After a few seconds, the vibration stopped. He sat on the edge of his bed and reached down to untie the laces of his shoes. The moon gleamed on the highly polished leather. He wanted nothing more than to kick his shoes away and flop onto the bed. But the hold of his childhood room was too great. With a sigh, he padded in his socks over to the bureau and placed the shoes on the mat as he had done since he was four.

He slipped his laptop from his briefcase, and logged onto his parents’ Wi-Fi. He had upgraded it when he realized he would be spending weekends there. Fifty-three new emails since he boarded his flight, almost all of them flagged as urgent. “Goddamn it,” he muttered. Everything was always urgent. Nothing could wait in the minds of the senders, even though Parliament moved at a glacial pace.

He scanned his inbox. He was searching for one name, one email that would ensure a good night’s sleep.

But it wasn’t there.

He knew it wouldn’t be. The Prime Minister wasn’t one to take no-shows at key fundraising events lightly. It didn’t matter that Harry’s mother was ill. The election cycle was about to begin and all hands were needed on deck. Harry was one of the few bright stars in an administration that had been plagued by spending scandals, a sluggish economy and voter fatigue.

He snapped the lid of his laptop shut. He couldn’t bear to look at the emails. He had cleared his weekend, so he could respond to the emails tomorrow—and hope that the report he had chaired for the Committee of Public Safety would redeem himself in his boss’s eyes. Rumor had it that Minister of Public Safety Lindsay Muir-Brown was stepping down from Cabinet, for ‘personal’ reasons. They all knew it was because the PM had ordered her to resign after an embarrassing misuse of taxpayers’ dollars. And now the Minister of Public Safety portfolio was finally within Harry’s grasp. There had been encouraging backroom rumors. Diversity and the region he represented were in his favor. It had killed him to skip the fundraising dinner. And in fact, he was ashamed to admit, he almost didn’t.

But the tremulous voice of his mother on the phone had pulled him home.

And the weight of his own shame.

He unscrewed a slim metal flask that had once been a weekend indulgence. A few long pulls, and his phone’s vibration against his chest simmered into a fiery burn through his veins. Screw his emails. Screw his boss.

It took only a few minutes to change into a t-shirt and boxer shorts. He untucked the blanket at the end of his mattress so that he could straighten his legs. With a low sigh of relief, he slid under the sheets of his childhood bed. He turned on the television.