Read Online The Sleeper by Emily Barr - Free Book Online Page B

coffeed up.’
    We walk across the car park together, Sam wheeling my little bag.
    ‘How was your week?’ I ask, strangely formal. ‘At work and stuff? And what did you do in the evenings?’
    I have to ask this, even though we speak every day.
    ‘It was fine,’ he says, lifting my bag to carry it up the set of stairs that cuts through from the station car park to the front of our house. ‘It was, in fact, phenomenally tedious. You absolutely can’t do this job for more than your six-month contract, OK, sweetheart? I can’t bear it without you. You know, the moment I see your train coming into the station, everything’s all right. I’m so bored without you. We belong together. We always have done. I hate having the bed to myself. I hate sitting here playing Scrabble against myself on my phone.’
    I laugh, without meaning to.
    ‘Is that what you do? You play Scrabble against yourself on the phone?’
    ‘I know! It’s manly, isn’t it?’ He stops, turns to me and bites his lip. ‘Do you want to know the worst thing about it? It’s this: the reason I mess about on my phone is so that I have a legit reason to be holding it in my hand and staring at it, because all I’m really doing is waiting for you to call.’
    ‘Sam! Tell me that’s not true!’
    ‘OK. It’s not true.’
    ‘It is, isn’t it?’ I want to shrink away from him. I must not.
    ‘So how was the train? You look tired.’
    He is unlocking our front door. I look at his back and imagine the hurt expression that would appear on his face if I told him the truth: I am tired because I was drinking gin and wine until two with my new great friends, and discussing him in some depth. And by the way, a handsome man pressed his knee against mine and I liked it. Then I nearly kissed him.
    ‘I never sleep well on the train,’ I say instead.
    ‘I know. You poor thing. We could look at the flights sometime, if you wanted?’
    ‘No, I enjoy it really. Honestly. A bit of coffee and I’ll be perfectly all right. And breakfast. I couldn’t stomach the railway croissant this morning. I’m starving.’
    ‘Well, that’s good news, because I’m going to make you the best breakfast you’ve ever had in your entire life,’ he says, and I put my handbag down, and take off my coat, and go to the coffee machine and pour myself a cup. I am home.
    That afternoon we go to one of the pubs in town. It is still sunny, but cold, with a wind blowing straight off the Atlantic. I am wearing my Cornwall uniform of skinny jeans, a blue and white striped top and a coat I bought in New York five years ago, before we spent all our money on useless fertility treatment. Sam looks every inch the Cornish shipyard worker in a massive cuddly fleece, jeans and clunky Timberland boots, again purchased years ago when we had cash.
    ‘Cheers,’ I say with a bright smile, holding up my vodka and Coke. Short of Red Bull, which would have raised an eyebrow, that seemed like the most stimulants I could cram into one glass. The alcohol makes me feel sick, coming as it does on top of an unshakeable secret hangover, but I press on, and soon I feel a million times better.
    ‘Lara!’
    I look round, grateful to whoever this might turn out to be, and see Iris. I have not seen her since I bustled her out the day she came for tea. I still feel bad about that.
    ‘Hello!’ I pat the wooden seat next to me. We are sitting at a huge round wooden table, and Sam and I are, naturally, right next to each other. There are acres of table free, kilometres of bench. ‘Come and sit down. Sam, you remember Iris.’
    ‘Yes,’ says Sam, verging on the rude. ‘How are you?’
    ‘Oh, you know,’ says Iris. She is looking more eccentric than ever, or perhaps she just seems that way to me, used as I am now to corporate London. She is wearing a pair of striped tights, a tiny velvet skirt that, I have to admit, she carries off magnificently, and a fluffy jumper. Her hair is still dark at the roots and blond