Love on the Rocks by Veronica Henry Read Free Book Online Page A

shot to Lisa, disappearing off in his ill-fitting suit with the too-short trousers.
    Lisa knew if it had been left to her father, he wouldn’t bother with life insurance. He didn’t even bother with car insurance. It was Julie who made sure everything was paid up. Before she went into the hospice, she’d gone through the paperwork with Lisa.
    ‘I don’t want to bother your dad. He can’t cope with it. But these are the important ones – and don’t forget the MOT. Sid from the garage will come and pick the car up and drop it back if you just tell him. Preferably before it runs out. I’ve marked it all up in the diary.’
    Julie’s eyes had been bright that day, and Lisa felt a surge of hope that perhaps she was on the turn, that perhaps Mother Nature had had a change of heart. But she hadn’t.
    Andrea stood next to Bob at the funeral. Lisa wore a red dress that she and her mum had chosen on their last shopping trip together. And when she saw her aunt’s fingers close around her father’s, Lisa felt sick. Phil had been at the funeral, because he had always got on with Julie, but he lingered at the back and made his escape before he came face to face with his wife. Not before he’d given Lisa a hug, though.
    ‘I’m so sorry,’ he’d managed to croak gruffly, and she wasn’t sure if he meant about her mum, or about her dad and Andrea.
    Lisa moved in with a friend from school, so she could finish her exams, though she felt rather halfhearted about them. She missed her mum so much she felt ill, and seeing Andrea take her place made it worse. Her father couldn’t talk to her about it. He couldn’t defend his decision, but it was obviously his way of coping. She realized how weak he was and she despised him for it. How could he possibly view Andrea as a replacement for Julie?
    The chip shop soon ran itself down. Andrea cut corners, changed suppliers, didn’t have the warmth or the charm or the rapport with the customers. And although Bob toiled away in the background, trying to keep it all together, his heart wasn’t in it. The place was dirty – the tiles coated in grease, the floor muddy, the air thick with burned oil. Where Julie had made sure there were freshly laundered and ironed overalls for each shift, they were now worn for days on end.
    And all the while, that long hot summer, Andrea drove around in Julie’s car, with the roof down and the stereo blaring, her peroxide curls ruffling in the wind, tapping her painted nails on the steering wheel.
    Lisa didn’t have the energy to remonstrate with her father. To try and open his eyes to what was happening. She knew she had to get away from Gloucester, make a new life for herself somewhere else, before she was eaten up with resentment. She was getting harder by the day. And she wanted to be like her mum. Happy, optimistic, warm, generous to the last. Not like grasping, cold, hard-hearted Andrea. The final blow came when the news filtered through to her that The Happy Plaice had been sold. Bob and Andrea had bought a bar in Spain. Courtesy of the insurance pay-out. Courtesy of her mum’s cancer, actually, when you looked at it closely. Now Lisa knew she could never forgive her father. For not allowing her mother to fulfil her dream. And giving it instead to Andrea.
    From that day on, Lisa was determined never to rely on anyone else for her happiness. Or to give too much of herself away. That way she could never be compromised. No one could ever do to her what her father had done to her mother. Bob had loved Julie with all his heart, yet he had still found it within himself to betray her. If that was true love, thought Lisa, then who needed it?
    On the surface, she was everything her mother had been. Warm, affectionate, vivacious. You had to dig deep to get to the hard core, but it was there, steely and immovable, like the stone of an avocado buried at the centre of its soft, inviting flesh. And as long as you just wanted the outside, that was fine.
    That