One Plus One: A Novel by Jojo Moyes Read Free Book Online Page A

going to have to tell her daughter that she couldn’t make it add up. Jess Thomas, the woman who always found a way through, who spent her life telling the kids that it would All Work Out, couldn’t make it work out.
    She hauled the vacuum cleaner down the hallway, wincing as it bumped against her shin, and knocked on the door to see if Mr. Nicholls wanted his office cleaned. There was silence, and as she knocked again he yelled suddenly, “Yes, I’m well aware of that, Sidney. You’ve said so fifteen times, but it doesn’t mean—”
    It was too late: she had pushed the door half open. Jess began to apologize, but with barely a glance the man held up a palm, as if she were some kind of a dog—
stay
—then leaned forward and slammed the door in her face. The sound reverberated around the house.
    Jess stood there, shocked into immobility, her skin prickling with embarrassment.
    “I told you,” Nathalie said, as she scrubbed furiously at the guest bathroom a few minutes later. “Those private schools don’t teach them any manners.”
    —
    Forty minutes later, Jess gathered Mr. Nicholls’s immaculate white towels and sheets into her holdall, stuffing them in with more force than was strictly necessary. She walked downstairs and placed the bag next to the cleaning crate in the hall. Nathalie was polishing the doorknobs. It was one of her things. She couldn’t bear fingerprints on taps or doorknobs.
    “Mr. Nicholls, we’re going now.”
    He was standing in the kitchen, just staring out through the window at the sea, one hand on the top of his head like he’d forgotten it was there. He had dark hair and was wearing those glasses that are supposed to be trendy but just make you look like you’ve dressed up as Woody Allen. He had a lean, athletic build, but wore a suit like a twelve-year-old forced to go to a christening.
    “Mr. Nicholls.”
    He shook his head slightly, then sighed and walked down the hallway. “Right,” he said distractedly. He kept glancing down at the screen of his mobile phone. “Thanks.”
    They waited.
    “Um, we’d like our money, please,” Jess said.
    Nathalie finished polishing, and folded and unfolded the cloth. She hated money conversations.
    “I thought the management company paid you.”
    “They haven’t paid us in three weeks. And there’s never anyone in the office. If you want us to continue we need to be up to date.”
    He scrabbled around in his pockets, pulled out a wallet. “Right. What do I owe you?”
    “Thirty times three weeks. And three weeks of laundry.”
    He looked up, one eyebrow raised.
    “We left a message on your phone, last week.”
    He shook his head, as if he couldn’t be expected to remember such things. “How much is that?”
    “One hundred and thirty-five all together.”
    He flicked through the notes. “I don’t have that much cash. Look, I’ll give you sixty and get them to send you a check for the rest. Okay?”
    On another occasion Jess would have said yes. On another occasion she would have let it go. It wasn’t as if he were going to rip them off, after all. But she was suddenly sick of wealthy people who never paid on time, who assumed that because seventy-five pounds was nothing to them, it must be nothing to her, too. She was sick of clients who thought she meant so little that they could slam a door in her face without so much as an apology.
    “No,” she said, and her voice was oddly clear. “I need the money now, please.”
    He met her eye for the first time. Behind her Nathalie rubbed manically at a doorknob. “I have bills that need paying. And the people who send them won’t let me put off paying week after week.”
    He took off his glasses and frowned at her, as if she were being particularly difficult. It made her dislike him even more.
    “I’ll have to look upstairs,” he said, disappearing. They stood in uncomfortable silence as they heard drawers being shut emphatically, the clash of hangers in a wardrobe. Finally