“I’ve emailed Trish Morrison with Phelps’ details. If she’s switched off for the night, at least she’ll see it first thing and get his photo out too.”
“Good.” Shay finished what he was doing and got up again, still looking rather depressed. “I’m pretty beat, Con. I think I need to call it a night.”
“Of course. It’s been a long day.” No doubt he’d be up again in the early hours. I closed my laptop and got up with it. Seeing my face, which I wasn’t controlling as well as I should have been, he impulsively gave me a quick, reassuring hug and slapped me on the back before stepping away again.
“It’ll be fine, don’t worry,” he told me, mouth quirking a little, on command. “I’ll bounce back soon enough. You know what I’m like when I start worrying about things I can’t fix.” Yes, I bloody well did. “It’s an irrational waste of time, doing that.” He sniffed. “Our stupid organic brains flood with stupid chemicals, and you just have to think as logically as you can until it wears off again. It soon does. ‘Night, Cuz.”
“Goodnight, Shay. Sleep well.” I picked up my laptop and left him to brood in peace until he felt ‘normal’ again.
Much as I’d have liked to throw something or punch something just then, the noise would only upset him and make him feel guilty. I went to give my teeth a vicious brushing and splashed some cold water over my stubbled face instead. It was my judgment that Shay trusted, not his own. It always had been. That was ‘my area’ as far as he was concerned, because I was better at dealing with people and understanding them than he was.
He was wrong about the ‘understanding’ part of that, in some ways. He knew far more about how human beings operate, and how we ‘malfunctioned’ than I did. As for the rest of it, we’d both realised, when we were still kids, that there was a limit to how much we’d be able to achieve. The world was too messed up, our societal structure too complex, for us to do more than make a very small impact, whichever career path we decided to follow. Every choice had its drawbacks, so why not do what we both wanted to do anyway and choose paths that would put us in a position to do what little damage control we could?
Despite its many deficiencies, the system we had to work with was a hell of a lot better than no system at all. I knew that, but sometimes, like now, that knowledge didn’t make me feel any better either. I used my highly overestimated ‘good judgment’ to make a rare and carefully considered decision. Tomorrow was probably going to be a very busy day again. I gave my own stupid brain chemicals half a sleeping pill to calm them down and took myself off to bed.
Twelve
I woke up again to the sound of Shay moving around at about half-past five and decided I might as well get up too. Our early night meant I’d already slept more than a solid seven hours and dozing off again would only make me feel groggy when I woke up for a second time. Why did oversleeping feel more tiring than not getting enough?
I had a good, long, refreshing shower before cleaning my teeth and shaving. Was it my imagination, or was my morning stubble still getting thicker every year? Well, I wasn’t about to take the kind of drastic steps Shay had, however time-consuming this little daily chore might be.
It had been a bit disturbing, witnessing his disgusted, almost hysterical reaction as his body began to sprout hairs in his early teens. Da hadn’t said anything, he’d just gone out and bought Shay his first laser kit, and that had been the end of that little crisis. Adding up the time that I’d spent shaving since then, I reckoned my cousin had already saved himself hundreds of hours by not needing to. Da had even driven him to a few supervised clinic sessions too. He’d always seemed to know the best way to handle some of Shay’s adolescent problems without embarrassing him by attempting to discuss them.
Full daylight was seeping in through the curtains by the time I’d finished in the bathroom, so I opened them up and flicked the light off before throwing on some gym gear. I wasn’t sitting around in a suit until it was time to head out.
My cousin must have opened the connecting door a crack at some point while I was showering, and an ambrosial smell began to waft in from his room. Coffee? Where on earth had he managed to get real coffee for me at this time? I hadn’t even heard him go out. I followed my disbelieving nose, and he grinned hugely, directing my gaze to the side of the desk where a little black cylinder about thirty centimetres high was standing. Apart from the button and the light on the front, it could have been an ordinary flask.
“It’s a portable espresso machine,” he told me. “It’s got a proper fifteen bars of pressure too, but you have to put capsules in it, sorry. Coffee in seconds, well, once the water’s heated. But it’s dead quick if you fill it from the kettle or a thermos… I got a few different capsules in for you to try.” He managed to stop bouncing excitedly for long enough to hand me the little cup of freshly made espresso, and I tasted it cautiously.
“That’s very good coffee!” I gulped it down. “Better than a lot I’ve been served in coffee shops.” What a neat little gadget. Fifteen bars? It was tiny! “I didn’t even know these things existed. Show me how it works?”
He did, thoroughly enjoying my enthusiastic reaction to his little surprise. He went to rinse the cup out, and we
