Over You by Lucy Diamond Read Free Book Online Page A

houses.
    ‘This way,’ Lisa said, leading them along. ‘Not far, promise.’
    ‘Thank God for that,’ Nell said. ‘My arms are about to drop off with all this stuff.’
    ‘See that silver Merc up there?’ Lisa asked, pointing ahead. ‘Well . . .’
    ‘Is it yours ?’ Josie gulped. She knew Lisa was flying high at work, but she hadn’t known she was flying that high.
    Lisa shook her head. ‘In my dreams,’ she said. ‘It’s Roger’s. He’s my neighbour. No, I was about to say, my house is just there, near the Merc.’ She laughed. ‘My car’s that really badly parked Honda.’
    Right, thought Josie as they walked past it a few moments later. That brand spanking new baby-blue Honda must be the one then. O-k-a-a-ay. Lisa clearly was raking it in these days. She really had turned into alpha-minx of the pack while Josie hadn’t been looking.
    Nell let out a long whistle as Lisa stopped in front of a house with a black-painted door. ‘Is this all yours?’ she asked. ‘The whole house?’
    Lisa nodded. ‘Yep,’ she said proudly. ‘The whole shebang. Come in and have a look.’
    ‘Wow,’ Josie blurted out as she followed Nell and Lisa up the front steps and into the hall. ‘Wow, Lisa. This is so . . .’ She swallowed, not able to think of a suitable superlative. The hall was long and wide, laid with the original Victorian floor tiles – small black and white squares in a checked pattern. The walls were painted a warm cream, and there was a huge gilt-edged mirror on one side and an antique console table with elegant curving legs on the other. ‘So gorgeous,’ she said, with a sigh of envy.
    ‘Just dump your stuff and I’ll put the kettle on,’ Lisa said. ‘There’s a cloakroom under the stairs for your coats,’ she added, walking along the hall in front of them.
    ‘Bloody hell, Lise,’ Nell said. ‘I feel like I’m messing up your house just standing in it!’
    ‘Don’t be daft,’ Lisa’s voice floated back to them. ‘Come down to the kitchen and tell me what you want to drink.’
    Josie unlatched the cloakroom door and hung her coat on a peg. There was a selection of Lisa’s coats and shoes in there, with several hooks still empty. Josie found herself thinking of her own coat rack, with the boys’ green winter Parkas on it, plus their navy-blue raincoats and a variety of hooded tops for warm days, all fighting for space with her and Pete’s things. That’s the pay-off, she was ashamed to find herself thinking. Lisa’s got a nice house, but she doesn’t share it with family. Not like me.
    She shoved the thought out of her head as quickly as it had popped up. That was a horrible thing to think. ‘I am so jealous of this house,’ she confessed to Nell in a whisper.
    ‘Tell me about it,’ Nell said. She hung her coat on a peg, kicked off her boots and shut the door. ‘How do you think it happened?’ she asked as she and Josie walked to the kitchen. ‘I mean, we all started off the same, didn’t we? Fresh out of college, with our rubbish boyfriends, bad haircuts and crappy temping jobs. And now look at us.’
    ‘Exactly,’ Josie said. ‘Wow, Lise. If I had this kitchen, I would just live in it, I think.’
    The kitchen was long and wide, and stretched down to French windows at the far end, through which Josie could see a decent-sized garden. The walls were whitewashed and had a rough, country look to them, as if they were really the walls of a farmhouse in Provence. The large windows were hung with cheerful striped roller blinds, with slate tiles on the sills. The units looked like solid oak, and were topped with black granite work surfaces. Everything shone like a Flash advert – the espresso machine, the chrome juicer, the silver Alessi kettle . . .
    ‘No, I mean, you as well, Jose,’ Nell was saying. ‘You’re a success story too, with your man and two kids and nice home. And Lisa’s shot off the scale in career terms, with—’
    ‘Hardly,’ Lisa said, filling