Until You're Mine by Samantha Hayes

with a sigh, which is clearly one of relief. A punctuation mark; a full stop.
    ‘Mummy, Noah broke Barbie,’ Lilly says, thrusting a contorted naked doll at her mother.
    ‘Oh dear,’ Pip says with a sideways glance at me as if it’s somehow my fault. ‘Let me see.’
    ‘Noah,’ I say with forced disdain, ‘why did you do that?’ Really, I’d quite like to pat him on the head and tell him well done.
    ‘Cos Barbie’s stupid and not real,’ he says, echoing my thoughts.
    ‘That’s not a good reason to break someone else’s doll,’ I tell him. ‘What do you say to Lilly?’
    Noah shrugs. He bites his lip until it bleeds.
    ‘Say sorry,’ I tell him.
    ‘She’s not broken any more,’ Pip says, handing back the mended doll to Lilly. ‘Just bent a bit.’
    I watch Noah’s eyes track Lilly and slightly-bent-Barbie as they leave the room. He’ll have another go for sure. I’m learning that he’s quite like me: things that are perfect are just asking for it.
    *
    When Pip has finally left with a sullen Lilly in tow and a promise to make the play-date a weekly occurrence, I get started on the boys’ supper. I promised homemade soup, didn’t I?
    I peek into the sitting room and see that the twins are glued to some cartoon or other. A double-take shows me that Oscar is actually asleep, lolling on the arm of the chair with a string of drool leaking onto the upholstery. Noah glances at me idly, our new bond stretched silently between us, and turns back to the telly without a word.
    I pull the door closed and grab my coat, purse and keys. On the top step, I scan the street left and right. There’s no one about, no one paying me any attention. I can almost see it from here and, with a big breath, I launch myself down the steps and through the front gate. Without stopping, I dash to the corner shop, buy what I need – silently cursing the old woman in front of me counting out her change penny by hard-saved penny – and, before I know it, I am back in the hallway slipping out of my coat. Trying not to pant, I peek into the sitting room again. The boys are still safely in the same place, but then my vision goes blurry as adrenalin rushes through me. A hand on the doorframe steadies me.
    ‘James,’ I say automatically. I force the smile that’s buried beneath the shock.
    ‘Zoe,’ he says, and I have less than a second to decide if he’s angry, if he knows I left his sons alone. ‘How was your day?’
    ‘Fine,’ I say, still unsure and cursing myself for having no idea how to make soup.
    ‘You look chilly,’ he says, standing up and stretching.
    ‘I’ve just taken the recycling out to the bins,’ I say with a silent prayer of thanks that I actually did this chore earlier in the afternoon and had the presence of mind to remember. Full bins in the kitchen would have given me away. I slide the plastic shopping bag across the floor with my foot, although I needn’t have bothered because James flops back down into the sofa and shrugs an arm round each son.
    ‘Great,’ he says awkwardly, and now Oscar is awake and James is more interested in talking to his sleepy son than bothering with me.
    ‘I’ll get their supper started then,’ I say, and leave for the kitchen.
    *
    ‘Something smells divine,’ Claudia says. She looks tired and stressed but with the veneer of a brave face pasted over the top. I don’t think she’s entirely comfortable with me being here yet. What she needs to understand is that it’s a necessity for both of us.
    ‘It’s the soup,’ I say proudly. A great pot of it is simmering on the Aga’s hotplate. A quick search on the internet told me how to use the damned thing before I started the job. Apparently my previous employers had one. ‘Homemade, of course.’ Ten empty cans – homemade soup only comes in big batches, I once learnt from my aunt – are now crushed and deposited right at the bottom of the recycling dustbin. Mix in a few fresh herbs and no one’s going to