Read Online I Should Be So Lucky by Judy Astley - Free Book Online Page B

leaves, almost as if she were rolling on the woodland earth. Then instead of the expected impact she would be walking away from the crumpled, smoking car to join a waiting crowd of women, recognizing the faces of every one she’d ever known, from tiny girls at her first school, university mates, her barely remembered grandmother, her sister and mother, her daughter, her friends. And somewhere among this collection would be Rhys, completely unhurt, gloating and triumphant and smiling all around at these women, saying, ‘See? It was nothing.’ And they were all delighted and celebratory apart from furious, terrified Viola – the spoilsport, the bad fairy.
    In the first confused waking moments, Viola would still feel she was right there on the edge of the group, searching for the one face she didn’t know, the one who wasn’t there, who he’d been with when he died. And she was a hundred per cent sure he
had
been with someone – in real life, not in the dream. Whoever he was leaving her for, this suddenly discovered absolute unchallengeable love of his life, had been in that car. The police had thought so too. The crash had been on a remote road and the call to the emergency services had been from a distraught woman who wouldn’t give her name. If she’d been injured, she hadn’t hung about waiting for the ambulance. But it was no longer as if Viola really wanted to know about her – it wouldn’t change anything to be confronted with some random woman who had run away from her dead (or far, far worse, dying) lover. What kind of woman did that? A very young one? A terrified one? Someone astoundingly concussed? But it was no use speculating: whoever it was had faded back into whatever life she’d had pre-Rhys, just as Viola was trying to now. If only the dream would – please – leave her alone. She’d fight it off and try her absolute best to will it never to visit her again once she’d moved back home, she resolved as she got out of bed before it was light and went to make a cup of tea.
    He’d probably have forgotten all about her by now, Viola thought later as she clicked on Gregory Fabian’s number in her phone. She felt ridiculously nervous about calling him, ashamed that she’d left it so long. Good manners should have sent her visiting the Fabian Nursery well before this, to thank him properly for taking care of her and driving her home. She’d have gone on Sunday if it hadn’t been for the three-line whip of Kate’s lunch, though of course that would surely be any garden centre’s busiest day. Then, just before his phone could ring, she quickly switched hers off again, deciding that as she was still, post-shower, wrapped only in a not-quite-big-enough towel, she needed to be dressed in order to talk to him. Mad, she told herself as she rubbed her damp hair dry, he CANNOT see you. You DO NOT need to be fully clothed and with hair done and make-up on, just to fix up some simple visiting arrangement. But then, just as she’d dropped the towel and was about to put on her knickers, the phone rang.
    ‘Hello, you. I saw your number come up on the phone – must have been an iffy signal so I thought I’d call you back. I was beginning to think you’d deleted me!’
    Aagh! Gregory Fabian. She sat on the bed, naked, rather pointlessly crossing her legs and clutching the towel to her body.
    ‘No – not at all! Sorry, it’s just been a bit busy and stuff. Exams and all that, you know how it is.’ Oh, ridiculous: how could he possibly know? He had no idea what she did for a living. All he knew about her was that she couldn’t drive straight and that she had a barmy mother with daughter-control issues.
    ‘You’re a student?’ he asked.
    ‘No! I teach – at a cram— I mean a tutorial college.’
    ‘Crammer. We’re allowed to call it that, aren’t we?’ he said. ‘Is it Med and Gib?’
    ‘You know it?’
    ‘Not personally. A friend’s son was there a few years ago. They managed to haul him