Who Loves You Best Read Online Free PDF Page A

before? Sorry I was three hours late and you missed your mother’s birthday dinner, but I’ll make it up to you. I know I said you could have Christmas off this year, but this trip is really important, I’ll make it up to you. We can’t afford to give you a pay raise this summer, but don’t worry, we’ll make it up to you.
    I have no idea how I’ll break it to Jamie. He’s been pinning everything on this break.
    I’m exhausted by the time Maggie gets home, late, as usual. The children have been absolute fuckers; dragged from pillar to post on Maggie’s errands, they’re fractious and overtired. As soon as she walks in the door, they fling themselves dramatically at her, clinging onto her legs like tree frogs, and she glares at me accusingly. What, you think I’ve kept them locked in the coal cellar and fed them stale bread and water? Suddenly I’m not sorry I gave the kidschocolate biscuits and Coke as a treat after tea. They’ll be bouncing off the walls all evening.
    When I pull up forty minutes later outside our block, I see Jamie has every light in the flat blazing. I sigh inwardly. He can’t bear the dark these days.
    “Jamie?” I throw my keys on the hall table. “Sorry I’m so late. Maggie was an hour late because of some meeting, and then—”
    I never even see the punch coming.
    “Live-in,” I say casually.
    Annabel looks surprised. “I understood you’ve always preferred live-out?”
    “I need some … personal space.”
    Her eyes flick towards my bruised cheekbone, then back to her screen. “I haven’t had a chance to go through your file properly yet. Remind me, how long is it since Caroline placed you with the Hasselbachs?”
    “Two years.”
    She gives me a beady look. “The salary’s pretty good. What’s the problem?”
    “Nothing really,” I fib. “I think the relationship’s just gone stale. You know how it is. We both need to find someone else.”
    “Before this, you were with the Corcorans for just over a year.” Annabel scrolls down, tapping her red nails on the screen. “Two boys, eight months and a-year-and-a-half. But just one other family before that, I see?”
    “The Martindales were my first nannying job. Maeve,their little girl, was on my county swimming team. When she was about eight her mum got sick, and they asked me to look after her full-time,” I say, thinking that, actually, it was Anna Martindale who rescued
me
, “and, well, it sort of went from there.”
    “I hadn’t realized you were on the county team. We should put in on your CV.”
    “I was in the nationals. I had to quit when I got knocked off my bicycle and broke my shoulder, so I started coaching instead.”
    She looks pitying. There’s no need. I was gutted at the time, of course, but I’m over it now. It’s been nine years, after all. You can’t keep thinking
what if
.
    “We’d be able to get you a much better placement and salary if you had a degree in early childhood education or some other child-care qualifications,” Annabel muses. “Parents can often be funny like that. They’d rather have an eighteen-year-old with a bit of paper than someone experienced like you.”
    “I didn’t exactly plan this as a career,” I say mildly. “It just sort of happened.”
    “Well, your references from the Corcorans and Martindales are fantastic, and I’m sure Mrs. Hasselbach will give you a glowing one, too. I’ve got at least three lovely families on my books that I think will suit you—let me make a few calls. When can you start?”
    “As soon as you can find me a job,” I say.
    ———
    Jamie and I were in trouble before The Accident (he insists on referring to it like that, as if he’d been hit by a car, or slipped and fallen down a flight of stairs). We’ve been together too long; we aren’t the same people anymore. Six years is a long time. I’m twenty-seven now, not twenty-one. People change.
    When we met, Jamie was the weekend rugby captain at the South London Sports