IN THE HOURS BETWEEN • TC

2. Back and Forth, Back and Forth

They get home and Una doesn't stick around for Timmy's little initiation tour, doesn't stop to show him where the kitchen is and where the back door is and blah blah blah. He can figure it out by himself; right now, she needs a shower and she needs one badly. Una takes the stairs two at a time, her shoes left in a tangled pile at the bottom foot for which she will no doubt be shouted at later. She grabs her towel from her room. Body wash, razor, facial cleanser. Then, the bathroom door is shut, locked, the shower is turned on to a blissfully lukewarm setting, and Una sets about scrubbing, washing off the grime and the horrible stickiness of suncream, the odour of sweaty teenagers and humid June air.

She's just finished shaving her right leg when there comes a series of swift knocks on the door and Fen's sharp Una?

Una straightens up. Swipes her finger vertically across the blade to get rid of excess hair, and tilts her head back towards the spray.

"Yeah?" she calls back. Chucks the razor to the floor and begins foaming up her other leg. She turns the temperature up a little, now that she's adjusted to the cold.

"How long are you going to be?" Fen asks, and Una sighs in frustration.

"I don't know, however long it takes me," she replies, her voice sitting on a sharp blade.

"Well can you hurry up, darling?" Fen replies. "Timothée would like a shower as well, and you're going to use all the hot water."

Una rolls her eyes, breathes deeply at the mention of Timothée. Of course it's him. Of course it's his fault that her shower is being interrupted, him and his greasy hair and his-- she could scream, but she shaves her leg instead. Does so leisurely, taking her time, making sure she's got every last hair. Thoroughness is key, after all - if the water shuts off while Timothée is taking his much needed shower, it isn't her fault. (Well, it might be her fault, but it's certainly not her problem.)

Una turns the shower off when she feels the temperature drop ever so slightly, the tell-tale sign that the water is about to go cold. She's taken enough showers directly after Frank to know that - both of them take an incredibly long time in the shower. She steps out and dries off, towelling her hair.

The air is blissfully cool as Una steps out of the bathroom, steam billowing out of the door, making her seem like a magician in a puff of smoke. She knows that this is the same air she will complain about in twenty minutes when her body is back at room temperature, but for now she revels in the coolness. Traipses down the landing, which is blissfully free of people, her bare feet dampening the carpet.

Una gets changed into shorts that are too short, and a crop top. There's something that's probably strange about dressing like this when Timothée is here, but if he wants to come and live in their house for half a year, he can learn to mind his business and let Una wear whatever she wants in her own home.

(That doesn't mean she won't change before she goes downstairs next. Change into shorts that are slightly longer, because these ones are actually ridiculously short, and she doesn't want anyone seeing her bum, let alone Timothée.)

Una sits on her bed, tempted to stand by the window, but she knows the air will be spiced and unsatisfying. She lounges backwards, picking up a novel from her bedside table that she's been laboriously working through for three months. It's this size of a brick and it's one of those books that everyone is supposed to read at least once in their life, only Una can't quite get the motivation for it. She likes the musical version, but the book? Far too long.

She opens it to the right page, shuffling up to the headboard and letting her neck sink down into her shoulders, which she knows will hurt later but at the moment is quite comfortable. She starts on the same page that she's been stuck on for a week, and thankfully makes it past that last line of words, the type impossibly small.