False Advertising by Dianne Blacklock Read Free Book Online

but Gemma hadn’t even decided what she was going to do yet – only that she would go ahead and have the baby. Keeping it was a whole other can of worms, one she was not ready to open yet. The only thing she was sure of was that the more people who knew about the pregnancy, the less chance she had of making her own decision.
    â€˜You can’t tell them, Phee,’ she said seriously. ‘Not yet anyway, not till I’ve at least got a job and somewhere to live.’
    Gemma was watching Phoebe closely, watching her put all the pieces into place, waiting for the penny to drop . . .
    â€˜Um . . . what are your plans in the meantime?’ Phoebe asked tentatively.
    â€˜Well, I was kind of hoping I could crash here . . . just short-term.’
    Phoebe missed a beat. ‘Oh . . .’
    â€˜I know it’s a lot to ask –’
    â€˜No, no, it’s not,’ Phoebe said weakly. ‘It’s not that . . .’
    â€˜It’s Cameron, isn’t it?’ Phoebe’s husband. The original man of steel. Or he’d probably prefer titanium or something more upmarket. ‘I know he doesn’t like me, Phee.’
    â€˜Maybe that has something to do with you throwing up on his shoes the first time you met him.’
    â€˜He still hasn’t gotten over that, eh?’
    Phoebe shrugged. ‘It’s just that he likes his privacy . . . likes things to be a certain way . . . He’s very . . . particular.’ Phoebe sighed heavily. ‘What the hell. You’re my sister and you need us. Cam’s just going to have to handle it.’

Balmain
    Helen was sitting on the back step nursing a cup of tea between both hands, gazing out at the yard, waiting out the time till she could pick up Noah from preschool. The lawn desperately needed a mow, the edges a trim; a passionfruit vine runningrampant over the shed needed to be tamed. The whole yard was looking sad and overgrown. Not that it had ever been a picture – she and David weren’t exactly your House and Garden kind of people. Helen thought it was probably because the house wasn’t actually theirs. And now she didn’t know how much longer she’d be able to hang onto it. It had been going round and round in her head for weeks now, and she was still no closer to a solution. Mostly because she hadn’t really done anything about it. Except mull. And that was getting her nowhere.
    So she cleaned. She cleaned out cupboards and wiped down shelves, benches, walls, architraves, skirtings, windowsills, anything listed on the back of the bottle of Spray’n’Wipe. It was full of useful suggestions. Helen had sprayed and wiped parts of her house she had never thought to spray and wipe before. And it gleamed. Even Noreen had remarked how immaculate the house was looking, although she’d said it as though it was weird. Or as though Helen was weird. Clearly she was not grieving the way Noreen and Jim expected, and they intended to do something about it. And for some reason they chose Noah’s birthday, of all times, to bring it up. It was a hard enough day as it was; Helen felt it was somehow wrong that birthdays and holidays kept on coming after someone had died. Christmas was almost another year away, mercifully, and she fully intended to ignore her own birthday this year. But she couldn’t ignore Noah’s fourth birthday, and she didn’t want to. She’d even bought him Wastelanders figures, a vexed issue that had been under discussion for a while. The Wastelanders were all Noah could talk about and all he wanted, but David had been ambivalent, despite the fact that Noah only knew of them at all because of a daily five-minute cartoon on the ABC. Surely if they were on the ABC they were okay? David was inclined to agree, except they were made in the US, and he had an inherent distrust of anything that came out of the US. However, Helen