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Like I was finally rediscovering where I belonged. How weird was that?

8. Dylan

Ididn’t notice him at first because I was too bewildered when I woke up. It was just before seven, and I’d slept a solid six hours. The last time I’d slept that long… I couldn’t even remember. But I got up and forced myself into the shower before digging out another shirt and trying to button it up as I almost tripped over my own feet, realising Stewart was still on the chair, fast asleep with his phone in his hand.

Fuck me sideways.

“Stewart?” I called out, a sudden panic shooting through me that he’d died in the night and I was now sharing space with a corpse. Obviously not, as he stretched and yawned, seemingly not concerned that he was still here and that I was standing here just wearing an open shirt like an idiot.

“Morning,” he grunted. “Seems I fell asleep. Did you sleep well?”

“Six hours. Jean will be here in a bit. I need to get going. Tidy up and all that and pretend I know what I’m doing.”

He’d already got up and made his way to the bathroom while I stood there feeling the total embarrassment spread from my cheeks right down to my toes. What on earth was I playing at, asking my neighbour to babysit me? Also… There had been a hug.

That part was now making me want to flee out those patio doors and never return. Jump the back wall and run screaming across the train tracks, hurling myself in front of the express train thundering past.

We were situated at the back of Marylebone Station. Trains were as much part of this house as birdsong and the sound of laughter. And now silence. The goddamn silence.

“It’s always easier to rest when someone else is in the house. I find that too. I can’t sleep because I can’t hear the kids upstairs,” he said, reappearing behind me.

Talk about insensitive and triggering. I shuddered, but he just stood there and looked at me.

“You have to figure out how to deal with hearing me talk about my family. Just like you have to learn to talk about yours. They are alive and well, and you have to remember that.”

“They don’t feel like it. It feels like I’m grieving, constantly, with nothing to show for everything I’ve lost.”

Talking like a pathetic plonker again. I knew I had to snap out of this. I had spent the past weeks listening to Jean repeatedly tell me as much, and I was frighteningly starting to see it. The way I behaved. How I’d given up not only on myself but perhaps on everything. Life. This place.

“I’ll make us tea,” I stuttered out, fleeing upstairs before I burst into tears.

Damn it. Get it together.

I listened to him leaving through the patio doors, then, as I sat there staring pathetically at the two cold cups in front of me, I wondered if he’d finally given up on meor if he would return. Well, he did return, again with his signature teacups.

“This is getting silly.” He laughed, looking at the four cups in front of us. “But I like silly. I like that we have a brew together.”

“Like normal people.”

“Like those builders on that site yesterday.”

“They were so clueless; they didn’t even understand the documents I was shoving under their nose. All that investment and no idea.” I sounded like Jean.

“But that is where you build,” he said. “They were grateful. I could see the relief in them just from watching you shake their hands. The way they were grasping at those folders and how you smiled at them. Reassuringly.”

“Their mistakes are easy to fix. The money they’ve wasted less so.”

“But they know better now. And hopefully, they’ll tell their friends about the lawyer who salvaged their first building project and ensured they learnt the ropes.”

“More likely, they’ll laugh about me down the pub, tell all their mates about the skinny useless lawyer who justturned up on site and shoved nonsense at them until they caved in and agreed to pay him money.”

“Positivity, Dylan.”

I didn’t believe in it. Not anymore. And once again, I cringed at myself for freaking out when the doorbell rang.

I’d once handled courtrooms full of people and been called in as an expert witness, talking the talk with confidence and ease. These days, the idea of having to face a delivery guy at my front door made me break out in a panic. Not that I got up to open the door.

“I’m assuming that’s Jean?” Stewart said, getting up and walking out into the hallway, where he yanked the door open, his booming voice echoing a cheery good morning all the way to where I was hiding behind the kitchen counter.