She swung back the duvet and gingerly rose, reaching for the bathrobe that was hanging on the door and wrapping it around herself. ‘Let’s see what we’ve got,’ she managed, her voice a half-croak, half-whisper.
His heart-shaped face turned up to her as slowly – so slowly – they climbed the stairs. ‘Can I have my chocolate from Zwarte Piet?’
She looked back down at him, knowing he had sensed her weakness, that now was as good a time as any to strike. She couldn’t help but smile. ‘Well, just this once.’ Like she was doing him the favour!
He cheered with delight, running ahead of her into the kitchen. She peered around the door, watching as he raced over to the treats box. There were oranges in the fruit bowl. At the very least she should peel one for him, but even the thought of that was a step too far for her this morning.
‘Listen, Jazz, we’re very late,’ she said haltingly, forcing down the nausea that kept threatening to overwhelm her. ‘So while you eat that, I’m going to have a shower and get dressed and put your clothes out. I want you to come up and get dressed as soon as you’re done, deal?’
‘Okay, mama,’ he said distractedly.
She hauled herself up the next flight of stairs with visible effort, automatically stopping in at his bedroom. The curtains were still drawn, his Jedi duvet half on the floor, and she felt a stab of self-loathing that he had been sleeping alone up here all night whilst she had been passed out downstairs. Anything could have happened and she would have been unable to help him – if he’d woken needing the toilet, if the house was on fire, if an intruder had broken in . . . He had been as defenceless and vulnerable as if she’d never bothered coming back at all.
She made his bed (barely) and picked out some clean clothes for him, then continued into her bedroom, stepping straight into the shower. It was a luxury she never took for granted, much like turning on a light and having a fridge. She stood there with the water pouring over her face, trying to remember last night – Matt’s distracting kisses, his clever hands, his smouldering eyes, Harry’s voice breaking up over thousands of miles. But, to her despair, it wasn’t to either one of them that her mind kept returning. Worse, they weren’t the reason tears were streaming down her face.
Lee glanced at her friend on the other side of the window as she padlocked her bike. Mila was sitting at the breakfast bar, reading the local paper, a dispatched ginger shot beside her. Always punctual, she looked beautiful in the winter sunshine, her elfin features and shiny dark cropped hair rendering her positively doll-like. She was wearing her yoga kit; they had clearly already had very different mornings.
Mila looked up as the bell rang and Lee shuffled into the coffee shop, her expression changing at the sight of her. ‘Oh my God, what happened to you?’ she whispered as Lee sank into the chair beside her, which she’d bagged with her coat. ‘You weren’t that bad when I left last night.’
‘Half a bottle of whisky,’ she croaked by way of reply.
‘After all that champagne?’ Mila regarded her with silent concern, seeing how even her kitten ears were wonky, before putting a worried hand on her arm. ‘Black coffee?’
Lee nodded, pulling off the hat. Her hair stood with static. ‘Better make it two.’
Mila returned a few moments later with a tray of coffee and tiny slices of ginger cake on the saucers. Wordlessly, Lee put the cakes onto Mila’s plate. It was still too early for her to look at food.
Mila watched her closely. ‘So, did he go back with you?’
‘Who?’
Mila looked around them, to check no one else was listening. ‘Matteo Hofhuis. You were all over each other.’
Lee swallowed, staring down into the coffee. ‘Oh. Yeah.’
‘You don’t seem very happy about it.’ She leaned in to whisper excitedly. ‘He is so gorgeous.’
‘Also incredibly conceited, shallow, really quite dull and an egomaniac. But yeah, gorgeous.’
‘Obviously he didn’t stay over?’
‘Obviously.’
‘And you got Jasper off okay?’
‘Eventually – an hour and a half late. Having had chocolate for breakfast. Poor kid having me as a mother . . .’ She rubbed her face in her hands, feeling her failures writ large.
‘He’ll cope,’ Mila said, barging her affectionately. ‘And how about Bart? Did you call him too?’