Page 50 of Sleep

But it was different this time. There was give and take, and it was nice to be taken care of for once, an unexpected feeling that made sense in my head. I wasn’t deluded enough to believe I was some kind of princess in a fairy tale. The most I could expect out of this was a brief fling, swiftly followed by a broken heart. I knew the drill. In that respect, this wasn’t any different from the norm. My norm.

God knows where my head was, but I rolled up outside my parents’ house with no recollection of how I’d navigated the M4 all the way there. Frightening, but I was tired and weary, and the drive was blocked by the carer’s car. Having to park on the street annoyed me. Well, I was annoying with myself—doing the walk of shame up the garden path at my age.

My dad met me in the doorway. “Your idiot is in the kitchen,” he declared curtly.

“Okay.” I brushed past him and dumped my bag on the floor. “Which idiot? The one who broke Mum’s vase or the one who left the sink tap running and flooded the downstairs toilet?” Our carers were a bit like my wait staff. Sometimes in need of a little gentle guidance.

“No, you fool!” Dad half shouted. “Your idiot.”

I stopped. Because. Surely not.

Heart thumping, I stomped into the kitchen, still wearing my heels. Heels made me more confident. Taller. Impossibly so. My height was a good weapon to intimidate. Not that I needed to intimidate, especially my ex-husband, who’d been sitting at our kitchen table sipping a cup of tea but had the decency to scrabble to his feet when I burst through the door. He even held out his hands in defence.

Okay, scratch that. I needed to intimidate. Big time.

I also needed the fuck calm down, in case I went for him and punched him in the face.

For the record, I did not have a violent bone in my body. But in my head, I was throwing punches. Hard ones.

“Mabs,” he said in a voice that was a little wobbly. Good.

“Don’t Mabs me,” I snarled.

“Sit, I’m making you tea,” he said, moving gingerly over towards the kettle. “I’m not here to start a war, nor am I here to wave bloody white flags between you and Mark. He doesn’t even know I’m here.”

“Where does he think you are then?”

“In bed, getting my beauty sleep.”

“Oh, Finny.”

So easily swayed, me. Weak and stupid. I slumped into a chair and sat there, deflated, all the morning’s feelings tumbling around inside me. Happiness and sparkles mixed with doom and despair. And now I had to deal with Finley, the man I’d met outside a club in Soho, me barely eighteen and stupidly naïve. Him, the most handsomely rugged man I’d ever met, a country boy, full of innocent charm. He’d taken me home to his place, and I’d never really left. We’d married. Fought. Cheated. Hurt. So much hurt. Yet my stupid head decided I was relieved to see him. Because despite the violent end to our marriage, he still made me feel. Not love. Not fear. Just a familiarity I craved, having someone who knew me as well as he did just sit there and let me breathe.

“I…” he started but then stopped and sat down opposite me, pushing a cup towards me. Tea. I didn’t drink tea. Not that Finley would remember; Mark certainly never did. He brought me cups of tea as gestures of kindness I was supposed to be grateful for when all I wanted was to hurl them back at him. Maybe he’d known me, for a short time in my youth, but he didn’t know me anymore. Not in the way he once had.

“I need you to know,” Finley began again, “that nothing we did last weekend was done to hurt you.”

“Bullshit,” I spat. “And oh, congratulations, by the way. Thrilled for you both.” My sarcasm was, for once, perfectly on point.

“I know you’re hurt.”

“Hurt? Finny, I’m embarrassed AF. Humiliated to the bone. Hurt doesn’t even start to describe it.”

“I’m sorry.”

I said nothing, but he’d clearly got the vibe in the room because he squirmed uncomfortably and took a sip of his tea. It must have been cold by now. Good.

“Mabs—”

I huffed. He went on.

“You’re the kind of person who will never jump unless you’re pushed.”

“And where the hell am I supposed to jump?” The anger was intense. It always was with Finley and me. All that stuff about having forgiven and forgotten? It was nothing of the sort. It was still boiling in that cauldron inside of me, and if I didn’t get out of here soon, I would explode.

I clenched my fists, talked myself down in my head because familiarity wasn’t always good. It made me lose all my inhibitions, and I needed to compose myself back into what everyone expected me to be. Calm. Composed. Kind. Elegant. Always.

“You need to jump. And I’m here to push you.”

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