Before I Let You In Read Online Free PDF Page B

friends.
    When her face began to feel heavy from the make-up she would remove in a few hours’ time, she flicked the screen of her phone, dreading a message telling her that Michael had had to leave while she was still at work. There was nothing, just a couple of emails that could wait until later, and a text from Bea.
    E looking harassed. Do all mums look like that? Thank God we r happily sprogless!!! Xx
    Karen smiled at Bea’s way of telling her she was worried about Eleanor while trying not to look interfering. She fired off two text messages, one replying to Bea – Sure she’s fine but texting her now. Maybe we should offer to take boys this wkend? – and one to Eleanor: Love our lunches. Miss u as always. Anything I can do to help with the little men? Xx
    Bea replied almost instantly.
    Sounds good. Let me know when. Xx
    Karen was just about to tap out another message, her thumb hovering above the screen, when she heard Michael’s key in the door.

6
    Eleanor
    As Eleanor left the café, she felt the calm and freedom seep away from her like a physical drain on her body. She had to go and pick Noah up from her mum’s, then it would be back to school for Toby, followed by tea and bathtime. When Adam arrived home, he was usually too knackered to put the boys to bed, so she’d end up doing that too. It would be 8.30 before she could sit down, and then she’d be listening for the monitor all evening, eventually crawling into bed for her three hours’ sleep before Noah woke again.
    As she drove, she thought of Bea and Karen and what they would be doing with their evenings. With Michael away, Karen would probably work, typing up notes, making referrals and sorting invoices, all done from the comfort of her own sofa with a glass of wine in her hand and a trashy movie on TV. Bea would spend her evening at the gym, popping to Eleanor’s long enough to disturb the kids – no matter what she promised – then getting changed to head out with the girls from work, no doubt. She’d drink and laugh until late and then climb into bed safe in the knowledge that tomorrow was Saturday and she could sleep in before lunch out with Karen or one of her other friends.
    Eleanor’s evening looked a bit different. If Noah went down okay she had calls to make about the surprise party she and Bea were arranging for Karen’s birthday in six weeks, and she wanted to make a list of decorations they would need for the VIP suite in the restaurant she’d booked – she still hadn’t decided if they should have a theme. She and Bea had spent a whole afternoon window-shopping for ideas when they’d first started planning it months ago, and all they’d managed to decide was no pink. Then tomorrow Toby had football at 10 a.m., so she and Noah would go to that with him while Adam worked, then they’d all have lunch together before a birthday party with the other mums from the school, followed by a takeaway and a film in the evening. Such a glamorous life.
    She often tried to remind herself that this was what she’d wanted – that this stage of the boys’ lives wouldn’t last forever and she’d miss it when they were teenagers and she could do what she liked. By then, though, she was pretty sure she’d be too knackered from the last ten years to get her glad rags on and go to a nightclub. Did nightclubs even let you in over forty? Maybe there was a special room for people who’d spent their thirties covered in baby sick. And by the time Noah was old enough, Toby would be eighteen, and the thought of him bumping into his mum in C21 sent her into a cold sweat.
    Her phone rang, Adam’s name flashing on the caller ID.
    ‘Hey, love.’ She put him on hands-free and shouted into the receiver.
    ‘Hey, how are you?’
    ‘Good, thanks, what’s up?’ It wasn’t that Adam never called her in the day any more; it was just that there was always a reason, which usually involved adding to her to-do list. Can you just pick me up …? Can you just