Girls' Night In by Emily Belden

Author:Emily Belden
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Graydon House Books
Published: 2020-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

DAY 27

Change your bedsheets

“Annie! You are having someone over to stay?”

Annie snorted. “Some chance.” In all the time Costas had lived with her, she’d never had anyone spend the night. She knew he did sometimes, but they always crept out before dawn, leaving only rogue hairs in the shower.

“Then why are you…?” Costas stood in her bedroom doorway, indicating the piles of linen all over the place. Buster was scooped in his arms, licking his face with a pink tongue.

“Don’t let that dog down—I’ve just cleaned all this,” she warned. Annie’s usual beige-ish bedspread was lying in a heap on the floor, and she was putting on a new one, turquoise with pink flowers.

“He will not eat things. He’s a good dog, aren’t you, baby? Yes, you are. Yes, you are! So, Annie, why do you clean?”

“Oh, I just thought it was time for a change. Make things nicer.” She’d slept in those bedclothes since she moved in here, broke and possessionless. She’d left all her nice things behind, turned her back on her old life, bought the cheapest sheets she could find, scratchy and uncomfortable, and hadn’t washed them quite as often as she should have.

Costas gave her a thumbs-up. “Good for you, Annie. I go out now.”

He was dressed in a tight silver T-shirt and she smiled at him indulgently. “You have fun.” Maybe she should buy some sheets for him, too. After all, it wasn’t very nice in the little box room he called home. As she plumped and smoothed and admired her new bed, she thought about what he’d said. If, in some parallel and very unlikely universe, someone did happen to see her bedroom, it would at least now not entirely embarrass her.

She bent down to open the lowest drawer in her cabinet, looking for a pillowcase. Something rustled. Tissue paper. And too late Annie remembered what she’d hidden away in there, her most precious treasure.

It was the only thing of Jacob’s she’d saved. The rest had been clothes bought from shops, that anyone could have, but this little cream cardigan had been made by her mother, knitting solidly in front of the TV for two months. The buttons were shaped like lambs’ faces. Annie pressed it to her face and breathed. Out of it fell a small plastic hoop, with the name Jacob Matthew Hebden printed on it. His hospital ID.

And she was back there. In her old bed, early in the morning. Mike bringing Jacob to her for a feed, his small body sliding in between them. The baby they’d made. A miracle. Usually when she thought about that time, it was blackened with the anger she felt. But Mike, too, had lost all that. Even if he had Jane now, Annie was not so blinded by rage she didn’t realize it could never make up for what had happened. Nothing could. Mike was the only person who could really understand how it felt for her to hold this little cardigan and remember the baby who was no longer inside it.

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