Read Online The Runaway Princess by Hester Browne - Free Book Online Page B

first husband, lived in
his
family’s rambling pile in Worcestershire with his second wife, Laura, and their three children, Oliver, Edwin, and Betty. Marigold and Kit had no extra children, but they did have several Clumber spaniels, named after various characters from
Fawlty Towers
, plus Kit’s horses, all of whom had names too. It was sometimes hard to tell whether Marigold was screeching about human family members or doggy ones. (Jo was very good about drawing people diagrams on napkins and so on while she dished the gossip.)
    “It’s maddening,” said Jo. “I’ve told her—I’ve got quite enough legal drama in my life spending all day with builders, without getting dragged into her court cases.”
    “But that’s exactly why you need Ted,” I persisted. “He’d bring calmness to your life. Calmness and kindness and a lawn with amazing stripes.”
    “I get that from having you as a flatmate.” Jo reached for her tea again and gave me a friendly nudge. “And you smell a lot nicer than Ted.”
    “Even if I do leave mud on your nail brush?”
    “I can deal with the mud in return for this fried egg,” said Jo, and she smiled at me as she chewed.
    I smiled back at her and thought, not for the first time,
Who knew the best friend I’ve ever had would be someone who thinks fried egg is a delicacy?



Five
    T here were lots of things I loved about my job—I could literally see the fruits of my labor springing up around me (hee), and the satisfaction of watching a neglected space turn into a fragrant cloud of flowers never got old. I set my own hours, and I didn’t have to worry about office politics or have an opinion about the latest reality TV show, and thanks to my digging, I could also beat most men in arm-wrestling matches. However, even I had to admit that being a garden designer was a lot more fun between March and October. The reality on a cold January morning was thermal leggings under my jeans and a moisturizing regimen that stopped just short of a light coating of duck fat, like a Channel swimmer.
    January, for me and Ted, meant a series of backbreaking tidy-up jobs inspired by other people’s New Year’s resolutions. We’d spent two days clearing a mountain of deadwood in Battersea, which the husband of the household had chopped out of his apple trees during a trying Christmas with the in-laws, and another day discreetly fixing his frenzied handiwork. By Wednesday we were on our fifth trip to the tip with a full vanload of cuttings to be composted, and my arms felt as if they were about to fall off.
    Saturday night’s party seemed like a very long time ago, although the memory of it floated in and out of my mind constantly. I couldn’t stop thinking about Leo scaling the scaffolding. And also Ted refused to stop going on about Grace’s ruined plants and what he’d like to do to Rolf Wolfsburg with his shovel.
    “You realize that if Richard can’t make Grace’s dreams come true, we’re going to have to think up a whole other source of revenue for—oi! Can you put your phone away?” Ted turned in the passenger seat and glared at me.
    I pocketed my phone. I’d just been checking it was still working. Not that I was expecting it to ring—Leo hadn’t taken my number, and anyway, what would I say if …
    Anyway, it hadn’t rung. He hadn’t rung. No one had rung. Or texted.
    “I was just seeing if Grace had left a message,” I improvised, because I was, sort of. “She’s back on Friday.”
    Ted slapped his forehead. “Friday! What are you going to say happened to her plants? A very specific balcony burglary? If you’d just left her plants there, instead of taking them home to swap the pots over …”
    That
had
occurred to me. Many times.
    “I could just tell her the truth.” I still had one plant, after all. One plant might be enough.
    “Which part of the truth? That she managed to blight the seeds she planted? Or that you didn’t trust her to do it properly, so you stole