Everything and Nothing Read Free Page A

enough to be something you wouldn’t make up.
    Ruth and Christian Donaldson reacted exactly as she’d expected, sitting up like two eager spaniels, liberal sensitivity spreading across their faces.
    ‘He said if I went he’d disown me.’
    ‘But you went anyway?’
    Agatha looked down and felt the pain of this slight so hard that real tears pricked her eyes. ‘No, I didn’t. I could kick myself now, but I turned down the place.’
    Ruth’s hand went to her mouth in a gesture Agatha doubted to be spontaneous. ‘Oh, how awful. How could he have denied you such an opportunity?’ She was longing to say that she would never do anything so terrible to her own children.
    ‘I stayed at home for a while after that, but it was terrible. So many rows.’ Agatha could see a neat suburban terrace as she said this with a pinched man wagging a finger at her. The air smelt of vinegar, she realised; maybe her mother had been a bad cook or an obsessive cleaner, she wasn’t sure which yet. She wondered along with this kind couple sitting in front of her how he could have been so mean. ‘I left five years ago and I haven’t spoken to them since.’
    ‘But your mother, hasn’t she contacted you?’
    ‘She was very dominated by my dad. I think they’ve moved now.’
    ‘Do you have any siblings?’
    ‘No, it’s just me. I’m an only child.’
    ‘Poor you,’ said Ruth, but Agatha could already see her working out that they were getting a nanny who was clever enough to get into university, and for no extra cost.
    When Agatha got back to her grotty room in King’s Cross she felt tired and drained. She was still trying to work out why she might have told the Donaldsons she was called Aggie when no one had ever called her anything but Agatha. She supposed it must have sounded friendlier and she’d have to go with it now. Her room-mate’s mobile was ringing. She answered with a curt hello and then started waving madly at Agatha. Lisa was prone to wild mood swings, so Agatha didn’t take any notice until she heard what she was saying.
    ‘Oh, she was amazing, we were so sad to lose her . . . yes, she had sole care of both of them, I work full time . . . No, it was because we decided to move out of London, to get the children a bigger garden.’ Lisa started to pretend she was sucking a massive penis as she said this which annoyed Agatha, she fucking had to remember the script. ‘In fact, we nearly stayed just to keep her.’ Fake laughing, Lisa miming sipping a glass of champagne. ‘Oh, it’s so hard, isn’t it, all that juggling.’ Lisa put her hand over the phone and mouthed fucking tosser at Agatha, who smiled obligingly. If Lisa fucked this up she might hit the stupid bitch. ‘No, no, ring anytime, but really, I couldn’t recommend her highly enough.’ Lisa threw her phone onto the bed and made a sucking noise with her teeth. ‘Man, those posh types are gullible. They almost deserve to be done over, innit?’
    ‘Thanks,’ said Agatha, fishing her last twenty-pound note out of her wallet and handing it over to Lisa. If you wish for something hard enough it will happen, someone had once told her, or maybe she’d seen it on a film. She didn’t care, all she cared about was wishing herself out of this hellhole and into the Donaldsons’ home as quickly as possible.
    ‘Do you want Indian or Chinese?’ asked Ruth as she rooted through the spare kitchen drawer overflowing with wrapping paper, old packets of seeds, a spilt box of pins, paint colour charts and numerous other bits of tat for which they would never again find a use.
    ‘Don’t care,’ answered Christian, pouring them both wine. ‘I’m knackered.’
    The children had only been in bed for fifteen minutes and Ruth was sure Betty would be down any minute with some excuse like wanting a glass of water and then she’d lose her temper, which would mean the only real time she spent with her daughter would be about as far from quality as you could get. But