The Playdate Read Online Free PDF

you talk it through with me? Guy said that a lot of the tech’s moved on. I said I’m sure I’ll be fine, but actually, I’m completely petrified . . .”
    There is another silence.
    “Actually, Cal, I couldn’t give a shit. I can’t believe you’re dumping Rae with strangers. After everything we’ve been through with her. And I’m five thousand fucking miles away. What am I supposed to do?”
    Tonight Rae and I celebrated my new job. We made “cocktails” of lemonade, apple juice, and pink food coloring, and danced to Girls Aloud.
    I take a long breath. Stay calm, I think.
    “Tom. I don’t know—maybe . . . You have been away a lot this year, and . . .”
    “Yeah, well, that’s what happens when you have two lots of rent to pay, Cal.”
    I exhale.
    “OK, but the thing is, I don’t think you realize how good she is. She wants to do stuff on her own. I found out from her teacher last week that she took herself off to join the lunchtime choir all by herself, and now she’s excited because they’re doing an end-of-term concert. And you should have seen her today, trying to run to the park with her friend. She’s just desperate to get away from me. She just wants to be normal. I mean, Tom, really, she is normal.”
    And then I throw my last attempt into the ring.
    “And, you know, it means I’ll be earning my own money again and not asking you all the time. So maybe you won’t have to work away so much . . .”
    He actually snorts now.
    “You know what, Cal? That’s the thing. It’s always about you.”
    What? I feel Mum’s temper rising in me. I gulp.
    Count to ten.
    “I actually don’t think for a second this has anything to do with what is good for Rae, Cal. I think it’s about what is good for you . . .”
    “Tom—that’s not fair!” I hear myself exclaim down the phone.
    Please, I think. Don’t do it, Callie. Don’t let him do this.
    “Yeah?” he says. “You reckon? That’s exactly what it’s about, it’s . . .”
    It’s no good. When Mum’s temper comes, it comes out of some place deep down inside me. I wish, not for the first time, that she’d been around long enough to teach me how to control it.
    “Tom?” I say. “Why don’t you just . . . oh, just . . . oh, FUCK OFF!”
    And it’s all too late. Slamming the phone down, I turn over in my bed and scream into my pillow.
    Idiot!
    Stupid, stupid, stupid.
    I’ve done it again. Every time.
    I lie there, keeping my face buried in the soft cotton, annoyed with myself. It dampens quickly with my breath. Somehow the warmth is comforting.
    Oh God. I bet Kate, his camera assistant, was there, listening to all of it. I bet she was lying with her head on Tom’s shoulder, with that amazing hair, the color of blackberries, tumbling all over him.
    Why do I let him get to me?
    Groaning, I roll out of bed and walk through to the sitting room, shaking my head. I will not cry. I will not cry. I will not let Tom rip away the tiny bit of forgotten self-esteem that Guy gave me back this week.
    Aimlessly I pick up my address book, desperate to talk to someone, already knowing there is no point. The grubby pages are tattered, full of crossed-out contacts and out-of-date entries. I keep meaning to replace this book but secretly I know that if I removed all the school friends I left behind in Lincolnshire, and the college and work friends who eventually gave up calling when I gave birth at twenty-seven to a child with a heart condition and was too tired to meet them for a drink or even answer the phone for three years, there would be hardly anyone left.
    I look at the few contacts who have hung on determinedly. They are fading away of their own accord, the ink blurring with age. I consider them for a second. Fi’s dad died three monthsago in hospital in Lincoln and I haven’t been in touch since she first rang from home to tell me, because, to be honest, she mentioned that her friends were “helping her through” and I realized, with a pinch