The Next Best Thing by Sarah Long Read Free Book Online

recently a shoebox in unlovely Balham. Rupert respected her independence and they
enjoyed mutual visiting rights. And now they were going to do things properly. She had a wedding to plan, and a home to decorate as well as her day job. Busy, busy, busy.
    The train was pulling into Paddington and Lydia checked her make-up in her compact mirror. Green eyes, an unusual colour cleverly emphasised by her use of eyeshadow, luxuriant auburn hair, her
best feature, which she often wore brushed forward over one shoulder. She traced a finger lightly over her slim white neck that was gratifyingly free of lines. Come to think of it, Anne Boleyn was
not an ideal role model. She got her man all right, but then look what happened to her.
    Lydia thought she’d work at Rupert’s flat this afternoon, since everything about Prince Charles’s farming methods was loaded onto her laptop. There was no need to be too
technical; her readers were more interested in her insight into HRH at home than his views on dreary old agriculture. Who cared what the calves ate, what really mattered was whether the valet who
served them tea looked as though he might be enjoying an unhealthy relationship with another member of the royal household. Though she wouldn’t couch it in those terms. She worked for a
society glossy, not the gutter press.
    ‘Cadogan Gardens please,’ she said to the taxi driver, who nodded his approval. What a relief it was, after two years of remonstrating with cabbies to take her to the black hole of
Balham, to know you wouldn’t have to put up a fight in order to get home. ‘Sorry love, I don’t go south of the river,’ they usually said, ‘can’t get a ride
back.’ She quite sympathised; she wouldn’t go there herself given the choice.
    It had been such a come-down, after her return from New York. Two years of Sex and the City glamour, the feted British expat, then home to roost in Balham. It gave her a frisson of panic
to think what might have been if Rupert hadn’t come good on the proposal. A lifetime of Balham, although it was surprising how many posh people seemed to emerge from the tube, mostly
temporary inhabitants on a staging post to somewhere more respectable. Young blonde mothers would drift westwards to Wandsworth to join horrid playgroups and children’s music clubs twixt the
commons in Nappy Valley. Nappy of the Valley of Living Death. Lydia would stick to Chelsea, thank you very much.
    She paid the taxi and let herself into Rupert’s building, picking up his post from the hall table. She would take care of all the admin once they were married, she was good at it and liked
to feel in control. She walked up to the second floor and let herself into the apartment, throwing down her coat and breathing in the atmosphere of what would soon become her home. The maid
hadn’t been in and Lydia made a mental note to change that: you needed someone every day or what was the point? A bowl of half-eaten cereal sat discarded on the kitchen table, and a cup of
cold tea stood on the drainer, next to the supper dishes piled up in the sink. Well, they’d just have to stay there; Lydia had no intention of starting as she didn’t mean to go on.
    She wandered down to the bathroom, where Rupert’s spartan collection of toiletries stood on the shelf above the basin. Razor, shaving foam, deodorant, toothbrush, it didn’t take
much to gel him ready for the outside world. Her own overnight bag was kept in the cabinet, containing a small sample of the range of beauty products that would soon be crowding Rupert out. She
frowned as she looked round the room. Those black and white tiles would have to go, they were so desperately Eighties. She was planning to completely redo this bathroom anyway, to turn it into a
wet room. This meant you lost the boundaries between shower tray and floor (so suburban, the idea of a shower tray!) and just stood in a mist of beautiful mosaic tiles while the water came
at you from all