IN THE HOURS BETWEEN • TC

6. Follow Your Eyes

When they get home, there is a letter waiting for Una in a familiar copperplate. She picks it up off the doormat and charges upstairs ahead of everyone else. Una presumes that everyone's too tired to nag today, because no one's called after her about the tangled pile of her shoes by the foot of the stairs.

She launches onto her bed and delicately runs a finger under the join of the envelope, easing the two sides away from each other and pulling out the flimsy paper inside. She reads every single line with fondness, a laugh here and there. A longing roots itself somewhere in the pit of her stomach, and her mouth twists as she reads the last line again and again and again.

There are foreign footsteps on the stairs, and she tucks the letter back into the envelope, leaving it on her bed and going to shut the door. She meets Timothée, who is walking to the spare room, and he doesn't give her his usual smile. Una's not quite sure why it's so jarring, why she allows herself to be so bothered by it.

She closes the door on him. Goes back to her bed and opens the letter again. Reads over everything, but the last line doesn't seem as exciting any more.

She falls back into the duvet and lies there solemnly, trying to work out if she should apologise. If she doesn't, he'll hate her. If she does, she'll be making it into a big thing, when it's literally nothing. It should be literally nothing.

Which is why she goes and gets herself a glass of lemonade and avoids everything to do with Timothée as much as possible. She goes outside and reads a different book, though it doesn't catch her attention for long. Sean is making a Caprese salad for dinner and Una steals a leaf of basil from the pot plant. Rolls it in between her fingers and breathes deeply, happily. She steals a bit of mozzarella, too. Chews happily and wanders into the sitting room, where Frank is watching Love Island.

"I don't know how you watch this," she huffs, putting down her lemonade and collapsing onto the other end of the sofa. Frank shrugs, and Una watches glumly as the contestants natter. It's mind-numbing, but she doesn't have the energy to draw herself away now that she's sitting down.

They watch in near silence until the ad-break, at which point a head of curls pokes around the door and asks politely if it may join them.

Frank nods. "You don't have to ask, Timothée," he says. Timothée nods, scratches his nose. Sits down in the space between Una and Frank.

"What are we watching?" he asks, turning towards Frank. "Wallace and Gromit?"

It turns out that this is a joke, because Frank and Timothée laugh at each other and she senses that it's something they have between them. Something that doesn't involve her.

After an ad for Birdseye chicken nuggets, the Love Island logo comes back onto the screen and Timothée grins again. "Ah. I see," he says, flipping his phone over and over in one hand. "Not Wallace and Gromit."

Frank laughs as Timothée tucks his phone under his thigh and crosses his arms, leaning back in the seat. Frank is hugging a pillow to his chest, and the three of them watch. Silence, silence, silence. Nasally voices. Boobs.

"This is cataclysmicly bad," Una says, repeating her mum's verdict of the show. She hopes it exudes nonchalance, an air of sanctimoniousness, but the comment falls flat in the room. No one replies.

She rolls her eyes.

"How do you even like this?" Una asks, her voice coated in disgust. Timothée stretches his arms above his head like a rousing cat, then slumps back into his seat.

They sit through the ad break in silence, both Frank and Timothée on their phones while Una stares blankly at cars, life insurance, PPI claims. She dares a glance over in the other direction, and Timothée is texting quickly, smiling at his phone.