Wild Oats by Veronica Henry Read Free Book Online

about it. Christopher was being so brave about his father, whom he adored, and she didn’t have the heart to put him through any more stress. And when her friends saw photographs of Lydbrook House, set on a tributary of the River Teme between the villages of Upper and Lower Faviell, they were all green with envy. After all, it looked pretty impressive: huge, built of grey stone, with gables and pointy windows and aterraced balcony that looked over the lawns right down to the babbling rivulet, garages and outhouses and garden rooms and summer houses and even the remnants of what had been a grass tennis court. Zoe managed to persuade herself that a large country house was a natural progression at her time of life, and she’d never have to scour the roads for a parking space outside her own home again.
    The reality was different. Lydbrook House would have been described by Drace’s as ‘a country home in need of some updating’ – understatement of the century. Rosemary and Hamilton were not into interior decoration, being resolutely outdoor people. Acres of worn carpet, reams of faded curtains, threadbare upholstery and large, ugly furniture abounded. The kitchen was hell, fitted with fifties Formica units, with sliding frosted doors that jammed when you tried to open them and nasty metal handles. There was an Aga, but it was in a hideous shade of light blue that Zoe could not begin to persuade herself was fashionable. And every available work surface was covered in orange and brown flowered sticky-back plastic. The wallpaper was almost retro, covered in line drawings of root vegetables – leeks and beetroot and parsnips; she’d seen something similar in House and Garden that was over fifty pounds a metre. But this was yellowing and peeling off in great chunks.
    Her lovely furniture from Elmdon Road was swallowed up by the house and didn’t go remotely. Hersage-green Conran sofa hovered apologetically by the French windows in the drawing room, looking decidedly out of place next to the faded chintz and worn tapestry of the Draces’ battalions of mismatched chairs and sofas. Her beautiful light beech table and matching chairs looked utterly ridiculous in the enormous, gloomy dining room, so she’d stored them away in one of the outhouses until the day when the heavy wallpaper and curtains and carpet could be stripped away and replaced with something light and airy.
    The boys, of course, loved Lydbrook. As well as their father’s old bedroom in the attic, they had a huge room over the top of the garages with a ping-pong table and enough space for Christopher’s old Hornby train set, for the days when it was raining and they weren’t able to venture out into the paradise of their garden. They were in absolute heaven. Zoe, by contrast, was in absolute agony every time they went out to play. She would hover anxiously by the French windows, tucked out of sight so they couldn’t see her, convinced that they would be tempted down to the river and into the water and immediately be sucked under by an angry current and swept away for ever. Christopher told her she was being over-anxious. The boys were old enough to understand the dangers, and sensible enough not to venture riverwards without adult supervision. After all, Christopher and his two sisters had grown up at Lydbrook with no fluvial mishaps.
    And then there was Christopher’s mother, Rosemary – or Ro, as she was known, though Zoe could never quite bring herself to use this term of endearment as that would somehow be accepting Rosemary’s presence. For Rosemary was part of the Lydbrook package. Not that she was intrusive: she hovered apologetically; spoke in a tiny voice; scuttled off to her own quarters thereby racking Zoe with alternate guilt and irritation. She would almost have preferred Rosemary to be overbearing and bossy – at least then she could have fought back, snapped at her. But how could you complain about someone who was no trouble at all?