The Playdate Read Online Free PDF Page A

Satellite phone.
    “What’s up?” he says, sounding concerned.
    “Oh. No. Rae’s fine,” I say, trying to sit up.
    “Well, what?” he snaps.
    “Tom?” I reply, opening my eyes and blinking. “You know it’s two in the morning?”
    There is a silence as he works out that in Sri Lanka he is five hours ahead, and not behind, U.K. time.
    “Shit. Have I done it again?”
    Tom is a skilled wildlife cameraman who could tell you everything you’d like to know about the breeding habits of a golden jackal or fennec fox, but when it comes to numbers, he is bordering on the equivalent of dyslexic. In the old days, I found it sweet and funny when he woke me at 2 A.M. from Uganda or Papua New Guinea, and heard his apologetic disbelief that he had cocked up again. “Go on then, tell me what you’ve been doing,” I’d say, burying into blackness under the duvet so I could pretend he was lying beside me, hearing about his day spent searching a cave for a rare wolf spider or getting stuck up a tree with a camera while his guides chased away the mountain lion underneath.
    But Tom and I don’t joke anymore. Ever.
    We just get to the point.
    “I rang because I’ve got some news,” I say.
    “What?”
    “Um . . . well, I’m going back to work.”
    There is a pause. A great big pause that stretches from London across the starry night of the Arabian Sea to Sri Lanka.
    Maybe I’ll be lucky, I think. After all, I was lucky with Rae when I told her earlier this evening. She was so excited she spat out the popcorn we were having for our weekly Friday night “midnight feast.”
    “You’re going to work?” she had shrieked. “What, like Hannah’s mum? A farmer?”
    “A pharmacist,” I laughed, picturing Caroline tossing hay in her Karen Millen suit and highlighted bob. Rae has already told me that Hannah is her big hope for a best friend.
    “No, I’ve got a different job. But you know what that means? It means that I won’t be here to pick you up after school.”
    “Yippee!” Rae shouted. “So I can go to after-school club with Hannah?”
    “Uh, yes,” I replied, confused. Grateful. Already missing her.
    So that was Rae. But Tom is Tom.
    “What—is that a joke?” he growls on the phone.
    “No.”
    I sigh.
    “Tom, listen. I can’t stay at home forever. It was only meant to be six months, then it was a year. Now it’s five. I have to go back to work sometime.”
    He says nothing, so I tiptoe on.
    “I actually just rang Guy at Rocket on the off-chance he had a few days’ freelance work, and then he just asked me out of the blue to do the sound for Loll Parker’s first short film—the Swedish artist, who did the thing at the Tate?”
    I pause, fighting the small involuntary smile that keeps pulling at the corners of my mouth since I spoke to Guy on Tuesday.
    “Bloody hell, Cal!” I want Tom to say. “Well done! Well done for being so good at your bloody job that your old boss has snapped your arm off the minute you ring after five years!”
    “Sorry, Cal. Am I missing something?” he actually says. “So, who’s going to look after Rae?”
    It still feels like the universe has shifted off its axis when that coldness emerges from Tom’s lips. My Tom always spoke as if there were a joke coming at the end of his sentence. My Tom never spoke like this. Not once in four years. I try to remind myself he’s just worried about Rae.
    “Well, she’ll go to after-school club for a few weeks,” I say, trying to remind myself he’ll need time to get used to the idea, just like I have. “Which she’s really excited about, by the way. And the staff are trained in first aid, like teachers. But if the Loll Parker job goes OK and I like it, and Guy offers me more work, then I don’t know . . . I’ll probably find a childminder who can fit round my hours.”
    There is another, even longer pause.
    “Tom?” I say.
    “What?” he replies curtly.
    I take a chance. “Look—I know this is a lot to ask, but could