Pedigree Mum Read Online Free PDF

darling.’ Nadine places a delicate hand on his knee. ‘So you feel trapped …’
    ‘Well, um, kind of …’ Rob looks down at her hand, feeling no less startled than he would if a rare butterfly landed there. He can hardly swat it away, but nor does he feel entirely comfortable with her leaving it there for much longer. Anyway, why is he grumbling about the move? Is it the vodka, or a pathetic desire to say what he
thinks
he should say to a girl who can barely have turned twenty? Her hand is showing no sign of removing itself from his knee, and he wonders what the others will think as they come back into the room, armed with a lump of Cheddar and some crackers on a pink chopping board (clearly, neon pink is a theme around the flat). Of course, they won’t think anything. Eddy’s new team are always hugging and mauling each other. It’s not unusual for Ava to give Eddy a languorous shoulder massage in the middle of a features meeting.
    Rob swallows hard and tries to centre himself by picturing Mia and Freddie on the beach last weekend, sculpting a sand mermaid with seaweed for hair. He attempts to think of ordinary things: the numerous cracks and leaks he must fix in the Shorling house, and the lone nit Freddie made him examine with a magnifying glass as it writhed on a sheet of white paper.
    By the time Eddy, Frank and Ava get up to leave, Rob realises he’s even more inebriated than he first thought. Nadine springs up to fling her skinny arms around her friends before resuming her position on the sofa.
    ‘So, Rob,’ she starts, ‘what are you going to do?’
    He drains the last of his vodka and tonic. ‘I have no fucking idea.’
    ‘Well,’ she says, ‘for what it’s worth, I have this mantra, okay? And it’s that we should all be true to ourselves …’
    Normally, Rob would snort at the kind of fluffy sound-bite so beloved of women’s magazines:
Follow your dreams. Life’s not a rehearsal. Be true to yourself
… But it’s approaching 3 a.m. and her eyes are incredible – piercing blue, emphasised with the kind of flicked black eyeliner which makes him think of sexy French girls in arthouse movies.
    ‘You’re right,’ he blurts out. ‘The thought of leaving London …’
    ‘It’s like leaving a part of yourself,’ she suggests.
    ‘Yes! That’s exactly it. It’s where I’ve lived and worked my whole adult life …’
    ‘And you’ve done really well, Rob.’
    ‘Oh, I don’t know about that,’ he murmurs bashfully.
    ‘But you have! You virtually run the office … I’ve always found you a bit intimidating, to be honest.’
    ‘God, I hope not.’
    ‘No, that’s just me being silly.’
    ‘Well,’ he says with a grin, ‘I’ll try to be less intimidating in future …’
    And so the night goes on, Rob now too drunk to care about whether he’s slurring or not, and sensing the little knots of tension starting to loosen in his shoulders and neck. He knows he should call a cab, but being here with Nadine is so much nicer especially as, with most of his family’s possessions transported to Shorling, ‘home’ feels like a bleak shell with a bed and a sofa plonked in it.
    ‘Look, Rob,’ Nadine is saying, looking sleepy now, ‘you can crash out here if you like. This is a sofa bed and I’ve got plenty of spare bedding.’
    ‘I …’ he starts, knowing he should continue:
Thanks, but
I’d better go home.
But he can’t. He is physically incapable of coherent speech because every fibre of his being is focused on Nadine’s red lips.
    They are getting closer and closer and Rob knows without doubt that she is going to kiss him. He also knows there is no way he’ll be able to resist kissing her back. Then they
are
kissing – snogging, actually – the just-turned-forty-year-old father-of-two with undeniable talents in the Lego department, and the beautiful rich girl who lives in Daddy’s flat and trots off to India whenever she feels like it. They pull apart, laughing in