Until You're Mine by Samantha Hayes Read Free Book Online Page B

children to their parents.
    Inside, it’s dark and cool and smells of powder paint, school lunches and farts. The wooden floors kick up an evocative scent as I stalk the corridors. Through glass squares in the classroom doors I see older children still gathering their belongings. There’ll be a stampede very soon. At the end of the corridor is a door with a sign on saying After School Club. A few kids have just gone in.
    ‘Oh, boys, you scared me half to death,’ I say, once inside.
    The teacher, a man in his fifties, glances up from the work piled on his desk. ‘Can I help you?’
    ‘I’ve come to pick up Oscar and Noah. I’m their new nanny. Come on, lads,’ I say. I need to get out of here. It’s stifling and airless, the oxygen having been sucked up by three hundred greedy kids.
    The teacher takes off his glasses. ‘First I’ve heard of it. The boys always come to after-school club. Their mother fetches them at six.’
    ‘Not now she doesn’t,’ I say too brusquely and immediately turn him against me. ‘Look, I’m Zoe Harper. Claudia Morgan-Brown introduced me to Mrs Culver this morning and let her know the new situation.’
    ‘There are forms,’ the man says unhelpfully. ‘You’ll need to see the secretary.’
    ‘Where is she?’
    ‘Gone home,’ he says. ‘But the forms need to be signed by the parent so you won’t be able to take the boys today. Not without a form.’
    ‘Oh for heaven’s—’
Keep calm
. ‘Oscar, Noah, will you please tell your teacher who I am?’
    The boys just stare at me. They are pulling apart dried-up Playdoh and scattering it on the floor. You’d think he’d want to be rid of them.
    ‘Please?’ I beg. ‘You don’t understand. If I can’t pick up the boys, well, it just doesn’t look good on my first day at work.’ My arms dangle limply by my side. What they’d really like to do is hit the stupid old man.
    ‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘Not my problem. I’ll have to ask you to leave now.’
    In a flash of desperation, I march up to the boys and grab each of them by the hand. Without a word, they obediently follow me as I tug on their arms.
Good lads!
I think, inwardly cheering them for not making a fuss as we run out. Behind me, the teacher’s making one though.
    Stop! Thief! Kidnap!
    I hear him stumbling between chairs as he attempts a chase, but he’s too old to catch us. He yells for his assistant and phones for help as I charge off with Noah and Oscar.
    As we head for the park, I have to remind myself that it’s not the done thing, stealing other people’s children.
    *
    We’re laughing about it later, of course, and she’s totally on my side.
    ‘Stupid secretary. I wrote her a letter. Sent her an email. Told her to circulate it to the staff. Even spoke to Mrs Culver before you started. And we met her this morning. God.’ Claudia has just got home from work. Dumped her keys, bag and shoes in the hallway. ‘Anyone would think you’d kidnapped them.’
    I did.
    ‘That’s what some crusty old man said when I strode right out of there with them,’ I said with a wry laugh.
    ‘They phoned me immediately. I guess we can’t blame them for doing their job.’ And Claudia laughs – a beautiful laugh with white teeth and her head tipped back. Her neck is very pretty.
    *
    Later, in my bedroom, with the boys bathed and read to and tucked up in their own beds exhausted and happy with minty breath, I boot up my laptop. Speedily, I type an email and click send.
    Then I set to unpacking the rest of my belongings. T-shirts and tops in one drawer, undies in another, all rather messily arranged. I think about the onerous task of packing it all up again every Friday evening. It seems ridiculous. Claudia wants me gone at weekends – I can understand they need their family time – but, in all honesty, I can’t afford to do that. She is so close to her due date.
    I grab my laptop and make some notes. When I write ‘due date’, my finger hits the wrong key and it