Read Online The Model Wife by Julia Llewellyn - Free Book Online Page A

because he’d just wet himself, their battered orange MFI sofa and their wall of red-and-gold, leather-bound Reader’s Digest ‘classic’ books.
    Thea wished it were not so, but there was no doubt she was a snob. She blamed it on her paternal genes. Trevor Mackharven was a kind, if stodgy, man, who’d always treated her as his own, but Thea had never ever been able to shake off the knowledge that she wasn’t; that she came from a better place.
    Like Poppy, Thea had never known her father. There, however, the similarities ended. Thea was twelve years older than Poppy for a start and her father hadn’t left Jan but had died before Thea was born. Poppy had been a beautiful baby, Thea had not. Brown-toothed ladies who bent over her pram to coo backed away in shock at the sight that greeted them. Just so no one should forget this, Jan had placed a huge photo of her infant daughter in pride of place in the middle of the mantelpiece. It showed a baby with a shock of bright red hair and a face like a pug dog with worms.
    Fortunately, the photos surrounding it showed a slow improvement. There was Thea aged four at Jan’s wedding to Trevor: still a plain little girl but the red hair replaced by thick black locks that fell down her back like wires. Then there was six-year-old Thea at the christening of her first brother, Paul, her face thinner now though still blighted by NHS glasses with sickly pink frames. Thea at the christening of the twins, Edward and Nicholas, her face ravaged by the fierce acne that had endured throughout her adolescence.
    She took another sip of coffee and studied the other pictures in their tacky brass frames. There she was on her graduation day, looking embarrassed in a mortar board and gown, flanked by Trevor in a cheap suit from Burton and Jan, beaming in polyester lilac. Thea’s looks had definitely improved by this time: the specs and the spots had gone and John Frieda had invented Frizz-Ease, but her eyes were still too slanted and her mouth too wide, with nothing to be done on either count. There she was in the family line-up at Paul’s wedding: eyes closed but wearing a gorgeous green Jasper Conran suit, proof she was now earning good money. And then there was Thea in a divine cream Stella McCartney dress accepting an award for best TV news item of the year at the BAFTAs. Three years ago, the last night she and Luke had spent together.
    To her annoyance, Thea felt a pinching at the bridge of her nose as her tear ducts started to fill.
    ‘Are you all right, sweetheart?’ her mother asked.
    ‘I’m fine,’ she said briskly, getting up and heading to the door. ‘I’m going to get dressed.’
    As she left the room, Trevor and Jan exchanged concerned looks over their bowls of Shredded Wheat.
    ‘Do you think she’s all right?’ Jan said, sotto voce.
    ‘Of course,’ Trevor reassured her, picking up the teapot, ‘fill this up will you, love? She’s probably still jet-lagged. Remember how it took you days to get over it after you came back from visiting her?’
    Jan liked this answer. ‘You’re right,’ she agreed eagerly, switching on the kettle. ‘She’s only been back a couple of days. Or maybe she’s got a boyfriend? She could be missing him.’
    Trevor snorted. ‘Thea with a boyfriend? I can’t imagine that.’
    ‘Oh, don’t say that, Trev,’ cried Jan, stricken. ‘She’s thirty-six. I do worry, you know. I keep reading about these girls leaving it too late to have babies. I don’t want Thea to be one of those.’
    ‘Paul has children,’ Trevor pointed out, somewhat irrelevantly. ‘And Thea’s always said she doesn’t want babies. After all, sweets, she has got a great job.’
    ‘I know,’ Jan said. For a moment she was silent, reflecting on how different her daughter was to her, how – having watched Jan’s struggles to bring up four children on a limited income – Thea had always sworn she was going to devote herself to her career. And that devotion had paid