but I cut her off.

“She’s a highly anxious, hyper independent child. Of course she wouldn’t say it outright. But it doesn’t take a genius to tell that clearly someone has been hurting her for weeks, now does it?” I fireback, turning to Arabella, awaiting an explanation that doesn’t have an undertone of “I’m not paid enough to deal with this.”

“I did not hit him,” Arabella clarifies, as if the distinction is what I’m caught up in. “I pushed him off of me.”

That certainly changes things. A lot of things.

“You pushed him off you?” I echo. “What was he doing on you in the first place?”

The room freezes. I look at Ashley, who is visibly shaken at this point, but Arabella’s ready to move on, as if the whole thing is already old news. “It doesn’t matter. They’re not pressing charges, so I’m being released, right?”

Ashley sets her folder on the table and opens it, as if the answer is in there somewhere. “That’s the issue. Lydia has made it clear she’s unable to supervise, and the alternatives are—” she hesitates, “not ideal.”

“Not ideal how?” Arabella asks.

“The judge won’t approve another foster family. Not for a kid who assaults a member of the household twice in one year,” Ashley says, matter of fact. “You’re officially ‘high risk.’ Ideally, we’d send you to another group home, one that specialises in crisis. But right now, the only options are institutional unless a relative takes over.”

Arabella doesn’t say anything. She glares at us, then tries to put her hands in her pockets, but realises she doesn’t have pockets, so she settles for crossing her arms.

Eventually, Arabella asks, “What kind of institution are we talking about?”

Ashley hesitates. “Northridge.”

“That place is one step away from a psych hospital,” Arabella mutters. “They take your blood every time you sneeze.”

Ashley glances at me, the way a croupier does when she knows the table is about to get ugly. “Harry’s home study was approved and he finished the parenting classes. He can apply for emergency custody. If it’s granted, you can be on a plane to London this time tomorrow.”

I expect Arabella to say yes. I expect her to say no. I expect her to call me a narcissist and storm out, or to laugh in my face, or to refuse even the basic satisfaction of closure. What I do not expect is the silence, the way Arabella’s jaw locks and her body flattens to the back of the chair, eyes fixed not on me or Ashley, but some void in the centre of the room. She stays like that, tension stretched so tight I can hear the plastic creak, and for a good thirty seconds I wonder if she’s just going to ride it out until the clock runs down on all of us.

Ashley keeps her hands folded on the folder, like a mediator waiting for the right moment to declare a recess. She tries again. “If you want to think about it, that’s alright. But you need to decide by tonight, because you’re being released tomorrow whether you’ve decided or not. It’s Northridge or London. Your choice.”

Arabella doesn’t move. Her voice, when it comes, is so even it sounds fake. “How long would I be there? Northridge, I mean.”

Ashley seems just as surprised that she’s entertaining this, as I am, but she humours her anyway. “Technically, until you’re rehomed. But with your record, the judge could push for medical justification and keep you there for longer.”

Rehomed. As if she’s a Labrador and not a person. I would find the comparison hilarious, except the stakes are so high that every word feels like the click of a gun being cocked.

“That’ll have to do, then,” Arabella says.

“What?” I say, incredulous. “Arabella, you can’t be serious—”

“Don’t act like you’re ready to storm the gates for a kid you abandoned before she could even walk,” she replies. Even Ashley, who’s seen more of this than I ever will, looks like she might be sick.

I am angry, but also so desperately sad that I could cry. “I know you had your reasons for saying no before, but this is, objectively, your best option.”

Ashley, probably sensing that she is losing her grip, stands up and says, “I’ll give you a minute.” She stands and knocks on the door, letting the security guards lead her out of the room.

Now it’s just the two of us. The world’s most dysfunctional version of a family reunion.

There are hundreds of books, hundreds of films, all dedicated to this moment—the big confession, the father making up for lost time, the tearful reunion where everything is fixed with one perfectly timed hug. But I don’t have the script. I have nothing.

I try the angle again. “I want you to come with me. If you hate it that much, we can figure something out, but just come with me. Please.”

“No,” she says sternly. “I didn’t ask you to come. I don’t want you involved.”

This is the point where I want to bang my head against the table.

“Well I’m here,” I tell her. “And I’m involved whether you like it or not.”

She laughs, but there’s nothing funny about it. “I’m not going to be an actor in your—” She waves her hands in the air. “—pathetic rescue mission. It’s not going to change anything. It’s not going to make any of this better.”

If this was meant to be a knockout punch, it doesn’t land. “You keep saying that, but I’d rather be a pathetic rescue mission than the guy who didn’t even try.”

“It’s too little too late,” she says, wiping her face with the back of her hand. I think she might be crying, but it’s impossible to know. “Did you even think about me? Before we met, did you ever think about me?”

I wish I could tell her that I’ve spent my whole life regretting leaving, even though that’s not strictly true. I thought about her, of course I did, but in the selfish, guilty way of someone who assumes the damage is already done and there’s nothing to be gained by reopening the wound.

“Not as much as I should have,” I admit. “But sometimes.”

She shoots me a look that momentarily freezes my blood. “Well I thought about you and Genevieve every single day of my life,” she says, and this time there’s no sarcasm, no defence. Just the flat, devastating truth of it. “There’s a million different versions of me that needed you, and you chose not to be there. Both of you. And every time something went wrong, I pretended you’d show up and fix it. That’s how fucking stupid I am.”

“I know I wasn’t there,” I say. “I know I’m the reason you had to do it all yourself. I can’t change any of that. But I’m showing up now, Arabella. I was heartbroken when you said no the first time—”

She cuts me off. “Just because we have a relationship doesn’t mean I don’t hate you,” she says, and the words are so raw that I feel them as a physical pain, like someone driving a nail into my chest. “And it took me a really long time to hate you instead of me. So this can only go so far, because the closer we get, the more it feels like I'm actually starting to forgive you.”

“I know I don’t deserve it,” I tell her. “But is that really such a bad thing?”

“Of course it is,” she snaps. She finally looks at me, and her eyes are full of so much pain that I almost look away. “I had to convince myself you were some…massive disappointment. That I should be grateful you weren’t there, because you’d just let me down over and over again, but all you’ve done is prove me wrong—” she stops herself, then starts again. “So if I say yes, it’s like I’d be admitting that I needed you. That I was actually missing something this whole time.”

This is it. The real thing, the secret at the core of her. What she’s been afraid to tell me all along.

She goes silent after, and I know better than to interrupt the silence. For once in my life, I shut up and let someone else have the floor. She picks at her cuticles, scraping blood, and I think that if this goes on long enough she’ll peel down to bone.

“You can hate me,” I say finally. “You can hate me for the rest of your life, if that’s what you need. You can blame me for every day I wasn’t there, and for every shitty thing that happened to you because I wasn’t. If you’re waiting for me to tell you that you don’t need me, that you’ll be fine on your own, I can do that, too. But it’s not true. I want to be your dad, and I want you to come with me.”

“Fuck you, Harry,” she murmurs.

If there is a god, she is laughing at me right now. I try to remember what Chloe told me once, in another argument, another life. That sometimes the kindest thing you can do is give people the dignity of their rage.

Part of me wants to make a joke about how, in this family, “fuck you” is as good as “I love you,” but the rest of me is clawing at the table, desperate for anything that feels like a way forward. I settle for just being in the room, breathing the same recycled air and hoping she’ll believe me this time, or at least not despise me for the effort.

I wish it were like the last time, because at least I had time to convince her, but the options are stark this go around. Either she leaves here with me or she goes somewhere she can’t leave at all. The line is that thin.

She’s the one who breaks the silence. “What if it turns out to be a bad idea?”

I swallow, because this is not the kind of thing you can answer honestly without sounding like you’ve prepped for it. “I don’t think it will. I’d like you to give it a try.”

She wipes her eyes with her sleeve, then looks up at the fluorescent strip overhead as if she’s praying for an electrical failure to end the scene.

“Fine,” she says, and I swear it’s like the stars have just aligned right in front of my eyes. I don’t know what kind of cosmic intervention someone has arranged on my behalf, but if I ever find out, I’ll convert.

“Thank you,” I breathe.

I’m not sure how long we sit there—three minutes, maybe, or thirty. Ashley comes back in, looking as if she’s afraid we’ve staged a double suicide. She surveys the scene, then sits down like she’s about to apologise to the entire country on live TV.

“Well?” she asks.

Arabella doesn’t say anything. She just sits there, arms folded, eyes on the table. I answer for both of us.

“She’ll come with me,” I say, and the relief on Ashley’s face is almost comic.

“Great,” she says, with the energy of a coach whose underdog just scored a single, accidental point. “We’ll need to file for emergency custody, but given your approval status, I don’t think there’ll be any problem. I’ll call it in.”

I nod, even though I don’t really understand the next steps. I can feel Arabella watching me, like she’s waiting for the moment I’ll panic and run for the exit.

“I’ll get your things from the Bowen residence,” she tells Arabella. “Do you want to call Lydia? Say anything before you go?”

Arabella shakes her head. “Tell her I said thank you.”

Ashley nods and starts tidying her papers, the end of meeting shuffle that’s as much about avoiding eye contact as it is about bureaucracy. “We need to get over to the courthouse now, before they close for the evening.” She looks at Arabella. “I’ll call you to let you know when it’s approved.”

We all stand at the same time. I expect Arabella to run, or to try and push the table over, or to do literally anything other than what she does next, which is walk around the table and hug me. It’s not a Hollywood hug. It’s angry, and tight, and desperate, and for a second I think she’s going to drive her fist into my back. But she’s shaking, and so am I, and the whole thing is so much messier than I’d imagined.

When she pulls away, we just look at each other. It feels like another long, silent truce between us. I try to memorise the outline of her—how she looks at me, how her hair falls, the exact shade of yellowing bruise on her collar bone—because in some absurd way, I feel like this might be the last time I ever get to see her like this. It’ll be the last time she’s completely out of reach.

.𖥔 ݁ ˖ .𖥔 ݁ ˖ .𖥔 ݁ ˖ .𖥔 ݁ ˖

By morning, I am at the DCFS office with a cup of coffee and the world’s worst pen. The office is on the fourth floor of a tower that is one lift ride away from being condemned. It’s the kind of place where the waiting room is carpeted in two distinct but equally appalling shades of blue and the heat is set to a level that suggests the staff are trying to poach the children before rehoming them. I sign in at the front, surrender my driver's licence, and am issued a fluorescent orange visitor sticker, which I stick to my sleeve because my jacket isn’t built for the humiliation.

Ashley meets me in the foyer with the demeanour of someone who wants to finish this as quickly as possible. Her hair is up, her eyes are red, and she does not attempt small talk.

"Michael's at the Juvenile Centre," she says, as if I'd asked. "He'll bring Arabella straight to the airport. If we get these forms filed, you can be on the two p.m. direct."

I follow her down a hallway that is lined with bulletin boards covered in missing children and inspirational quotes from Lyndon B. Johnson. She waves me into a conference room, the kind with a laminated table and a box of tissues already half empty. There are three folders set out, each with my name misspelled on the cover.

"You need to complete the petition paperwork," she says. "It has to be notarised. We can get the in-house notary to do it, but she's on lunch until eleven."

I look at the folders. The top sheet is a checklist of things I have never considered: allergies, medications, “history of elopement,” which is apparently a polite way to ask if your child will run for it the second your back is turned. There’s also a form about corporal punishment, which I sign with such speed that Ashley actually laughs.

“She’s not really a runner,” Ashley tells me, “but she’s got a way of making people think she is. Most of her foster families only lasted a week or two.”

I tune her out and finish the first stack, then move on to the next. My penmanship degrades after the third page, devolving into the zig-zag scrawl of someone being interrogated under a bright light.

At some point, Ashley asks, “Are you ready for this?”

“No,” I say, truthfully. “But that’s never stopped me before.”

She makes a note in her file, and I can’t tell if it’s a joke or if I’ve just given her more ammunition to assign me another course for dysfunctional parents.

While we work, Ashley gives me the lay of the land. “Once you land in London, you’ll need to file with the local authority. They’ll want to do their own home visit, confirm you’re not a sex offender, that sort of thing.”

“Why would they think I’m a sex offender?” I ask, only slightly kidding.

“Because you’re not her legal parent. You’re still a stranger, just with slightly more domain.” She sips her coffee. “Social services will want a full account of your living situation, financials, and your relationship history. They’ll want to see you both within a week of her arrival.”

“Lovely,” I mutter. “I’m not even divorced yet. I’m a goldmine for the tabloid industry.”

Ashley smiles, but it’s the smile of someone who’s seen worse. “You have nothing to worry about. Honestly, you’re overqualified compared to most of our placements.”

That is not reassuring, but I sign where she tells me to sign. I sign my name so many times that I lose all sense of what it’s supposed to look like. By the end of it, I’m not even Harry Styles, I’m just a succession of jagged loops.

When the notary finally returns from lunch, she examines my passport, witnesses three signatures, then stamps the bottom of the page with a force that rattles the whole table. "Congratulations," she says. "You’re a dad."

Ashley laughs, soft and humourless. "It’s not that simple."

The notary slides the papers into a manila envelope. "It never is," she replies, and then she’s gone, back to whatever administrative crypt she came from.

Ashley files the paperwork away, then pulls out another sheet: “Incidents, Past and Present.” It’s a summary of every time Arabella has been written up, suspended, or physically restrained. The list is three pages long. Double sided.

"You'll have to keep her in your sight for the first six months," she says, barely looking up. "Any issues, any self harm or aggression, you need to call the number on the last page."

I nod, but the last twenty four hours are running through my head like CCTV footage on double speed. I want to ask if there are any other traps, but all I can think about is that this entire process could fall apart because I forget to tick a box.

“Some of these are…impressive,” I say.

“Better than most,” Ashley replies. “At least she’s never set a building on fire.”

“Not yet,” I murmur, flipping through the pages. “Last time she got arrested—” (which is a crazy statement to make about a fifteen year old) “—she had a possession charge. Does she have a drug problem I should know about?”

Ashley frowns. “She’s been through the whole recovery thing, but honestly? I don’t think so. Her story is the pills were already in the car, and they were prescribed to the foster dad. They corroborated it, but the judge tacked on the charge for effect. And I’ve never seen her high before. I’d know.”

I nod, but I can’t help the feeling that I’m not getting the whole story. “Maybe she just took them the one time. Did they test her when she got arrested?"

“They did. And then every week after that. She never tested positive for

benzodiazepines. If anything, she hates the idea of drugs—probably because of her time in the group homes. Pills are the currency there."

I let that sink in. "So she doesn't have a drug problem."

Ashley actually laughs. "If Arabella has a problem, it’s not chemical. She’s as clean as anyone I've ever seen in the system."

I move to the next thing. The question that’s been crawling around inside me for weeks. "Do you know what actually was happening while she was living with Lydia? We both know it wasn’t nothing."

Ashley stiffens, then looks down at her hands, folding and unfolding them on the table. “It wasn’t nothing,” she confirms. "Arabella told me her foster brother was coming into her room at night."

I feel an electric cold in my arms. "Coming into her room and doing what?" I ask, even though I already know.

She just blinks at me. There's nothing in her expression but exhaustion and disgust—not at me, but at the world, at the system, at herself for being part of it. "What do you think?"

I feel my stomach twist, like I’ve been punched. "And you kept her there?"

"No," Ashley says immediately. "She spent a whole week sleeping in my office. I called every home in three counties, but they were all at capacity. The state doesn't place 'high risk' kids outside their county unless there’s an emergency, and this didn't qualify as an emergency because..."

"Because what?"

Ashley sighs. "A few days ago, she changed her story and said she'd made it up. She was very convincing about it, but I think she just wanted to go home. Lydia and Miles both denied everything, and Arabella told the state investigator it was all a misunderstanding, so the case was closed."

I stare at her, unable to process the logic. "So she just...went back?"

Ashley nods, looking grim. "She had nowhere else to go. If she didn’t, we’d have to declare her unhoused and put her in a shelter, at least temporarily."

"And you believed her when she said she was lying?” I ask. “About Miles, I mean."

Ashley looks at me, and I see what it costs her to do this job. “No. I don’t think she was lying. Arabella wouldn’t lie about something like that. She knows how serious it is,” she says. "But since I couldn’t find any evidence, and she backtracked, my supervisor said there was no reason to remove her from the home.”

I think about every phone call, every FaceTime, every time she told me she was fine. I think about the bruises, the silences, the evidence of struggle that was staring me in the face. I want to go to the Bowen house and kill Miles. I want to punch the wall, or scream, or file a lawsuit so crushing it bankrupts the entire state of Illinois.

"When she first told me about it, I wanted to tell you, but she begged me not to and I didn’t think it would come to this,” she adds, “I’m sorry I couldn’t do more. It’s a catch twenty-two, but sometimes that’s the way the system works. If we’d pulled her out with nothing…it would have been a gamble.”

I don’t respond. We finish the paperwork in silence. Every time I sign my name, I imagine the years it will take to undo the damage. I imagine Arabella, fifteen, packing her bags for the hundredth time, never staying anywhere long enough to forget how to leave.

When it's over, Ashley stands. "Let’s go to my office. I picked up her things from Lydia’s house this morning."

We walk through a maze of cubicles, past the photo wall of lost children. Ashley leads me into her office, which is the size of a closet and lined with binders labelled "Monroe, A.L." and "High Risk / Expedited."

She opens a locker and pulls out three bags. One is a school backpack with six different keychains. The second is what I recognise as her dance bag, and the third is a suitcase packed to the point of explosion.

“Three bags?” I say. “She’s moving countries with three bags?”

“She’s not supposed to own more than she can carry,” Ashley says. “That’s a rule for kids in care. If you have to leave, you have to pack in fifteen minutes or less.”

I have nothing to say to that. There’s no word in any language for how it feels to know your child’s entire life fits into a single trip up a flight of stairs.

“Do you want to check the contents?” Ashley asks.

“No, thank you,” I say, because the idea of picking through her life like a customs agent is too much.

Ashley opens a safe and passes me Arabella’s passport. “We should go. Michael will meet us at the gate with Arabella.”

I take the bags. They’re heavier than they look, but not by much.

I follow Ashley outside, where the sky is the colour of dishwater, and the wind cuts through my coat. I set the bags on the kerb and wait for the car, thinking about all the things I want to say to Arabella, and all the things I know she will never say to me.

By the time the car pulls up, I’ve already decided: I won’t let her pack in fifteen minutes ever again.

[lowkeyharry]

Spaces - Part 9

✨ summary: harry becomes concerned for arabella's safety, and he doesn't know how to help her.

content warning: mentions of abuse!

🍒 word count: 3.2k

🪩 masterlist

H A R R Y

It’s three weeks since Chicago, and the city has already reduced itself to a handful of images: the brown river, the glass towers, the ancient pizza joint with cracked vinyl and the smell of scorched yeast that clings to your clothes for hours. I spent the first week pretending the hearing was a blip, an administrative hurdle, a challenge completed with minimal emotional fallout. The second week, I remembered how to sleep again—six hours, sometimes seven, interrupted only by the occasional anxiety dream featuring a balding judge and my own incompetent signature on a ream of forms. By the third week, I’d started to believe the system was working as intended. The paperwork processed, the visit scheduled, the summer bleeding into a cold, fluorescent autumn.

Arabella and I call at least twice a week. We both pretend it’s for her, so she can update the social worker about our “ongoing relationship,” but it’s really for me. I tell myself this is normal. All parents do it—they obsess, they hover, they look for the code in their child’s posture that will explain why some days she is alive and others she’s nothing but a frame around a collection of melancholy statements.

I’m sitting on the sofa in my least offensive jumper, laptop open on the coffee table, trying to look less desperate than I am, but the moment the camera flickers on I forget everything. The image resolves with a stutter, then sharpens to show Arabella, sitting at her desk in a bedroom I have never seen in person. The walls are some shade of off white that suggests an institutional reluctance to commit to colour. She’s wearing a hoodie, the kind that drowns her frame, and her hair is up with a few loose curls escaping to soften the shape of her skull.

The first thing I notice is the absence of expression. Not just the usual reluctance, but a total flatness, like someone’s left her on the wrong setting for too long. The area under her eyes is slightly dark, and the whites are streaked with a capillary map that makes her look either deeply stoned or deeply allergic. If she didn’t blink every so often, I’d think the connection had frozen.

“Hi,” she says, which is the entirety of her opening statement.

“Hey, love,” I reply, and instantly want to bite my own tongue. It’s not that I’m forbidden from being affectionate, but there’s an etiquette to these things, and ‘love’ is a word best used when the other party isn’t currently displaying symptoms of acute emotional frostbite.

“Sorry,” she says, not quite making eye contact. “I lost track of time.”

She has not lost track of time. She is, in fact, never late; if anything, she’s always several minutes early, but likes to sit there in silence until the exact second of the agreed appointment before pressing ‘accept’. Today, she’s broken her own ritual. That’s the most worrying thing I’ve seen all week.

“You alright?” I ask, keeping my voice neutral.

She nods. “Fine.”

There’s a silence, as if the four letter word has sucked all the air out of the conversation. I try again. “Did you finish that English essay?”

She pulls a face. “Yeah. It was just, like, a compare-contrast thing. Shakespeare versus August Wilson. My teacher said my writing is ‘overly antagonistic’.”

I laugh, and I want her to join me, but she doesn’t. She just looks at me, then away again, then down at her hands. “Are you feeling okay?” I ask.

She hesitates just long enough for me to hear the answer before she says it. “Yeah. Just tired. Miles’s got, like, five friends over for a poker thing tonight so no one’s sleeping until they all pass out.”

I want to press further, but every muscle in her face telegraphs that she’s at the end of her reserves. She’s speaking with that flattened affect I’ve only ever heard from people who’ve survived a war or a really bad workplace retreat.

The next few minutes are small talk. I ask about her classes; she says “Fine.” I ask about Nutcracker rehearsal; she shrugs. I tell her about London—how the weather has turned, how Chloe’s cat has developed a taste for my laptop charger, how I’ve accidentally taken up running because the District Line is always on strike. Each anecdote lands with a dull thud, and I start to resent her a little for not even trying. Then I catch myself, and the resentment folds neatly into guilt, as it always does.

Eventually, she gets to the reason for the call. “Did you finish the home study yet?”

I exhale, more relief than I’d like to admit. “Yeah. Social worker came Tuesday. She asked if there were locks on the upstairs windows and then spent the rest of the time grilling me about screen time and carbon monoxide alarms. She was here for forty minutes. I gave her a tour, and she didn’t even look in the fridge.”

Arabella nods, eyes glazed over. “They don’t care about the fridge. They just want to make sure you don’t have guns or heroin everywhere.”

I laugh, but it’s a placeholder. “Well, I passed. She said it’d be cleared by the end of the week. If your foster mum’s okay with it, you can come for Christmas. Or before, if you want.”

Arabella’s gaze drifts offscreen, as if someone is calling her from another room. “Lydia will be fine with it. I wasn’t going to spend Christmas with them, anyway.”

There’s a tension in her jaw that wasn’t there before, and I wonder how much of this she actually wants, versus how much she’s just tolerating for my benefit. I wish there was a way to ask her directly without sounding like I’m about to burst into tears.

I watch her scan the room, then rub the heel of her palm into her temple. There’s a smudge of purple on the right side of her neck, and for a split second I have a juvenile, parental spasm: oh god, is that a love bite? It would be almost funny, except there’s nothing funny about the way she’s holding herself, so rigid you could snap her in half.

She sees me looking. “What?”

“Is that a hickey?” I ask, trying to sound like I’m joking. “If so, very poor hiding technique.”

She immediately blushes, but it’s not the blush of someone who’s been caught with a boyfriend in her bedroom. It’s a defensive blush, the kind that signals embarrassment but also warning.

“Oh,” she says, adjusting her hoodie so it’s better covered. “No, it’s not—”

The longer I look, the worse it gets. There’s a patch of blue under the red, like a developing bruise. It’s not the clean oval of a love bite, but the irregular splatter of a firm grip. “Arabella, what the hell happened?”

“Nothing happened. I don’t know what it is.”

“You don’t know what it is?” I repeat.

“It’s probably the one from the showcase.”

She cannot think I’m actually that stupid. “That was ages ago,” I point out.

“It was a bad one,” she doubles down. “It’s still healing, that’s all.”

I let the lie breathe for a moment. “Well it certainly didn’t look like that last we talked,” I say. “And that bruise was on your shoulder. Your other shoulder.”

“I said I don’t know,” she snaps, her voice suddenly sharp. “It’s just a bruise. We did contact improvisation this week, and my partner’s an idiot. Maybe it’s from that—I don’t keep a diary of my injuries.”

“What type of improv involves someone putting their hands around your neck?” I ask.

She glares at me, not in the way a teenager glares at her father, but in the way a wolf glares at a predator encroaching on its territory. “You’ve never done contemporary partnering, so you wouldn’t get it.”

“I just—” I stop. “I want to make sure you’re safe.”

She rolls her eyes, but she’s blinking too much, and I can see the way her hands are twisting the fabric of her sleeve into a rope. “I am. It’s fine.”

I want to ask more, but every line of inquiry feels like a minefield. I think about Chloe’s endless lectures on “keeping the channel open” and decide to let it go. For now.

We talk for a few more minutes, mostly about logistics—passport renewals, whether or not she wants to fly business class (“absolutely not, I’ll die of embarrassment”), the essentials of Christmas dinner.

We say our goodbyes, and I promise to text her the second I get the official approval from the court. She hangs up first, and for a minute I just sit there, staring at the black screen, at my own haggard reflection, wondering if I have the right to be worried or if this is just another overreaction in a long history of overreactions.

I try to tell myself it’s nothing. Maybe she really did just knock her neck against a locker and forget about it. But then I think about all the things I’ve read, all the horror stories of foster care, all the times I’d told myself, “It’s better now, they’re vetted, there’s a system in place.” I know how systems work. I know they’re just stories we tell ourselves to feel better about what we can’t control. So I make a note, mental and literal, to bring it up with Ashley tomorrow.

When I finally go to bed, I dream about the pizza place in Chicago. Arabella is sitting across from me, but every time I try to speak, she stands up and leaves. The dream repeats, over and over, until I wake up drenched and shivering.

.𖥔 ݁ ˖ .𖥔 ݁ ˖ .𖥔 ݁ ˖ .𖥔 ݁ ˖

Weeks pass. Not in a “blink and you’ll miss it” way, but in the slow, stomach acid fashion of British train delays and dental appointments that move but never resolve. My work schedule turns into a patchwork of emails, court mandated parenting modules, and waiting for updates from Arabella’s caseworker. I ask about the bruises—there are more of them now, I’ve counted—and Ashley says she’s “looking into it.”

The first call, she said, “Probably a dance injury. They’re very physical at her school.”

The second call, she said, “She’s withdrawn, but not at risk.”

The third call, she said, “I’ve conducted a wellness check. Arabella’s not reporting any concerns.”

Which makes sense, if your definition of “concerns” is limited to things you’re willing to articulate to a state appointed stranger in a cubicle. It’s a classic administrative dodge: agree with the complaint, then invalidate it. I can respect the move, but it doesn’t make me less sick.

Today is Sunday, which means Arabella and I are supposed to call, which means ten minutes of circling my own house, figuring out what I’ll say if she picks up and I find another injury to add to the list, or if she doesn’t pick up at all. I set up the laptop in the kitchen, because that’s where the light is best, and because there’s something childishly optimistic about pretending this is a normal family interaction.

When she calls, it’s video. She’s on camera, full face, chin on fist, the last remnants of the bruising on her neck slightly visible. She looks so tired it makes my teeth ache.

“Hey,” she says, monotone, as if we’re already mid-conversation.

“Hey, love. You look—” (like you’ve been in a car accident) “—prepared for battle.”

She cracks half a smile. “I’ve got a history test Tuesday over World War II. I’m going to fail the written portion.”

“I doubt that. I bet you know more than your teacher already.”

She scoffs. “Right, well he thinks Hitler was Italian.”

I let that sit. It’s the first time she’s tried to be funny in weeks.

“Do you want help?” I offer.

Arabella makes a face like she’s just bitten into a lemon, but then relents. “Yeah, I guess.”

“Do you want the state approved version, or the real one?”

“State approved. If I write the real one, I’ll get sent to the guidance office again.”

I settle in, balancing the laptop on my knees. “Alright. You can break it down like this: number one, the Treaty of Versailles ruined Germany’s economy and made everyone in Europe deeply resentful. Number two, the Great Depression, which made everyone even more miserable. Number three, Hitler appears, blames everyone else, and suddenly all the problems seem like they can be fixed if you just shout loud enough and hate a few specific people.”

Arabella is listening, not in the passive way most students do, but with a twitchy alertness. She taps her pen against the desk, staccato rhythm, and lets me I talk for ten minutes straight—about appeasement, about Chamberlain’s umbrella, about how nobody in Britain wanted to fight so they kept pretending Hitler would just get bored if you ignored him long enough.

I try to make it funny, because she hates being lectured. She listens, actually listens, and at one point I catch her smiling at the screen before she remembers to frown again. It’s the first time in weeks she looks like a person instead of a warning sign.

I finish with, “And then America shows up, pretends they’ve been there all along, and everybody rewrites the ending so they’re the heroes.”

“Is that really how you see it?”

“That’s really how it was,” I say, “but if you want a better grade, talk about global cooperation and the United Nations and, I don’t know, the power of hope.”

Arabella drops her pen and stares at the screen. Her face is pale, her eyes dark as ever, but there’s a faint shine to them. “You’re actually good at this,” she says.

“At teaching?”

“At not being annoying,” she clarifies, and for a moment, I feel like I’ve won a lottery nobody else knows exists.

“You’d still fall asleep,” I tease.

She smiles again, then suddenly goes very quiet. Her eyes go glassy, and before I can process it, a single tear rolls down her cheek. She wipes it away, quick and angry, but not quick enough for me to pretend I didn’t see it.

I don’t say anything for a few seconds, because I’m afraid if I do, she’ll hang up. But then she fidgets, and the cuff of her sleeve rides up, and I see another bruise—this one lighter, greenish at the edges, like it’s healing.

“Who’s doing it?” I say, careful not to say it in a way that could be used as evidence later.

“Doing what?”

I nod at her wrist. “The bruises.”

She doesn’t answer. Instead, she goes back to the test. “What was Operation Barbarossa?”

“The German invasion of the Soviet Union,” I say, but I won’t be thrown off. “Arabella, you know you can tell me anything, right?”

She sighs, and I see the whole face collapse, just for a second. “I told you, I’m just clumsy.”

The words aren’t lining up with the tension in her face. I’m trained to notice these things; half my job is reading the difference between what people say and what they mean. I try to calibrate my response so it’s not too dramatic but also not too casual.

“If something’s wrong,” I say, “you can tell me.”

“Nothing’s wrong.” She tries to look unbothered, but it’s an effort. “Just tired.”

I want to believe her, but I can’t. I know this dance. The first step is always “it’s nothing.” The second is “it’s not that bad.” The third is admitting you need help, which is usually too late.

“You’ve been tired for weeks, love. Did something happen with Lydia?” I try, careful not to sound like I’m accusing.

She sniffs, and for a second I see the child in her, all anger and confusion and nowhere to put it. “No. She’s fine. She’s nice, actually. Better than the last one.”

“So what is it?” I ask.

Arabella fixes her gaze on the middle distance, as if there’s a script taped to the wall behind her. “I asked Ashley about switching placements, but she said no. There’s nowhere else to put me.”

This is news to me. “When did you ask?”

“Last week. I didn’t want to make a thing of it.”

I want to ask why she never mentioned this, but I know the answer already. She didn’t want to disappoint me. Or maybe she didn’t want me to think she couldn’t handle it. Or maybe she just didn’t want another adult telling her everything was fine when it obviously wasn’t.

“Why do you want to leave?” I ask. She goes very still. In the background, I hear the faint clatter of cutlery, someone laughing in another room.

“It’s not about Lydia,” she says quietly.

“So it’s Miles, then?” I deduce. “Has he…done something?”

She shakes her head, too quickly. “No. He’s just annoying. He’s always around, he never leaves me alone. He gets into my stuff, tries to get me to hang out with him. It’s like, can you not?”

I have to bite back the urge to start shouting, to demand she tell me everything right now, but I know it won’t work. I remember what Liam said: Some children in care learn to present a certain narrative, especially if they think it will make them seem more normal, or less of a burden.

“If you want to stay with me, I’ll make it happen.” I say, and mean it, but the words get caught in the splintered space where a better parent would have found a way to keep her here in the first place. “You just have to tell me.”

She smiles, but it’s a grimace. “Please don’t make me tell you no again, Harry.”

The pain in my chest is so sharp it’s almost funny. “I’m not trying to force you. I just want you to know you’re not trapped.”

She doesn’t answer right away, then, just as quickly as it started, she wipes her eyes. “Can we go back to the war stuff? I want to ace this stupid test.”

I nod, and for the next half hour, we pretend. I quiz her on dates, on names, on the difference between the Eastern and Western Fronts. She answers every question, never once letting her voice waver.

After we hang up, I realise my hands are shaking. I try to picture myself at fifteen, alone in a house full of strangers, waiting for the next bad thing to happen. I try to imagine what I’d want someone to do.

I make a plan to call Ashley first thing in the morning, but I already know what she’ll say. “We’re monitoring the situation.” “It’s being handled.” “She’s resilient.”

Maybe she is. But I’m not.

[hryptid]

Vancouver, 06.07.18

[lowkeyharry]

Spaces - Part 8

✨ summary: arabella learns harry is a man of his word.

🍒 word count: 5.9k

🪩 masterlist

A R A B E L L A

Three weeks isn’t long enough to forget a city, but it’s long enough for the dreams to stop. It’s been twenty one days since I left London, and nineteen since I got placed with Lydia and her son, Miles. I know all of this because Lydia is obsessed with commemorating shit—she’s the type who buys you a card titled “Happy Three Week Anniversary of Living With Us” and tape it to your door. I have five of these already, including one for “Congrats on Your First Week of Sophomore Year.”

The new foster place is a skinny brick row house in a part of Chicago that’s trying really hard to outpace its gentrification, like it’s in a speed walking competition with itself. Lydia is a nurse who works weekends and collects cross stitch patterns of curse words. Miles is one of those water polo players who’s already got a college offer and the arrogance to prove it. They’re both at her sister’s in Wheaton for dinner, which means I have the whole house to myself and am using this power exclusively to eat microwaved quesadillas and talk shit with strangers on the internet.

Except not really. Because as soon as I finish the last triangle of cheese and limp tortilla, my phone buzzes with a reminder: “FaceTime Harry — 4:00pm.” I wonder if he’s set an identical reminder in his phone, or if he just remembers by sheer force of obsessive need.

We talk two or three times a week now. I wonder how long this will last—if, eventually, the novelty will wear off and we’ll return to the distant planets we both prefer. But for now, I kind of like it. We usually FaceTime, because that way neither of us has to worry about running out of things to say—when you can see the other person, silence is less awkward.

I stare at the screen for five minutes before I remember that American time is not the same as London time, and it’s probably a million o’clock for him already. I click the FaceTime button. It rings twice before he answers, which is typical. He always picks up on the second ring, like he’s been rehearsing for the exact millisecond to seem normal.

Harry is sitting on the floor in front of the fireplace, legs crossed like a deranged yoga instructor, wearing a hoodie and socks, which means he’s either taken or nap or gotten back from a run. He looks tired, but in a way that suggests he’s making an effort not to. I notice right away that the art in the back of the living room has been moved and there’s a stack of books where Chloe’s weird pottery used to be.

“Hey, darling,” he says, and for a second I almost roll my eyes, but then I don’t, because it’s not as annoying as it was the first time he said it.

“Hey,” I reply, and for a moment, there’s this weird, tender respite between us, like neither of us wants to fire the opening shot of the evening.

He beats me to it. “You’re home alone?”

“Yeah. Lydia is at her sister’s. Miles is probably smoking weed in their basement.”

He grins. “What a rebel.”

“It’s Illinois,” I remind him. “You can buy weed at a drive through if you have a coupon.”

He makes a face like he can’t tell if I’m joking, which is fair because I can’t either. He’s got a mug of something steamy, but I don’t think he’s drinking coffee at this hour. It’s tea, because of course it is. “You sound like you’re settling in. You like it there?”

I think about it. “Yeah. I do. It’s not—” I search for the word. “It’s not weird, like some of the other homes. Lydia is actually pretty chill. They’re nice. I mean, it’s temporary. But it always is.”

He smiles, but then there’s a pause, and I know something is coming. Eventually. He always does this—says the nice stuff first, then sneaks the unpleasantness in the middle. “You started school this week, yeah? How is it?”

“Yeah, it’s fine,” I say, which is the default answer and probably all he really wants to know, but then I remember I’m supposed to be trying, so I elaborate. “I actually missed it. We had an assembly about vaping and why it’s a gateway to…Satanism?”

I don’t tell him I missed it because the group home was a nightmare of relentless, hungry chaos, or because I crave routine like a dog craves a locked door.

“Is it working?” he laughs. “Do you feel more susceptible to Satan now?”

“I’m not sure. The new principal is scarier than the old one, so maybe.” I glance past the screen, trying to look casual. “You look exhausted. Did Parliament collapse or something?”

“Thanks, Arabella,” he deadpans, then actually laughs. “There’s a minor scandal brewing, but nothing that can’t be solved with a strongly worded apology and several million pounds in hush money.”

“Sounds like your wheelhouse.”

“It is,” he agrees, without irony.

We talk about my classes, and he’s insufferable about my math grade (“This is a safe space for STEM achievement,” he says, like he invented the phrase), and I ask if he’s still working with the boring party or if he’s finally moved on to the fun one. He’s consulting for an independent, which is apparently “so much less of a clown car,” but he won’t say who, because political loyalty is second only to actual royalty in his mind.

We orbit like this for a while. It’s the safest we’ve ever been. No big emotional minefields, just regular, dad level banter, if your dad was a reformed supervillain who knew how to use social media.

Finally, he goes, “So, your caseworker called me yesterday.” This is how he always introduces a topic he knows I’ll hate: as a joint operation, like I should already know the terms.

“Ashley?” I ask.

He nods. “She’s been…very diligent, actually. I think she’s on a mission to prove American social services are as good as ours.”

“That’s a bit of an uphill battle,” I murmur. “What’d she want?”

“We were talking about a court appearance to formalise visitation,” he tells me. “I’ll need to be there in person. Two weeks from Monday.”

My stomach does a somersault. “Court date? I thought it was going to take weeks. Didn’t she say the judge was booked out?”

“They moved it up because it’s uncontested,” he says. “And they said it was a priority to get it sorted before the school year ramps up.”

I force myself to sound normal. “I thought we were waiting on the paternity test?”

Harry makes a face. “We already got the results.”

This is news to me. “When?”

“A few days ago. They just had to confirm what was already obvious.”

“You didn’t say anything. Neither did Ashley.”

He grins sheepishly. “Since Genevieve and I did one before you were born, it was all pretty anticlimactic. I guess it slipped my mind.”

“That’s the kind of thing you tell people,” I say, but I can’t decide if I’m actually mad or just playacting.

“I know,” he says. “I’m sorry. Did you think it’d prove the opposite?”

“I was taking your word for it,” I admit. “Still. It’s weird. Feels like something should change, but nothing does.”

He shrugs. “That’s how it goes, I think. One day you’re a stranger, the next you’re…less of a stranger, but still technically not allowed to hang out unless a judge says so.”

I roll my eyes. “That’s so dramatic.”

“Isn’t it?”

He lets that sit for a moment, then clears his throat. “Ashley said you’ll probably get a letter about the hearing, but the whole thing is just a formality. They might even let you come over for holidays, if that’s something you want.”

There’s a silence while I do the math in my head. I could be back in London for Christmas, or sooner, if Lydia goes on vacation or the system shuffles me again. The idea is equal parts terrifying and thrilling.

He studies me. “You alright?”

“Yeah. Just…wasn’t expecting it so soon.” I try to think of a question that won’t make me sound like an idiot. “What happens if the judge says no?”

“They won’t,” Harry says, with a confidence that is either admirable or deranged.

“But what if they do?”

“They won’t, Arabella,” he says gently. “Even if they did, I’d appeal. But I don’t think it’ll happen. Ashley said your placement is stable, and your attendance at school is a ‘positive adjustment indicator.’”

“I’ve only been in school for a week. Is that real?” I ask.

He grins. “I may have paraphrased.”

I can’t help but smile, even though my hands are suddenly cold. “Is Chloe coming?”

There’s a blip in the call, a half second lag that’s not the internet but the pause of someone trying to get their own story straight. Which means the answer is no.

“She probably would if you wanted her to,” he says carefully. “But we’re actually…well, we’re not together right now.”

It takes me a second to process. “You’re not—like—divorced, are you?”

“Not so far,” he says, and there’s a flash of something across his face, fast enough to miss if you’re not looking for it. “Just separated.”

I think about Chloe’s face at the show, the way she hugged me at the end, the way she didn’t flinch at my bluntest answers. I wonder what it takes for a person like that to leave.

I stare at him, and it hits me, all at once, that I’m the reason his marriage imploded. I feel sick. “You don’t have to do this,” I tell him. “If it’s about the court stuff. You can drop it. I’ll understand.”

He shakes his head, quick and almost panicked. “It’s not that. I promise. She left before we even asked you to move in.”

That doesn’t add up.

“But you guys seemed fine,” I tell him.

He sighs and runs a hand through his hair. “We’re trying to be, but it’s not easy. She’s been at her sister’s since she found out.”

I remember when we went on a walk in the park and he mentioned she was upset, but I figured she couldn’t be that upset if she asked Harry to introduce us, or if she came to the showcase, or if she sat across from me and tried to convince me to move in with them. Keyword: them.

“But I met her, like, twice? So I thought you worked it out.” I say, and I can’t keep the edge out of my voice. “Why’d she bother if you two have been separated this whole time?”

He looks at me, and there’s a weariness that’s almost beautiful. “Because when you’re married, you don’t just stop caring when you’re upset,” he says. “Not if you want to work it out.”

I sit with that for a while. It is not how anyone I’ve ever known works. I wonder what that’s like, to love someone and also be completely fine with them vanishing for weeks at a time. Every breakup I’ve ever seen is a screaming match, or a sudden, silent withdrawal. I can’t picture two people just mutually agreeing to back off and wait it out, like it’s a game of chess nobody wants to win.

“You think you’ll get back together?” I ask, because I want to know how much damage I’ve caused.

He smiles, but it’s the sad kind. “I hope so.”

I don’t know what to say. All I can think is that everytime I come into someone’s life, I ruin it. I try to swallow the guilt, but it just sits there.

He sees it. “Don’t do that,” he says gently.

“Do what?”

“Blame yourself. You didn’t cause this, love. I was the one who lied—it was going to catch up to me eventually.”

“That doesn’t make me feel better,” I say, because it doesn’t. “The correlation is a bit undeniable.”

I look at the clock on my wall. It’s only been twenty minutes, but I feel like I’ve aged three years. “Are you okay?” I ask him.

He nods, but I can tell he’s putting on a front. “I will be. Are you?”

I think about it. “Yeah. I’m fine.”

“You can always tell me if you’re not. That’s the deal, right?”

“Sure,” I say, but I know I probably never will. The longer I look at his face, the more I realise that this is what he wanted to tell me all along: that sometimes people do the hard thing, even when it doesn’t make sense to anyone else.

The call goes on for another hour, but eventually, Lydia comes home, and I hear her calling my name from the kitchen. I tell Harry I have to go, and he says “Text me anytime,” like he means it.

“Goodnight, Harry,” I say.

“Goodnight, Arabella.”

I hang up and just sit there for a moment, trying to imagine what it’s like to be the kind of person who doesn’t run away when things get complicated.

.𖥔 ݁ ˖ .𖥔 ݁ ˖ .𖥔 ݁ ˖ .𖥔 ݁ ˖

Court is never as dramatic as TV makes it out to be, which is saying something, because my actual life has had more courtroom appearances than the average episode of Law & Order: Teen Delinquent Unit.

Ashley is sitting next to me in the waiting room, scrolling through her phone. She’s dressed for the part: boxy blazer, polyester slacks, and a badge on her lanyard that reads “Ashley Watts, DCFS” as if anyone here would care to question her authority. Next to her is Michael, my ad litem, who is about forty but wears a tie with cartoon gavel prints on it and keeps making small talk about the Bears. He tries to ask about school, but I answer in monosyllables, and after a few minutes he gives up and resumes his lifelong war with the coffee machine.

The door to the courtroom is closed, but through the frosted glass I can see the shape of Judge Hanson’s head, bald and perfectly round, moving at random intervals behind his massive bench. I know it’s him because I saw his profile last time I was in this exact courthouse, when I was eight and the Monroe situation reached its spectacular, televised conclusion. There’s something poetic about bookending my foster care experience with the same judge, like a sad, administrative ouroboros.

It’s 8:57. Court is at 9:00 sharp. Harry is not here.

Not that I’m surprised. If I were going to bail on a situation, I’d do it at the last possible second, too. I imagine him in a hotel room, rehearsing lines into the mirror, then chickening out and catching a flight back to London, texting a polite “so sorry, can’t make it—got hit by a truck,” from the safety of O’Hare Terminal 5. I wonder if he’d even bother to call me.

Ashley must notice my leg bouncing, because she glances up and says, “He’ll show. He called me yesterday to confirm.” She says it like it’s a sure thing, but I can tell she’s bracing herself for the opposite.

As if on cue, the door at the end of the hall opens, and there he is. Harry Styles, in person, in Chicago, walking like he’s on a fucking runway and not entering a Midwestern courthouse. He’s wearing a grey suit, the kind that screams “this is just a formality,” and a tie so dark it’s probably black, but I know from experience that it’s actually some colour with a pretentious name like “imperial blue.” He doesn’t look nervous at all, which annoys me, because I’m vibrating out of my skin.

He clocks me instantly, gives a little wave, and then beelines toward the seats. He shakes Michael’s hand, then Ashley’s, then sits beside me like we’re about to present a science project on “Why the System is so Dumb.”

“You made it,” I say, low enough that only he can hear.

“Of course I did,” he answers. The obviousness of it is almost painful. He says it like following through is a given, and it occurs to me that maybe, for him, it is.

The door opens, and a bailiff with a mustache that belongs in a biker bar pokes his head out. “They’re ready for you,” he says, and it takes me a second to realise he means us.

We file in. The room is almost empty, just us and the judge’s assistant, who’s arranging files behind the bench. Judge Hanson is perched at the elevated desk, flipping through papers like he’s expecting to find a misprint that will save him from having to rule on anything today. He looks up as we enter and fixes me with the same slightly disappointed gaze he used when I was eight, like I’d failed to do my assigned reading for “How to Not Ruin a Family.”

He nods at the adults, then looks directly at me. “Miss Monroe.”

“Judge Hanson,” I say.

We take seats at the two tables, which seems idiotic since nobody’s actually here to object or sue anybody. I’m at the end, Ashley beside me, Harry at the other end of the row like some weird sandwich of adults who all think they’re helping.

The judge clears his throat. “We are here to address the petition of one Harry Edward Styles, citizen of the United Kingdom, regarding visitation of the minor, Arabella Larke Monroe.” He glances at me. “You prefer Ellie, correct?”

“Arabella, please,” I reply. 

He notes this in the file, as if the distinction is critical to the legal outcome. “Right. As I understand it, the petition is uncontested. Is that still the case?”

Michael says, “Yes, Your Honour.” Ashley echoes the sentiment. Harry just nods, like he’s above the theatre of the American legal system.

“I see the paternity tests indicate relation. When did you first make contact with your daughter, Mr. Styles?”

“About three months ago, when she approached me in London.”

Hanson raises a brow. “So the minor initiated contact?”

Harry nods again. “Yes, Your Honour.”

The judge looks at Ashley. “Did the State facilitate this meeting?”

Ashley interjects: “No, Your Honour. Arabella located her biological father independently. The Department was made aware after the fact, and supervised subsequent communications.”

“And prior to that?” he asks Harry, his tone a little sharper. “Did you make any effort to contact her?”

Harry hesitates just long enough for me to catch it. “I wasn’t aware of her status in care. Her biological mother and I had an agreement that I would not be involved.”

I study his face, searching for any sign of calculation, but there isn’t any. He’s not here to win points, just to get through the script.

Judge Hanson digests this, then shuffles through more paper. “Your occupation, Mr. Styles?”

“Political consultant. I own a firm in London.”

“And I see you own your home. Who lives with you?” the judge asks, like this is about to be a trick question.

There’s the briefest pause. “At present, myself.”

Judge Hanson looks up and narrows his eyes. “The file indicates you’re married.”

Harry doesn’t miss a beat. “We are currently separated.”

“Do you anticipate reconciling?” Hanson asks, a little more invested than before.

Harry answers, “We’re working on it. Yes.”

The judge doesn’t react. “Does this impact your finances or your ability to provide for the minor?”

“No, sir.”

The judge studies him for a second, as if searching for cracks. “What is your intent with regard to Miss Monroe?”

Harry actually looks at me, and for a second I feel like I’m the only person in the room. “To have an ongoing relationship with her, as much as she’ll allow.”

The judge seems satisfied, but not pleased. He turns to Ashley. “Is the minor aware of these plans?”

Ashley glances at me. “Yes, Your Honour. She’s been informed of every step, and she’s expressed a desire to maintain contact.”

“Let’s ask her,” Judge Hanson says, and I realise too late that this is my cue, because Ashley taps my knee and gestures for me to stand.

I do, the legs of my chair scraping in protest. “Yes?” I say, trying not to sound like I’m already on trial.

“Miss Monroe,” the judge says, “please tell the court, in your own words, how contact with your biological father began.”

I hate talking to adults like they’re the only ones in the room, but I do it anyway. “I found out his name through my birth mother. I was in London for a summer programme and went to his house. We talked. That’s all.”

The judge tilts his head. “And was it your idea to reach out?”

“Yes. I wanted to meet him.”

“Did you feel threatened or coerced in any way?” he asks, like this is a line from a checklist.

“No sir,” I say. “I felt safe.”

He nods. “Would you like to continue seeing him?”

“Yeah,” I reply, a little more confident. “It’s what I want.”

Judge Hanson lets that sit for a moment, then turns to Ashley. “Ms. Watts, what is your assessment?”

Ashley puts on her “I’m the adult in the room” voice. “Miss Monroe is currently placed with the Bowen family. The home is stable, the placement is appropriate, and there have been no issues reported since intake. She’s doing well in school and there are no outstanding disciplinary actions. She’s been in virtual contact with Mr. Styles for five weeks. No incidents have been reported.”

“And your recommendation?” he prompts.

“Given Arabella’s age—she’ll be sixteen soon—and her history of independent functioning, we recommend unsupervised visitation. She and Mr. Styles have been in consistent contact for two months without incident. We further recommend that, after a successful home study and completion of state mandated parenting courses, visitation in the United Kingdom be permitted.”

I try not to laugh, because the idea of Harry in a “Parenting 101” seminar is so deranged it could be a sitcom pilot.

Judge Hanson turns to Michael, who has barely moved this whole time. “Mr. Smith, any concerns as ad litem?”

Michael flips open his own folder, as if he’s not already read it a dozen times. “No objections, Your Honour. Arabella has expressed a clear preference and appears to be making well informed decisions. There are no red flags in Mr. Styles’ background, and he’s fully compliant with the state’s requirements.”

The judge grunts, then turns back to Harry. “You are aware of Arabella’s history in the system? Her placement disruptions and legal record?”

“Yes, Your Honour.”

“And you still wish to pursue a relationship with her?”

He smiles, and I want to crawl out of my skin. “Absolutely.”

The judge raises one eyebrow, just a little. “Are you prepared to comply with all DCFS requirements and home studies, including any supervision parameters?”

“Yes, Your Honour.”

The judge sighs, in that way adults do when the outcome is obvious but they still have to make it look like a real decision. “I rarely grant unsupervised visitation at the outset, Mr. Styles. Especially not across international lines. But given the circumstances, her age, and Arabella’s clear agency in this matter, I see no reason to stand in the way. I’m going to approve the recommendation, subject to monthly review.”

There’s a pause. Nobody reacts, because in foster care world, nobody ever gets what they want on the first try.

“Anything further?” Hanson asks.

Ashley shakes her head. “No, Your Honour.”

Judge Hanson bangs the gavel—an unnecessary flourish, but I get the sense he enjoys it—and says, “Case number 17-2290 is hereby resolved. Good luck, Miss Monroe. Mr. Styles.” He gives a little nod to Harry, then immediately starts on the next file.

The second we’re dismissed, the room sort of resets—everyone going back to their factory settings. Ashley shakes the judge’s hand like she’s closing escrow. Michael collects his folders and makes a joke about “at least this time no one threw a chair.”

Before I can even blink, Ashley shepherds us into a conference room while Michael heads off to his next disaster. Harry and I sit on opposite ends of the table, which is more for the visual than the emotional distance, and Ashley opens a folder so thick it could double as a booster seat.

“First off,” she says, “congratulations. That went about as smoothly as possible.” She actually means it, which is disturbing. “There’s some follow-up paperwork.” She slides a stack toward Harry, who flips through the first few pages like he’s expecting a pop quiz on Illinois child welfare law.

She gives me a quick, sanitised debrief. She makes it sound like parole, which, to be fair, it kind of is.

We cover a lot of territory. Visitation policies (“The State expects you to refrain from overnight visits for at least two months”), phone call etiquette (“No calls after 10pm unless it’s a documented emergency”), and the home study, which is basically a reverse job interview where Harry has to prove we won’t end up on the five o’clock news.

At the end, Ashley slides a stack of forms across the table and points to where Harry needs to sign. “Initial here, and here. Full signature on this page. You’ll need to sign that one in front of a notary. This is your copy.”

Harry signs where she tells him to, pen gliding over every liability clause, and it occurs to me that he’s probably signed more NDAs than birthday cards. At one point, she hands me my phone, which I’d forgotten was even confiscated. I power it on and am greeted by eight notifications, three of which are from Harry, reminding me not to “do anything drastic” before court.

Ashley stands, gathers her folders, and says, “Harry, we’ll be in touch about the home visit. Arabella, I signed you out for the whole morning. Take a victory lap, but be back by noon.”

Translation: she’s not driving across two zip codes to drop me when she could be home watching true crime documentaries about kids like me.

She looks between me and Harry, then decides the situation is safe enough to abdicate. “If you need me, text,” she says, and then she’s off.

For a minute, Harry and I just sit there. Not speaking. Not even breathing, really. He checks his phone. I unlock mine and pretend to be interested in the email backlog, but really I’m watching the seconds tick upward, waiting for the next instruction. There isn’t one.

Finally, Harry sighs and says, “That was a lot easier than I thought it would be.” He turns to me, eyes all soft edges, like he’s surprised by the shape of the outcome. “I mean, I knew they’d grant it, but I was expecting more resistance. More drama.”

“Guess we’re just not that interesting.” I don’t mean for it to come out so flat, but my brain is still catching up.

He tilts his head. “Are you alright?”

I want to say yes, but the truth is, I’m dizzy with how fast everything happened. “I just… I guess I didn’t think you’d actually do it.”

He gives this injured sort of smile, the kind you make when you’ve been accused of something you’re secretly guilty of. “I told you I would.”

I nod, but it’s automatic. “Yeah, I guess you did.”

Now he looks uncertain. “Isn’t this what you wanted?”

“No, it is,” I say. “I mean… it is. It’s just—” I search for a better word, but it never arrives. “Weird.”

I see it—this flash of something real, not the version of him that’s polished and self effacing, but the version that maybe wants this as much as I do, even if we both pretend otherwise. “It’s weird for me too.”

I expect him to make a joke, or pivot to something lighter, but instead he just stands and offers his hand, like he’s inviting me to a wedding or a funeral. I get up, and he pulls me in for a hug. Not a tentative half pat, but a full, bone crushing wrap of arms around my shoulders. For three seconds, it’s like I have an exoskeleton made entirely of his nerves and whatever cologne he’s remembered to wear this morning. I think about resisting, just to be a shit, but the truth is it’s exactly what I need, so I let it happen.

When he lets go, there’s something unstitched in his face, but I can’t tell if it’s happiness or fear or just a general malfunction in the software.

“Is there a tradition for post court celebration?” he asks. “I’ve never had one go this well before. Champagne is probably illegal, so perhaps…lunch?”

“Sure,” I say, because there’s nothing else to do and no one waiting for me at home.

We leave the courthouse, and the city is exactly the same as before, which is a disappointment. It feels like there should be some marker, some “after” to compare with the “before.” But it’s just more of the same—a muggy September afternoon, a line of bored drivers at the curb, the usual army of government workers power walking to their next disappointment.

Harry leads the way to the L station, navigating like he’s memorised the city’s arteries, or at least faked it well enough to convince his own legs. He moves with purpose, which is so at odds with his usual “drift until caught” aesthetic that I wonder if he’s faking it for my benefit. We make a game out of crossing intersections before the walk signal, like if we get hit by a car it’s the city’s fault and not ours.

“You seem to know your way around,” I say.

He shrugs. “Northwestern’s only fifteen miles from here.”

“That’s like an hour away,” I point out. “And a completely different biome.”

“I used to come into the city a lot, actually. Even when I didn’t have a reason.”

“With Genevieve?” I ask, just to see if he’ll flinch.

He doesn’t. “Sometimes. She loved the city. Used to drag me to all the museums and then complain about the tourists.”

I try to imagine Harry in this city, walking the streets, maybe holding hands with a married woman and pretending it didn’t matter. It makes me want to shake him, but also makes me feel sorry for him. It’s a confusing cocktail.

“You know she still lives here?” I ask.

He raises his eyebrows. “I didn’t know that.”

“Her husband is a state rep. They have, like, a family. Three kids, big house in Wilmette.” I say this flat, like it’s trivia and not a funhouse mirror version of what my life could have been.

“I thought he was the mayor?”

“He was. About fifteen years ago,” I deadpan. “Now he gets paid to yell about taxes and how Chicago is the crime capital of the world.”

“Ugh,” he says. “I’d rather be dead than at that dinner table.”

We get on the train. It’s half empty, which is rare, but it means we can both sit and pretend not to notice each other. He stretches his legs out and taps the edge of the seat, like he’s testing the structural integrity of public transport.

We end up at a pizzeria that probably hasn’t changed in forty years. The booths are upholstered in red vinyl and the menus are sticky with a decade of fingerprints. We split the vegetarian, and the waitress calls him “sweetie,” which is funny, because he’s clearly older than her by at least a decade, but he takes it in stride.

“How’s Chloe?” I ask, because I know if I don’t, he’ll think I’m avoiding it.

He’s quiet for a second, like he’s arranging his answer into neat little boxes. “She’s good. Busy. She wanted me to tell you to call her, if you want. No pressure.”

I nod, but my brain starts spinning immediately. I imagine a dozen scenarios, all of which involve her telling me to stay away from her husband, or thanking me for the pleasure of blowing up her life. I try not to let it show. “What for?”

“She just… misses you, I think,” he says. “You don’t have to, obviously. But I think she’d like it.”

I can’t imagine what she’d want to say to me. “Is she going to try to convince me to move to London again?”

He laughs. “No, I think she’s finally accepted that you’re not going to be swayed by English breakfasts or rain or the Queen. We both respect your decision. She just wants to talk.”

I think about it. “Maybe.”

We don’t talk about the court, or the paperwork, or even the looming DCFS home study, but we talk about everything else. He asks about Lydia (“She’s fine”), about Miles (“Less fine”), about school (“It’s just school”). I ask about London, and he describes the city like it’s a family member he misses, which makes me like it more than I should.

He tells stories about his time at Northwestern, about the terrible apartments and the even worse winter storms. I try to imagine him as a college kid, and it doesn’t fit. He must sense this, because he grins and says, “I was a mess, you know. Not so different from you, actually.”

Maybe that’s why he’s doing all this—sees some sort of redemption in saving me from myself.

“You turned out alright.”

“Some days, yes. Others, not so much.”

We finish the pizza, then linger until the waitress brings the check. Harry pays in cash, and leaves a ridiculous tip, because apparently that’s how you demonstrate class solidarity.

We step outside into the sticky air and I’m not sure what happens next, but Harry looks at me. “Can I walk you back to school?”

I want to say no, just to prove that I’m fine on my own, but it’s a long way and the last time I walked it alone I ended up being followed by a guy who wanted to sell me vape pens out of his coat. “Sure,” I reply.

We walk. The city feels different now—less threatening, more open, like I’m not just passing through but actually taking up space. I can see the school in the distance, the gothic spires of the main building rising above the haze. I slow down, dragging my feet, not because I want to, but because I’m afraid of the goodbye.

We stop at the gate. Harry looks at me, then at the school, then back at me. “Can I see you again before I go back?”

“If you want,” I say, almost terrified by the fact that I have to feign indifference.

“I do.”

I almost think he’s going to hug me again, but he doesn’t. He just says, “Take care, Arabella.”

“See you later, Harry,” I say.

He watches until I’m through the gate, then turns and walks away, head down, hands in pockets, just another man with too much history and not enough time.

[aridesireslove-deactivated20260]

I DO NOT write characters with trauma, they consciously choose to be born with those

[livelove-fangirl]

Reading a story you wrote when you were 13 is something that makes you realise that there was always something weird and lonely about you. Mostly weird.

[lowkeyharry]

Spaces - Part 7

✨ summary: harry starts to realise it might be too late to mend the broken ties with his daughter.

🍒 word count: 5.3k

🪩 masterlist

H A R R Y

The walk to the Linbury is a silent one, except it’s not, because Chloe’s silence is never really silent. It’s a performance, finely tuned for supreme psychological impact, and the only thing louder than the click of her boots on the pavement is the sound of her not talking to me. She’s got the demeanour of someone who has prepared a thesis on the subject of my failures but is waiting for a jury before she reads it out.

I am a couple of steps behind. Not because I am shorter (I am not), or slower (also not true), but because Chloe is propulsive, and she’s had two weeks of living with her sister and a rolling boil of unresolved marital indignation to burn off. The last several days, we’ve exchanged all essential information via text, including but not limited to: the status of a package that was delivered to the house, the updated time for Arabella’s performance, and, most recently, the exact shade of blue I apparently cannot differentiate from black when matching my own shirts to my own trousers. There was an emoji in that last one, but I still haven’t figured out what it’s supposed to convey.

We’re almost at the river when Chloe finally stops, dead in the middle of the pavement, and wheels round on me. “Did you bring the tickets?”

I produce them with a flourish. “Of course.”

She looks at the envelope, then at me, then back at the envelope. “I thought you were going to email them to me.”.

“I thought it would be more—tactile,” I say. I was actually terrified of forwarding them and deleting the originals by mistake, but she doesn’t need to know that.

She makes a sound somewhere between a sigh and a warning shot. “Harry,” she says, “We need to get better at this.”

“At what?”

“At being a functioning unit,” she says, lowering her voice so as not to spook the couple behind us, who have decided to tailgate our marital disintegration as if it’s immersive theatre. “You have to communicate. You can’t just show up and expect me to guess your intentions.”

I could point out the irony of this, but I have an intuition that it would not go well. “I’ll try harder.”

She softens marginally. “I’m sorry. It’s just… this is important to her. And I don’t want us to fuck it up.”

We resume walking. She’s still a half step ahead, but now it feels less like a military formation and more like choreography. The sky is a pastiche of blue and orange, the river glinting with the oily anticipation of a thousand discarded ambitions, and by the time we reach the theatre entrance, we are at least presenting as a team.

“She’s in two pieces,” Chloe says, toggling to the evening’s running order on her phone. “One in the second act, then she’s in the finale.”

“It’s actually four,” I correct, because I have the printout folded in my coat pocket, and because I am a petty, relentless arsehole. “She’s doing a pas de deux, the corps in the Berlioz, then two contemporary numbers.”

She side eyes me, suspicious of this unlicensed information. “How do you know that?”

“She told me.” I try to sound bored, like I don’t care that my own daughter is a minor celebrity in a world I don’t understand. “I can make an excuse if you need to slip out early.”

Chloe slows her pace, the implication of the offer hitting a mark I didn’t mean to aim for. “I want to see it. Obviously.”

Obviously.

The thing about marriage is that after a while, you realise every conversation is a rehash of an earlier conversation, lightly reupholstered for the season. The ticket debate will give way to an argument about navigation (her phone’s better, but I’m faster), then to a debate about whether my work shoes can “handle” three blocks of wet pavement. It’s all ritual, the stalling before real hostilities.

The Linbury is already humming when we arrive, the lobby filled with clusters of high functioning parents and their precision engineered offspring. Chloe scans the room, clocking the competition in a single pass, while I duck my head and focus on not making eye contact with anyone who looks like they might want to talk to me.

We find our seats, which are middle row, dead centre, and close enough to the stage to see the musicians tuning up in the pit below. Chloe sits, legs crossed, and immediately begins scrolling through the programme again, eyes darting between names as if cross referencing with an internal blacklist. She pauses at Arabella’s name, which is printed in a smaller font under the header "Summer Intensive: Emerging Talents," and I watch as something almost like pride flickers across her face before she catches herself and goes blank again.

“I wish she’d let us take her out to dinner after,” Chloe says, not looking at me. “It feels weird to just—watch, then leave.”

“She and I are going to dinner,” I correct. “You said you weren’t sure if you’d be up for it.”

She bristles. “Because she doesn’t know I’m still living at Maddie’s, and I’d rather not announce it at a Nando’s.”

“She’s not an idiot, Chloe.”

“She’s a child, Harry. She’s spent half her life being let down by people who over promise and under deliver.”

I try to think of something to say, but I can’t. This is the new normal: Chloe gets the last word, and I collect the echo.

There are two minutes to curtain when Chloe finally speaks again. “Have you talked to her again? About getting custody?”

“Not really,” I admit. “She’s been up to her neck in rehearsals. I didn’t want to push.”

“You’re always afraid to push. It’s your defining trait.”

“I’m trying not to fuck it up. That’s my other defining trait.”

Chloe locks her phone and finally makes eye contact. “You’re going to have to bring it up again. She needs to know we’re not just…making a gesture.”

I look at her, careful to keep my voice at a whisper “She knows I’m serious. She’s just not ready.”

“She’ll never be ready,” Chloe says, and there’s a note in her voice that sounds like she’s speaking from experience. “No one is. But we need to be clear. Otherwise, she’ll think we’re just being nice for the summer and then she’s back to square one.”

I try to frame this as a reasonable disagreement, but I know she’s right. “I’ll bring it up again tonight. At dinner.”

“Good,” says Chloe, and then leans back, as if she’s just completed a particularly gruelling round on an exercise bike. “I’ve decided I’m up for it.”

The house lights dim, and the audience hushes itself. A woman with a posh accent comes onstage to welcome the crowd, recites a list of sponsors and bursaries, and then introduces the evening’s performances. The first two acts are described as “a journey from tradition to the cutting edge of contemporary movement,” which I translate as “two hours of watching teenagers be more talented than I will ever be.”

The first two numbers are a parade of technical prowess and soul erasing sameness. Twenty bodies, all doing the same thing at the same time, each one so perfectly disciplined that I’m not even sure which ones are male and which are female. There’s a kind of beauty in it, but also a horror—like watching a colony of bees, or a particularly well drilled army. I clap on autopilot, though Chloe is silent, eyes flicking between the stage and the house, as if searching for some hidden flaw.

The next piece is the one Arabella warned me about: Romeo and Juliet, Balcony Pas de Deux. She’s Juliet, obviously. The choreography is beautiful but dangerous; there are lifts and spins that would give even the most seasoned parent heart palpitations. At one point, she’s standing on the boy’s thigh, balanced like a bird, and then he catches her and whirls her over his head. The whole thing is ethereal, but it’s also so romantic, so covertly sexual, that I have to resist the urge to look away.

Chloe doesn’t. I hear her gasp, then she leans in and whispers, “She’s—” but never finishes the sentence. There’s something on her face I’ve never seen before, a mixture of awe and sorrow.

The variation is short, but it feels like a lifetime. Arabella lands every turn, every impossible reach, and when the boy fumbles the catch, she adjusts mid air, makes it look like it’s meant to be that way. The crowd claps, some even stand, and I see a few parents nudging each other, maybe recalibrating the rankings in their heads.

As the lights shift for the next set, I realise I haven’t breathed in a minute. Chloe looks at me, eyes bright and just a bit glassy. “You didn’t say she was that good,” she says, but I actually don’t think this is the start of another tiff.

“I didn’t know how to say it,” I reply.

We watch the rest. Arabella appears again, as a part of the corps in a group ballet—sameness again, but her movements still have an urgency the others lack, a refusal to be completely drowned in the collective. Next comes the first contemporary piece, a writhing, anguished thing set to a score of dissonant strings and amplified heartbeats. Arabella is centre stage this time, and the effect is immediate—she’s transformed, every line sharper, every movement loaded with intent. She throws herself across the stage, collapses, rolls, springs up again. At one point, she’s the only dancer moving, all the others frozen in tableau, and the silence from the audience is total. She looks like she could break apart at any second, and I realise that this is the point: to be watched, and to dare anyone to look away.

I sneak a glance at Chloe. Her hands are folded, lips pressed tight, eyes fixed and glistening. She doesn’t say anything until the end, when the entire cast collapses in a heap and the audience erupts into applause.

The curtain call is a blur. Arabella bows, and for the first time, I see her smile. Not a huge grin, but a soft, almost private satisfaction. The applause is thunderous, and even though I know she hates attention, she stays at the front, bowing again with the other students until the house lights come up.

The lobby is an inferno. Every parent, sibling, and hanger-on has flooded the front hall, so it’s part mosh pit, part photo op, with the lights cranked to maximum and at least three different languages fighting for space in the air. Chloe and I are wedged against the wall by the coat check, which gives us a tactical view of the battlefield but makes it impossible to extract ourselves without breaching half a dozen sacred social boundaries. The only thing keeping the crowd from total collapse is a velvet rope, and a woman with the voice of an air traffic controller trying to call out names over the heads of a hundred patrons.

Arabella emerges from the side doors about fifteen minutes after curtain call, but the effect is instant. She’s still in rehearsal blacks, the makeup mostly scrubbed off but leaving a residue of glitter at her temples. Her hair is twisted into a claw clip, but two curls have already escaped and are curling up from the humidity. She sees us at once, and her face does a sort of internal cartwheel before she manages to put on a civil, maybe even happy, smile.

Chloe is in motion before I can even clear my throat. “You were magnificent,” she says, arms open, and for a second I think Arabella is going to recoil, but she lets herself be hugged. It’s brief, but real, and when they separate, Chloe keeps her hand on Arabella’s shoulder as if to anchor her to the moment.

I try to be casual. “You were—” I fumble for the right word, and settle on, “terrifying.” She gives a half smile.

“Thanks, I guess?”

“I mean it in a good way,” I add. “You scared the shit out of the people in the front.”

Chloe grins. “Those are the critic seats.”

Arabella makes a noise like she’s being choked by affection. “Thanks for coming,” she says, and there is no trace of sarcasm. “I know you’re both busy.”

Chloe waves this away. “It was a privilege,” she says, and means it. “Do you have a favourite piece? From the whole programme, I mean?”

“Probably the Berlioz,” Arabella says. “It’s the only one that feels like it might collapse at any second. The choreographer’s a sadist, but he knows how to make people look good.”

There’s an energy to her now, a readiness to be seen, and I wish I’d been the kind of parent who got to see it every day. 

Chloe keeps going. “Do you want to pursue it professionally? Dance, I mean.”

Arabella’s face does the origami thing again, folding in on itself before resolving into something legible. “I like it,” she says. “But I’m not delusional. I’ll probably blow out a knee by twenty.”

“Backup plan?” Chloe asks, and I’m suddenly aware of how much she sounds like a careers advisor.

“I’m not sure,” Arabella admits. “I thought about social work, but that’s kind of a cliche.”

I want to jump in, to say that she can do anything, be anything, but then a boy—tall, probably seventeen, with the haunted look of someone who’s just missed a train and the train was his entire future—threads through the sea of parents until he’s standing right behind Arabella. He does not say her name; he just places one palm, very delicately, at the back of her waist.

She jumps a full inch off the ground, then whips around. When she realises who it is, she laughs it off in a way that is almost too casual. “Jesus, you nearly gave me a stroke.”

“Sorry, sorry,” he says, grinning too. “I’m leaving for dinner with my parents, but I wanted to apologise. For earlier.”

“Don’t worry about it,” she replies. “I should have called it.”

“You did call it,” he says. “I just didn’t listen.” His eyes flick to Chloe, then to me, then back to Arabella. “I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“Yeah,” she says, and this time it’s soft. He gives her a half-hug, and when he pulls away, he’s got that boyish blush that says he’s still figuring out his limbs and their permitted radii. Then he walks off and vanishes in the sea of bodies.

Chloe looks at Arabella, then at me, then back to Arabella. “Was that your partner?”

Arabella nods, still smiling at the space where he was. “Yeah. Max.”

“He’s very…” Chloe tries to find a word that isn’t “fit” or “intense.” “Dedicated.”

Arabella rolls her eyes. “He dropped me before curtain. That’s why I’ve got this,” she says, pointing at the bruise.

Chloe’s face flashes maternal outrage. “He dropped you?”

“Yeah, I was six feet in the air, so it was terrifying,” Arabella says. “But he felt worse than I did.”

I can’t help myself. “Does it hurt?”

She shrugs, which makes the bruise ripple under her skin. “Not really. It just looks bad. I’ll ice it when I get back.”

“It’s going to hurt a lot tomorrow,” I say, trying not to sound like I’m reading from a dad manual.

Chloe smooths her hair back, and then, with a conspiratorial tilt to her voice, says, “You want to escape before the parents’ guild comes for you?”

Arabella gives a look so darkly grateful that I almost laugh. “Please.”

We bail out through the side door and onto the street. The walk is brisk, with Chloe and Arabella side by side, leaving me to drift behind like a bodyguard who failed his background check. The whole time, I watch the way Arabella holds her arms—careful, always bracing against unexpected contact. I catch a glimpse of the bruise again, spreading deeper, and I want to murder the boy, even though I know it’s pointless.

Dinner is at a little Italian on a side street, the kind of place where the menu is scrawled on a blackboard and every table is lit by a single, unflattering pendant bulb. The host doesn’t blink at the sight of three people booking a table for four; he ushers us in, and we are seated at a wobbly round near the window.

It’s nice. For about ten minutes, it’s just three people at dinner. No history, no secrets, just the ritual of chewing and talking and not quite meeting each other’s gaze.

But then Chloe glances at me over her wine, and I feel the shift coming. “So,” she says, turning to Arabella, “when do you fly back to Chicago?”

“Monday,” Arabella replies. “Early. The school wants us out by ten a.m.”

Chloe looks at me. She doesn’t say anything, but the message is clear: now.

I clear my throat. “Have you given any more thought to—” I can’t even finish the sentence. I hate that I sound like a Victorian suitor asking for a hand in marriage.

Arabella knows immediately what I mean. Her whole posture shifts, and she puts down her fork, drawing in a measured breath. “Yeah. I have.”

The air is suddenly thick with possibility; every nerve in my body knows what’s coming, but still hopes for the alternate ending.

“It was really nice of you to offer,” she adds, “but I don’t think I’m going to do it.”

It’s a clean kill, and it lands with the force of a car accident at thirty kilometres an hour. Not fatal, but enough to crumple everything soft inside me. For a second I don’t even process it—I just stare at her, waiting for the rest of the sentence, the part where she says, Just kidding, or I’ll think about it some more. But there’s nothing else. Just the echo.

Chloe is the first to recover. “That’s okay, sweetheart,” she says, and her voice is so calm, so completely non-judgmental, that I want to buy her a medal. “It’s a big change. We understand.”

“It’s nothing against you, I just…” She stops, then forces herself to keep going. “I do better on my own. That’s all.”

There’s a raw honesty to it that makes my eyes sting. I look at Chloe, who is visibly struggling to process the idea that someone might reject an upgrade to their life on the basis of principle. Arabella glances up at me, and there’s a flicker of panic on her face, like she’s worried she’s just severed the last thread between us.

“I’m sorry,” she continues, and it’s the closest she’s come to vulnerable. “But it’s not going to change anything.”

Chloe tries again gently. “It might not be what you expect. Sometimes things that seem impossible turn out to be exactly what you need.”

“I don’t want to find out,” Arabella says. “I like what we have now. It’s enough.”

It’s not enough, but I understand. Surface level is safe. Anything deeper and the risk doubles. I feel a white hot rush of guilt, knowing that I left her to fend for herself, and now, when there’s finally an opening, I’m too late.

The conversation stalls out, and I still can’t bring myself to speak. I just stare at the bubbles in my water glass, wishing I could go back and edit my life from page one.

Arabella sees this, and immediately tries to fix it. “I’m really sorry,” she repeats, and the words are so raw, so desperately sincere, that I want to tell her never to apologise again. “I didn’t mean to let you down.”

“No, no,” I say, finding my voice. “You don’t have to be sorry. I’m proud of you, Arabella. Whatever you decide.”

Chloe nods, but I can tell she’s fighting the urge to argue. “It’s an open invitation, love. You change your mind, you let us know.”

Arabella nods, grateful for the out, and Chloe looks at me, her face an essay in patience and pity. “You can still visit her, Harry. Chicago’s not that far.”

Chloe squeezes my hand. I want to believe that this is a happy ending, but all I feel is failure. I force a smile. “Whenever you want.”

Arabella picks at her salad, which is mostly rocket and thinly shaved cheese, and I can tell from the way her fork never quite lands that she is already somewhere else. The decision has cost her something, but I can’t tell if it’s regret or just the price of peace.

Finally, Arabella breaks. She looks at me, then at Chloe, and then back at me, her eyes just wide enough to betray that she’s rehearsed this next bit. “Did your lawyer say anything about visitation?”

It’s such a direct question that it takes me a second to process. “He said you’re old enough to decide for yourself.”

She nods, chewing her lower lip. “That’s what I thought.”

I look at her, waiting for the next shoe to drop.

She fiddles with the ring on her index finger, a habit I recognise now as stalling for time. “I talked to my caseworker yesterday,” she says. “I’m not going back to the group home when I get back. They’re placing me with a family.”

Chloe asks, with the exact right amount of gentle concern, “Is that what you want?”

Arabella shrugs, but there’s a tiny tremor in the movement. “It’s not really up to me. But it’s better than the group home, I think.”

I can’t decide if this is an advancement or a new set of hazards. The idea that she’d prefer the random lottery of a new foster family to the even-odds gamble of living with me and Chloe is so bleak that I can’t hold it in my hands. But I keep my mouth shut, because I know better than to call her choices into question.

“I’ve obviously never had this problem,” Arabella says, “but sometimes foster families are weird about contact. And since I’m not sixteen yet, and you don’t…” she trails off, searching for the least punishing words. “Since you don’t have any rights, you’re technically just some guy. So they can tell me I can’t speak to you, and I’d have to listen to them, or else we’d have to go through court, and it’d be a big ordeal.”

The word “rights” lands between us. This feels like a breakup. Chloe blinks, but doesn’t flinch. I force myself not to look away.

“They could do that?” Chloe asks, and her voice is perfectly neutral.

“Yeah, I mean, once I’m sixteen it’s not really up to them, but some families are more strict than others,” she glances at me. “I think it’s a liability thing.”

A silence drops over the table like a wet towel. I look at her, then at Chloe, and I wonder what the correct answer is. Arabella’s not actually asking; she’s warning me, in case I decide it’s not worth the fight. She’s already braced for the possibility that I’ll disappear, just like her mother, just like every other adult before me.

“So if they didn’t want you to see Harry what would we have to do?” Chloe asks.

“Paperwork, mostly. Probably a court appearance to get a judge to sign off on it,” she hesitates. “Most people don’t bother. It’s a long process–might not even be worth it. But if the family is cool it shouldn’t come to that.”

It’s not even a question. Of course I’d do it, but I’m too caught up in finding the right syntax to spit it out.

Chloe breaks the spell. “Harry will talk to his lawyer,” she says, and her tone is final. “We were prepared for court anyway.”

Arabella looks at me, searching for any hint of insincerity. I nod, but it feels like the smallest gesture in the world. “Of course it’d be worth it,” I reply, and it’s all I can manage. “You’d be worth it.”

Arabella’s surprise is visible for only a nanosecond, but I see it. She was expecting a fight, or at least a minor debate about the complexity of international law. But I’ve already failed at the big things, and this is—at last—a task I can complete.

“Thanks,” she says, and I think maybe she means it, because she looks away, blinking rapidly. Chloe watches her, then me, and the space between the three of us fills up with the thick, invisible soup of all the things we want to say but know will never come out right.

“Do you know them?” Chloe asks. “The foster family?”

Arabella shakes her head, no. “Not really. It’s a woman and her son. We did a Zoom call, but mostly it was just the caseworker reading out their schedule.”

“And are foster families…” Chloe’s eyes sweep the table, then land back on Arabella. “…nice?”

Arabella gives the question a proper second’s thought. “Yeah,” she says. “Most of them are fine. Some are strict, but they’re just—” she flicks a hand, searching for the phrase, “covering their arse. Like, there’s always a social worker lurking around, so if you set the house on fire or bring drugs in, they get more criticism than a non-foster family, and they could have their licence revoked. So it’s a lot of rules, but for good reason, I guess.”

Chloe nods, absorbing this with the attention of a researcher dissecting a new strain of behaviour. “How long do you think you’ll be with this one?”

“Few months, at least. Ideally longer, but…that’s what they always say.” Her voice is bone dry, a complete evacuation of self pity.

A minute later, she asks if she can use the loo, and disappears down the hall. Chloe watches her go, then immediately leans in urgently. “You need to file the visitation paperwork tomorrow. If it comes down to it, she won’t ask.”

I was already thinking it. “I’ll do it first thing.”

Chloe looks at me, the tough love radiating off her like heat haze. “Did you hear the way she phrased it? She’s not just being polite. That was the most tragic heads up I’ve ever witnessed. And she didn’t even ask you to talk to the lawyer, like it didn’t even occur to her that you'd follow through.”

“I know, but I will,” I tell her. “I just can’t believe she’s picking foster care over us.”

“Don’t take it personally,” Chloe says, even though everything about this is personal. “Besides, she can always change her mind. Maybe she’ll come around.”

“Maybe,” I echo. “I want her to want us.”

Chloe smiles, but something about it screams, “now you know how she feels.”

“She does, Harry. She’s just too smart to say so.”

Arabella returns to the table, and we eat in silence for a bit. Arabella demolishes her pasta in record time, and I can see that she’s desperate to get out of here. We don’t speak about her not wanting to live with us, the foster family, or visitation, and after a while it all feels less like a wound and more like a fact—something we’ll have to work around, rather than fix.

Chloe glances at her watch. “It’s getting late. We should walk you back.”

Arabella shrugs. “You don’t have to.”

“I want to,” Chloe insists, and there’s no arguing with her when she gets like this. “Have you seen the men that linger outside the Royal Albert Hall after dark?”

Arabella almost smiles at that. “They’re mostly tourists and pensioners.”

“I rest my case,” Chloe replies, already out of her seat and draping her jacket over Arabella’s shoulders. “Let’s go.”

We stand, and I see that the bruise on her shoulder is even uglier in the restaurant’s harsh light—spreading down toward her elbow, black and green at the edges. She doesn’t flinch, but the way she swings her bag onto her good side is the sort of thing only another chronic self hider would notice.

The walk is less eventful than the one earlier, which is to say, none of us are actively bleeding out through our eyes. Chloe and Arabella talk quietly ahead, covering topics like the weirdness of British milk. I hang behind, half a step out of sync, trying to figure out if I’m being written out of my own story, or if this is just the middle part of a book where the hero fucks up before a dazzling third act redemption.

At the crosswalk, Chloe and Arabella both stop, letting a black cab roll past before stepping into the street. I catch up to them just as we hit the kerb on the other side, and for a second, we walk in perfect formation, three abreast, our shadows overlapping in the orange lights. I look down and see how Arabella’s shadow barely touches mine. She’s already moving away.

The dorms are in a grand Victorian building that has almost certainly hosted more aristocrats than any other structure on this street. The front door is glass, and behind it I can see two girls in matching hoodies, sitting cross legged on the floor and eating directly out of a takeaway bag. Arabella slows when she sees them, as if she’s embarrassed to be witnessed in the company of actual adults.

We stop at the steps. I don’t know if I should hug her, or shake her hand, or just wave. Chloe solves this by pulling Arabella in for a hug, then stepping back to give us space.

“Text when you get in,” Chloe says.

Then it’s just me and her. The words are heavy in my chest, but I can’t make them come out right. Arabella notices and tilts her head, giving me the world’s smallest smile.

“Are you okay?” she asks.

I want to be honest and tell her I am devastated. That she could have me and I would do everything in my power to get it right. That I’m so sorry for every day she didn’t have a family. But all I can muster is, “I’m going to miss you.”

That takes her by surprise. She looks at me, eyes wide, and for the first time she seems unsure of what to do. “I’ll miss you too,” she says.

For a moment, we stand in silence, because I have never been good at endings or apologies, and then she hugs me. Actually hugs me. I feel no hesitation, or awkwardness, or fifteen years of abandonment. It’s just a daughter hugging her father, and I never want to let go.

“Bye, Harry,” she whispers.

“Goodbye, Arabella,” I reply. “Call me before you leave, alright?”

She lets go, then climbs the steps. Before she disappears, she looks back at us, and I see it—that strange, unspoken hope that maybe things could be better next time, if there is a next time.

The door shuts behind her, and Chloe and I stand there for a long minute, not moving. I want to go back to the moment in the restaurant, or the lobby, or even the park, and do it all again. Say the right things. Hug her tighter. Tell her she’s wanted, not just tolerated. But life doesn’t work that way, and maybe it’s enough that she left with the knowledge that she could call, or write, or just exist in the world knowing someone was willing to show up for her, even if it took them fifteen years to get there.