Sophie Kinsella's Shopaholic 5-Book Bundle by Sophie Kinsella Read Free Book Online

Times catalogue. “Have you made the coffee? Chop chop, darling!”
    “I was going to,” I say, and make a half move from my chair. But, as always, Mum’s there before me. She reaches for a ceramic storage jar I’ve never seen before and spoons coffee into a new gold cafétière.
    Mum’s terrible. She’s always buying new stuff for the kitchen—and she just gives the old stuff to charity shops. New kettles, new toasters … We’ve already had three new rubbish bins this year—dark green, then chrome, and now yellow translucent plastic. I mean, what a waste of money.
    “That’s a nice skirt!” she says, looking at me as though for the first time. “Where’s that from?”
    “DKNY,” I mumble back.
    “Very pretty,” she says. “Was it expensive?”
    “Not really,” I say. “About fifty quid.”
    This is not strictly true. It was nearer 150. But there’s no point telling Mum how much things really cost, because she’d have a coronary. Or, in fact, she’d tell my dad first—and then they’d both have coronaries, and I’d be an orphan.
    So what I do is work in two systems simultaneously. Real prices and Mum prices. It’s a bit like when everything in the shop is 20 percent off, and you walk around mentally reducing everything. After a while, you get quite practiced.
    The only difference is, I operate a sliding-scale system, a bit like income tax. It starts off at 20 percent (if it really cost £20, I say it cost £16) and rises up to … well, to 90 percent if necessary. I once bought a pair of boots that cost £200, and I told Mum they were £20 in the sale. And she believed me.
    “So, are you looking for a flat?” she says, glancing over my shoulder at the property pages.
    “No,” I say sulkily, and flick over a page of my brochure. My parents are always on at me to buy a flat. Do they know how much flats cost?
    “Apparently, Thomas has bought a very nice little starterhome in Reigate,” she says, nodding toward our next-door neighbors. “He commutes.” She says this with an air of satisfaction, as though she’s telling me he’s won the Nobel Peace Prize.
    “Well, I can’t afford a flat,” I say. “Or a starter home.”
    Not yet, anyway, I think. Not until eight o’clock tonight. Hee hee.
    “Money troubles?” says Dad, coming into the kitchen. “You know, there are two solutions to money troubles.”
    His eyes are twinkling, and I just know he’s about to give me some clever little aphorism. Dad has a saying for every subject under the sun—as well as a wide selection of limericks and truly terrible jokes. Sometimes I like listening to them. Sometimes I don’t.
    “C.B.,” says Dad, his eyes twinkling. “Or M.M.M.”
    He pauses for effect and I turn the page of my brochure, pretending I can’t hear him.
    “Cut Back,” says my dad, “or Make More Money. One or the other. Which is it to be, Becky?”
    “Oh, both, I expect,” I say airily, and turn another page of my brochure. To be honest, I almost feel sorry for Dad. It’ll be quite a shock for him when his only daughter becomes a multimillionaire overnight.
    After lunch, Mum and I go along to a craft fair in the local primary school. I’m really just going to keep Mum company, and I’m certainly not planning to buy anything—but when we get there, I find a stall full of amazing handmade cards, only £1.50 each! So I buy ten. After all, you always need cards, don’t you? There’s also a gorgeous blue ceramic plant holder with little elephants going round it—and I’ve been saying for ages we should have more plants in the flat. So I buy that, too. Only fifteen quid. Craft fairs are such a bargain, aren’t they? You go along thinking they’ll be complete rubbish—but you can always find
something
you want.
    Mum’s really happy, too, as she’s found a pair of candlesticksfor her collection. She’s got collections of candlesticks, toast racks, pottery jugs, glass animals, embroidered samplers, and thimbles.