arranged neatly on the desk, and her clothes hanging—organised by colour and season, of course—in the wardrobe. Then she opened her planner to the current week and pulled out a few fine liners from her 20-colour pack. Specifically: teal for medication and self-care, forest green for work, and raspberry for social commitments.
Hannah preferred to organise her weeks in advance—typically every Sunday—but she’d been thrown off her routine, what with recent events. Recent events being a euphemism for her rampant recklessness, as demonstrated by marshmallow-based attacks on authority figures and her alarmingly quick decision to move into the house of a man with tattooed hands.
She still wasn’t sure how she felt about those tattoos. She didn’t mind them, not at all. She just couldn’t understand what it was about the ink on Nate’s hands, especially, that made her stomach dip like a swallow swooping through blue skies. They triggered this odd fizzing in the centre of her chest that felt like something long-dormant awakening.
And now she was thinking far too hard about feelings and tattoos and Nate when she should be carefully planning the days ahead.
“Come on, bitch,” she muttered, uncapping the forest green pen. “Get it together.”
Hannah’s professional responsibilities were remarkably light. She was starting to feel bad about the amount Nate was paying her, not to mention the free food and board. She’d only really be with the kids in the evenings and on Saturdays. Plus, she’d tidy the house, organise the weekly food shop, things like that.
Frankly, she would’ve done that for free if it meant she got to check out Nate’s arse every so often.
The quiet hummed with crisp possibility as she finally filled in her planner. Since she was alone, she allowed herself the luxury of smiling at nothing like an utter loon. She couldn’t help it. This felt like the night before the first day back at school. This felt like a brand new opportunity to conquer the world. This felt like getting back to herself, like returning to the life she’d thrown away when she’d let her temper get the better of her years ago.
Starting tomorrow, Hannah Kabbah would be working in childcare again.
And she’d be damned good at it, too. By the time she was done with the Davis family, every yummy mummy who’d ever sneered at her would want to know what her secret was.
Hannah would take the most inordinate pleasure in telling them to go fuck themselves.
She woke up before her alarm, which shouldn’t have been possible.
Hannah’s anti-depressants doubled as knock-out pills. She loved her tiny lilac tablets, not only because they kept her from petrifying into a frigid grey ball, but also because they ensured she got a solid eight hours’ sleep every night.
Or nine. Or ten. Or eleven.
She had to be really careful about setting that alarm.
But when Hannah woke up to birds tweeting outside her window, it was still drowsy-dark outside. Countryside, summer morning dark, when the sun’s rising somewhere in the distance and the farmers are up and about, but the Hannahs should be safely wrapped up in bed.
Hannah was not safely wrapped up in bed. The minute her eyes slid open, she got up. Lying in bed was an activity she reserved for sleep or depressive episodes. Otherwise, physical inertia led to the kind of mental overactivity that had once caused her to reimagine the entire cast of Legally Blonde as Twilight vampires, and then play the new version of the film in her head.
She’d given it three stars, which had been generous.
So she was up. Up, annoyed, and confused as to what had woken her at—she checked her phone—four-fucking-thirty in the morning. A few minutes of intense listening answered the question well enough: someone was moving around downstairs. Quietly, so quietly that she strained to hear them.
Maybe she had special senses, like in those comics Ruth loved to read, and her mutant brain had psychically alerted her to a very respectful burglar. Or, more likely, to an errant child pouring their own cereal and making a mess of the kitchen.
Hannah threw on an enormous, wooly cardigan—to match her enormous, wooly sleep socks—and went downstairs.
Nate’s insomnia had absolutely nothing to do with Hannah Kabbah.
He knew this because he’d been suffering with insomnia on and off his whole life, and for the past few weeks, it had been quite firmly on. So his inability to sleep tonight—the way he’d lain in bed staring at the ceiling for hours before thirst and boredom and irritation beat out bone-deep