Chapter 31
Chapter thirty-one
The alarm went off at seven and Matty groaned; mostly from lack of sleep and a little because of the warm body tucked in behind her.
Sloan stirred and turned away, cool air rushing into the space she left as she reached for her phone on the bedside cabinet. Bleary-eyed, she checked the screen, tapped out a message, then set it down and pressed back in against Matty.
“Go back to sleep.”
Matty didn’t need telling twice. Her eyes closed and she drifted off almost at once.
Sloan, however, stayed awake.
For a moment, she just lay there, watching as Matty snored gently beside her. She felt torn about it. How easy it was and yet, how easily it could all go wrong.
That was the part that unsettled her.
Not the hangover. Not the late night at the hospital. Not even the fact that Matty had stayed.
Wanting Matty was one thing. Wanting her when Gloria had taken to her so quickly was another. Sloan had not seen her mother warm to anyone like that in years. If this went wrong, it had the potential to blow up in her face in a way no other mother issue had.
At the club, or with anyone who understood her terms, Sloan would have known exactly where she stood. With Matty, she didn’t have a clue. There were no rules here. No agreed shape to any of it. No guarantees. But then, there never were, were there?
***
When Matty woke again, the clock beside the bed said it was just before eleven, and Sloan wasn’t there.
She sat up, blinking around the room, trying not to think about the incessant need that still throbbed between her thighs.
“Shit,” she muttered, scrambling out of bed.
Opening the bedroom door, she could hear music downstairs and imagined Gloria watching the telly where Sloan had left her.
A smile played across her lips as she imagined Sloan, as tired as she had been, getting up and seeing to Gloria before heading off to work, leaving Matty to enjoy a lie-in.
Descending the stairs, Matty could hear music as it played softly in the background, but it was coming from the kitchen, not the lounge.
She glanced into the living room and found Gloria in her chair, fast asleep. Fair enough. It had been a long night.
But if Gloria was in there, why was there music playing in the kitchen?
Matty wandered in—and stopped. Sloan was there, in expensive joggers and a matching hoodie, an apron tied round her waist, hair tied back, looking oddly domestic.
She turned, startled, a hand to her chest.
“Jesus, Matty.” Sloan laughed at herself, then went still, taking in the sight of Matty, still in her pyjamas, in her kitchen. “Did you get some sleep?”
“Yes.” Matty smiled. “Like a baby.”
“Good.” Sloan raised an empty mug. “Coffee?”
“Please,” Matty answered. “You’re not working?”
“I thought, under the circumstances, I’d be no good in the office, and I’d only worry about her, so I stayed home.” She poured fresh coffee from the cafetière. “I can do what I need to from here.” Glancing at Matty. “And I thought we might spend the day together. Talk?”
“Okay. Is it alright if I pop home to shower and change first?”
Shuffling in the hall distracted them both.
“Mum, I told you to ring the bell.” Sloan sighed and moved towards the door.
“I’m not dead,” Gloria said. “And I’m not a budgie, ringing a bell for attention.”
“It’s safer. That’s all.”
Gloria ignored her and hobbled further into the kitchen. When she spotted Matty, she said, “Oh, you’re up then. Thought we’d have to send in a search party.”
Matty smiled. “Sloan was kind enough to let me sleep in.” She pulled a chair out for Gloria.
“Kind enough to keep you up all night too, was she?”
“Mum, don’t be crass,” Sloan admonished.
“I’m not the one who invited the staff into my bed,” Gloria replied, before turning back to Matty. “Are you getting dressed? I want to go into town.”
“Into town for what, exactly?” Sloan asked.
Gloria turned to her. “I don’t need a reason.”
Matty cut in, “I need to pop home, get changed, then I can come back and—”
Sloan untied her apron strings. “I’ll drop you home and then take Her Majesty into town.”
“I want her to come,” Gloria added.
“Matty isn’t your—”
“It’s fine—I don’t mind,” Matty said. “If you just let me know where you are, I can come and meet you.” She leaned closer to Sloan. “Isn’t this what you wanted?”
Sloan looked at her. “I was hoping for something a bit less supervised.”
“We can go buy me a scooter, then you two can do what you like, and I can do my own thing,” Gloria said, before hauling herself up from the chair. “I’m ready when you are.”
“Give me five minutes,” Matty said. “I’ll just go and get changed.”
She slipped past Sloan and headed upstairs.
Gloria sniffed. “Don’t be all day about it,” she hollered to Matty’s retreating form, then turned and made her slow trek back towards the lounge.
***
With Matty disappearing upstairs to change back into last night’s clothes, and Gloria wandering back into the lounge, muttering to herself about being treated like an invalid, Sloan reached for her phone. The moment Sloan heard the television come on, she hit the dial button.
“She stayed over last night,” she said when Eleanor answered. “In my bed.”
“Good morning to you, too,” Eleanor said dryly.
Sloan turned her back to the doorway and lowered her voice. “I’m serious.”
“I assumed as much. I’m still not seeing the problem.”
Sloan rubbed at her forehead. “I am.”
“Did you have sex with her?”
“No…” Sloan hesitated. “We just slept.”
There was a pause, then Eleanor laughed.
“Yes, thank you,” Sloan muttered. “I’m aware of how that sounds.”
“So, what exactly are you panicking about?”
Sloan glanced towards the lounge, making sure Gloria had not reappeared. “Mum likes her.”
“Right.”
“No, not just likes her. She’s taken to her. I’ve not seen her warm to anyone that quickly in years.” Sloan leaned against the worktop. “If this goes wrong, it won’t just be awkward for me—I’ll lose the best carer Mum has ever had.”
“Then don’t fuck it up.”
Sloan shut her eyes. “That isn’t especially helpful.”
“It’s accurate.”
A car horn blared down the line, followed by Eleanor swearing at someone.
Sloan let out a breath through her nose and told Eleanor all of it—the lying awake, the uncertainty, the fact that there were no rules and no agreed shape to any of it.
“That sounds less like a problem and more like a woman you actually care about.”
Sloan said nothing.
“Oh, for God’s sake,” Eleanor said, “do you need someone to give you permission to get on with your life?”
“I’d settle for a guarantee.”
“Well, there isn’t one,” Eleanor answered. “How long are you going to keep denying yourself what you want?”
Footsteps sounded overhead.
Sloan straightened. “I’ve got to go. She’s coming back down any minute.”
Eleanor laughed softly. “Try not to make a complete mess of it, then.”
Sloan ended the call and looked at the screen for a moment longer.
“Helpful…” she murmured.
She slipped the phone onto the worktop and exhaled slowly, as if doing so might settle everything. It didn’t.
The cafetière was still half full.
She poured what was left into her mug, though it had gone stewed and bitter, and took a sip anyway. Eleanor’s voice still rang in her ears, blunt as ever, stripping everything back to the part Sloan had been trying not to look at too closely.
No guarantees.
That was the problem.
In every other part of her life, Sloan knew how to manage risk. She assessed, planned, mitigated. Even when things went wrong, she liked to believe she had seen the structure of the fall before it came.
This was different.
Matty was in her house, as a guest. Gloria was in the lounge, probably thinking up new ways to annoy her. And Sloan was standing in her kitchen, behaving like a woman with a life soft enough to contain mornings like this.
The thought should have amused her. Instead, it made something tighten low in her chest.
From the lounge came the murmur of daytime television, followed by Gloria’s dry cough. Ordinary sounds. Domestic sounds. The sort Sloan had once imagined she had no use for.
And yet.
Her gaze drifted to the doorway, and to the empty stretch of hall beyond it.
In a minute, Matty would waltz in as though being here were completely normal.
They would take Gloria into town. They would talk, perhaps.
Or avoid talking, which was its own kind of conversation.
Either way, the day would keep moving, and Sloan would have to move with it.
She took another sip of the coffee and grimaced. Eleanor had said there were no guarantees, and Sloan already knew that was true.
She set down the mug just as she heard footsteps on the stairs, thinking the bitter brew might be a metaphor for the day ahead.