Sun of the Sleepless Read Online Free

of water from around her eyes, she paused to pour a cup of unsweetened black coffee and then ambled to the living room door. Jabbing the handle down with an elbow, she nudged the door ajar with the make-up bag and flicked it wide open with a shove from her foot, simultaneously blowing over the surface of the hot coffee to cool it down a little.
    Standing in the doorway, she surveyed the neatly arranged pile of six plastic storage containers, each filled with books and periodicals stretching from the eighteenth century right up to quite rare modern publications. She had yet to lumber each box down the narrow staircase from her first floor flat to her van and she inwardly groaned at the thought of doing so although, mercifully, she had been able to find a parking space just outside her own apartment building the previous evening. She did not like to load up the van and leave it overnight, the collection of books represented her entire stock and she could not risk it being stolen or damaged in some unforeseen accident. She had plenty of time yet; another cup of coffee and some breakfast and she would be up to the task.
    Nestling down onto the sofa and setting the hot coffee cup upon a coaster, she picked up the wad of papers lying on top of one of the containers. It was a full inventory of all the books contained within the boxes and scanning down the list she reminded herself of some recent acquisitions that warranted a special place on her stall at the antiques market that morning.
    She enjoyed buying and selling antiquarian books, although most of her best sales were in fact only a few decades old. She had to admit to herself that this line of business was a lot harder than she had initially imagined and for the foreseeable future she would have to continue subsidising her business income and more importantly the expenditure, with her wage from a part-time clerical job. Even so, she enjoyed getting out and about and hunting for viable stock or combing the internet for gems that she could turn a profit on. She had even started to receive requests to find specific books and enjoyed the personal aspect of providing such a service, although she was under no illusion that she was still a tenderfoot in the unprincipled and somewhat merciless world of antiquarian book trading. She guessed that her outgoing personality had helped in balancing the negative affects of her lack of experience and, certainly, combined with her looks it aided in establishing new contacts.
    She regarded herself as lucky in that her father had been an avid book collector and so she had grown up at least aware of the rather quirky trade in dusty old tomes, however, the few amateur transactions that her father had engaged in gave no hint of the painfully slim margins that differentiated sales of simply obscure printings from the really rare impressions. Above all, her childhood and adolescence had imbued a love of old books; the feel of ageing paper, the smell of leather bindings, the history that they epitomised.
    After draining her cup and completing a cursory check of the boxes against her inventory, she wandered back to the bathroom to dry her hair and to apply a dash of mascara and lip-gloss. Hanging up her robe ready for the next morning, she slunk back to her bedroom and dressed, preparing for a cold day outside at her stall. Soon enough, she was warmly attired and ready for the task of loading her van.
    She unlocked the front door of the apartment and leaving it wide open started the laborious task of carrying the containers full of books down the stairs to her van. She pushed the first box over the carpet of the living room, the small plastic castors on the bottom dragging against the pile. The smooth tiles of the kitchen were easier to scoot across but at the landing at the top of the stairwell she had no choice but to lift the box up and carry it down.
    At just under six feet tall she was long limbed and strong, but she knew that the weight of all