Connie was hungover. She knew it before she opened her eyes; the thudding in her head and the extreme feelings of nausea being a perfectly adequate indicator that she had imbibed considerably more than she should have done the night before.
Reluctantly she forced herself to let daylight into her world, and instantly groaned as she did so and the pain in her head became considerably worse. It was not going to be a good day by any stretch of the imagination. Still squinting slightly she looked around her bedroom, fought the urge to vomit as the unwelcome bouquet of white wine reached her from a half drunk glass on her bedside table, and then became somewhat curious when she noticed her washing up bowl on the floor at the side of the bed.
The presence of the washing up bowl showed quite a lot of organisational skills, which, somehow seemed like they might have been a little bit beyond her the night before given her apparently alcohol induced state. Her first concern was that Grace might have put it there, which would have been, in terms of her parenting, fairly catastrophic and would probably involve multiple angry phone calls from Sam; much deserved of course, but then… no. It couldn't have been Grace. Grace had done her usual, objected to something fairly mundane like having to go to school the following day, and rang the ever obliging, really bloody irritating, Granny Strachan to come and pick her up. God she hated that women.
She was just therefore congratulating herself on having the foresight to bring the bowl to bed when there was a knock on the bedroom door. She groaned inwardly, partly because the noise was like a sledgehammer to her head, but more importantly she had no idea who was behind the knock, and none of the options really appealed.
She took a deep breath – prayed fervently that it wasn't Jacob – and called out for whoever it was to enter.
Charlie. Well, Charlie was better than Jacob. At least with Charlie she wasn't running the risk of having slept with him and therefore having to deal with the sticky issue of conscious uncoupling yet again. She pulled her duvet around herself and looked up at him awkwardly.
"Hey."
He smiled at her kindly, and held out a cup of coffee which she took gratefully.
"How are we feeling this morning?"
It was typical Charlie; gentle, non judgemental, but with just enough concern to make her feel completely bloody awful. She looked away, biting her lip and feeling like a naughty child.
"Rough and," she glanced down at the bowl again, "a little embarrassed. Well, no, a lot embarrassed."
To her surprise he sat down on the bed beside her, which – if she was completely honest – felt a little over intimate, and reached out to squeeze her shoulder.
"It's OK, Connie. I won't deny it was an-", he paused, apparently looking for the right word, "interesting night but it's not a problem. I understand."
She closed her eyes and sighed, not particularly enjoying the concept of having been the cause of an interesting anything. She was just wondering if she ought to start apologising when Charlie spoke again.
"To be honest, I'm quite flattered. I mean if I were 20 years younger…"
Her eyes flew open in horror as his words hung in the air. She looked at him, searching his face for any indicator that what he was implying was his idea of a joke, but saw nothing except a dawning sense of realisation that she had no idea what he was talking about.
"You don't remember." He said softly, seemingly suddenly as awkward as she was. "You have no recollection."
She shook her head; embarrassment, mortification and the urge to vomit all threatening to overwhelm her simultaneously.
"No, Charlie, I don't remember. What the hell happened last night?"