Elinor felt a pat on her back and ignored it, snuggling down deeper into the warm nest of her duvet. The patting gradually increased in vigorousness until at last she opened her eyes and turned to stare up at Tony fiercely.
‘What?’ she demanded angrily. She could still feel the mists of sleep clouding up her brain and stubbornly refusing to dissipate.
Tony put his hands up in mock surrender.
‘God, Elinor, don’t ever let me catch you when you’ve just woken up. You’re an absolute tiger! It’s six o’clock in the evening now and I was just wondering if you wanted some dinner? And what’s the plan for tonight? Are you wanting to head over to Trenouth?’
Elinor sat up and rubbed her eyes.
‘I don’t know... I’m so, so tired,’ she added unnecessarily, yawning loudly.
‘I gathered that,’ said Tony, looking like he was trying not to laugh. He sat down on the bed and waited patiently for Elinor to elaborate.
She looked at him disconsolately.
‘Right now, all I want to do is sleep.’
‘OK, fine,’ said Tony, giving up. ‘Look, come and have some of the pasta I’ve cooked up and then you can head straight back to bed if that’s what you want.’
‘But I don’t have a toothbrush or any of the stuff I use at bedtime. Or my pyjamas for that matter.’
‘I’ve got spare toothbrushes in the bathroom cabinet and you can borrow my pyjamas tonight.’
Elinor made a face. Tony was so much taller and broader than her. Any pyjamas he gave her would be falling off her, surely?
After trying unsuccessfully to come up with a better suggestion, she eventually shrugged and reluctantly got herself out of bed.
She docilely followed Tony to the kitchen, ate a bowl of pasta and then disappeared again shortly afterwards to get her face washed with soap, her teeth brushed and to change at breakneck speed into a pair of Tony’s pyjamas. She always carried her medication in her handbag so she swallowed her two Sertraline tablets. Thankfully her handbag had been retrieved from the boot of Leo’s old Volvo before they left Constantine Bay, because a few hours’ delay in taking her medication could make her feel very sick indeed. In a record thirty minutes she was tucked back up in bed again.
Some houseguest I am, she thought to herself ruefully. But within a few minutes the warmth of the bed dragged her down to the land of nod again...
When Elinor woke up again her room was in complete darkness except for a narrow sliver of light coming from the corridor. For a brief moment she wondered where she was until she suddenly remembered the events of the last twelve hours.
She turned her head to look at the window. She reckoned it must be late at night, given how dark it was outside the window, and she was grateful that Tony had helpfully left the hall light on.
Her wrist was starting to ache painfully again; the ibuprofen she’d taken earlier in the evening had worn off, leaving an uncomfortable throb.
Elinor reached across and switched on the bedside table light, blinking in the sudden glare of it and feeling the brightness momentarily hurt her head. Her watch told her it was one in the morning.
She picked up the packet of paracetamol that Tony had left with her and popped another tablet in her mouth, swallowing it down with some water. Then she leant back on her pillows and for want of anything better to do stared at the wall opposite her bed, waiting patiently for the painkiller to kick in.
She found the quiet stillness of the night slightly unnerving, accustomed as she was now to Leo’s old bungalow. There was rarely a time during the wintertime when you didn’t hear the wind gusting or howling against the solid walls of his house. And rarely was there a time during the night when you didn’t hear the house expanding and shifting on its ancient timbers.
Forty minutes later Elinor was still lying in bed, wide awake and thoroughly fed up. Because of her anxiety, there’d been many nights over the last year when she’d been left unable to sleep, lying awake until the early hours of the morning. As she was already on strong medication for her anxiety, she’d been averse to crawling back to the doctor and begging for some sleeping tablets. So for a long time she’d managed her erratic sleep with over-the-counter sleeping tablets, both herbal and artificial.
Elinor hated the night. For some reason its emptiness made everything worse for her.
She couldn’t understand why, but in the dead of the night negative emotions and thoughts became magnified and distorted. The smallest of her fears and worries grew to an unsustainable size during those sombre hours. Like the genie in Aladdin’s lamp or the evils of Pandora’s box, it often felt at night as though supernatural powers beyond her control had been unleashed and were taking hold of her emotions and mental health.
Tonight, as she lay there in her bed, Elinor relived the mortification of her behaviour towards Jennifer the day before, as well as all the inconvenience she had thrust upon Tony since her accident. She tortured herself with recriminations and self-loathing.
It was Friday night, and she was sure if it hadn’t been for her Tony would’ve been at the pub with his friends. And what was Jennifer going to think when she found out about this?
She felt a complete and utter fool.
She started to cry forlornly, letting the tears slide down her face as she reached out for a tissue to wipe her nose.
In the end, she decided she couldn’t stand the emotional pain any more. Physical pain she could deal with but the emotional pain was far, far worse. She could only describe it as a knife twisting in her chest.
She got up and went out into the corridor, looking for Tony’s room. She saw his bedroom door was slightly ajar and she quietly pushed it open, tiptoeing into the room. When she peered at the bed she could see Tony was sleeping on his side, with his back to the door.
Without even considering the fright she could be giving him, she lifted one side of the duvet and slid herself into the bed, huddling up to his back and reaching up to rest her left hand carefully over his waist.
‘Elinor, what the hell are you doing?’ mumbled Tony irritably, not moving an inch but his muscles tensing under her arm.
Elinor buried her face into his back and didn’t reply.
Tony turned around slowly until he was staring into Elinor’s face, his brown eyes glinting in the light from the hallway.
‘What’s wrong?’ he asked in a gentler tone of voice.
Elinor just looked at him pathetically, tears running down her face. He lifted his hand and gently wiped the tears away with his fingers.
‘Don’t cry. Tell me, what’s wrong?’
‘I think I’m just feeling overwhelmed with guilt at how I behaved towards Jennifer and I’m feeling awful at putting you to all this inconvenience too. All because of my stupid pride and arrogance. I should’ve never gone out into the ocean with the conditions as bad as that. I don’t know what in the world I was thinking.’
She sobbed.
‘And I’m really wishing Leo was here. He calms me down so much.’
Tony reached an arm around her and pulled her close, so her head was now resting on his chest. He stroked her back softly and she felt the warmth of his body slowly loosen the tension in hers. She buried her nose in him, breathing in his musky scent.
It wasn’t long before she started to giggle.
‘Tony, honestly, it doesn’t take much to get you excited,’ she said, feeling a hard bulge against her hip.
Tony looked down at her and grinned widely.
‘What do you expect, Elinor? You know perfectly well what you do to me.’
Elinor squirmed a little further up the bed and then reached across to kiss Tony tenderly on the lips. He responded eagerly, kissing and tasting her lips as though starting a long and slow voyage of discovery.
He took his time, as though testing her resolve and commitment, but in the end it was she that moved them on, by pulling off her clothes and impatiently reaching out to take his off too. Almost as soon as Tony reached for her naked breast, she was moaning impatiently for him to fill her.
After that, time sped quickly by and before long the pair of them were coiled up around each other and drifting off to sleep once more.