Before I Let You In Read Online Free PDF

know you won’t.’ Robert smiled. ‘Welcome to the career of your dreams, Dr Browning.’
    Karen descended the steps of the Cecil Baxter building, her mind reeling. Partner. Everything she’d worked for, everything she wanted was within her grasp now. She might not have the family she’d hoped for as a child but at least she had her career – finally she felt her choices were going to be vindicated.
    As she made her way to her car she looked both ways down the street before she crossed but what she saw made her stop sharply at the side of the road. To her right, no more than a hundred yards away, was a silver Fiat parked up as though its occupant was waiting for someone. And sat behind the wheel, waiting, watching her walk from the building despite it being hours since their session that morning, was her newest patient, Jessica Hamilton.

5
    Karen
    ‘Yes!’ She had been fumbling for her keys for the last five minutes, and as her fingers closed around them and she pulled them out of her bag, a crumpled piece of white paper followed them and landed on the doorstep. Grabbing it off the ground, she let herself in and threw her bag into the porch.
    ‘Hello? Michael?’ She resisted the urge to shout, ‘Honey, I’m home!’ and anyway, it would have fallen on deaf ears – Michael wasn’t here. Although the house was hers – well, the bank’s – he had his own key and treated the place as his own when he was there in the week. They weren’t like any of the other couples Karen knew, constantly checking in with each other, and although she found it hard at times, it worked for them. Mostly. She hated having to keep the nature of their relationship a secret, but telling those around her where Michael really went on his weekends ‘at work’ simply wasn’t an option.
    She wandered through to the living room, smoothing out the piece of paper as she walked. A cheerful-looking yellow logo was emblazoned across the top; her old school and the one Toby attended now. The words ‘Keeping in Touch’ were written under the logo in large print. It was some kind of newsletter detailing the children’s achievements of the term so far. Karen shoved it on to the TV cabinet without reading the rest.
    She was used to the still silence that came with too much time home alone, but today it unsettled her, and she switched the TV on to fill the void where a bustling after-school routine might have been. It flickered into life and she left it on the channel it was already tuned to, ignoring the predictable fodder of the retired and unemployed that came on and heading upstairs to fix her make-up before Michael arrived. She wanted his mental picture of her to be a good one, to last him the few days he’d be away. In the couple of years they’d been together, they had made sure never to let themselves go, become comfortable inthe way they might have done had things been different. Their time together was always cherished, knowing that he might have to leave at any minute if a family emergency arose.
    As she refreshed her lipstick and mascara and applied more blusher to her cheekbones, she thought of poor exhausted Eleanor and the way she never had a second to spend on herself any more, and of Bea and the fact that all she had was time. And her job, which didn’t exactly seem to be going swimmingly at the moment . She should offer to do more for both of them, she decided: take the boys off Eleanor’s hands for the day so she could get some well-deserved rest, spend some more time with Bea and try and find her someone who made her happy. Not that that had exactly gone well last time she’d tried – a fact Bea didn’t hesitate to remind her of. In retrospect it had probably been a silly idea to set her friend up with someone she worked with, though Bea could have shown a bit more gratitude and at least waited until Sean had left before calling him a total wanker under her breath.
    The fact was, Karen only ever wanted the best for her