The Model Wife by Julia Llewellyn Read Free Book Online Page B

had wanted some kind of product for getting limescale off the bath, but for the life of her Poppy couldn’t remember its name.
    And then there’d been all the ingredients for the dinner she was going to cook for Luke on Friday, which was both his day off and their second anniversary. Poppy had decided to treat him to salmon – Luke loved fish – in a creamy herb sauce, but what were the herbs again?
    Damn. Poppy had been quite excited about her culinary foray. When she and Luke had got together he’d been shocked at her lack of cooking skills, demanding how anyone could seriously exist on a diet of Pot Noodles and long-life apple juice. ‘And what’s this?’ he’d asked, brandishing her pot of Crème de la Mer she’d pinched from a photo shoot.
    ‘Don’t eat that! It costs about two hundred pounds a jar!’
    5°
    ‘Christ,’ he’d sighed, ‘two-hundred-pound face cream and there’s not even any decent bread and butter in the house.’ He paused, then added, ‘Any more,’ making it clear Hannah had always paid attention to such details.
    When Poppy had dreamt about marriage and children it had been a misty montage involving a lot of scampering and cuddling and certainly no wiping of filthy bottoms and laundering of stained bibs. If the vision was more concrete, she saw herself as Maria in the Sound of Music with dozens of children snuggled up in bed round her as a thunderstorm raged outside.
    It hadn’t occurred to her that having them still snuggled in bed with her at three a.m. when her grumpy husband wanted sex might not be quite such fun. Not that her imaginary husband was ever grumpy – oh no, he was an adoring man gazing at her across a crystal-laden, candle-lit dinner table saying things like ‘You have made my life complete’. It hadn’t crossed her mind that she would have to put that crystal and candles on the table, that she would have to make the dinner, satisfying Luke’s demands for home-cooked food. That she would have to make sure there were always three different types of muesli in the house, plus ‘decent’ bread, posh French butter, chunky marmalade, Bonne Maman jam, Marmite. Good coffee (i.e. Lavazza not Nescafé). Fresh orange juice. And that was just breakfast.
    ‘Usually Luke leaves for the office about ten,’ she whispered under her breath. ‘And in the evenings, of course, he’s presenting the news and usually has dinner either in the work canteen before the show, or goes out afterwards with colleagues. So usually I just microwave a baked potato for myself and then I have a tub of Skinny Cow ice cream while I watch Luke on TV.’
    Poppy couldn’t remember when she’d started giving interviews. Some time after Clara was born, she’d begun to enjoy little chats in her head explaining to a sympathetic lady from a magazine about how she was rooting for Nisha, the former children’s TV presenter, to win this year’s Strictly Come Dancing . How she’d just been to visit Hogarth’s House in Chiswick and couldn’t believe such an oasis of tranquillity existed just off one of the busiest roads in London. How Clara’s favourite thing at the moment was to feed the ducks in the canal while shouting ‘Quack, quack.’ All the little things she longed to share with Luke but which he was rarely around to listen to; and even if he was they seemed to bore him.
    ‘Mummeeee!’ Clara interrupted her mother’s train of thought.
    ‘Yes, darling?’
    ‘Mummeee, Clara get out.’
    ‘In a minute, darling. Just let Mummy finish her shopping.’ She looked up and caught the eye of another buggy-pusher. Tall, dark, probably quite pretty once, but old, at least forty, and haggard. Poppy recognized her from the baby clinic. They’d both been regulars in the hellish newborn days when Poppy had been so tired she’d once scattered formula powder over Luke’s pasta thinking it was Parmesan and cleaned Clara’s filthy bottom with a Flash floor wipe. Poppy smiled at her.
    ‘Hi!’
    The