Cole:Sorry I didn’t see you before I left
Cole:You distract me from real life
And there we were, back to sex again. Three messages deep and I’d already fucked it up.
With a sigh, I retrieved Ella from the afghan rug and left the room under the pretence of putting her down for a nap. But it was me who needed to sleep. Without Toby in my arms, insomnia had hit me worse than it ever had, and I hadn’t slept a wink since I’d left Cornwall.
My eyes hurt.
I put Ella in the Harvey Nichols cot my father had bought her instead of giving an actual shit, and I lay down on the bed beside her. She grizzled for a while, but eventually gave in and knocked out with her fist in her mouth.
I watched her, jealous, but sleep wouldn’t come to me. My mind was racing too fast and yet seemed to move too slow for me to catch a coherent thought. Toby’s silence bothered me. But it was more than that. I’d been a wreck long before I met him. I’d worked hard to be better, and somehow, today at least, I was still a wreck.
You need to sleep. Nothing will ever be okay if you don’t sleep.
Like I needed my subconscious to tell me that. I thumped my head on the pillows and tried every meditative breathing exercise I’d ever learned. Relaxed my body, muscle by muscle, joint by joint. Allowed my mind to drift the way it wanted to, then practised pulling it back, over and over. I’d had clients who couldn’t sleep—city folk, mainly, too caught up in screen time and pay cheques to switch off. But my time on the farm had taught me that other things bred insomnia too. That even Angelo, his body battered by chronic fatigue, didn’t sleep well. Maybe Toby—
My phone buzzed, startling me enough that perhaps I had been asleep after all.
I lunged for it, not wanting to wake Ella just yet, and answered it without looking at the screen. “Yeah?”
The shy laugh that answered me sounded a million miles away. “Wow. You sound like a really angry man.”
“Toby?”
He laughed again. “It’s me. I’m calling from the house. My phone got stamped on. I can see your messages, but I can’t make the screen work.”
“Who stamped on it?”
“Joe. But it was an accident. He gave me another one, but I haven’t got round to using it yet.”
His voice was an instant tranquilliser. I lay back, barely taking in the words, just his soft, velvet brogue that was all the comfort I’d ever need. “I was worried you’d think I’d run out on you.”
A protracted pause stretched out. Then Toby sighed. “It did cross my mind, but I don’t know why. It’s not like you’re obligated to tell me your plans.”
I wasn’t. But maybe I wanted to be. And that was the stupidest thing ever. I was a single dad with nothing to my name but a beautiful baby and a yoga mat. Toby was twenty-four with his whole life in front of him. He didn’t deserve to be fretting over me.
“Where did you go, anyway? Harry said you’d gone home, but I don’t know where that is.”
“I came to see my dad. Not because I wanted to, but because he’s got some stuff of mine in his loft, and I wanted to bring it back to use at the clinic.”
“So you don’t like your dad either, eh?”
“I never said that.”
“But you didn’t want to see him.”
“Not really. I hate him.”
Another low chuckle wrapped around me, cocooning me into a place where I couldn’t seem to do the right thing. Then Toby spoke again. “You’ve never talked about your family.”
“Yeah, well. We don’t seem to do much talking.”
“Because we’re not friends?”
“I never said that either.”
“But we’re only supposed to be fucking, right? Eventually? So we’re not friends, are we?”
