Gray hadn't wanted to stay, but he could deny Cressida nothing. He hating the Lez Girls house with a strength that surprised and perplexed him. He didn't like its three concealed stair-cases, and he found the small rooms claustrophobic and oppressive. The latter because it seemed that the rooms were aggressively furnished and decorated as if there'd been an unconscious decision to avoid the feminine cliché. He wondered if the clubroom fustiness of the house's interior was a gesture to confound the overtly camp-feminine pinkness of the stucco exterior walls; and
that antidotal theory could as equally well be applied in reverse. Or, just maybe, to give the Occam's Razor principle a look in, the interior's design options
were merely constrained by its darkly stained, oak-panelled walls.
Damn.The long day behind the wheel had left him irritably analytical and head-achy. While Cressida crashed around upstairs, flinging open windows to air out the rooms and generally exorcising, as best she could, her own demons with frenzied automatic activity, Gray went in search of coffee. Beans or ready ground, he wasn't fussed, even instant would do. He found beans. Above the kitchen, Cressida's feet pounded across the floorboards and then stopped suddenly.
“Oh. My. God!” Her voice carried through the ceiling. Her feet stampeded down the hidden stairs behind the kitchen wall and she burst through the door, looking sad, tired and almost surprised to see Gray there, holding a bag of Blue Mountain dark roast and questioning her with his quizzical gaze.
“Don't ask,” she said, seeing his question. “And you might be safer down here than to go upstairs.”
“Ah. Is that an order?”
“No, you lughead, but if you go up
those stairs,” she pointed emphatically. “I would have no option but to kill you.”
“Ah, right, girl stuff.” He frowned into the bag of beans. “Got a grinder anywhere?” She showed him.
While he went through the therapeutic ritual of grinding and then playing with all the knobs and levers on the elaborate espresso machine in the dining room, Cressida returned to the upper floor armed with a black garbage bag and a pack of kitchen wet-wipes. When she reappeared she was calmer. She also brought down a pillow and some blankets.
“Upstairs is now safe,” she said wearily. “But I still think you'll be comfier on the sofa in the lounge. I've kipped on it myself once or twice when I was too pissed or tired to make it to my room.”
“I'll be OK, Cress. Coffee?”
“No thanks, it'll wake me up and I don't want to be awake.”
Gray nodded. He didn't know what else to do. At length he said: “Well. I'll be right here if you need me.”
“Yeah, thanks for being here. It's ... I ... y' know ... Oh fuck.” She turned and left Gray with his coffee and blankets.
He wasn't certain, but he thought she cried herself to sleep. If he was right, it seemed to take a long time before she stopped trying to smother her sobs in her pillow. When the noises stopped he crept upstairs to check on her. To make himself happy that she had not done anything silly. He hesitated outside her bedroom door. It was ajar and her pushed it a little more open. He stood in the doorway and looked. Her single bed seemed to half fill the tiny cell-like room. Cressida was curled up foetally, facing the wall against which, for want of space, the bed was pressed. Gray watched her shallow breathing for a few moments, reassured and at the same time worried by how far her withdrawal from the world would go. He was so absorbed he almost jumped when she spoke, without moving.
“I'm not asleep.”
“Sorry ... sorry. I was just ... you know ...”
“Checking up?”
“Uh, yah. Checking up. Pretty lame huh?”
The mound of bed-covers convulsed slightly as the woman underneath made a short soundless snort of strained mirth. “Yeah, so lame that getting back downstairs is gonna be a bitch?”
“Eh? What? No!”
“Quit it, Gray. I was being the bitch ... again. I was actually asking.” She wriggled under the covers, getting a little closer to the wall. There wasn't far to go. “I think I could do with a hug.”
In the semi-dark — the only light was a 40 watt bulb back near the top of the stairs — Gray grinned, feeling artlessly pleased not just at the prospect of a small titbit of intimacy, although that was a bonus not to be slighted, but also because her needfulness was a justification for his concern. “Well, I never leave home without a spare hug or two,” he said as he crossed the threshold.
“Uh, Gray?”
“Yes.”
“Just a hug, yeah?”
“Right, just a hug.”
“Oh, and leave your stinky bloody trainers outside the room, huh?”
“Yes, ma'am.” In the dark his grin was so wide, his ears feared for their safety.
Chapter 29 
