Matilda Next Door - Kelly Hunter Page 0,8

his landlord did. Maybe they both did.

But the water pressure was second to none and the liquid soap smelled divinely masculine, and there was shampoo to match and if she wasn’t about to fall into bed and get some sleep she’d have tried that out too.

As for putting her smelly travel clothes back on, surely Henry would have a T-shirt she could borrow? Not that she felt altogether comfortable striding into his bedroom wearing nothing but a damp towel and rifling through his drawers, but needs must.

He’d never know.

Henry had a lot of dark suits and perfectly pressed white business shirts. His socks ran in neat rows and so did his underwear. Black, grey, ooh navy. ‘Henry, you rebel,’ she murmured at the lone pair of stripy pink and red socks right at the back of his sock row. ‘Bet you didn’t buy those.’

But they would do to keep her feet warm, and the grey cotton boxers looked as if they could do pyjama duty, assuming they stayed up.

The man rolled his T-shirts and kept them in tidy rows as well. For these, he’d allowed himself to branch out with his colour scheme to include various shades of dark green, pale blue, and pristine white. She took a blue one, dropped towel and tried her makeshift nightwear on for size.

The T-shirt drooped off one shoulder and almost covered the boxers, and why anyone needed a wall full of mirrors in here was open to speculation, but the sight of herself dressed in Henry’s intimates and standing in front of his absolutely enormous bed brought a flush to her cheeks that had not been put there by the heat of the shower.

His bed sheets and doona were grey—of course they were—a finely striped linen that felt butter-soft to the touch, but she had her own room in here somewhere and had taken enough liberties already.

The spare bed was big enough for two and came with crisp green sheets and a doona so soft and feathery Tilly thought she might weep with something very close to relief. She should set her alarm, she thought, as she slipped beneath the covers and closed her eyes and tried to banish the feeling of movement from her body. She should sleep for a few hours and then get up and seize the day, but her phone was in the kitchen and the princess bed was superbly comfortable, even better than the one at home, and she smelled like a dream. Henry’s T-shirt was ridiculously soft, and even though he wasn’t present she still felt oddly comforted by the notion that she was in a place of safety.

Henry with his tidy drawers and one lone pair of stripy socks.

Chapter Three

Henry hated when others were right and he was in the wrong. It happened so rarely these days that he’d almost forgotten what it felt like. But Tilly had been right about the frailty of his grandparents, in particular his grandmother’s mental deterioration and the toll it was taking on his grandfather. The reality of their plight and his rampant neglect of them had been like a hammer to his chest for the past three days. Watching his grandmother get up and down the verandah steps injected fear straight into his heart. Standing back and letting his grandfather—once a towering figure in his mind—make tea for them all with shaking hands and deliberate caution, damn near brought Henry to tears.

Tilly had warned him.

More fool him for thinking her melodramatic.

But the fridge was well stocked, and there was bacon and eggs and fresh bread, even if it was the soft crust variety, and the freezer was full of neatly labelled soups, with the labels written on the plastic takeaway containers in black marker, ‘made on’ dates and all, and he knew that handwriting. It took him straight back to school, and sitting beside Tilly on the school bus, trying to explain physics questions to her and her simply not understanding a word he said, no matter which way he explained it. Anxiety and apology—hers. Frustration and impatience—his. And suddenly he felt ashamed, standing here years later with Tilly’s home-made shepherd’s pie in his hand, which his grandmother wanted him to take out of the freezer. He’d never made fun of Matilda’s inability to understand complex equations, no, but he’d judged her for it. Judged her too for staying in Wirralong and making the most of it.

‘Henry, son.’ He looked up to see his grandfather eyeing him with no