The Beach Hut Next Door by Veronica Henry Read Free Book Online Page A

than I could ever have imagined.’
    She could picture the van resting at the top of the beach, her paintwork gleaming, a long queue of people snaking from the window while she scooped out ball after ball of ice cream to cool them down. It would be hard work, she knew that – she would have to find as many opportunities as she could to make a decent profit – but Jenna wasn’t afraid of hard work.
    She threw her arms around Chris’s neck and squeezed him. ‘You are amazing,’ she told him.
    ‘Well. Enjoy her. And I want the first ice cream, when the day comes.’ He turned to go.
    ‘Hold on – let me give you a lift back at least.’ Jenna lived on the outskirts of town and it was a good walk back in.
    ‘It’s OK. I’m going to run. Part of the new fitness regime. Gonna get myself back into shape.’ He patted his already flat stomach with a grin and started to jog along the road.
    Jenna watched him go. She prayed that he would find the strength to stay on track. He’d been a wreck for a long time. But she would keep an eye on him, from afar.
    She turned back to the van. She climbed inside, pressed the button and listened to the jangle that would herald her arrival. She threw back her head and laughed with joy.
    She spent the day in a frenzy of excitement, unable to wait for Craig to come home so she could show him. She unpacked all the dresses that she had stowed away when she moved back to her mother’s, disillusioned: the ones that had been her trademark when she sold ice cream from the booth on the front – fifties halter-necks with circular skirts in bright colours, splattered with flowers and cherries and hearts. She’d wear a different one every day again, she decided.
    And when Craig arrived back from his course that evening, she couldn’t stop laughing when she saw his face.
    ‘What on earth is that?’ he asked, looking at the van parked on the road outside. No one would dare touch it now they knew he was home.
    ‘This,’ said Jenna proudly, ‘is going to make me my fortune this summer.’
    Craig looked at her for a moment, puzzled. She could see he wanted to ask where she had got the money to buy it, but didn’t quite like to.
    ‘I went to the bank,’ she said, ‘and forced them to give me a loan. I wouldn’t leave until they coughed up.’
    She took him by the hand.
    ‘Come inside,’ she commanded him. And inside the van, she wound her arms around his neck and kissed him, for if it wasn’t for Craig, goodness knows where she would be, but certainly not where she was now. And the future was even brighter. She could feel it in her heart.
    The Ice Cream Girl was back. All she had to wait for was the summer.

ELODIE
    There was nothing more thrilling than being handed the key to a new house. Nothing to beat the sensation of sliding the key into the lock and pushing open the front door, wondering what you would find, breathing in the stillness, knowing that now you could do what you liked; that you could make it yours.
    As she held the cold metal in her hand, Elodie thought of the times she had gone through this ritual over the years. Five or six, she calculated, each time with an incremental rise in property value. She was, after all, her father’s daughter more than her mother’s, and she had inherited his business acumen rather than her mother’s spendthrift tendencies. Not that she didn’t like spending money. On the contrary, she had already spent several thousand in her mind before she’d even got to the front door, putting up a new set of gates and re-landscaping the drive and pulling down the awful flat-roofed garage someone had stuck up.
    The difference between the money Elodie spent and the money her mother had been used to spending was that Elodie worked on the basis that you had to speculate to accumulate. Anything she spent was an investment, or an enhancement to her investment. And it was her own money that she was spending. Her mother, as far as she knew, hadn’t done a