Until You're Mine Read Free

and press up against him. I kiss his neck. ‘You’ve known the deal from the start. We wanted a baby but I also love my work. Am I selfish to want everything?’ I kiss him again and this time he turns his head and reciprocates, but it’s so very hard for us. He knows the deal. Doctor’s orders and I’m sticking to them this time. ‘Anyway, everything would go to hell in a handcart in the department if I stopped working completely. We’re understaffed as it is.’
    ‘I thought Tina was running things while you’re away?’
    I shake my head, starting to feel stressed. ‘Everyone’s sharing out my caseload while I’m on maternity leave, but when the baby and the boys are settled, I’ll want to go back. At least if I work up to my due date, I’ll have more time at home with the baby after she’s born.’
    Sensing my anxiety, James cups my face and plants a smacker on my mouth. It’s a warm kiss and says: I won’t mention it again and, more importantly, I won’t pressure you for sex.
    ‘Anyway, Zoe Harper, nanny extraordinaire, is coming for coffee tomorrow morning at eleven.’ I grin.
    ‘Fine,’ James says, switching the channel to Sky News. He starts hoovering up all the stock market stuff and moans about his pension and investments. I can’t really see that far ahead – being old, retiring, needing to draw off James’s inherited pot. I can only see as far as the end of this pregnancy, having my baby, being a complete family. Becoming a real mother, finally.

2
    I’M GOING TO be late. I feel the frown chiselling into my face as the freezing air bites at my skin. I can’t afford to be late. I need this job badly and it’s not an option to fail. God, no one knows how much I need this position with James and Claudia Morgan-Brown. Get them – double-barrelled and all big-housed in Edgbaston. I pedal harder. I’m going to be a sweaty red mess when I arrive. Who decided cycling was a good idea? Was it to impress them with my love of the outdoors, my penchant for green transport, my love of exercise that I’ll no doubt impart to their offspring? Or perhaps it’ll just make them think I’m an idiot for arriving at an interview on a bike.
    ‘St Hilda’s Road,’ I say over and over, squinting at road signs. I wobble as I stick out my arm to turn right. A car honks as I dither and waver in the middle of the road. ‘Sorry!’ I yell, although it doesn’t look like the kind of neighbourhood where one yells. It’s a far cry from my place . . . my
last
place.
    I pull over to the kerb and take a bit of paper from my pocket. I check the address and cycle on. I pedal past two more streets and turn left into their street. The houses were big before but they’re massive down St Hilda’s Road. Imposing Georgian buildings sit squarely in their own grounds either side of the tree-lined street. Gentlemen’s residences, they’d be called by estate agents.
    James and Claudia’s house is, like all the others, a detached period property, the lower half of which is being strangled by a twiggy Virginia creeper. I’m no gardener but I recognise it from my childhood home, which incidentally would have fitted twenty times inside this place. The creeper still has a few scarlet leaves clinging on even though it’s mid-November. I wheel my bicycle through a huge pair of open wrought-iron gates. Gravel crunches beneath my feet. I have never felt so conspicuous.
    The Morgan-Brown residence is a symmetrical house built of red brick. The front door, surrounded by a stone portico, is painted shiny green. Either side of the impressive entrance are large stained-glass windows. I don’t know what to do with my bike. Should I just lie it down on the gravel at the bottom of the front steps? It’ll make the diamond-shaped rose beds and the neat squares of lawn set into the sweeping parking area look like a scrapyard. I glance around. There’s a tree just outside the main gates. I quickly go back out onto the street. Its