Love Nest by Julia Llewellyn Read Free Book Online Page A

group. So her job wasn’t perfect – a lot of the stuff they published made Jordan’s memoirs look like Proust and Christine was always demanding freebies and she wasn’t paid the market rate because she was too pussy to ask for a rise. And Phil annoyed her sometimes with the way he always watched telly with his hand down the front of his trousers and – on the rare occasions when she was enjoying something like a film – he would switch to the Teletext cricket scores without any consultation or warning. He always walked forty paces ahead of her and the girls down the street, and if she ever sent him to the supermarket he always ignored her detailed lists, coming back with sackfuls of things like potatoes because they were on special which then sat in the cupboard for weeks going off.
    But no life was perfect, and no marriage. Give and take was the key. So she was surprised and somewhat miffed when one night in bed, after the twice-weekly sex which she had decided she’d compromise with, he said, ‘I’m bored. Work doesn’t offer any challenges any more. I’ve done it all, made all the money I want to make. It’s time to climb off the ladder and smell the roses.’
    Another thing that annoyed Karen. Phil’s fondness for clichés. But she just said, ‘What would you like to do?’
    ‘Well, I know you’ve always been against it but I really do want you to think about moving to the country. The proper country. I’d like to find a wreck. Do it up. Be a bit of a squire if you like.’
    Karen stiffened. ‘I couldn’t work in the country,’ she said.
    ‘Of course you could. They’ve got broadband there now. You could freelance.’
    Karen cringed. She knew what freelancing from the country involved: writing articles about other women who’d also migrated from the city and had set up their own business making hand-embroidered high-chair slip covers. Begging nineteen-year-old work experience girls to listen to her ideas. Earning about seventy-three pounds a year. No, thank you.
    ‘We’ve had this discussion. I have to be in London. I really enjoy my job, Phil.’
    ‘But I don’t any more. I hate the commuting…’
    ‘You were the one who wanted to live in St Albans.’
    Phil gave her one of his rare icy looks. ‘I hate the commuting,’ he repeated. ‘I’m bored with sitting at a desk number-crunching. I want open spaces. A new challenge.’
    ‘Darling, we’ll talk about it in the morning. I’m bushed. Goodnight.’
    She hoped by the morning he’d have forgotten all about it but to her annoyance, he brought it up again. And then again and again in the months that followed. She found him browsing property websites.
    ‘Darling, the girls are so happy at their schools. You’re not seriously suggesting we uproot them?’
    It was annoying, but Karen never really took it seriously. Generally Phil tried to please her – it had always been that way. She’d made a compromise in marrying him and another in moving to St Albans; he couldn’t ask any more from her.
    And then everything changed.
    Phil kept getting colds that he couldn’t shake off. Was constantly exhausted. Had bad headaches. Was losing weight. Eventually the doctor did some blood tests.
    The diagnosis came back – leukaemia.
    Karen would never forget the night after he’d received his diagnosis, her trying to keep it together. Phil, who’d always been so calm, so logical, losing it. Shouting about how his body had betrayed him. ‘Now it knows how to grow a cancer,’ he’d yelled, until drowsy Bea had come downstairs, wanting to know what the noise was, and they’d told her Mummy and Daddy had been chopping onions and it had made them both cry and a bit cross.
    In the days leading up to his first consultation he would lash out viciously and irrationally. Then he’d lock himself in his den, watching old golf DVDs and snarling at Karen even if she dared ask him something like what he wanted for supper. ‘Who cares?’ he’d yell, his