Page 132 of The Winter of Second Chances
‘Goodnight,’ John answered.
Annie was at the door when John said, ‘Thank you.’
‘For what?’
‘Worrying about me. Letting me stay tonight...’ The words hung as if there was more to say but it didn’t come.
‘It’s more your home than it is mine,’ said Annie. She smiled at him, then turned and left.
Annie couldn’t sleep. She had mentally redecorated Saltwater Nook and put together a three-course bistro menu – mental organising was usually a great soother – but still sleep evaded her. The evening’s events and all its possible outcomes kept playing on a loop behind her eyes. Fear and relief, fear and relief filled her chest repeatedly. She wondered if Alfred was okay. Maeve had messaged the group at half past midnight to say that Alfred was comfortable and that she was heading home. Though she wanted Alfred back to his old self as soon as possible, she hoped he was incapacitated enough tonight that he wouldn’t make a break for it and disappear off into the back streets of Margate.
Annie was glad she didn’t have a clock that ticked in the bedroom. Somehow a ticking clock seemed to elongate the hours when you couldn’t sleep. She’d read somewhere about the phenomenon of dry-drowning and snippets of what she’d read returned to her now, despite her best efforts to dismiss it.Is that a thing? Dry-drowning? Is it only in children?She couldn’t remember. She began to worry about John dry-drowning on the sofa.Why wouldn’t he just go to hospital like a normal person? Now I’m responsible for him!She ran through the symptoms list Georgina had given her. How could she check these things from her bedroom?
After several long minutes of panicking that John might be dying quietly in the sitting room, she got up and tiptoed along the hall – silently cursing every squeaking floorboard – to the dark lounge. She could just make out his silhouette. She listened hard and was rewarded with the sound of his breathing: slow and steady. Relieved, Annie crept back to her room, climbed into bed and fell into a fitful sleep. She woke with a start at a quarter to two and tiptoed back into the sitting room, where she again waited until she heard John breathing before returning to bed. After much tossing and turning she drifted off again, only to wake up at ten to three in a panic that had no meaning for twenty seconds before the events of the previous night came crashing back to her with startling clarity.
When she crept in again at twenty past four, by now an expert in avoiding all the squeaky floorboards, she couldn’t hear anything. With fast rising panic, Annie stepped further into the room, holding her own breath, the better to hear his. There was a rustling sound from the sofa, and she let out her breath. She blinked into the gloom of the encroaching dawn and could make out John’s outline. She took a step backwards to creep back to her room when John’s outline moved, and she froze. John lifted his arm, the corners of the blankets in his hand, and shuffled back flat against the sofa.
‘Come on,’ he said in a gravelly whisper.
Annie hesitated.
‘Neither of us is going to get any sleep if you keep coming in to check I’m still alive. Don’t ever take up being a cat burglar as a career, you’d likely get pinched on your first job.’
Annie smiled into the darkness and made her way to the sofa. She lay down, nestling in against him, her back up tight against his front on the small sofa. She wiggled briefly to get comfortable before John brought his arm and the blankets down and draped them over them both.
‘Are you comfortable?’ he asked.
‘Very,’ she replied.
‘I’m sorry about before. When I saw you with Max...’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘I realised that not being with you was not an option, however complicated it makes things.’
‘After tonight, I’ll happily take complicated, so long as you’re with me.’
‘You should know, I’m useless at wooing,’ he whispered, nuzzling his face into her hair.
‘Good. I’ve had enough wooing for one lifetime.’
‘But Icanpromise you I will never cheat.’
‘No wooing and no cheating – I’ve never had a better offer.’
She yawned and John tightened his embrace around her, pulling her closer still, and Annie revelled in the weight of his arm across her body. Warm, if slightly squashed, with the slow rise and fall of John’s chest against her back and his feet wrapped around hers, she drifted off to sleep.
Annie woke up alone on the sofa. She was too hot under the blankets. She reached to the coffee table and picked up her phone; there was a yellow post-it note stuck to the screen which read:
Don’t panic! All is well. I’m down in the cafe. Didn’t want to wake you. XX
Annie peeled the post-it back and saw the time: 9.22 a.m.
‘Shit!’ she said out loud, kicking off the blankets and rubbing the sleep from her eyes. She stumbled out to the bathroom and found another post-it stuck to the door:
There’s no rush. Calm down. XX
This made her smile. She quickly got showered and dressed and headed down to the cafe.
