An Autumn Affair Read Online Free PDF Page B

only fleetingly. In a nutshell, she was of no use to anyone – which led her to conclude that perhaps she really should have carried on driving into the wall after all.

Chapter Three
    Ask anyone who knew her, and they would all agree that Julia Blakelaw was generally an easy-going soul, phlegmatic and resigned to her existence. Since her run-in with Max in the supermarket a few days ago, however, Julia had demonstrated none of those traits. A deluge of discontentment and despair had swept away all other emotions. While never placing herself in the ‘Ecstatically Happy’ category, Julia had, however unwittingly, accepted her lot and got on with it. Since bumping into Max, though, it all seemed completely futile – a feeling exacerbated by a surreptitious rummage through her old photo albums. The albums she kept hidden in a battered old suitcase in the bottom of her wardrobe. The albums crammed with photos of her and Max.
    ‘Has my blue striped shirt been ironed?’
    Propped up against the pillows still abed on Monday morning, Julia observed her husband, Paul, as he flicked through the rainbow of shirts in his wardrobe. Fresh from the shower, he had a towel wrapped around his waist. He wasn’t in bad shape for a man just the wrong side of forty, Julia concluded. Courtesy of his twice-weekly squash games, there wasn’t so much as a hint of a paunch. And the grey bits in his dark curly hair served only to make it more interesting. Totally unfair.
    ‘Julia. My shirt?’ he repeated. ‘Has it been ironed yet?’
    Dragged out of her reverie, Julia shrugged. ‘If it isn’t there, then probably not.’
    The look on Paul’s face told her this was not the answer he’d been hoping for. ‘But I need it.’
    Julia heaved an almighty sigh and folded her arms over her chest. ‘Why? You’ve got thirty others to choose from.’
    ‘But I need that one. I’m presenting to the Board today and it’s the only one I feel really comfortable in.’
    Julia rolled her eyes. She didn’t have the energy for an argument. ‘All right. All right. I’ll iron it.’
    ‘Thanks.’ He flashed her a smile as she clambered out of bed.
    Well, at least that was something, mused Julia, tying the belt of her robe around her waist. ‘Thanks’ was not a word uttered with much regularity in the Blakelaw household. Her positivity, though, was short-lived.
    ‘And can you do it quickly?’ he added. ‘I need to be in the office half an hour earlier today.’
    ‘Right,’ she muttered through gritted teeth.
    On the landing, she bumped into Faye.
    ‘Oh. If you’re ironing, could you do my denim skirt?’
    ‘Of course,’ said Julia, plastering a saccharine smile onto her face. ‘Anything else?’
    Faye narrowed her eyes and screwed up her nose. ‘No. Just the skirt.’
    Reaching the spare bedroom which doubled as an ironing room, Julia flung the door shut and plopped down on the bed, causing the mountain of creased clothes on it to topple to the floor. She’d spent the entire weekend running around after them all – as usual. But this weekend, it had felt so different. So … wrong. She rested her forearms on her thighs and dropped her head into her hands, anger and resentment spinning through her veins. Since when had she become such a doormat? Since when had she allowed people – and her own family at that – to treat her as nothing but a domestic slave? Once upon a time she’d harboured dreams, ambitions. She’d wanted to travel, have a successful career, achieve something – all the things that made life worth living. But that seemed a million years ago. What had happened to that lively, feisty girl? The girl who had been so full of energy, with a natural zest for life? The girl that had captivated Max Burrell …
    Julia had scarcely believed it when Max had shown an interest in her. They’d both been seventeen, in the first year of sixth form. Julia – pretty and popular – had been academically capable, but nothing special.