Bound to You Read Online Free PDF

other girl that types with you? You need more friends in London, you know, Nichi,’ Christos continued. ‘I mean, when I start the PhD . . .’
    He trailed off. He’d mentioned the forbidden issue. Neither of us wanted to get into a discussion about this again on a Sunday.
    ‘Yeah OK, I might, I’ll see,’ I said, taking charge of the conversation.
    The next morning I took my place among London’s commuters and went to work. In a hospital, everything and nothing is an emergency, and Monday mornings as a medical PA always highlighted that contradiction.
    While I had the weekends off, the surgeons I served would nearly always have been called in. Dumped on my desk would be piles of patient notes and half a dozen Dictaphone tapes containing urgent letters for typing. Sometimes, by the time I came to typing them up, overnight complications meant the patient in question had already passed away. I relied on the surgeon to remember that when he or she came to sign, and for them to instruct me to shred the letter. But once I’d had to p.p. a batch and erroneously sent one to the bereaved family. I was absolutely horrified when I found out. Journalism was going to be easy by comparison.
    This Monday though, there was nothing on my desk but my own filing and a copy of the
Lancet
medical journal. A long day lay ahead. I remembered what Christos had said about trying to make some more friends, but I was feeling too fretful about our ongoing stand-off over living arrangements, and the prospect felt daunting. The women I worked with were nice enough but they were either utterly absorbed with their partners or their hectic single-girl social lives.
    That evening, Christos and I set off to meet Layla for dinner in one of those tired-looking Lebanese restaurants on Edgware Road. Layla had texted Christos to say she was running fifteen minutes late, so I suggested that we sit outside and smoke until she arrived.
    Christos asked the waiter for a hookah and two glasses of tap water. He blew on the hookah’s coals and took the first long inhalation, forcing the water to bubble up. Refracted through the blue marbled glass, it reminded me of the waves that frothed around the double kayak we had taken out in Greece last summer. We planned to take the canoe out again when I joined Christos there in August, which was fast approaching.
    I had been thinking about how I was going to broach the subject of Christos’s living arrangements, the details of which I still had no idea about. Emboldened by the fact that Layla would soon be here to distract us if we got into a fight, I dared to ask him if he’d made any further arrangements.
    ‘Well, I haven’t found a flat. But I think I’ve found a flatmate.’
    ‘Oh?’
    ‘Yes. It looks as though I’ll be living with Markos.’
    With Markos? With that irresponsible, Peter Pan, party-boy advertiser? The guy that spent as much money on champagne as he did on designer furniture?
    ‘With Markos? Are you kidding me? If your parents wouldn’t let you live with me then they certainly aren’t going to let you live with Markos!’
    ‘Well, it was their suggestion actually,’ Christos replied quietly.
    ‘But WHY?’ If I’d been angry when Christos announced he was moving out, I was apoplectic now.
    ‘Because we went to school together. Because they know him.’
    ‘But they know me!’
    Christos sighed, looked wan with desperation. ‘I know they do, Nichi
mou
.’ He took my hand across the table.
    ‘I’m going to the bathroom,’ I announced, and hurried inside. I didn’t want to cry, I wanted to compose myself before Layla arrived. I wanted us all to have a nice evening.
    I scrutinised myself in the mirror. Indignation did not suit me; it made my cheeks look even puffier. My eyes were molten with unshed tears. I dabbed gingerly along my lash line with a corner of toilet roll to avoid smudging my eyeliner. There was a flush from the other cubicle. Out came Layla.
    ‘Nichi
mou
, how are