Sloan looked down at herself.
“And your jeans,” Matty finished.
“Thank you. I’m sorry that I shouted at you.”
“And called me an idiot.” Matty smiled over the lid of her drink as she took a tentative sip, wincing when it was still too hot. She watched as Sloan’s cheeks reddened a little. “I’m not, by the way.”
Sloan nodded. “No, that was... I’m sorry. Name-calling is obnoxious.”
“Won’t get any arguments from me,” Matty said, pulling one foot up and untying the laces of the skate. “So, you should probably get it off your chest.” She pulled her foot free and dropped the skate to the ground, raising her other foot to repeat the process.
“I’m not sure that’s—”
“Any of my business? Fair enough,” Matty said, lifting her bag and digging out her shoes. Sloan watched as she slid her feet into them without bothering to untie the laces.
“My mother is...an issue,” Sloan heard herself say, reaching for her coffee as Matty tied the laces of her skates together.
“Okay.”
“She had a stroke a while ago that left her with some...”
“Issues?”
Sloan smiled. “Yes. She doesn’t have full use of her left side, and she slurs slightly, and... Well, to put it mildly, she’s spiteful, cantankerous, rude and—”
“Obnoxious?”
Sloan nodded again, forced to agree with the description. “And now, I’m in the predicament of not being able to find a carer to come in and take care of her while I’m working.”
“Because she’s a handful?”
“Yes.”
“Sounds like a nightmare.” Matty sipped her coffee, then sat back and looked at Sloan more closely. The put-together woman from the other day now looked like she carried the world on her shoulders. “So, why can’t you find anyone? There must be loads of carers out there.”
Sloan sighed. “Because it appears we’re blacklisted. Well, she is. Nobody wants to deal with her, and I can’t blame them. I don’t want to deal with her either, but here we are.”
“Surely, they can handle one rude woman. How bad can it be?”
“Bad,” Sloan admitted. “She throws things—remote controls…anything handy that’s within reach. Yesterday it was a bowl of soup.” She closed her eyes at the shame of it. “She will deliberately wet herself to make a point.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“I do not know,” Sloan said slowly. “I can’t take time off work right now. We have a huge deal going through, and Boston are having tech issues that, of course, I’m left to deal with.” She glanced across the square towards where her office was looming up along the high street.
“How much are you paying?”
“What?” Sloan said, aware Matty had spoken but not quite catching it.
“I said, how much are you paying to look after the old dragon?”
Sloan wasn’t sure whether to laugh or admonish. Instead, she simply said, “At this point, whatever they ask for.”
Matty nodded, sipped her coffee again, and let the numbers spin in her head. “Twenty an hour. Monday to Friday. Short-term—until you find someone.”
Sloan laughed then, despite herself, as she reconsidered the submissive tendencies she’d already noticed in Matty. “Oh, you wouldn’t last an hour with my mother.”
Matty held her gaze. “Why not?”
