The way home was a long one, but Josh usually enjoyed it. Out of the city, there were so many things to see and experience all the time that driving was no longer the best option anyway. Even the slight rain that fell over him was a different rain. It tasted like melancholia. It sounded like weeping trees. Everything was different out there.

Andy was different, the poor mess of a man. He looked like a puppet with its strings cut off. Would he have been better off staying in England, killing people routinely? Maybe he wouldn’t have loosened up so much. Maybe lowering his defenses had done him more harm than good. Maybe the amount of crimes he had committed was not something you could recover from.

Josh often wondered about all this. Wondering was all he could do. Andy was an adult, older than him, stubborn. He wouldn’t listen, and he would face the severity of his condition.

‘He probably started drinking years ago,’ thought Josh. This was not the attitude of someone who had just taken up a bad habit. It was like he was finally letting go and drowning in it.

The worse part of it was probably his pride. How he was all distant and pretending that everything was fine. He relied on Josh to keep him fed, boozed up, and still pretended that he was his own man. That was unbearable. Sometimes Josh wanted nothing more than to slap him across the face to wake him up from that drunken stupor. He never did. What would happen to Andy if he did get upset enough to leave? Did he have it in him to survive on his own?

Still, there was no need to abandon him, unlike Ms. Giraud had said. Josh was sure Andy could get back on his feet. It had been only six weeks since they left, and he was fine then. All he needed was to get back on his feet and rest a little while. They would save up some, get the van repaired and finally go on towards Spain. It was probably still summer enough to bathe in the Mediterranean Sea.

Josh left the road to follow the dirt track that led to the old farm. It had stopped raining, but now water had slowly seeped through the coat. Wind picked up, making the rest of the road chilly. It would be really good to go home and get changed.

Night was definitely falling when Josh reached the farm. There was a single light on, shining from the ground floor window. The door opened smoothly. Even though the building was old, it had been renovated fairly recently. Inside, the air was dry and warm, with faint rancid smell lying in wait, tell-tale sign of the condition of the sick animal living there.

Sitting on a red couch faded by the sun, Andy was reading. Josh came in quickly and removed his shoes using his heels. His socks were soaked through.

“Hey, Andy,” said Josh, a bit awkward after having had such hard thoughts about him on the way. He tried to look as non-threatening as he could. “Had a fine day?”

“Hum,” said Andy. It took him a few seconds to lower his newspaper. “Yeah, sure. I can almost get some of the sentences figured out now, did you know? Well, there are pictures and it’s not great literature but you know, it’s a start.” He held his whisky high like he was proposing a toast. His eyes gleamed. “How was your day?”

Josh wasn’t fooled a second by Andy’s broken voice. he was probably in a lot of pain right now, and the day had most likely been a living hell. Coming closer to hang his coat, he noticed how the smell seemed to come directly from Andy himself, like he was sweating vinegar. He probably was, to think of it.

“Good, good,” said Josh. “Ms. Giraud’s grand-daughter came for a visit. I had a pretty good workout. I told you about her, I think.” He tried to look innocuous before breaching into the next topic. “So, did you get anything done done today?”

Andy shifted on his seat, his eyes on the paper again. “Well, you know, the language lessons like usual, along with some cleaning. Believe it or not, old houses get messy real quick.”

That was one of the ways Andy lied to himself. He kept pretending he was busy doing something, learning French, cleaning — his own mess, more often than not —, talking about how he regularly bought bread like it was a full day’s job. Truth is, a walk to the nearest bakery and back was probably all he could manage, and Josh doubted that even the shop’s clerk was convinced.

“All right,” he said, nodding. He didn’t know what else to do. What good could come from unraveling his lies? How fragile was he underneath? Still, he was getting a bit pissed. He didn’t like being put in charge of such a big and prideful child. “It does looks pretty clean,” he said, with a hint of aggression in his voice.

Andy didn’t seem to pick up on it. He was reading again, or at least trying to. The whole newspaper was in French and no matter what he said about it, Josh knew it wouldn’t have been much different if all of it was written in Mandarin.

“Did you figure out where the short-circuit came from?” said Josh. A week ago, Andy had talked about how he felt confident about getting this one problem out of the way. Which left all the other problems the van had.

“Yeah, well, I looked,” said Andy. He shrugged, his hands in the air still holding onto the newspaper. “I think cars ain’t really my thing anyway.”

Josh answered that with a tense smile. He was bound to get angry at some point in the conversation. He leapt for a way out. “I’m gonna go have a look,” he said, and left the way he came in, grabbing his coat on the way.

Truth was, the only thing that was worse off than Andy right now was the green bulletproof van they had left England with. It had almost broken down in pieces along with the situation over a month ago now. Ultimately it had to be dragged up here by Cedric’s tractor. Cedric was the good farmer renting them the place, a friend of Ms. Giraud.

Josh crossed the yard with his coat over the head to protect himself from the rain. The weather had gotten worse. Opening the warehouse door, he lit up the van’s silhouette with a flashlight.

Seeing it as it was now took Josh back in time. Again, they had barely crossed the channel tunnel and trouble was just starting.