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

off, Jan thought proudly. A producer for the Seven Thirty News , Thea had spent the past couple of years in New York. But now the programme had a new editor, and Thea had been recalled to London, just like that, as a senior producer. It was very impressive. None of Jan’s friends could believe Thea was actually on speaking terms with the likes of Luke Norton and Emma Waters and, especially, the gorgeous Marco Jensen.
    But still… Jan’s floppy face sagged.
    ‘Every woman wants to be a mother, Trev.’
    ‘Shh,’ Trevor hissed. ‘She’s coming back.’
    They both gazed into their bowls, as the subject of their conversation re-entered the room, dressed in tight jeans and a beige chunky-knit sweater. Trevor stood up.
    ‘I’m off to work now, love. Will you be here when I get back?’
    ‘No, I’m leaving in a minute.’
    Trevor gave her a diffident hug. ‘Goodbye then, my love. See you again soon, I hope.’
    ‘Mmm,’ Thea said. Irrationally, it annoyed her when Trevor called her ‘my love’, even though he had every right to. Most people didn’t even know he wasn’t her real father. After all, she had taken his surname when her mother married him. Thea’s real father, Leo Fry, had worked in an accounts office by day, but at night was a singer in a rock band. Mum had met and married him when they were both twenty-one. He’d died, only weeks before Thea was born, in a motorbike crash. Throughout her childhood, Thea had obsessed over how different her life would have been if Leo’s back wheel hadn’t hit that patch of oil. In her parallel life, she would have grown up an adored only child, touring the world with her rock-star father.
    But Leo had died, so Thea’s fate had been to grow up in this run-down semi, on the fringes of an industrial estate, littered with plastic cars, trucks, diggers and aeroplanes that belonged to her three boisterous younger brothers. It was a solitary childhood. Mum loved Thea, but the boys’ demands meant she had little time to spare for her. Thea had spent a lot of time locked in her room listening to her father’s precious Bob Dylan albums.
    The only person who actually had time to really listen to her was Leo’s mother, who lived in Guildford, a short bus ride away. Thea visited her every Sunday without fail. Mum just nodded vaguely and said, ‘That’s nice, angel’, when Thea brought home a good report. Gran would put her specs on, read it carefully and note with approval that Thea was ‘excellent’ at French and frown when she saw she hadn’t been paying attention in biology.
    ‘You’ve got to work as hard as you can, Thea,’ she’d say. ‘There are so many opportunities for girls these days. Opportunities I’d have killed for. You can get out of Dumberley and do something with your life. Don’t let me down, love.’
    ‘I won’t, Gran,’ Thea promised. And she hadn’t.
    ‘I’m going to make you some tuna sandwiches to take back to London with you,’ Jan wittered as the front door slammed. ‘They’re your favourite, aren’t they? At least, it used to be. Maybe there’s some American sandwich you like now. If you tell me, I could make it for you.’
    ‘I doubt you can buy lox and pastrami in Dumberley,’ Thea muttered.
    ‘Sorry?’
    ‘Oh, nothing.’ As always, Thea felt guilty. Her mother was only trying to look after her. The problem was Mum was always trying to look after everyone, with the result that she had neglected herself. Even now the boys had grown up and left home, she still seemed to have no time for herself, busy as she was baking for Trevor, washing Trevor’s dirty underpants, cleaning Trevor’s facial hair out of the basin, while Trevor sat in the pub with the darts team watching Sky Sports and nursing a pint.
    ‘Here, have another slice of toast,’ Jan said, shoving the rack under her daughter’s nose. As penance for her earlier nastiness, Thea smiled.
    ‘Thanks.’ But as she continued flicking through the Daily Post , she