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“Trust me. After this, you shower and then I’ll make you a banana smoothie.”
Finn drank the Berocca and felt her insides heave. “It was the Scotch that did it,” she explained. “Champagne I can manage, but Scotch ...”
“And all on a school night, while I was grading boring papers,” Connie said with a laugh.
“Yeah, so glamorous.” She winced as her head made another complaint known.
“Okay, go shower. You’ll feel better. It’ll pass.”
And they both knew that Connie wasn’t talking about the hangover. Finn was engaged in a state of depression, and the only thing that would help was putting one foot in front of the other, day after day, until she began to feel more like herself again.
The water did soothe her; and so too did drying her hair properly and putting on makeup as though she was going to work. She wasn’t. She had begun accepting fewer and fewer assignments in recent weeks.
She dressed in a simple pair of black pants and a green sweater then padded back into the kitchen. Connie slid a glass across the counter. “Banana, milk, and my nana’s secret ingredient. I have to go.” Connie frowned. “You’ll be okay?”
“I’ll be fine,” Finn promised, her smile far from genuine. She felt like she was about to start crying again.
“I’m going to call you at lunch.”
“You don’t have to…”
“Yes I do. You’re my best friend. I think you’ll see it’s in the fine print of our contract.” When Finn opened her mouth to object, Connie forestalled her. “You’d do the same for me, wouldn’t you?”
Finn nodded bleakly.
“Take it easy.” She kissed Finn’s cheek and then scooped up her bag and a heap of papers.
Taking it easy was something Finn had become very good at. With fewer jobs on her schedule, she’d dug deep down her list of ‘to-read’ books. She snuggled into the arm chair, and placed the banana concoction beside her.
She had read three chapters when her phone pinged. She flicked it open and smiled to see that she had a new email from Madison. Strangely, given the relationship and the way in which they’d met, Finn no longer thought of Caradoc when she heard from the young girl. Maddie had taken to reading with the same zest as Finn. She had a voracious, obsessive interest in novels, and Finn took great pleasure in moulding her tastes. She read the latest missive – a discussion of Elizabeth Bennett’s suffering – with now-rare delight and tapped out a quick reply, before dipping back into her own novel.
Two more chapters passed and her eyes were feeling heavy. She was contemplating relocating to the sofa to have a proper nap when the door buzzed.
Connie sometimes had deliveries of bulk art supplies delivered to their flat. It was more reliable than sending them to the school. With a small groan as her head began to pound once more, she moved through the flat.
“You!” She exclaimed, when she pulled the door inward and saw a suited Anton standing just beyond. He had the most enormous bunch of flowers in his hands – an arrangement of lilies and hydrangeas stunningly put together. “You and your bloody Scotch,” she said with a lift of her brows, playfully punching his arm. “Come in.”
r /> He grinned and handed the flowers to her. “You get used to it.”
“Scotch? I don’t think I ever will.”
“Perhaps not. It’s not important.”
Finn bit down on her lip, feeling a sense of remorse at how she’d behaved the night before.
“I just wanted to make sure you were okay,” he said softly. “You were really upset. I’ve been … worried.”
Another tick in the ‘perfect guy’ column. “I’m fine,” she promised, her smile lopsided. “I will be, anyway.” She found a vase beneath the sink and rinsed it, then balanced the flowers in it temporarily. They would need to have their stems cut and the paper removed; she’d enjoy doing that later. Not at that moment.
“Good.” He reached over and pressed his palm into her cheek. “And you’ll call me if you want to catch up.”
“Yeah, of course.” She captured his hand in hers and pulled it down in front of her. “Another time, if I’d met you, I would have thought all my dreams had come true.’
“A victim of timing and circumstance then,” he groaned dramatically, earning a laugh from Finn.
“Something like that.”
She saw him to the door, and kissed him on both cheeks as he left, before turning back to give the flowers her attention.
