A Very Accidental Love Story Read Online Free PDF

to double her salary and negotiate more time off if she’ll only reconsider, but no joy; she’s had enough of the job and wants out, simple as that. In desperation, I even thought of calling on my sister Helen, but know without even bothering to ask that it’s not a runner.
    Being brutally honest, I have to admit that Helen and I have little in common and have never really been all that close, so she’s hardly someone I can expect to come to my rescue in my hour of need. Besides, since I had Lily, Helen’s gone and met a guy called Darren who runs a small seaside B&B in Cobh and within an alarmingly short space of time, she upped sticks and announced she was moving down the country to work side by side with him. Packed everything in for him; her job in a call centre, her brand-new flat, the lot. But then that’s my sister for you; she’s always struck me as someone who panic-dated, panic-settled and is now living with the consequences … in Cobh, miles and miles away from her old friends and her old life.
    Total insanity, I thought at the time, and I still continue to think it. And although I’ve only met Darren a handful of times at Christmas dinners, or else on the rare occasions when they both come to Dublin and drop in to visit me and Lily, I can’t help wondering if Helen is actually happy living with him, two hundred miles away in a tiny remote village. But then, keeping up to date on what’s happening in each other’s lives is tough and apart from the odd ‘Hi, great to hear from you, but can I call you back? I’m running into a meeting’ type chat, we never seem to really get a chance to catch up properly.
    And no, I still haven’t taken Lily down to Cobh to visit, in spite of all the child’s entreaties and in spite of the fact that she adores her auntie, because how could I possibly leave work? Every now and then Helen will email, mainly either to vaguely moan for a little bit about Darren or else, in a roundabout way, to ask for a lend of money; it seems people in the hotel business are even more savagely affected by the economic downturn than the rest of us. And I always oblige and fire off a cheque and never ask for it back, and she’ll gratefully accept, then send bright, breezy emails inviting Lily and me down for a freebie weekend anytime we want. Which is a nice thought and much appreciated, but come on … me? Get a whole entire weekend off? Saturday AND Sunday? One day after the other? Are you kidding me?
    That aside though, I know Helen’s up to her tonsils with trying to make ends meet at the B&B
à la
Sibyl Fawlty anyway, so I’m sure she’s quite enough on her plate without me landing Lily on top of her too. Plus, no matter how desperate I was and no matter how much money I paid Helen to take care of her till I got sorted, it would mean I’d never get to see my little girl at all, wouldn’t it? And frankly the snatched glimpses of her slumbering little head first thing every morning and last thing at night are about the only thing keeping me sane after the daily grind I’m expected to get through. The one dangling carrot in my life that somehow makes the rest of it all that bit more bearable.
    ‘Barack Obama’s re-election campaign has just GOT to get a page one tomorrow, Eloise,’ Robbie Turner is thundering on, interrupting my incessant stream of worrying. Robbie is the
Post’s
chain-smoking, gravelly-voiced chief political editor; a likeable guy, young but never youthful looking, he just streels round the office night and day looking as washed out and baggy-eyed as the rest of us. But then, because of the time differences involved in covering any foreign story, the political editor is expected to put in hours almost as ridiculous as I do myself. The general rule of thumb is that if I’m here till the night editor takes over at eleven p.m., chances are I’ll catch a glimpse of Robbie’s thick, prematurely white shock of hair and John Lennon glasses still at his desk,