Normally, Malcolm was an early-bird. Holly knew from experience that most times he was awake before the alarm clock went off, and frequently up and making breakfast. However, as she surfaced from sleep the next morning – some five minutes before the alarm was set to wake her – she realised he was still sound asleep beside her.
She switched off the alarm clock, to forestall it going off and waking him, and looked over her shoulder. At which point she couldn't prevent a huge grin from breaking out on her face.
He still looked adorably absurd in her fluffy onesie. Fortunately he probably hadn't caught sight of himself in a mirror the night before, because he'd have called her every name under the sun for making him wear it – although he claimed to have relatively little personal vanity, he had very definite standards about what a Reed should or should not wear, and a fluffy blue onesie would undoubtedly now be placed at the very top of the latter. He should actually think himself lucky – she'd originally hesitated over whether to get one with a hood and lamb's ears, and the thought of him waking to find himself wearing that was so hilarious she had to put a hand over her mouth to stop the splutter.
Always a light sleeper, it was too much to hope for that he'd fail to notice her slipping out of bed, though she did her best to do so stealthily. His eyes flicked open, grey as the clouds in the dawn-light outside the window.
"Hush," she told him, with a kiss on his forehead. "Go to the bathroom if you need to, love, then get back into bed. I'm making breakfast this morning." She frowned him into obedience and then slid her feet into her slippers and padded through the tiny hall into the lounge.
Which was not empty.
JJ was sitting on the sofa, Dickon purring on his lap. As she entered the room, he looked up, his hand stilled on the cat's back and a look of unbearable apprehension on his face.
Fortunately she'd just closed the door into the hall, so Malcolm probably wouldn't hear her small squeak of surprise. The surprise morphed immediately into delight, however, and she flew across the room to hug her cousin, regardless for once of Dickon's indignation as JJ stood up and he was dumped gently on to the floor. "Yes, love, he's here. Of course he's here."
"I'm going to kick his sorry ass for scaring me like that," he said softly, holding her in a rib-crushing grip. "He switched his cellphone off – I didn't know what the hell he'd done, where he'd gone..." He looked away. "I checked out the guest bedroom, and he wasn't there. I've just been sitting here, praying..."
"He was in a bad way when he got here." She looked up at him seriously. "He needed to talk. I don't think he could think of anywhere else to go.
"JJ, this is between the two of you and I'm not going to interfere. But I'll give you one piece of advice: remember that old saying of Epictetus' – 'we were given two ears and one mouth, and therefore we should listen twice as much as we talk'."
He gave her a hollow smile. "So I'll listen to him after I've kicked his ass."
"You'll listen to him when you take him breakfast." She turned away to the kitchen.
He followed her, and helped with the washing-up that had been left from yesterday. Neither of them spoke, but it was a comfortable silence; Dickon went to the back door, took a couple of horrified leaps into the snow, and hurried back in again as soon as he'd left a melting yellow stain beside the shrivelled last-year's stems of the fuchsia bush.
When all the plates and cutlery and kitchenware were dried and tidied away, she started on breakfast, once again with his help. In no time at all she had a tray ready, with two bowls of warm porridge heaped with raspberries and honey; a stack of hot buttered toast and two steaming mugs of tea completed the array.
"You do realize I only drink this stuff for you." He nodded down at the tea as he picked up the tray.
"And you know I only make it because you do." She smiled up at him. "It seems to be getting a habit with me to have exhausted men turn up on my doorstep. As soon as you've settled things with Mal, the first thing you need to do is get some sleep. You must have travelled all night."
"All night and most of yesterday afternoon. Whole country seems to have been just paralyzed by the snow. Don't you have it here that often or something?"
"Oh yes," she answered sunnily. "Most winters. But we never get used to it. There's something quintessentially British about our transport infrastructure never being quite prepared for fallen leaves in autumn or snow in winter."
He shook his head, probably at the peculiarity of the British psyche. Then, with a visible straightening of his shoulders, he walked towards the door into the hall.
She opened it for him, and turned the handle to the master-bedroom to let him walk through. Then she closed the door behind him and walked briskly to the bathroom, where she turned on the shower, shed her nightdress and stepped under the water, where she began washing her hair, singing as loudly as she could.