Any Way You Want Me Read Online Free PDF Page B

even considered not being pregnant again. Did he really mean that? I didn’t know if I could cope with not being able to feel those first wonderful flutters of life in my belly again. Even the blood and grunting of labour for one last time would be worth it if I could plant kisses on a seconds-old pulsing head again.
    ‘Well, I haven’t decided yet, anyway,’ I said, trying to make a joke of it. ‘So if anyone’s offering . . .’
    My noodles suddenly felt squirmingly uncomfortable inside me. And the ginger seemed too hot, now that I thought about it. Two of them is enough, thanks – what did he mean by that?
    I sighed and drank some more of my wine. I knew exactly what he meant by it, that was the problem. The way he’d been completely unable to comfort Nathan the other night had already flagged that one up. He wouldn’t even be able to get past the headlines of the paper, let alone reach the international news pages, if we had a third child.
    ‘Well, if you’re serious . . .’ Matthew smirked, patting my arm with a damp palm. He was half-drunk already, with a fleck of spittle on his top lip and a moustache of sweat sheening in the candlelight. ‘You go for it, Sade. I’m all for big families. Shame Chloe’s not so keen, but there you go.’
    Ouch. The man was a walking, talking nightmare. Chloe glared at him and a terrible silence crashed down, with a tension that resonated like a vibrato.
    ‘I grew up in a big family,’ Mark said quickly. ‘They are great. Bloody hard work when you’re doing the parenting bit, though, I’m sure.’
    I smiled at him gratefully and noticed that Julia was frowning. ‘Hard work and expensive and messy . . .’ she reeled off, through a tight little mouth. You could tell she’d trotted the words out before. ‘My sister has children, and honestly, the money she throws at their school fees, you would not believe it.’
    I bit my lip. Don’t say it, Sadie. Don’t mention that most schools are free. Don’t get on your socialist high horse and inform her that, in your opinion, private education sucks. Even though I was sliding into drunkenness at an alarming rate, I still managed to cling to the fact that no, I really didn’t want to start an argument with Alex’s new boss. I didn’t. Did I?
    Luckily, Mark stepped in again. ‘Alex, Julia was telling me that you work on the Review section of the paper,’ he said. ‘Do you get to do much reviewing as well as editing?’
    If Matthew was the nightmare husband, Mark was starting to seem like the dream. He was easy-going and confident, and had a knack of saying the right thing at the right moment. He was what was known as A Good Bloke or, if you thought like Jane Austen’s Mrs Bennet, A Good Catch. Actually, I decided, staring at him until my eyes went out of focus, he was pretty tasty, too. Well, if you liked that rich, clean-cut sort of look, anyway. He was wasted on Julia.
    Then, quite randomly, I found myself wondering what my life would have been like if I’d married him instead of meeting Alex. I bet he would have been up for a third child. He liked big families, didn’t he? He wouldn’t have spoken to me in that same dismissive tone as Alex.
    I stopped myself guiltily before the idea developed any further. What the hell was I thinking that for?
    ‘. . . although I started off working on the weekend magazine,’ Alex was saying as I snapped back to attention. ‘That’s where I met Sadie.’
    Julia’s eyes swivelled across to me, pinning me to my chair, practically. ‘You worked on the paper, too, Sadie?’
    Yes, once upon a time, Julia, I did. Straight out of university, in my one cheap suit from Topshop, with my non-existent typing skills and CV of lies and exaggerations, yes, I did work on your precious paper. Surprise! I have a brain, too!
    ‘Alex and I were assistants on the magazine,’ I said lightly. ‘Our eyes met across the filing cabinets—’
    ‘And two weeks later, she’d jacked in the job to