Before She Was Mine Read Online Free PDF

stepped in, shaking the rain out of his curls.
    ‘She’d left it in the toilet. God knows what she was doing with it in there.’
    ‘Texting Joe, I bet.’
    ‘Ah, Joe.’
    ‘You’ve met him?’
    ‘Only the once. He’s younger than she is.’
    ‘By how much?’
    Michael shrugged. ‘Visibly.’
    ‘What’s he like?’
    ‘All right, I suppose.’
    ‘Go on.’
    ‘Nothing else to say. We didn’t talk for long, they were going to see a film.’ He laid the phone on the coffee table and perched himself on the sofa arm. ‘What’s up
with you, anyway? You look like you’ve spent the afternoon sucking crab apples.’
    ‘Get lost,’ I said.
    ‘Come on, Mrs Glum, give us the news. Let me see if I can’t sort you out.’
    He always adopts this teasing tone with me. He doesn’t do it to other women; I’ve heard him in the pub, in the garage, and I know he can hold a perfectly normal conversation if he
wants to. I suppose he likes to think of himself as a kind of uncle, except he isn’t blood relation to any of us. His dad moved in with Melody’s mum when Michael was five and Melody was
thirteen, then moved out a decade later, leaving Michael behind at his own request. ‘I was doing my exams, I was settled,’ he’d told me. ‘Staying seemed the easiest
thing.’
    All of which makes him a paper-brother only. But he’s still loose family and, having already been married and divorced, he does have a fair bit of life experience under his belt.
He’s not a bad listener either.
    So I told him.
    ‘Your best friend’s engaged.’
    ‘Yeah.’
    ‘And, naturally, you’re thrilled for them both.’
    ‘I am.’
    ‘You bloody great liar, Frey.’
    ‘I am . Of course I’m happy for Nicky. She’s my friend .’
    Michael stared at me till I looked away. Then he said, ‘She’s all right is Nicky. I’ve never forgotten that time you had glandular fever and she came round every few days with
books and fruit, pictures she’d taken on her phone, all that girly shit.’
    ‘I’d have done the same for her.’
    ‘Yeah, yeah.’
    ‘I helped you when you fell down the inspection pit and broke your ankle.’
    ‘That’s true. You made me at least one cup of tea.’
    ‘I should have poured it over your head.’
    ‘Thank you, Florence Nightingale.’
    ‘You pretended you couldn’t get to the toilet and needed to pee in a milk carton. Is it any wonder I left you to your own devices?’
    ‘Poor, gullible Freya.’ He grinned and raised his eyebrows. ‘Hey, I think I know what’s bugging you. It’s that you might have to wear a frilly bridesmaid’s
dress. In pink, I shouldn’t wonder. You couldn’t bear the humiliation.’
    ‘If she does stick me in a daft frock, I’ll make sure I have my DMs on underneath.’
    ‘And your combats.’
    ‘I wonder if they do camouflage taffeta?’ I flopped down on the sofa next to him. ‘Seriously, though, I must be a bit crap if I can’t just be happy for her. She’d
be ecstatic if it was me getting married. She would. Because she’s everything I’m not. She’s straightened out, and uncomplicated and grown up.’
    Michael snorted. ‘What are you, then? Still a teenager?’
    ‘You know what I mean.’
    ‘I don’t.’
    ‘Nicky – she’s got everything, she’s done everything in the right order.’
    ‘What’s the “right order”?’
    ‘She stuck the course out at uni, for one. Then she got her legal qualification. Then her training contract. It’s all mapped out.’
    ‘You chose to do something different.’
    ‘I flunked it.’
    He pushed affectionately at my shoulder with his knuckles. ‘Not that again. Look, what’s done is done. There’s a lot to be said for admitting you’re wrong and doing
something about it. Unfairly maligned is the U-turn. I wish I’d walked away before I got married, it would have saved everyone a lot of grief. But you get so far down the line and it’s
difficult to untangle yourself.’
    ‘There’s more to it than