So, it had been worth it. Bliss had no price. Heaviness settled in his groin when he thought of those sensitive hands trickling over his body, her lips soft, white skin flushing pink with desire, her body filling the spaces his didn’t. That kind of connection was much more than sex.
Yesterday evening’s reflexology treatment had been a fishing expedition. Lying on her couch, his mind had at first worked furiously as he tried to assess whether her emotions were still high and irrational, or whether she’d be receptive to him saying, ‘OK, I know what I suggested is definitely a Plan B, for you. But it’s a good one. I’m not Nicolas, all negativity and interference. The treatment centre will be your baby but the financial risk will be mine.’ But he knew that she’d wanted it all, risk included; her professional persona had made her mood difficult to assess … and her hands on his feet had exploded his concentration. He’d felt himself sliding sideways into that place where ‘alert’ didn’t figure. Asking for her to opt in or out of the project by Saturday had been about his limit of functionality before he wandered back to his bed in Middledip and dropped into the blackness.
And now, as Liza definitely came under the heading of things he couldn’t control – in fact, half the time she made him forget who he was and what he was doing – he might as well turn his mind to compiling a mental ‘to do’ list of things he could.
At nine he rang Stuart, an estate agent who was still emailing him copious property details. ‘I need a place in Middledip, now, possibly very short term. I want to be in within days.’
Stuart sucked in his breath in traditional estate agent doubt. ‘Well, I don’t know—’
‘It can be done,’ Dominic inserted, gently. ‘It just needs you to identify a property that the owner is desperate to let because it’s been on the market for ages. Tell him or her that I’ll pay double the deposit if the rent’s right but I’m not committing to more than a month at a time until my affairs become more settled, and to think of me as a stopgap that might turn longer term.’
Stuart laughed. ‘Mr Christy, it’s not as easy as you make it sound.’
‘No problem. I’ll ring an agency that can make it easy.’ Dominic pressed ‘end call’. He grinned at Miranda who was preparing apples for the freezer and trying not to trip over the ball of fluff at her feet begging for apple peel. ‘How long do you think it’ll take him to ring back?’
Miranda pushed her glasses up her nose with her wrist. ‘Three minutes.’
‘I say two.’
‘You know you’re welcome to stay here as long as you want.’ She held up a big S shaped piece of peel and Crosswind rose on his hind legs in ingratiating showmanship, ready to swipe it out of midair.
‘I know.’ Dominic leaned back and linked his fingers behind his head. ‘You and Jos have been fantastic.’
‘I teased you too much about Liza, didn’t I? Sorry. You don’t have to go, Dom, I’ll butt out.’ Miranda looked apologetic.
‘That’ll be the day.’ He grinned. ‘But I do want my own space. It’s way past time.’ The phone began to ring. He checked the screen. ‘See? Two minutes.’ On the sixth ring, just before the call could go to voicemail, he picked up.
‘It’s a bit unorthodox, but if you give me an hour to collect some information, there might be a couple of clients I can talk to.’ Stuart had evidently realised that he had to act in order to earn his commission, but chose to save face by making it sound as if he was doing Dominic a massive favour.
‘Sure,’ Dominic agreed, affably. ‘Ten o’clock, mate.’
Dominic rang off as Kenny shuffled in, bent at the knees so that Ethan, clinging in monkey mode to his back, wouldn’t be concussed by the doorframe. ‘What’s happening at ten?’
Dominic explained. Then, ‘If I can get sorted with a place, will you drive me back to yours to get the rest of my stuff? I can ring for the furniture in storage to be delivered.’
Kenny yawned. In the past days, he’d demonstrated an awesome ability to lie-in on Miranda’s sofa, through Jos getting ready for work and playing games with Ethan, Miranda preparing breakfast and Dominic taking Crosswind out, his excuse being that he was last in the bathroom queue, anyway.
Morning pressure on the bathroom was yet another reason for Dominic to move out. Maybe he’d been spoilt, but he valued staggering straight to the shower when he got out of bed without allowing for the small-child-means-small-bladder equation and Ethan’s screams of distress if the bathroom was occupied when the small bladder reached capacity. And, although he’d dismissed with a joke Miranda’s guilty conclusion that she should butt out, he was tired of living under her well-meaning gaze.
Kenny swung Ethan down onto the floor. ‘Fantastic. I can crash with you for a bit until we see what’s what with the adventure centre and I get moved up here.’
Trying to ignore an unexpected sinking sensation, Dominic managed a smile. ‘What else?’ What else? He’d used Kenny’s place when it had suited him; he’d asked Ken to come up to Cambridgeshire to look at the adventure centre. He could hardly refuse him a bed. It kind of crossed any one-bedroom properties off the ‘possibles’ list, though, because damned if he was going to trip over Kenny on the sofa for the next few months – if he got The Stables lease. Mentally, he crossed his fingers. If he didn’t get the lease, Kenny would disappear to find another job and when Dominic next heard of him he’d be in Tasmania or Timbuktu.
He’d give Nicolas until Monday to stew, and then put in a cheeky counter-offer.
Getting the lease was looking more likely now that Liza had told Nicolas that she was out. Typical of Liza to make up her mind what to do, do it, and tell him when it was done. In fact, there had almost been a challenge in her voice. OK, it’s yours. Put your money where your mouth is.
Putting Liza and his mouth together in one thought created a dizzy rush of desire. Once she’d made up her mind to have sex with him, she’d really gone for it. Hot, urgent, focused—
‘Dommynic, you got a sword, yet?’
Dominic jumped from his reverie to see Ethan standing before him, a black pirate’s patch affixed drunkenly over his left eye. ‘Afraid not,’ he said, apologetically.
With a great grin of joy, Ethan whisked two plastic daggers from behind his back. ‘I got some! Now we can play pirates—’
‘Ethan!’ Miranda dropped two slices of apple in horror, and Crosswind’s teeth came together with a satisfied click as he made them disappear. ‘Where did you get weapons?’
The smile slithering from his face, Ethan retreated a step from the wrath of Mummy. ‘They’re not weapons, they’re swords. Maff-yoo’s mummy said I could bring them home to play.’
Miranda made a visible effort towards calm. ‘Swords are weapons, Ethe. You didn’t have them with you when I picked you up from Mathew’s house.’
Ethan stuck out his bottom lip. ‘They was in my packpack.’
Dominic smothered a grin at Miranda’s outrage, feeling sorry for Maff-yoo’s hapless mummy who, evidently, was not aware of Miranda’s pacifist philosophies. But probably soon would be.
‘I’ve explained why I don’t like you to play with toys like that.’
‘But Mummeeeee—’
‘Ethan, hurting people is wrong, so it’s not nice to pretend to.’
‘Aw, MummEEEEEEEEEEEEE—’
Over Ethan’s head, Dominic watched Kenny melting out of the kitchen, down the hall and through the front door, pausing only to swoop up his walking boots. Kenny wasn’t big on Ethan at full wail. Which left only Dominic to offer distraction. ‘Would you like to watch Crosswind skateboard, Ethan? Just until I get the phone call I’m waiting for?’
Two cross faces cleared miraculously and Ethan reached Dominic’s side in two Tigger-like bounds. ‘Yeah!’
‘Yes, please,’ Miranda corrected, automatically. Dominic sent her a ‘give him a break’ look and she turned back to her apples with, ‘Thanks, Dom.’
‘Thanks, Dom,’ echoed Ethan.
So Dominic spent the n
ext half hour in the road outside, bowling his skateboard along the asphalt whilst Crosswind hurled himself onto the deck with ecstatic barks, and a dancing Ethan roared encouragement from the pavement.
By the time it was time to go indoors, Crosswind was panting, Dominic’s legs were feeling the burn, but at least Ethan had forgotten his earlier disappointment sufficiently to race through the kitchen screaming, ‘Chee-arge!’
Then Dominic’s phone rang and Stuart told him he had two flats for him to look at in Bankside. He needed only a little nudging to agree to meet Dominic at eleven, leaving time for a cup of strong coffee first.
One of the flats proved to be little more than a studio, a lounge with a cramped corner that passed for a kitchen adjoining a bedroom via an open archway. ‘No,’ said Dominic, definitely.
‘The other one’s in that nice new development, Copse Corner Court on Great Hill Road, but it’s fifty pounds a month above budget,’ warned Stuart. He wore the estate agent uniform of sharp blue suit and neat brown hair as if it was made for someone smarter, shifting his trendy glasses uneasily on and off his nose.
‘Let’s look.’
Bankside – or the new village or Little Dallas – wasn’t large, so the second flat was a two-minute ride away in Stuart’s blue Ford Focus. But even though it was in Copse Corner Court, an attractive two-storey complex of flats nestling under artistically arranged pitched roofs and gables, Dominic could see why the flat at the far end of the development had never found a tenant.
Bad design.
Really bad. To reach the first floor flat involved a staircase so twisted that it almost amounted to a spiral, but with none of the grace. The landing was surprisingly large but there was no window, just a skylight in the sloping roof, which made the landing bright and airy but left the stairwell dim.
Inside, an OK sitting room overlooked the car park and shrubby garden and was divided by a breakfast bar from an equally OK kitchen. The main bedroom, with a view over a few roof tops and a brown-and-green carpet of farmland, was disproportionately large and had a generous en suite, leaving the second bedroom as a long, narrow cell that even a single bed would overcrowd. Its mean little window was high in its narrow wall. When Dominic hooked his elbows on the sill to pull himself up, he saw that this was to accommodate the pitch of another, lower, brown-tiled roof. Beside the second bedroom lurked a cupboard of a shower room.
Kenny would have to manage.
‘Yes,’ Dominic said. ‘If you can get fifty pounds off the rent.’ And, as Stuart began to ease his collar and splutter, ‘You seem to me the kind of guy who can make things happen. Phone the landlord and tell them three months’ money will be in their account this afternoon if they can give me possession by Saturday. But I need an answer in case I have to look again with a different agency.’
Stuart’s expression became almost pleading. ‘But what about—?’
‘You can make it happen,’ Dominic repeated, encouragingly. He wiped thick dust from a light switch. ‘Look at this place. It’s never been occupied because it’s the space left after designing the rest of the complex, and it’s awkward. The landlord should be glad to finally get some return on it.’
Stuart looked as if he didn’t know whether to be pleased that Dominic thought he could be an ace negotiator, or anxious at the idea of having to ask for fifty pounds off the rent. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’
Feeling the encroaching weight of the heavy fuzzies, Dominic let Stuart deliver him back to Miranda’s house.
‘’Lo, Dommynic!’ bellowed Ethan, racing out of the sitting room on the heels of Crosswind. The house still smelled of apples. ‘Can we play—?’
Crouching down to receive Ethan in his arms and simultaneously rub Crosswind’s wriggly back, Dominic gave the little boy a consolatory squeeze. ‘Sorry, Ethe. Got to sleep now.’ Crosswind stood up on his hind legs, resting a paw on Ethan’s shoulder.
Ethan tutted and slid an arm around Crosswind, like a little playmate. ‘Aw. You always got to sleep.’
‘Tedious, isn’t it? But I’ll only be half an hour.’ He gave dog and boy a combined hug then pushed himself upright, waved a hand through the kitchen door at Miranda and made for the stairs, knowing that he’d function better after a few zeds, even if frustrated by the necessity. Over seven days, his catnaps added up to at least three and a half hours, and that didn’t include coming round time. That was the equivalent of an entire morning wiped from his life, each week. He shoved through the door to his room, everything slipping out of focus as he heeled his shoes off, set his phone alert for thirty minutes and rolled down onto the bed.
It was a damned—
Chapter Twenty-Six
PWNsleep message board:
Tenzeds: OK, family can cope with my narcolepsy. But one friend … Not so much.
Brainwave: My mates tend to ignore it, which is OK.
Nightjack: Mine, too, except they elaborately avoid the word ‘sleep’!
Girlwithdreams: Tenzeds, if your friend is struggling with your narcolepsy, and you’re struggling with his struggling, how cool is this friend, really?
Tenzeds: He’s my oldest.
Girlwithdreams: You’d like him to be more concerned?
Tenzeds: I don’t want anyone to cluck over me! But accept what I have to do to manage the narcolepsy? Yes. Is that too much to expect?
By Saturday, as Kenny drove them back up the A14 from Royston, the Jag stuffed with their possessions, Dominic felt as if he’d spent a couple of days in a washing machine on spin.
On Thursday afternoon, he’d signed up for the flat at Stuart’s office in Peterborough, then, as Miranda had agreed to dogsit, he and Ken had driven straight to Royston. Camping out in Ken’s place, which looked like a luggage hall hit by a hurricane, as it was littered with stuff belonging to both Dominic and Kenny, they’d sat up until the early hours making lists and diagrams on a big pad and compiling Internet browser bookmarks for suppliers of kayaks, assault course builders, and ideas for how to construct an all-terrain skateboarding slope.
On Friday, he’d collected fresh meds. He hadn’t quite got used to the fact that drugs for narcoleptics were too strong and strictly controlled for him to have been able to create a stockpile, and had come dangerously close to running out. By next month, he should have safely transferred to a surgery in Bettsbrough.
He arranged for a man with a box van to visit the self-storage place he’d used, collect his half of his and Natalie’s furniture and deliver it to the new flat. He got his suit cleaned, as he supposed he couldn’t avoid Cleo’s wedding and the trousers had picked up a strange mark on the leg. He finished packing everything that he’d left in Kenny’s flat.
He was glad Kenny had a second bedroom, even if its bed was an inflatable, because, though he was wired with elation, he was exhausted enough by a late night and busy days to need two naps on Friday. It was more comfortable to be able to put a closed door between him and Kenny’s obvious uneasiness while he plunged into the short period of oblivion that made all the difference to his operating efficiency.
Apart from that, Kenny seemed as excited as Dominic, and had become a machine gun of incessant questions. ‘So, you really think you can save money on the assault course by utilising some of the trees in the coppice?’ And, ‘So you think that setting up the archery should be a doddle compared to the rest?’ Or, ‘What Health & Safety information have you got, so far?’
Dominic felt warmed that Kenny was so engaged. It was like old times, Kenny’s absorption of information depending on Dominic’s patience in articulating what he’d read. But coaching was tiring. Especially when the demands came at the same time as he and Kenny were thundering up and down stairs to load the car.
And now they were actually in the car, heading back to Middledip in time for Dominic to join Miranda, Jos and Ethan for Cleo’s wedding reception.
Joy.
At least nobody had suggested he bring a date. He’d hated attending weddings with Natalie, the feeli
ng of being on the defensive, ready for the ‘When will it be your turn?’ comments that had always made Natalie embarrassingly evangelical on behalf of those who chose to live without the paperwork.
And he’d never been able to imagine himself doing the ‘Will you marry me?’ thing and waiting for the response. A strange ritual, with unpredictable results … as Adam had proved.
Liza – who would probably come out in boils if he ever attempted to put a ring on her finger – was supposed to be giving Dominic her answer about whether to throw in her lot with his at The Stables today, and even waiting for that made him feel antsy, in view of her unexpectedly pissy reaction to the idea of working for him. With him. If he’d got that right, he might have already achieved his goal. Now, she was probably going to resist out of sheer obstinacy. And although he’d talked the talk about her being optional, fulfilling his new dream would be more fun with her on board. He imagined having all that energy around to feed from. Imogen and Fenella were probably perfectly nice women, but they weren’t the ones with the chutzpah to try to oust Nicolas and stamp their own style on The Stables.
And he had no real idea where to look for someone else to run it.
Liza would have to be persuaded.
‘Tell me again why we can’t have the fan descender?’ demanded Kenny, jerking Dominic from his thoughts.
Dominic slid down in his seat. ‘Too much money for what is, basically, a tower housing a vertical jet of air for people to hurl themselves into. Slow motion freefall can’t be satisfying or exciting enough to justify the outlay.’
‘I’d still have it.’ Kenny swerved the Jag into the outside lane. ‘The punters would love it.’
‘They’ll love everything. It’s going to be brilliant.’
The bride wore red.
Nothing seemed traditional about the Reece sisters so Dominic shouldn’t have been even passingly surprised that Cleo would get married in a ruby dress that snuggled around the top half of her and flowed around the bottom.
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