Page 11 of Stuck with the Hot Boss
‘The cleaner will let us out,’ said Leo. He banged on the door and yelled, ‘Hello!?’
After a few minutes, it became obvious that the cleaner had finished cleaning and gone home.
‘Well, Ash won’t be too long,’ said Evie. ‘And we have tap water, and books to read, so we won’t die of dehydration or boredom.’
Leo was shaking his head despairingly, as if being temporarily imprisoned in a room filled with dolls, pink faux velvet and fairy lights was the worst thing he could imagine. He really needed to learn how to look on the bright side of life, Evie decided.
But telling someone to cheer up was as useful as telling them to calm down – in other words, it was of no use whatsoever. So, she slipped off her shoes and lay on the bed, propped up by the deliciously squashy pink pillows. On the bedside shelf, she’d spied a copy ofAlexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day,a book she’d very much enjoyed when she was a kid, and which seemed apt, given the circumstances. She settled down to re-read it.
Leo had moved to stand by the window and glare out over the neighbours’ back gardens. For some time, the only sound in theroom was Evie turning pages and laughing softly. The sudden intrusion of Leo’s voice made her jump.
‘Should it take this long to get coffee?’
‘Not usually,’ agreed Evie. ‘Perhaps Ash needed to go back to the depot for a special tool?’
Leo looked down at his shoes. A pair of beige-on-beige Tigers. Fashionable and immaculate.
‘Ash was taking the piss, weren’t they?’ he said. ‘With the cap and the “guv” thing?’
‘Absolutely,’ said Evie.
Leo gave his swanky shoes a curt nod, then straightened up and let out a long exhalation of breath.
‘Fuck it.’
To Evie’s astonishment, he flopped down on the bed beside her. Some distance away, to be fair; it was a ridiculously large bed for a child. But still–
‘Are you okay?’ she ventured cautiously.
‘No,’ was the short answer.
‘Do you want to talk about i–?’
‘No.’
Shutting up it is, then.Evie turned back to her book. Alexander’s mother was insisting that people had bad days even in Australia. Evie felt she had a point. In a country where every second living creature could kill you, the odds of a day going bad seemed high.
‘All right,’ said Leo.
‘All right what?’ said Evie.
He’d been staring at the ceiling – glow-in-the-dark stars and more fairy lights – but now he turned his head to look at Evie.
‘I’d like to talk about it,’ he said.
Evie set aside the book. ‘I’m listening.’
Chapter Six
‘How do you do it?’ Leo asked her. ‘Be so entirely yourself?’
Evie wasn’t sure what he was driving at.
‘Because … I don’t know how to be anyone else?’ she said. ‘I mean, I can do an excellent Drew Barrymore impression, but that’s about it.’
‘Don’t you worry that people won’t take you seriously?’
‘Well, when I’m doing my Drew impression, I actually prefer it that people laugh.’
