Page 42 of Sleep

I wasn’t a child. I was a fully grown human, and they still hurt. Words hurt. Actions hurt.

I hurt. And I hated that I did.

And here I was again, diving headfirst into helping someone else, knowing I would fail. I always did. That wasn’t me being negative and pessimistic; it was just the way things were.

Nobody ever fought for me, not even when I was right there in the room. They certainly didn’t fight for me when I wasn’t there. Mark Quinton had taught me that, the backstabbing bastard. I wasn’t even going to think about Finley.

I was spiralling into madness again, ripping large sheets of plastic off a mattress, having thrown piles of clothes onto the floor, while Jonny stood in the doorway, panic-stricken.

“Beds are for sleeping in. There are perfectly good wardrobes in this room for your clothes.” I sounded like my father, and not in a good way.

“I know,” he said quietly.

I kept ripping, angrily taking out my frustrations on a packet that allegedly contained one king-sized fitted sheet.

“I don’t expect you to do this.” His voice wasn’t strong. I didn’t blame him.

This was madness. I solved issues, problems, and Jonny had a problem that I was…solving?

“You have a nice bed right here. Good sheets. Where are your pillows?”

“Somewhere…” He stepped into the room, opening wardrobe doors in a robotic, stilted way. We’d lost our comfort, our easy interactions. Walls back up with electric fences fully charged.

“Jonny, go have a shower. Brush your teeth. All that.”

“You sound like my nanny.”

“Not your nanny. Just hopefully getting you on the road to a little bit of rest.”

“Are you going to tuck me in as well?”

“Sure. I’ll even read you a bedtime story.”

I liked when he laughed even if it was a bit forced. I liked when he did as he was told.

He disappeared out the door and left me to do this. Make the bed. What the fuck was I doing?

I found the pillows, two ergonomic memory-foam monstrosities that felt hard as rock. No wonder he didn’t sleep. I made myself at home, rolling up my sleeves as I opened more empty wardrobes. Heading across the living room to the guest room, I went through the empty shelves in there, so much wardrobe space I was dizzy with the possibilities. The things I could do with these shelves. My fabric swatches all organised. Projects hanging up. I could suddenly see it all, and it was tempting. Very tempting.

I shook myself out of my juvenile daydreams, stealing the slightly superior pillows off the guest bed—at least that had been made up fully and clearly slept in—and returned to the master bedroom.

“Who uses the guest room?” I asked casually as a freshly showered Jonny appeared wearing a bathrobe. Thank fuck for that, because I didn’t think I could have handled a wet male body right now, especially since he followed me back into his bedroom.

I wanted to scream at myself. It wasn’t like that. This was the professional me helping a friend. Nothing more. Not getting any hopes up. Hopes? What hopes?

He wasn’t Richard Gere, and I was definitely no Julia Roberts.

“Jenny, my PA,” he answered finally. “I sometimes watch her kids. She sometimes needs to stay. Saves waking up two grumpy toddlers in the middle of the night.”

I could feel my jaw dropping. I pushed it back up.

“You babysit,” I stated to the pillows as I clumsily tried to shake a stiff duvet into a duvet cover and spread it over the bed. He leant down and grabbed the corner to help but shook it the wrong way so that the cover now sat crookedly over the mattress with the duvet in a heap inside.

“I do. I’m probably the world’s worst babysitter, but Jenny makes it easy for me, and the kids get tired and pass out pretty quickly here because, as you can see, there’s nothing for them to do.”

“Good tactic.” I was trying not to smile. I knew nothing about kids. Didn’t want them. Didn’t have a parental bone in my body. Yet here was a man in a bathrobe who couldn’t even make a bed, telling me he was some kind of trusted child carer?

“Kids.” He smirked. Thank God.

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