Still not entirely awake, I swung my legs off the bed and stood up, only to sit sharply back down again as the sole of my foot encountered one of the broken shards of china. I swore loudly at the shock and pain and clambered over the bed to reach the door before Jimmy succeeded in waking up every other occupant of the floor.
We would have been a peculiar sight to any onlooker who happened to be passing down the corridor at two o’clock in the morning. Fortunately there was no one around to see Jimmy, with his hair awry, standing semi-dressed on the threshold to my room. He had at least taken the time to pull on a pair of jeans, but I noticed that, like me, he too was barefooted.
He strode purposely into my room.
‘Are you all right? I heard you screaming.’ His eyes raked the room, looking for the cause of my terrified cries, and there was no disguising the alarm in his tone, which struck me as odd, for aren’t policeman trained to stay cool in an emergency?
‘Nightmare,’ I said succinctly, hopping over to the room’s only armchair to avoid standing on my damaged foot.
His sigh of relief seemed to empty his body of the tension that had obviously been coursing through it.
‘Oh God, is that all? I thought you were being murdered in here. And then when I heard that crashing sound…’
‘I had a little argument with the bedside lamp.’
It was then that he noticed the way I was cradling my left foot in my hand, while a slow but persistent trickle of blood oozed from the deep cut on the sole.
‘Rachel you’re hurt! What happened?’
Not for the first time I wondered if he was really in the right line of work. His powers of deduction seemed flawed, to say the least.
‘I stood on one of the broken bits of lamp in my hurry to get to the door before you broke it down.’
I knew that I must have sounded a little ungrateful but the nightmare still had me in its thrall and my foot was actually very sore. Instantly he was by my chair, gently prising my hands away from my injured foot.
‘Here, let me take a look.’
Gingerly, I laid my left foot in his outstretched hand, already preparing to wince at his touch, but he was infinitely gentle as he supported my heel in his palm, examining the wound which was still bleeding quite profusely.
‘Let’s get this cleaned up,’ he announced getting to his feet. ‘I don’t think there is anything in the cut, but we need better light than in here to be sure.’
Before I realised his intention, he had bent and scooped me into his arms and was carrying me towards the bathroom.
‘I can walk,’ I protested. ‘Or hop.’
He ignored my comments and kicked the bathroom door ajar with his foot and flicked on the light. As he looked around for somewhere to deposit me, I was acutely aware of the unfamiliar, although not unpleasant, sensation of being held against his naked chest. Less agreeable was the realisation that my nightdress was incredibly short and, as a result of my nightmare, was clinging revealingly to my sweat-dampened body. I tried to pull down on the hem but only succeeded in displaying even more of my cleavage by doing so. Fortunately, Jimmy’s attention was all on my foot.
He lowered me onto the edge of the bath and used the shower attachment to slowly cascade water over my foot and ankle. It stung a little at first, but I didn’t dare fidget too much, trying as I was to maintain what little modesty I had left with one leg lifted over the edge of the tub. Never before had I felt in such desperate need of underwear.
Under the soothing rivulets of water and the fluorescent bathroom lighting, Jimmy took careful stock of the wound and when he had determined that it was clean of foreign objects, he pressed firmly down on the cut to staunch the flow of blood. The bathroom was tiny, no doubt designed for single occupancy only, so we were by necessity very close together. So close that I could hear when his breathing, instead of slowing down now the initial panic was over, began to increase in pace. I knew then that it wasn’t just me who was aware of the intimacy of the moment. With his thumb still covering the cut, his fingers were moving in slow almost imperceptible circles upon my ankle. I didn’t know if he realised what he was doing, whether the caress was intentional or not, but his actions weren’t helping my heart to resume its normal rhythm.
Something new was happening here, and the very air in the small enclosed room seemed to pulsate with a heady and unfathomable emotion. Jimmy looked up and there was something in his eyes I had never seen before; he would have recognised it though, for it was reflected back at him on my own face. The moment seemed endless and we remained locked within its intensity, neither daring to speak or move for fear of breaking the fragile cocoon around us.