Wild Oats by Veronica Henry Read Free Book Online Page A

Someone who was enormously helpful, in fact. Someone who’d uncomplainingly sewed all the name tapes on the boys’ new uniform – a thankless task if ever there was one – and ploughed through mountains of ironing when you weren’t looking, leaving baskets of crisp clothing in the airing cupboard. Who would happily babysit at the drop of a hat. Who would play snap and twenty-one and pontoon with the boys on wet Sunday afternoons. Saint fucking Rosemary. Zoe didn’t feel as if the house was her own while Rosemary was hovering in it. Which, of course, it wasn’t.
    She thought longingly of their old house in Shepherd’s Bush. It was hardly palatial, and once the swing and slide had been put up in the garden there was only just room for a picnic table for barbecues. But she’d had neighbours – like-minded couples who were in the same situation. There was always someoneto leave the kids with, someone to have a coffee with, a moan and a gossip with, a much-needed glass of wine at six o’clock. It was secure, cosy, whereas Zoe felt as if she’d been set adrift on a vast ocean at Lydbrook House. As soon as she’d dropped the children off at school there were six long hours to fill with no one for company.
    The biggest problem was, of course, they had no bloody money. Christopher had sat her down very seriously. He had their bank and credit-card statements and some buff-covered files. He’d explained their situation to her carefully, patiently and apologetically.
    They’d sold well at Elmdon Road. But once they’d paid off the mortgage – which had swollen considerably by the time they’d extended it to put in a Shaker kitchen and a conservatory and converted the attic rooms to include a new bathroom – and taken into account that Christopher was going to lose his company car (they’d need at least thirty grand for a decent new estate), there was only a couple of hundred grand left. Zoe couldn’t see the problem, until Christopher pointed out that he was going to have to take a drop in salary, that there were the fees at his father’s home and the boys’ school fees to take into consideration.
    Zoe swallowed.
    ‘So – there won’t be much left over to do up the house?’
    ‘Um… no. I’ve worked out that you can have two hundred pounds a week housekeeping. And that’s got to include petrol.’
    ‘So why are we having to pay your father’s fees?’
    Christopher put it straight on the line. His parents were broke. Drace’s was in danger of going under. He was going to have to spend at least fifty thousand of the profit from Elmdon Road in order to salvage it. A revamp, a relaunch, Internet presence – and he was going to have to subsidize a drastic cut in their agency fees in order to attract some new custom.
    ‘I know it’s going to be hard. But if you think about it, life’s much cheaper here. The boys entertain themselves, there’s no parking to pay, no tube fares. The garden’s full of fresh vegetables…’
    He trailed off a trifle lamely at this, not quite able to meet Zoe’s eye. Fresh vegetables? she wanted to scream. Fresh vegetables that I’ve got to pick and bloody wash the mud off? Zoe was the type who bought her green beans already topped and tailed, her carrots cut into batons, her jacket potatoes scrubbed and gleaming…
    Today was Wednesday. She thought she hated Wednesdays the most. On Mondays she always had hope. Each Monday morning, with the zeal of one embarking on a diet, she convinced herself that this week was going to be different, this week she would find a kindred spirit at the school gates, a decent gym, a decent dress shop, and an exciting whizzy new social life full of people who didn’t come to school covered in dog hairs, wearing jodhpurs that made their arses look five times the size they already were.
    By Wednesday that dream had always beenshattered, and she had reached screaming pitch. By Wednesday she had picked up the phone to her friends back in London and