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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

‘Yeah, it’s hard explaining to a two-year-old that bleeding out there doesn’t hurt.’

‘Got you. Say no more.’ He yawned again. ‘Before I forget, Mum’s car has broken down. She’s stuck at her friend Julie’s house and won’t be able to get back to London in time to pick up Gigi from that harvest festival at the church tomorrow. Can you do it? She’ll be back here around midday.’

Will was flying to America in the morning and would be away for two days schmoozing some big new clients.

Yvonne’s Young Ones had requested that tomorrow all children join the harvest festival celebrations at the church adjoining the nursery. When I’d said yes to this request at the start of term I’d imagined that Gigi’s big role as a piece of corn would give Will and me a blessed relaxed morning reading the Sunday papers. I hadn’t figured we’d both be working. I now needed to work out the logistics of dropping her off and picking her up. I wasn’t sure how I was going to broach this with Hattie.

‘Yep. Sure.’ I stared at the ceiling. I’d just lost a colleague, I’d just potentially foiled an assassination attempt on a Chinese minister, another strike was likely to happen any minute and I now had a childcare issue.

He reached to turn his light off but stopped.

‘You OK?’

‘Bad day at work. I’m just really tired.’ I rolled over. I closed my eyes but I knew sleep would take a long time to come, if it all.

Peng was still alive.

But Robin was gone.

It felt wrong. To be lying next to Will feeling so utterly bereft and not be able to talk to him about it. There was no spin I could put on this that would make sense. It wasn’t right that I could sit in a duck hide with Frederick and talk about everything I was feeling, yet I couldn’t with my own husband in our bedroom. I saw what Frederick had meant: by having a job we couldn’t talk about we were keeping a part of ourselves back. Will was oblivious to how I was feeling. It wasn’t his fault, it was mine. I couldn’t blame him for not understanding, for not being there for me, when I couldn’t tell him why I was upset. I couldn’t expect to keep everything inside and for him to magically know. How could he ever really be there for me when he could never know what I was really going through?

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Subject: LIVE WEBCAM (.)(.)

MISSION: #80521

UNIT: WHISTLE

DATE: Sunday 6th October

ALERT: PENG’S DEPARTURE DAY

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Seven