Teresa Morgan - Meet Me at Wisteria Cottage

‘No, not yet.’

‘Oh, I thought when you said I could stay I assumed you had a spare bedroom.’ He did have a three-bedroom house exactly like hers.

‘One’s a gym and the other is the dumping ground for all my crap. I’ll eventually get around to clearing it out. You know what it’s like when you move house, takes a while to empty all the boxes.’

Maddy smiled wanly at him. ‘Yes, I remember. I still have boxes in my garage I haven’t opened yet,’ she said, her voice still hoarse from her hysterics earlier. ‘I’ve been in my house barely over a year.’ She started to cry, silent tears.

‘Don’t cry,’ Harry approached Maddy, ‘it’ll be all right, you’ll see. I think most of the damage was in the kitchen.’ His strong hand squeezed her shoulder, sending an unexpected ripple of delight through her body. She felt safe. She caught his scent; a mixture of a day’s work and a spicy Lynx deodorant. It wasn’t unpleasant. ‘Maybe we should hit the sack. It’s been a long day.’

Maddy nodded at him.

‘Come upstairs, and I’ll show you where everything is.’

Exhausted emotionally and physically, Maddy was relieved to follow Harry up the stairs. Whether she would sleep would be another thing, but she knew she needed to lie down. He gestured towards the bathroom which was the first door on the right, at the top of the stairs. Of course she knew this, it was her house, only decorated differently.

‘I haven’t had a chance to decorate yet,’ Harry said, as if reading her mind. The bathroom was very pink and floral, reminding her of the old couple who had lived in the house previously.

Maybe the tiredness made her smirk. ‘At least the suite is white, so it’s a case of just a lick of paint.’

‘And changing those hideous tiles,’ Harry said, shuddering.

Maddy giggled briefly. ‘Oh, I thought the flowers were so you.’

‘What with being a landscape gardener?’

‘Absolutely.’

Harry gave her a speculative look, as if appreciating her teasing, and opened the bathroom cabinet above the sink. ‘I think I have a new toothbrush in here. Hope you can cope with it being blue.’

‘Blue’s fine. Might have been a different story if I was eight.’ Maddy’s eyes widened as she stared inside the cabinet. ‘Wow. There’s enough drugs in there to open a pharmacy.’ Too late – she’d opened her mouth and said the first thing that had entered her head.

Harry slammed the door shut. ‘Here you go.’ He handed Maddy the new toothbrush still in its packaging.

She gulped and started fiddling with the toothbrush packaging. It was none of her business why he had so many tablets hoarded away, although if he was a complete psychopath, and she was staying under his roof for one night, maybe she needed to know. Was she safe? Now you are being overdramatic. He probably has a very good reason for the tablets. Maddy struggled with the packaging trying to take out the toothbrush, which was an impossible task even when sober. The perforated card would never tear.

Ignoring Maddy’s comment about the prescribed drugs in his cabinet, Harry took the toothbrush and ripped it out from the plastic wrapper with ease.

‘Sorry, I’ve had too much vodka.’ She hoped this sounded like a good excuse for her blurting out rubbish, and the fact she couldn’t open toothbrush packaging without scissors.

‘Do you want to shower?’

Maddy shook her head. She’d have one in the morning. Now she needed sleep.

‘Clean towels are in the airing cupboard, help yourself.’

‘Okay.’

Harry led her to the master bedroom. A king-size metal framed bed took centre stage, with navy blue bed linen clashing with the pastel green chintzy wallpaper. ‘Like I said, I haven’t decorated yet. Wanted to move in and get settled first.’

‘Of course.’ Maddy became tongue-tied, the meds in the cabinet eating at her curiosity.

‘I need to pinch a couple of pillows, if that’s okay, and I’ll be downstairs. I’ll let you use the bathroom first.’

‘Oh, Harry, could I borrow a T-shirt or something, please … to sleep in?’ She didn’t fancy sleeping naked. But she’d been wearing these clothes all day, and probably would need to wear them all day again tomorrow if she wasn’t going to be allowed back in her house.

‘Yes, of course, sorry.’ He rummaged in a chest of drawers opposite the bed and pulled out a white pinstriped shirt. ‘This is too small for me now. Use this.’

‘Thank you,’ she said, taking the shirt. ‘And thank you, Harry, for everything. You didn’t need to take me in.’

‘What are neighbours for?’

Sookie padded into the room, and jumped onto Harry’s bed, and immediately started washing and purring, as if Maddy and Harry didn’t exist.

‘Do you mind if she sleeps in here?’

‘No, it’s fine,’ Harry replied, but his expression didn’t match the words he spoke. ‘Right, I’ll let you sleep.’ Harry gave a gentle wave, and as he walked downstairs, Maddy entered the bathroom and locked the door.

She cleaned her teeth, and assessed the dark circles under her eyes, hoping some sleep would reduce their dullness tomorrow. Splashing her face with cold water helped remove some of the puffiness. She stared at her reflection in the mirrors of the bathroom cabinet. Behind those mirrors contained Harry’s drugs. She thought of taking a better look, but resisted, fearing he would hear the clicking of the magnets on the cabinet as she opened and shut the doors. And anyway it wasn’t any of her business.

Her mother had brought her up properly not to be a snoop. Or was it Dad?

‘I’m finished in the bathroom,’ Maddy called down the stairs, then closed the bedroom door behind her.

Under the watchful eye of Sookie curled up on the bed, Maddy stripped off her clothes, neatly piling them up and buttoned up the shirt Harry had given her. It may have been too small for Harry, but luckily on Maddy’s petite form, although long in the arms, it covered her bottom nicely making a good night shirt. If caught out in the middle of the night using the bathroom, at least she’d still keep some of her dignity.

She slid underneath the duvet, and once comfortable turned off the lamp by the bed. She was in darkness until her eyes adjusted to the street lighting that bled between the curtains.

She closed her eyes and listened, hearing Harry leave the bathroom, pulling the cord to turn the light off, and the sound of the toilet cistern refilling. All normal sounds, and not dissimilar to her own home’s, yet she tensed, feeling alien and uncomfortable. She was sleeping in a stranger’s bed. A man she’d hated this morning. Sookie didn’t seem bothered, so maybe Maddy needed to take a leaf out of her cat’s book and try to sleep. Things would look better in the morning, wouldn’t they?

***

With the taste of the pills he’d just swallowed still on his tongue, Harry closed the bathroom door as quietly as he could. He winced, pulling a face. Would he ever get used to those things? Usually he swallowed them, then cleaned his teeth to disguise their chalky, rancid taste. But with everything running around his brain, aware he had a house guest and wondering whether she was comfortable and settled, he’d forgotten to take his medication until he was about to leave the bathroom.

Harry found the spare duvet in the junk room of bedroom three. It really was the ‘box room’, the amount of boxes he still had stacked up. Too small for a bedroom, one day it would be his study. One day. He needed to find the strength to sort through the boxes. He knew there would be some memorabilia, photos that would remind him of Karin. He wasn’t ready for to face them yet.

Having grabbed some bed linen from the airing cupboard, he made up his bed on the larger of his sofas. In the past, he’d slept well on this sofa, as a fireman and working shifts and not wanting to wake Karin. Only in a different house … their house … Nowadays, his medication made him drowsy, so he’d sleep better than Maddy’s cat on this sofa tonight.