Page 48 of The Black Trilogy

“Just lean on me. We can go as slow as you like.” He’d have given a tortoise a run for its money, but we made it to the top. “Now where?”

“To the right, last door on the left.” His voice was barely audible.

I hadn’t planned on ending up in Luke’s bedroom tonight, but that was where I found myself. The elegant decor spoke of his mother’s touch again.

He sank onto the bed and leaned forwards, head in his hands. His face was paler than the cream quilt, and I couldn’t help wrinkling my nose at the splashes of vomit on his clothes. The smell turned my stomach.

“Lean back,” I said, then unbuttoned his shirt.

Hmm… Not bad at all. He had a gym, and he knew how to use it. There was no time to stop and admire, though. I needed to find him something clean to wear.

Opposite the bed, two doors hung ajar. I tried the left one first. Unlucky—that was the bathroom, complete with whirlpool bath. Did every house around here have one?

The right door hid what I was looking for—Luke’s dressing room. I rummaged around until I found a clean T-shirt, old but soft with a faded slogan:

Binary

It’s as easy as

01.10.11

Okay, geek alert. That was one for Mack, not me. She was probably sitting at her computer in Virginia right now. She rarely left it.

Luke made no attempt to help as I tried to shove his spaghetti arms through the holes. Good grief. Dressing Nate’s four-year-old was easier. Luke’s jeans were dirty too, and I reached for his belt.

“Tell me you don’t go commando?”

He managed a weak shake of his head, so I stripped him down to his boxer shorts and shoved him under the duvet.

Drugs. I needed drugs. Oh, don’t look at me like that—I meant painkillers. His bathroom cabinet yielded a box of condoms, vitamins, and four kinds of moisturiser. Surely he had paracetamol? Ah, there it was, a half-empty packet of Anadin shoved behind his spare razor blades.

By the time I got back to the bed, Luke had fallen asleep, and I didn’t want to wake him. Instead, I filled a glass of water and left the pills next to it on his nightstand. He could take them when he woke up.

Wonderful. What promised to be a pleasant evening had turned out awful, just like everything else in my life. Was I cursed? I stuffed Luke’s dirty clothes into the washing machine and found a pair of rubber gloves and disinfectant in the cupboard under the sink so I could sort out the downstairs toilet. Even after it was spotless, the smell of vomit lingered in my nose.

Back in the bedroom I’d borrowed earlier, I stripped down to my T-shirt and knickers. The door had a lock, but just to be on the safe side, I hid the key and dragged a chest of drawers across in front of it too. Not to keep Luke out, but to keep me in.

I checked on him once during the night, and although the covers lay twisted, he was still sleeping soundly. That was more than could be said for me. I’d barely dropped off when the sun rose over the balcony outside, waking me. Once, I’d thought of each sunrise as a new beginning, something to be thankful for, but now it signalled another day of sadness.

How much more of this could I take?

I was sipping a cup of coffee as I read the doom and gloom in the morning paper when Luke stumbled into the kitchen in his underwear.

“What the…?” He stopped short when he caught sight of me at the breakfast bar. “You didn’t leave.”

I looked down at myself. “Nope, still here.”

“But I threw up in front of you.”

“I wasn’t kidding when I said I’d seen worse.” He shuffled closer, and I laid a hand on his forehead. “You’ve got a fever.”

“I was freezing five minutes ago.”

“You should have stayed in bed. Did you take the painkillers?”

“Yeah, but they’re not working yet.”

“Go and lie down. I’ll bring up some Lucozade.”

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