Free What's Yours Is Mine by Tess Stimson Page A

pregnant wife or not. Men. They’re all the same.
    Grace’s eyes bore into me. God, she’s so fucking
anal
. She looks like she’s got a broom stuck up her arse, and if she grips that glass any tighter, it’ll shatter. It’s not my fault she’s got the hots for Blake; not that she’ll ever admitit. I don’t want to rain on her parade, but he’d never give her a second glance in a million years. She’s
so
not his type. Even if she did throw caution to the winds and open her legs, who’d want to have a fling with a goody-two-shoes like her? Blake must get enough of that missionary-position, no-swallowing crap at home.
    â€œSusannah doesn’t need a job,” Grace blurts out suddenly. “She’s not going to be staying much longer.”
    Uhh-ohh.
    â€œGrace!” Tom exclaims.
    â€œWell, she can’t stay here forever. She has a life to go back to. A job. I’m sure she wants to get back to the sunshine as soon as she can.”
    â€œActually, Grace,” I say, crossing my fingers and hoping she doesn’t totally freak out. “About that. Me staying here, I mean. There’s a bit of a problem with my visa …”
    I was right to tell her in front of everyone, I think. Grace always knows when I’ve pulled a fast one. She’d have chucked me out on the street if we’d been on our own. But because her friends are here, she keeps quiet. Poor, pathetic Grace. Always needing to be
liked
.
    Tom and Claudia try heroically to steer the conversation back into calmer waters, but it’s a lost cause. I brace myself. It takes a lot to make my uptight big sister lose her cool, but when she does, she flips big-time.
    â€œSusannah had a place at the Slade,” Tom is enthusing. “I think you did a year or two, didn’t you?”
    I flick open my cigarettes. “I left at the end of my first year.”
    â€œOh, yes. You got pregnant with Davey, didn’t you?” Grace snaps.
    Bitch. She didn’t have to tell everyone. That baby cost me my career.
    I’d never have got pregnant at all if Brady hadn’t gone on and on about how much he wanted to be a father, what beautiful babies we’d make. OK, he didn’t actually
tell
me to come off the Pill, but that’s clearly what he meant. He was thirty-seven, nearly twice my age; I figured he was ready to settle down. Talk about naive. He kept saying how thrilled he was, until one day he stopped being quite so thrilled, and ran for the hills. He didn’t even pack.
    By then, I was seven months pregnant, too late for an abortion. So there I was: nineteen, stuck in a crappy bedsit on my own with a screaming baby. Mum helped out with money, but Dad didn’t even talk to me for a year.
    â€œWill you be seeing Davey and Donny while you’re over?” Grace demands now. “Or will you be
too busy
with everything else to have time to drop in on your sons?”
    Great. Rub it in that I fucked up
twice
, why don’t you?
    â€œIt’s not about what I want, Grace. It’s about what’s best for them.”
    â€œSince when?” she sneers.
    It’s so goddamned easy for her, isn’t it? Amazing Grace, mistress of all she surveys. Perfect life, perfect house, perfect husband, perfect job. She doesn’t know what it’s like to have everything you touch turn to shit. She’s got no idea what it’s like to be alone. She’s always had Tom. She’s never had to struggle for anything, it’s all just been handedto her on a plate. No doubt when she decides she’s got time in her perfect little life for a couple of perfect children, she’ll have them on demand, a boy and a girl, born bang on their due dates so she can get right back to work.
    I didn’t
want
to give up my kids. I didn’t have any choice. My marriage to Donny’s father had broken up before Donny was even born, and he didn’t pay a