The Runaway Princess by Hester Browne

left ear and seven phone numbers written on his shirt), and as a result I woke up on Sunday feeling almost human.
    A giddy Christmas-morning feeling was flitting around the edges of my mind, as if I’d had a gorgeous dream I hadn’t wanted to wake up from, and it took me a moment to work out what it was.
    Then my eye fell on my bedside table, empty apart from one terra-cotta pot, and I remembered. Last night I’d met a blue-eyed man who’d scaled rusty scaffolding to rescue a plant. For me.
    I sat up cautiously, hoping that maybe a piece of paper with Leo’s phone number might have materialized in the soil or something, but it hadn’t. He hadn’t scrawled his number on the pot either. I don’t know why I hoped he had; I knew he hadn’t, and I’d been too shy and inept to ask him for it.
    Disappointment tinged the giddy feeling as I thought of all the things I
should
have said. How could I get in touch with him to say thank you now? It would be only polite to say thank you.
    Although, the realistic voice in my head started, if Leo knew people who went on Dream Seed courses, he was about four leagues out of my reach. And he was friends with that appalling Rolf, so I probably wasn’t really his type either.
    I swung my legs out of bed to stop
that
depressing line of argument and went through to the kitchen to start my part in the morning-after routine: the miracle cooked-breakfast hangover cure.
    The sitting room certainly looked a little less heavenly this morning than it had last night, even without guests slumped over the soft furnishings. I pushed open the curtains to let some light in and started to tidy on autopilot, but really my brain was only thinking about one thing. Each time I replayed the brief moments when our eyes met, or Leo’s hand had touched mine, a sharp thrill went through me, and I shied away from it as if I might wear out the memory from replaying it too often.
    But then I’d move a bunch of glasses or an empty bowl of olive stones and allow myself a sneaky sideways memory of Leo kissing my cheek, or him leaning in to my neck to make himself heard over the party, and I’d shiver all over again.
    In the end, I had to turn the radio on to distract myself, and with the dishwasher humming and the windows wide open to get rid of various smells, I fried eggs, and grilled sausage and bacon, and made toast, and piled the whole lot onto one big serving dish, then took it through to Jo’s room with a pot of tea so we could begin the party postmortem.
    *
    J o was lying surrounded by all her pillows, with a silk sleep mask over her eyes. Her hair was still in last night’s curls, but her skin was clean and pink. She always took her makeup off before she went to bed, no matter what state she was in, even the time we were both so worse for wear that she’d tried to use toothpaste for cleanser.
    “I’ve made you breakfast in bed, milady,” I said, doing a pretend
Downton Abbey
bob.
    She gave a languid waft of her hand, which was supposed to convey the impression that she never
ever
ate fried foods—we had to go through this each time—and I added my usual line, as of our first night out, “Five generations of my family swear by this fry-up, and they were—”
    “—proper drinkers,” Jo joined in for the last bit. “Oh, go on. Persuade me. Maybe start with tea.”
    I poured two cups of strong tea, the color of bricks, and stirred in two sugars. “Come on. You’re not
that
hungover. You’ve had eight hours’ sleep!”
    Jo struggled into a sitting position and held out her hand for the mug, sleep mask still in place. I put it carefully into her hand and went to open her curtains.
    “It’s a lovely day outside.” I shoved open the sash windows, and clean bright air rushed in, along with the sounds of a dog barking a few streets away and distant church bells. “Even the pigeons look clean.”
    “Are you still drunk?” Jo pushed the mask up onto her head and gave me a bleary-eyed look.