Fragments Read Online Free PDF

I?’ she fires back at me, her eyes never leaving my face. The baby is making a sort of grunty slurping sound and it’s sort of fascinating in a creepy way.
    ‘I haven’t broken any laws or done anything wrong,’ I say, adding for a good two weeks silently in my head. Ariella puts a cup each down in front of me and her mother, spilling some on the table as she does so. But her mother doesn’t seem to care and raises hers to her lips. Ariella sits down at the table and noisily glugs her own drink.
    ‘What happened to your face?’ says her mother.
    ‘I tripped over,’ I shoot back, self-consciously lifting my hand to my throbbing cheek.
    There’s a silence for a moment, broken only by the baby’s weird slurping.
    ‘Can she stay with us, Mummy?’ says Ariella. ‘Please? She can play with me while you look after Kit.’ Ariella pauses. ‘Because you know how tired you are, Mummy. You could get more sleep!’
    I look at Ariella and almost laugh. Little minx knows which buttons to press all right. But it’s a daft suggestion. Me? Stay here? Weirdly, though, her mother is watching me as though she’s thinking about it.
    ‘Can you clean?’ she says sharply.
    What? But I nod my head decisively. ‘I’m really good at cleaning.’ This is a bit of a stupid thing to say but the whole conversation is mad anyway.
    ‘Any childcare experience?’
    ‘I’m a very experienced babysitter. I used to look after my little brother all the time when my mum was at work.’ What brother? ‘And I used to do loads of babysitting back in Sheffield.’ Also a lie. I’m annoyed with myself for letting slip where I come from, though.
    The woman’s face softens for a brief moment. ‘Sheffield, eh? I went to uni there a long time ago . . .’ She looks wistfully into the distance and then back at me.
    ‘If you steal anything, or do anything you’re not meant to, my husband will find you and you’ll regret it. I can’t pay you, but there’s a spare room you can use. I can give you some clothes.’ It’s all delivered in a flat sort of monotone. Is she offering me a job?
    She makes a frustrated noise. ‘I want you to clean the house and help with Ariella. Understood?’
    I blink a couple of times. I’m not sure I’ve exactly got much of a choice at the moment.
    ‘Um, understood,’ I say. I barely get my breath before Ariella has hurled herself at me, knocking the air out of my lungs and filling my mouth with her hair.
    ‘We’re going to have so much FUN!’ she shrieks.
    ‘I’m Charlotte,’ says her mother with a tight little purse of her lips. ‘I’ll show you where the bathroom is in a minute. You look like you need a wash.’
    I don’t have time then to wonder what she meant about her husband. It doesn’t occur to me then that farmers don’t generally sound that scary.
    Or to wonder why Charlotte would take a bleeding, dirty runaway into her house so readily.
    Ariella doesn’t let go of my hand or stop talking for a second as she leads me up a big staircase and along a landing flooded by a rare blast of sunshine. My feet sink into the thick carpeting. I’m suddenly hyper aware of my unwashed body. Funny, it didn’t bother me when horses were my only housemates.
    ‘We’re going to have so much fun !’ says Ariella again, and then, without drawing breath, ‘And your bedroom is right next to mine so I can come in and see you all the time!’
    ‘Great,’ I say with a forced smile. But she doesn’t really notice as she leads me into a huge bathroom with white tiles and one of those old-fashioned claw-footed bathtubs, like I’ve seen on telly. Above the bath are glass shelves with all sorts of bottles of expensive-looking bubble bath. My fingers are itching to open them for a good sniff.
    ‘Mummy says to give you a towel,’ says Ariella and she opens the door of a wooden cabinet and extracts a huge armful of something soft, the same pale yellow colour as the walls.
    Is that a thing people do? Buy