Marriage and Other Games by Veronica Henry Read Free Book Online Page B

Labrador.’
     
    ‘I hate the countryside!’
     
    ‘You wouldn’t.’ Ed shook his head. ‘You’d love it once we were there.’
     
    Charlotte sat up wearily.
     
    ‘So,’ she said, ‘this was all about your dream. Your fantasy. You’ve ruined our lives because of what you wanted.’
     
    ‘I wanted it for both of us.’
     
    He reached out to stroke her hair. She ducked away.
     
    ‘Don’t touch me,’ she snarled.
     
    ‘Charlotte—’ His voice cracked. Etched on his face was utter misery and despair. But Charlotte didn’t feel as much as a flicker of sympathy.
     
    ‘We’re going to lose our house because of this. You’ll go to prison. You’ll be out of a job. How can you expect me to understand? We’ve lost everything, because all you can think about is yourself!’
     
    ‘I was thinking about us.’
     
    ‘No. You were thinking about Ed Briggs, and the fact that you want hundreds of your offspring running about the place. What about what I want?’
     
    ‘I know deep down that’s what you want too.’
     
    ‘I don’t! I’ve tried to tell you often enough, but you can’t take it in, can you? I’ve had enough of it all. I can’t go through it any more. I’ve come to terms with the fact that I won’t ever have children. It’s just a pity you can’t deal with the fact.’
     
    She fell back on the bed and looked up at the ceiling.
     
    ‘Fine,’ Ed replied flatly. ‘If you don’t understand that I wasn’t prepared to accept defeat, that I wanted to fight—’
     
    ‘So you stole over a hundred grand? From a charity? From your best friend’s dead son, effectively?’
     
    ‘It wasn’t supposed to go wrong.’
     
    ‘Wrong?’ Charlotte knew she was shouting now, but she was so filled with fury that she couldn’t help herself. ‘Wrong is the whole point. Even if it had gone right it would have been wrong. I don’t want a baby on those terms!’
     
    ‘You’d never have known.’
     
    ‘So what would you have told me?’
     
    ‘I don’t know. That I’d won the lottery?’
     
    He was shouting back now, equally frustrated that she couldn’t - wouldn’t - ever understand his motives. It was the first proper row they’d ever had. They had minor squabbles, of course, and the occasional difference of opinion, but it never became heated.
     
    ‘I’m sorry, Ed.’ Charlotte scrambled off the bed in an effort to put some distance between them. ‘There’s nothing you can say that will make me change my mind. What you did was evil. Selfish. Foolhardy. Irresponsible . . .’
     
    She was running out of adjectives.
     
    ‘Well, I’m sorry.’ Ed spoke softly. ‘But I did it because I love you.’
     
    Charlotte regarded him coldly.
     
    ‘Don’t you ever, ever dare use me as an excuse.’
     
    She turned on her heel and walked out of the room.
     
     
    She walked around the streets for hours, knowing there was no one she could go to. Besides, she didn’t want to be influenced. She wanted to make up her mind about what she was going to do without the world and his wife giving her their opinions, although it was unlikely that anyone would consider Ed’s crime anything other than heinous.
     
    She knew Ed had dreams, delusions of grandeur, almost, about a big country pile to bring up their putative children in. A lot of people he worked with came from that sort of background: they did their stint in a flat in the City, but when they started families they shot off to the country, no doubt with substantial financial help from their parents. But neither Ed nor Charlotte came from wealthy families; their respective parents were comfortable, but not sufficiently well endowed to be able to hand out lump sums to put down on a dear little rectory. And while between them they earned a good six-figure sum, it really wasn’t enough to sustain a mortgage on the type of home Ed had in mind.
     
    Yet he was always ploughing through copies of Country Life, sighing with longing, and