Lost Dogs and Lonely Hearts by Lucy Dillon Read Free Book Online Page A

Rather get it done while it’s all fresh in my mind.’
    Johnny started to reach for his jacket, but she shook her head. ‘No, honestly, hon, you stay here and finish your drink. It’s fine.’
    ‘We’ll share a cab,’ offered Bill. ‘Won’t make it too late.’
    ‘Before midnight’s fine.’ Natalie smiled. ‘He turns back into a frog after that. See you later!’
    She walked out of the pub into the night air, which had taken on an even sharper chill in the last few days. No sign of spring yet, she thought, clutching her hooded parka tighter as she blipped the central locking on their Mini Cooper and slid inside.
    Natalie loved her Mini Cooper. Johnny got the bus into school most mornings, so this was really her car, for driving to the business park on the outskirts of town where she worked, and for the endless marketing strategy meetings she had to schlep all over the place for. Every time she ran her hands over the leather steering wheel Natalie felt good about her life. It was a new car, and a bit of a luxury, but it had been their big treat to themselves, her and Johnny, since they didn’t have anyone to spend their money on but themselves, not like their brothers and sisters who spent every available penny on their kids.
    She’d ticked the ISOFIX child seat fittings option, just in case, when Johnny was faffing around deciding on what type of alloys they should get. It was sensible anyway, for secondhand values. A rational decision. Not just because Natalie often imagined a chunky little Maclaren child seat there, in her rear-view mirror. With a chunky little Hodge inside.
    As she pulled carefully out of the pub car park and onto the main road, there was a tight knot of moodiness in her chest, and she probed it ruthlessly. Since she and Johnny had officially started trying to conceive – Natalie hated the twee TTC phrases but found herself using them anyway – she’d tuned into her body like it was a kind of radio transmitter. Every twinge and mood swing and break-out registered in some part of her brain.
    Was it the pub? Did she resent not being allowed to drink on her baby diet? Not really. She missed the coffee more. God, she thought, you’d never believe women managed to get pregnant in the past, what with smoking and drinking and rare meat and what have you.
    Was it Bill? Not really. She didn’t mind hanging out, the three of them. Bill and Johnny were friends from college, and he was like an extra brother.
    Was it work? The knot tightened and she knew she couldn’t ignore it.
    Yes, work was getting to her. The credit crunch had clamped its jaws around the multi-national food company she worked for, as a marketing executive in a new organics sector, and her boss, Selina, was sharpening her claws on her team every day. What had really set Natalie’s nerves jangling was the way she already knew today’s monthly strategy meeting hadn’t gone well; Natalie was smart enough to see that other people’s budgets were being cut, leaving even less room for them, but there wasn’t much she could do about it, short of bailing out the World Bank.
    With a sharper flick on the indicator than was strictly necessary, she indicated to turn onto the road up to the estate where she and Johnny lived.
    But if she was being honest – and Natalie always tried to be honest – it was a guilty, less noble niggle passed down that chain of more reasonable work-related irritations that had caused the knot in her chest.
    That morning, when Kay Lambert, the third pregnant woman in a twenty metre radius of her desk, had made her big announcement via the office email, something had burst inside Natalie, something hot and jealous and stinging. Kay was really nice, but she was thirty-seven and she already had two children. This one was ‘a happy surprise!’ She hadn’t even been trying. She hadn’t been on IVF or anything, just ‘a rather naughty wedding anniversary in Bath!’ It was so unfair .
    Natalie’s knuckles