In the Moors by Nina Milton Read Free Book Online Page B

I’ll pay your rent.”
    I laughed. “Nice try. But I actually love my work, rent or not.”
    â€œWhen am I going to see you properly?”
    â€œHow about Wednesday evening? Come round, I’ll cook something.”
    â€œAre you telling me you’re working every evening between now and then?”
    â€œYes, Ivan. My clients mostly work too. I’m busiest at weekends and after four in the afternoon.”
    Ivan shrugged. He nestled his mobile in the palm of his hand. His fingers moved fast over the keys, like the fat legs of some intelligent insect, searching for his calendar. “Yeah, I can come straight from the office, if you like. Six-ish?”
    â€œMake it seven,” I said. “I’ll probably have to shop for food.”
    He leaned into me and we kissed again. I wanted to ask him to not turn up without warning another time, but I didn’t like to admit how uncomfortable I’d felt when I realized he’d been watching the stupid grin on my face.
    â€œSeen any more of that copper?”
    â€œNo, of course not.” The denial was out of my mouth before I could stop to ask myself why I was lying.
    â€œWhat did he want, in the end?”
    â€œOne of my clients got himself arrested. It’s okay, he’s not in any trouble. Mistaken identity, almost.”
    â€œThat’s good. You got me worried. Thought my girlfriend was a known criminal, for a minute.”
    â€œYep, that’s me. A price on my head in nine counties.”
    I watched him lope along the path and waved as the gate clanged behind him. I went into the kitchen and made myself a sandwich. Ivan’s parting quip was ringing in my ears—not the known criminal part but the my girlfriend part . I wasn’t ready to consider Ivan anything more than a casual date. We were as different as a ladybird is from a greenfly.
    I grinned. So long as I’m the ladybird , I thought, munching on a radish.

    â€œSo pleased to see you, Sabbie,” exclaimed my four o’clock. “How are you doing today?”
    Marianne Meyer had the faultless English accent of the Dutch, and she was always rather formal in her politeness. She towered over me as I let her in. She bordered on six feet in height, favouring well-cut slacks that glided against the concave curve of her abdomen and floated in a boot-cut around her stiletto heels. Her hair was as silky blond as mine is crinkly black and almost as long. She favoured small, tight tops that enhanced her beautiful breasts. At first I wondered about boob jobs, but now I’m sure that everything she displayed was real. She’s just a lucky girl—and that extended to her life. She had a fit bloke who adored her, a big family back in the Netherlands that meant a lot to her, and until recently she’d been accelerating through the cut-throat world of public relations.
    Yet she came to me over a month ago in quite a state. She’d taken weeks off work, lying in bed for most of the day, swallowing pills her doctor had prescribed, and trying to puzzle out the extreme reaction she’d had to the news that the firm was downsizing. Yes, everyone had become jumpy about re-interviewing for their jobs, but Marianne could happily tell me she felt quite confident that she’d keep hers. At first I couldn’t offer a crumb of help. I’d been completely stumped. Whenever I had journeyed into Marianne’s spirit world, everything seemed calm, well ordered. Cheerful, even. Nothing my guides offered me to take back to Marianne had rung any bells with her at all, and her meticulously kept dream diary looked as benign and mellow as Ovaltine, just as her life had been—until the day she’d taken the phone call about the threat of redundancies and suffered a complete emotional breakdown right there in the office.
    There were no gaps in her life into which this trauma could have fallen—no messy relationships, no wicked stepfather,