Peacock Emporium by Jojo Moyes Read Free Book Online

bypassing the supposedly more valuable stones in favour of two that he declared exactly matched Serena Newton’s eyes. Surrounded by diamonds, the sapphires still held an exotic, expensive depth, while age and now a lingering worry had caused their inspiration to fade.
    Behind her there was a round of applause as the young groom took his bride on to the dance floor. Vivi, glancing away from her mother’s enquiring gaze, didn’t flinch. She had got rather good at hiding her feelings, these last months.
    Her mother reached out a hand. ‘You’ve hardly been home in ages. I can’t believe you’re rushing off like this.’
    ‘Hardly rushing off. I told you, Mummy. I’ve got to babysit tonight.’ She smiled, a broad, reassuring smile.
    Mrs Newton leant forward, placed a hand on Vivi’s knee and dropped her voice: ‘I know this has been terribly hard for you, darling.’
    ‘What?’ Vivi couldn’t hide her sudden colour.
    ‘I was young once, you know.’
    ‘I’m sure you were, Mummy. But I really have to go. I’ll say goodbye to Daddy on my way out.’ With a promise to telephone, and a twinge of guilt at her mother’s hurt expression, Vivi turned and made her way across the room, managing to keep her face towards the doors. She understood her mother’s concern: she looked older, she knew she did, loss etching new shadowy echoes of knowledge on her face, grief sharpening its once puddingy outline into planes. It was ironic, really, she mused, that she should start acquiring those characteristics she had so desired – slimness, a kind of jaded sophistication – through losing the very thing she had wanted them for.
    And, despite being naturally home-loving, Vivi had done her best to return to her family as little as possible over the last few months. She had kept her telephone conversations brief, avoiding all references to anyone outside the family, had preferred to contact her parents through brief, cheerful despatches on jokey postcards, had insisted time after time that she couldn’t possibly come back for Daddy’s birthday, the village fête, the Fairley-Hulmes’ annual tennis party, pleading work commitments, tiredness, or an illusory round of social invitations. Instead, having found work in the offices of a fabric company a little way from Regents Park, she had thrown herself into her new career with a missionary zeal that left her employers astonished daily at her capacity for hard work, her babysitting families grateful for her perpetual availability, and Vivi frequently too exhausted, when she returned to her shared flat, to think. Which suited her just fine.
    After the hunt ball, Vivi had realised that whenever she mentioned Douglas’s name with anything but sisterly interest her parents had gently steered her away from him, perhaps knowing even then that he had longings she could not fulfil. She hadn’t heard them; perhaps, she concluded afterwards, she hadn’t heard him. He had never given her any indication, after all, that his affection for her held anything more than the most innocent brotherly interest.
    Now, having seen him look another way entirely, she had resigned herself to her fate. Not that she was going to have to find someone else, as her mother had repeatedly suggested. No, Vivi Newton now knew herself to be one of an unlucky minority: a girl who had lost the only man she would ever love, and who, having considered the alternatives carefully, had decided she would rather not settle for anyone else.
    It was pointless telling her parents, who would fuss, protest and assure her that she was far too young to make such a decision, but she knew she would never marry. It was not that she was so hurt she could never love again (although hurt she had been – she still found it difficult to sleep without her ‘little helpers’, the prescription benzodiazepine) or, indeed, that she had some idea of herself as a doomed romantic heroine. Vivi had just concluded, in the fairly