Love on the Rocks by Veronica Henry Read Free Book Online

everybody – she was very tactile. But her hands seemed to linger that little bit longer on Bob. Lisa was suspicious. Especially as she knew that her Aunt Andrea’s marriage to her husband Phil was rocky. Phil had warned her himself.
    ‘Watch her,’ he said. ‘Andrea is only interested in one thing and that’s money. Which is why she’s gone off me. Being as my business has gone down the drain.’
    He smiled ruefully at his own attempt at humour. Phil was a plumber – a wizard with a spanner but hopeless at running a business. Several bad debts had buggered up his cash flow and he’d ended up bankrupt. Andrea had been less than supportive, apparently. Her eagerness to help her sister out could only be seen as questionable, in Phil’s eyes.
    ‘She’s gone on and on about that bloody cabriolet,’ Phil went on. ‘As if I can magic one out of a hat.’
    Bob had bought a second-hand soft-top Golf as a surprise for Julie’s fortieth. It was their pride and joy, and Julie loved going out in it.
    ‘I’m not being flash,’ Bob had insisted. ‘I’ve worked hard for it. But it’s our little treat. What’s the point, otherwise?’
    Andrea obviously saw it as an indication that there was more where that came from.
    When Julie became too ill to do anything other than lie in bed, Aunt Andrea moved in. She grafted, Lisa had to give her that, because as well as working in the chippie and running the house, she nursed Julie – before the doctor gently suggested that she be moved into the hospice. That was when they knew.
    It was the most dreadful few weeks. How time drags when you are waiting for someone to die, thought Lisa. Half of you praying for a miracle, the other half praying for release, as you watch the person you love decompose, wilting faster than a discarded wedding bouquet. Lisa had to get the bus to the hospice, as Bob couldn’t bear to visit. He used the chippie as an excuse, but Lisa knew he was being an ostrich, that for every day he didn’t go he could kid himself that the next time he visited there would be an improvement, that Julie would be sitting up and laughing, scoffing her way through a box of Milk Tray brought by some other well-meaning visitor. Instead of lying, limp, exhausted, defeated, unable to even lift the remote to change channels on the tiny portable telly they’d brought into her room so she could keep up with the latest shenanigans in Albert Square.
    One Tuesday, unable to face double maths because there really didn’t seem any point – after all, she could add up five portions of fish and chips in her head quickly enough – Lisa went home and found her dad and Andrea in bed together. In the middle of the afternoon, with the curtains shut and George Benson on the stereo. She stood with her arms crossed while Andrea shot off to the bathroom and locked herself in and her dad pulled on his trousers.
    ‘You could have waited until Mum actually died.’
    ‘Lisa, love. A man has . . . needs.’
    ‘You could have gone elsewhere for that. There’s plenty enough places in Gloucester.’
    Bob looked shocked.
    ‘I’d never do that!’
    ‘But you’d screw Mum’s own sister.’
    ‘I don’t actually think she’d mind if she knew.’
    ‘Don’t you?’ Lisa’s eyes were hard. ‘Shall we ask her, then?’
    Bob went pale, not realizing that Lisa had no intention of taking what she’d seen any further.
    ‘Please. Don’t.’
    He put out a hand to touch her, but Lisa drew back.
    ‘It’s your money she’s after, Dad. Not your body.’
    ‘Money.’ Bob snorted disdainfully.
    ‘There’s the life insurance. Or didn’t you know about it? I bet Andrea does.’
    When the man from the insurance company came round once a month, Lisa watched her mother count out the premiums in greasy cash. She’d looked at the officious little weasel warily as he slid it into his document wallet.
    ‘You’ll be grateful enough if anything happens to either of them,’ he’d said once as a parting