Until You're Mine by Samantha Hayes Page A

question where it came from, not if they think I’ve been peeling and chopping vegetables all afternoon.
    ‘Pip came round earlier,’ I tell her to get her off the scent, but she’s straight back on it with her nose hovering over the pan, belly pressing against the Aga rail, sucking in the smells of my faux home cooking.
    ‘There’s a secret ingredient, I’ll bet,’ she says, briefly closing her eyes.
    Our faces are close. She’s only a breath away. All that new life buzzing inside her.
    ‘If I tell you that,’ I say with a smile, ‘I’ll have to kill you.’
    *
    Later, when the boys have scraped their bowls and asked for not only seconds but thirds too, once they have sucked on peach quarters and licked their fingers, after a warm bubble bath shared with a dozen plastic dinosaurs and a story from me, and after I’ve said goodnight to James and Claudia (with a few questions to her privately about how she’s feeling; if she thinks her time is close), I slump onto my bed as if my bones have dissolved from exhaustion and grief. When the tears come, I have to bury them in my pillow. When the anger comes, I bite into it, leaving little teeth marks of frustration in the crisp cotton.
    Why did this have to happen now?
    I pull my holdall from the bottom of the wardrobe. I unzip an inside compartment and pull out the little blue and white box. Clear Blue, it says on the front. Over ninety-nine per cent accurate. Two tests.
    All it does is make me want to go home. All it does is make me feel empty and utterly useless inside.

10
    ‘SHE’S BEEN SMOKING.’ I’m waddling up and down the drawing room.
    ‘Nonsense,’ James says wearily. ‘She doesn’t do that. Have you forgotten we asked her at the interview?’
    ‘I smelt it on her. No doubt.’
    I think for a moment. He’s right. She definitely told us that she didn’t smoke. But I don’t want the boys watching her have a sneaky cigarette outside the back door or even smelling it on her. Before you know it, they’ll think it’s OK to do it themselves. It’s not the way I want them brought up.
    ‘Ask her if you’re that bothered by it,’ James says.
    ‘How can I?’ I reply. I’m pacing back and forth between him and the fireplace. ‘It’s no good if she thinks we don’t trust her.’
    ‘You’re being so silly,’ James says. For some reason, he’s pointing at the empty grate. It’s always chilly in this room but James insisted we come in here to talk as it’s furthest away from the boys’ room and Zoe’s staircase. ‘Don’t you remember that she lit the sitting-room stove earlier and was complaining how hard it was to get going? She said the room filled with smoke and she was apologising. That’s all it was, Claudia. Wood smoke on her clothes.’
    Surely James knows as well as I do that there’s a difference between the two. I may be pregnant, but I haven’t lost my sense of smell.
    ‘No, no, you’re wrong. It was cigarette smoke on her breath.’
    We are suddenly silent as the door clicks open at the same time as we hear a quiet knock. ‘It’s just me,’ Zoe says. ‘I’m sorry to interrupt your evening.’ She looks anxious.
    Did she hear us talking about her?
    ‘Come in,’ James says.
    I pray she didn’t hear me.
    ‘It’s nothing really,’ she says, perhaps sensing our embarrassment. ‘We can talk tomorrow if you’re busy.’
    She’s waiting nervously in the doorway looking at each of us in turn. Her face is both pleading and apologetic. There’s something on her mind and she’s not sure how to say it. She looks as if she’s already been in bed, maybe unable to get to sleep. Her hair is slightly mussed on one side and the light eye make-up she was wearing earlier has been removed. The pale skin of her cheeks and forehead has the soft sheen of night-cream still absorbing, while her back-to-front T-shirt and woolly bed socks are another give-away of the intention of an early night.
    What led her downstairs again, I