‘I think I’m going to bed,’ she said, giving her hard bed another tentative poke. ‘My conversation with you is getting me nowhere.’
‘You’ll sleep?’
‘It’s almost midnight,’ she said. ‘So maybe I will. You don’t think if we asked nicely they might give us our luggage?’
‘Um…’
‘You don’t know that either,’ she said, and sighed. And then brightened. ‘Hey, but I’m set.’
‘You’re set?’
She tugged off her duffel coat and foraged in an inner pocket, then triumphantly produced a battered-looking toothbrush and a half-empty tube of toothpaste. She held it up like it was the crown jewels.
‘Bet high-flying lawyers don’t carry toothpaste on their persons,’ she said smugly.
‘Um…no. Can I ask why?’
‘I keep getting stuck,’ she told him. ‘I’ll go to a calving and it’ll be four in the morning, and as I finish the farmer will say can I hang around until his pig farrows or his neighbour’s cow calves. It’s too far to go home, so I kip on the couch and keep going. Hence the toothpaste.’ She smiled. ‘I’ll lend you toothpaste, but you’ll have to use your finger cos I’m not sharing toothbrushes. Even if we are going to be married, which I’m starting to seriously doubt.’
And she smiled, took herself to the bathroom and closed the door behind her.
She slept.
He was quite frankly astonished. To have the ability to close her eyes and sleep…It was a gift.
He wished he had it. Even as a kid he’d never been able to sleep. Bad things happened when you slept…
Where had that come from? The weird background of his past, where his mother was a shadowy figure moving in and out as life’s events lurched around her.
‘She was a frightened kid,’ Ruby had told him when he was old enough to respond to his foster mother’s deep concerns about his nightmares-where people had come and gone in the dark, and sometimes his mother had wept, sometimes she’d disappeared with the shadows, and when he’d woken she wasn’t there. ‘Your mother had nightmares of her own,’ Ruby had told him. ‘They didn’t let her grow up properly. The trick is-the thing we have to do-is to take charge of your nightmares and see if we can find you a way to live through them.’
She was a wise woman, Ruby. His one true thing. He and his six foster-brothers had been blessed by her taking charge of their shattered lives.
Ruby had been sensible enough to know he could never escape completely from the nightmares. Just learn to live around them.
So, dredging up a Ruby lesson from the past, he didn’t try to sleep now. He lay and watched the ceiling as he’d lain and watched the ceiling, countless nights in his past, not trying to sleep, just letting his thoughts go where they would.
But the ceiling wasn’t interesting. There was a light on through the other side of their prison’s thick doors, and he could see faintly by the chink of light it permitted in.
He could watch Rose.
Brave, he thought. Brave and lonely. But so practical. So accustomed to moving through grief.
She’d lost her dog this day. He knew already how much Hoppy meant to her, but had she wept or made a fuss?
There was nothing she could do about it. He’d been watching her eyes as she’d spoken of Hoppy and he knew how much it had hurt, how much she’d wanted to be out looking.
But there was nothing to be done, so a fuss hadn’t been made. There was nothing to do, so she’d settled for sleep.
She was some woman. A woman in a million. Like Ruby.
Ruby would love her, he thought, and then thought maybe, just maybe, he should have told Ruby more of what was happening. He’d described this marriage to his foster mother as a political move, nothing more. She’d been horrified, for she wanted so much more for her beloved sons.
Maybe Ruby was wiser than he was, he thought ruefully, for there was nothing political about how he was thinking of Rose.
He watched on. An hour. Two. This place was cold. They’d been given one blanket each. He was still wearing all his clothes, bar his shoes. The room was chill and getting colder.
‘I’m cold,’ Rose said into the silence, and he jumped about a foot.
‘I thought you were asleep.’
‘I was,’ she said. ‘But I just woke up. One blanket isn’t going to cut it.’
‘You’ve got your duffel coat.’
‘I have,’ she agreed equably. ‘So my top half is cosy. My bottom half is jealous. Do you only have one blanket?’
‘I…Yes.’
‘Could I trust you if I said you were welcome to share my bed?’
That took his breath away. ‘You’re proposing we sleep together?’ he asked cautiously.
‘Not in the metaphoric sense,’ she said lightly. ‘In the literal sense.’
‘You mean sleep as in
‘Take it or leave it,’ she said. ‘It’s a once-in-a-lifetime offer.’
‘Never knock a lady back,’ he said, and two seconds later he was spreading his blanket over her and then diving under the covers as well.
‘I have another suggestion,’ she said before he could attempt to settle.
‘Which is?’
‘My feet are freezing,’ she said. ‘We’ve both got jackets on. If I spread my nice woolly duffel over our feet, you could put our limousine driver’s jacket over our tops. Note that this is a major concession on my part,’ she said before he could move. ‘Because my duffel is very, very warm, and your leather jacket won’t be nearly as warm, not to mention that it’s really been lent to both of us. So I could be within my rights to keep my duffel just for me, but insist that your leather jacket goes over our feet. But I’m magnanimous,’ she said in a truly magnanimous voice.
He chuckled.
They spent a convivial couple of minutes arranging their bed. Two blankets. The duffel spread-eagled over the bottom half. The leather jacket over the top. Then they were both under.
She was in her jeans and a cotton shirt. He was in his trousers and linen shirt. His tie was still in his pocket.
Sleeping in her jeans would be uncomfortable. They now had sufficient coverings that taking off their outer clothes would be sensible, but he wasn’t about to suggest it.
The bed was too narrow for them to lie apart. Their bodies touched, side by side. He lay rigid.
This was impossible. They were two mature people, and…
‘This is crazy,’ she said. ‘We’re never going to sleep like this.’
‘So what do you suppose we do about it?’
‘Relax,’ she said. ‘If I lie on my side and you lie on the same side, you’ll curve round me and keep me warm. I’m a widow. I know.’
‘I…I guess,’ he said doubtfully, trying to figure how this could stay a nice, platonic sharing of beds-and she was
‘And you’re not a widower, but I’m betting you know as well that people can sleep together without wanting sex,’ she said. ‘So stop lying there like you’re standing at attention, only lying down. Relax.’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘That’s better,’ she said, and he felt rather than saw her smile as she turned on her side, waited patiently for him to do the same and then wriggled until her spine was curved against his chest.
Unbidden, his arms came round to hold her.
She stiffened-just for a moment-and then she relaxed again.
‘See, it’s not just me coming up with the ideas,’ she said. ‘Excellent. Now, relax and go to sleep. Unless you’re
