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Back The Nursery Save as PDF
Chapters (45)
  1. Cover
  2. Praise
  3. Dedication
  4. Prologue
  5. Part One
  6. Chapter One
  7. Chapter Two
  8. Chapter Three
  9. Part Two
  10. Chapter Four
  11. Chapter Five
  12. Chapter Six
  13. Chapter Seven
  14. Chapter Eight
  15. Chapter Nine
  16. Part Three
  17. Chapter Ten
  18. Chapter Eleven
  19. Chapter Twelve
  20. Chapter Thirteen
  21. Chapter Fourteen
  22. Chapter Fifteen
  23. Chapter Sixteen
  24. Part Four
  25. Chapter Seventeen
  26. Chapter Eighteen
  27. Chapter Nineteen
  28. Chapter Twenty
  29. Chapter Twenty-One
  30. Chapter Twenty-Two
  31. Part Five
  32. Chapter Twenty-Three
  33. Chapter Twenty-Four
  34. Chapter Twenty-Five
  35. Chapter Twenty-Six
  36. Chapter Twenty-Seven
  37. Chapter Twenty-Eight
  38. Chapter Twenty-Nine
  39. Chapter Thirty
  40. Chapter Thirty-One
  41. Chapter Thirty-Two
  42. Part Six
  43. Chapter Thirty-Three
  44. Acknowledgements
  45. About the Author

I thought of Frederick. The way he had looked at me as I’d left. I wondered what he was feeling. If the shock had worn off yet. If he was going to be getting any sleep tonight. I picked up my phone and clicked on my text messages to Frederick. Dots. He was typing something to me. I waited. The dots went. Another beat and they came back. I stared at my phone. I was back to being thirteen. Waiting for the postman to arrive. The dots disappeared and didn’t come back. Whatever he wanted to say he couldn’t find the words.

Or it was an iPhone fuck-up and I’d spent ten minutes transfixed by a software error.

I couldn’t work out which was more tragic.

What was wrong with me?

I was a mother of one having indecent thoughts about a work colleague. This was tried, tested and clichéd ground. I was hoping, as a trained assassin, if I was going to have issues in my marriage it would be something a little more original. It would turn out Will was actually a secret agent for a foreign intelligence but turned by his intense love for me he’d confess all and allow me to bring him in, leading to a happy, genuine marriage and a massive promotion for me. Or that I was forced to forget my wedding vows to seduce someone incredibly attractive, not because he was incredibly attractive but because the safety of the UK’s population decreed it for reasons I hadn’t quite determined – maybe some kind of nuclear threat. It wouldn’t count as cheating as it was for work. For saving my country.

But feeling like this, about a colleague, a school-run dad – it was all so depressingly normal.

Frederick was in my head when he shouldn’t be. He knew what I did, he knew what I was – and it didn’t stop the way he looked at me. It didn’t stop him wanting me. That’s what it all came down to. I’d known Frederick only days and it was already a more honest relationship than the one I had with my husband.

I knew I couldn’t ever tell Will about exactly what my job entailed.

Because above all was the fear that if he found out the truth he would leave me. And I would realise he never really loved me, because he never really knew me.

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Subject: HotHornyMums WAITING HERE!

MISSION: #80521

UNIT: WHISTLE

DATE: Friday 4th October

ALERT: 2 DAYS UNTIL PENG’S DEPARTURE

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Nineteen

‘PRINCESS.’

‘Darling, there aren’t any princesses in Roald Dahl.’

‘Be PRINCESS.’