Sunny Foxleigh—or ‘Foxy’, as more than one boyfriend had tagged her, thinking he was the first genius to come up with it—lay awake in her bed, her two young children asleep in the room next door. She could hear Hudson’s snoring through the wall. It clearly didn’t bother Daisy. Her daughter could sleep through an earthquake, her earnest, busy mind probably just as busy during sleep, with no time for distractions.
Sunny covered her face with her hands, trying to will sleep to come. The rough edges of paint on her fingers brushed against her nose.
The handle of Eliza’s door scritched and the hinges creaked. Soft footsteps padded along the passage. Her mother obviously couldn’t sleep either.
Sunny flung off the bedcover—a light blanket, all that was needed in September in Brisbane—and followed Eliza to the kitchen, blinking as her eyes adjusted to the light. Her mother was reaching up on tiptoe, into the top cupboard where the tea and coffee were kept, along with the Milo which had to be stored out of reach to stop Hudson eating it with a spoon.
Eliza jumped as Sunny approached, and clutched the tea canister to her chest.
‘Couldn’t sleep?’ Sunny asked, grateful to have someone else awake in the middle of the night. It made her own anxiety about him easier to bear.
Eliza squinted, lacking her glasses. ‘I was worrying about Lara, alone on the other side of the world.’
Sunny’s shoulders slumped. ‘Me too, among other things. That, and Hudson’s snoring.’
‘It’s rattling the walls,’ Eliza said, moving to the kettle and flicking the switch. She held up the tea canister, questioning.
‘No, thanks.’ Sunny leaned against the bench, catching sight of the red paint stains across her navy cotton pants. She didn’t care much for clothes and had never been one for pyjamas, happy to simply fall into bed in whatever she was wearing. She’d slept quite soundly on many couches in many people’s homes wearing her jeans. Sleep had never been an issue for her. Until the past week, anyway.
Sunny did love the winter pyjama sets on her children, though. Somehow, her estimation of her mothering efforts inched up a notch when she got the end part of the day down pat—dinner, bath, pyjamas, teeth, stories, bed. Regardless of the chaos two active five-year-olds could create throughout the day, the world was restored to some sort of order in the blissful, relieving silence that fell once they slipped into dreamland.
And then Hudson started to snore.
She studied Eliza’s hair as her mother moved about the kitchen. It was flattened on one side and Sunny wondered if she could suggest a newer, trendier haircut—something shorter, a close crop that showed all the different colours of ageing with pride—rather than the slightly too long misty-grey bob Eliza had been wearing for so many years.
She blinked, rousing herself, and voiced her greatest fear.
‘Do you think he knows?’
The kettle clicked off and steam floated gently across Sunny’s neck. Eliza looked away, jiggling her chamomile teabag.
‘God, I hope not.’