LITMIR.BIZ

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bags surrounding her, looking at the antique clock on the wall that was always set ten minutes fast and knowing that she should really make a start on lunch. But it was too late; her eyes had caught sight of one of the bottles of wine. Not too early for a drink, was it? She’d just make it a quick one, give herself a chance to flip through the magazines and catch up on the celebrity gossip.

      Nina sighed as she picked up the telephone. Her eyes ached as she read the tiny print of the local newspaper. Situations Vacant. Nina knew why they were vacant, too. Badly paid, badly run companies with no perks and definitely no prospects – but she nevertheless felt compelled to find out what her options were on the job front. But would this one be any different from the others she’d circled?

      ‘Hello, can I speak to Mrs Anne Conti, please?’

      There was a pause as the receptionist transferred her call to the human resources department via a blast of Vivaldi.

      ‘Hello? Is that Mrs Conti? My name’s Nina Elliot. I’ve just seen your advertisement for a secretary and was wondering if you could send me an … oh, really? So quickly? Okay. Thank you for your time.’

      Nina hung up and drew another neat red line across the paper. Internal applicant no doubt, she thought, realising she’d been through half the paper without any success.

      She got up and crossed the room, looking out of her flat window and up into a sky the colour of forget-me-nots. It was a lovely day again, and she was looking forward to visiting Olivia. Images as pretty as a Monet painting filled her mind. The Old Mill House. Green fields stretching to the horizon, a garden overflowing with flowers, the river – rushing and rousing – the perfect restorative. She hadn’t thought much about Olivia’s mention of a job the day before. She hadn’t dared to. Remembering Olivia from her time at the mill, it was probably something like arranging the flowers on her hallway table or helping out with the weekly shop. Anyway, it was nothing that was likely to add up to a living wage, Nina thought with a sigh. Besides, the idea of returning to the mill and actually working there was just too good to be true.

      She’d always been made so welcome there. In the four years she’d been the Miltons’ babysitter, The Old Mill House had been like a second home. Well, a first home, if Nina was really honest with herself. She’d always been so happy there. It had been a little sanctuary away from her own home when her parents had been fighting about who should move out and what belonged to whom in the run-up to their divorce. It had been tough being an only child and Nina had been secretly jealous of the Milton family, with their three young boys and inexhaustible number of cousins, aunts and uncles who were always popping over. The house was never empty and Nina couldn’t help wondering what it would be like now. Would it still be the happy drop-in centre that she remembered – or had the boys and the cousins all found places of their own and no longer felt the need to return to the family home?

      All the same, Nina thought, how comforting it must be to have a family home to come back to, even if you chose to live on the other side of the world. It was a rare thing nowadays to have your parents still together and still living in the same home where the family had been brought up, and she couldn’t help envying the Milton boys that security, because she’d never had it in her own life.

      Olivia anxiously buzzed around the house like a mad wasp. She straightened the hemline of a curtain, adjusted a vase on the mantelpiece, picked a few dead leaves from her house plants and plumped a few cushions. She wanted everything to be absolutely perfect for Nina’s visit.

      She hadn’t spoken to Dudley about the possibility of a new secretary – not yet – she wanted to tell Dominic first. Wouldn’t he be surprised? She couldn’t wait to see the look on his face. At least it might replace his current demeanour. He’d been a little brooding of late and she was worried about him. Olivia was used to worrying about her youngest, of course. It had always been the same, she thought, picking up a silver-framed photo of the boys.

      Billy, the eldest, was the brains of the brothers, always ready with the answers for Trivial Pursuit; Alex was the playboy, and had been chasing girls as soon as he’d been able to walk. Then there was Dominic. Olivia’s finger traced the face in the photograph. A mother wasn’t supposed to have favourites, but Dominic had always had a special place in her heart; he was the introvert, the artistic one, who’d spend his evenings painting a canvas whilst his brothers would be painting the town.

      Not that he’d been short of admirers. The lovely Faye had been around almost as long as there’d been a Dominic, and the relationship had been quite serious throughout their teenage years. But, since Dominic had been away at university at one end of the country and Faye had been studying horticulture at the other, they seemed to have forgotten about their burgeoning relationship. However, since Olivia had employed Faye to give their garden a makeover, she now realised that the young girl was still very much in love with her son.

      Olivia’s mind drifted back to the past and some of the family occasions when, as far as she was concerned, Dominic and Faye had been Norfolk’s sweetest couple. Birthdays, Christmases, New Years and countless afternoon teas and evening suppers had always included Faye. She had been an honorary member of the Milton family and Olivia couldn’t bear the thought of her not being a part of their family’s future, which was why she was, in her own unsubtle way, trying to get Faye and her son back together again.

      Dominic was having none of it, of course.

      ‘Mum! Just stop!’ he’d insisted. ‘It isn’t going to happen. We’ve broken up. End of story.’

      ‘But Dommie—’

      ‘And don’t call me that. I’m not a child any more.’

      No, Olivia thought, he wasn’t. He was a twenty-one-year-old graduate. A young, single man who really would benefit from the love of a good woman.

      But where on earth was Dominic?, Olivia wondered, as she waited for Nina to arrive. It wasn’t just Faye he was avoiding lately, but everybody.

      Nina couldn’t help but smile at the reflection that greeted her. The dress she’d pulled out of the wardrobe was old but pretty, and was certainly an improvement on her jeans.

      She rubbed her hands over the goose bumps on her arms, that were fast turning into goose-mountains, and rummaged around on the floor of the wardrobe for her cotton jumper. She grinned. Not exactly the height of fashion, but she was a practical girl and refused to freeze just in case she ran into an old boyfriend she didn’t even want to impress any more.

      For a moment, she thought about Matt, looking at the answer phone that was telling her she had five messages from him. He wasn’t going to give up that easily, was he? The first message had been the Matt she’d fallen in love with – the charming young man who had wooed her with his words as well as his good looks.

      ‘I miss you so much!’ he’d told her. ‘Call me. I can’t bear not seeing you. You’re everything to me.’ Her hand had hovered dangerously over the phone. The second message was similar but his voice sounded more anxious and, by the third message, the anxiety had turned to anger.

      ‘Where are you, Nina? What’s so important in your life that you can’t call me back? Who do you think you are, anyway? You can’t do this to me. I won’t let you!’

      Nina’s hands had begun to quake in the way that was all too familiar from the past when Matt’s moods turned, and she’d listened to the fifth and final message with trepidation. It had been horrible. He’d sworn, called her names, said he never wanted to see her again – never, never, never – and then hung up. It was a pattern that she had come to know well.

      Throughout their relationship, she’d often thought that she’d prefer him to physically hit her rather than inflict so much emotional abuse on her. It might, she thought, have been less painful in the long run.

      Now, looking at her reflection, she knew she’d done the right thing in breaking up with him. Friends like Janey might be shocked by the split, but they’d only ever seen one side of Matt. They never saw the other man because he was an expert at hiding him to everybody but her.

      She

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