Over You by Lucy Diamond Read Free Book Online

and started typing. ‘So, what are your plans now?’ Josie asked Nell as they waited. ‘I mean, will you go back to Wales, or stay in London for a while? Have you left your job?’
    Nell put a hand to her head as if she were going to tuck a curl behind her ear, then dropped it again. The habit clearly hadn’t quite left her. ‘Yeah,’ she said, ‘but it was only a temporary thing. I’m not sure what I’m going to do now. My first instinct was to get a plane ticket somewhere – anywhere – just to escape for a few months and . . .’ Her eyes slid away from Josie. ‘You know, lick my wounds. Distract myself from my broken heart with an adventure.’ She spoke the words lightly, but there was a brittle edge to her tone. Then she smiled properly. ‘But being back in London feels fab after a year in the middle of nowhere. I quite fancy a summer here, the more I think about it.’
    ‘Oh good,’ Josie said warmly. She loved the thought of Nell being closer at hand. ‘Well, if you want somewhere to stay, come to ours any time. You don’t even need to ring, just turn up. There’ll always be a bed for you.’ She rushed on before Nell could say no. ‘I mean, I know we don’t live in London, just boring suburbia, but it’s commutable if you’re working and . . .’ She stopped herself as they reached the front of the queue. ‘You know what I’m saying. Any time.’
    ‘Cheers,’ Nell said, smiling at her. ‘I might just do that.’
    The boys had floated up into Josie’s head periodically throughout the afternoon, but as abstracts largely, in the back of her mind, rather than for any particular reason. It was only on the bus rumbling towards Lisa’s house that she realized the time – almost four o’clock – and had a pang of missing them. Almost their entire day had gone by now, without her. That had hardly ever happened before.
    Lisa and Nell were chatting about something in the seats in front, and Josie couldn’t resist pulling out her mobile, just to see how her boys were doing without her. She pressed the home number – the one number she hardly ever dialled because she was so rarely away – and listened to the burr of the ring-tone. Ring-ring, ring-ring . . .
    She could imagine their white phone on the corner table in the living room, its aerial crooked and stuck together with gaffer tape where one of the boys had bent it, falling on it in a fight. Ring-ring, ring-ring . . .
    What would she be interrupting? she wondered with a little smile. Maybe Pete had got the pirate stuff out and they’d been immersed in a long, bloodthirsty game all afternoon. Maybe they were watching Star Wars together, deaf to the shrill of the phone, as Luke Skywalker grappled with Darth Vader. Or perhaps they were out in the garden being knights and dragons, and Pete was having to pelt through the house to get to the phone, a ridiculously small helmet still jammed on his head . . .
    Her own voice spoke to her.
    ‘You have reached Josie, Pete, Toby and Sam. We can’t take your call right now, so leave us a message and we’ll get back to you as soon as we can. Thanks. Bye!’
    She turned away from the woman next to her and spoke, hunching over her phone. ‘Hiya, it’s me,’ she said, smiling again as she imagined them listening to her words sometime later. ‘Hope you’re all having a lovely day together. Been thinking about you loads. I’ll try you again before bedtime, OK? Love you. Bye.’
    She clicked the line dead and dropped the phone into her bag. She couldn’t help wondering where they were. It was odd, not knowing, not being in the loop. Had Pete taken them out to the park all day, perhaps? Or to the cinema? They’d be having a brilliant time together anyway, she was sure. She should have done this before – given them their own space, the three of them, to do boys’ stuff without her.
    They got off the bus at the end of St Paul’s Road, a long curving street lined with genteel three-storey Victorian