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grimly. Well, she wouldn’t have to do
that
for much longer, at any rate. With the twins having reached their landmark eighteenth birthday only last month, they were both set to start university in September, Michael to Durham, and Thomas to St Andrews. And with her sons fledging the nest, it was time to turf out the real cuckoo as well. And not before time.
    Laura slowed to approach a roundabout and glanced down longingly at her mobile phone. She frowned when her gaze met the unfamiliar blue-coloured casing. Somewhere within the last few days, she’d mislaid her old phone, and had been forced to buy a quick replacement when a search in all the usual places had failed to bring it to light. No doubt she’d find it eventually, probably in the pocket of a seldom worn coat maybe, or a handbag. Even though she’d thought she’d checked in all of those places. Far more likely that the bloody thing would turn up somewhere really bizarre, like the back of the bloody fridge, or at the bottom of one her boots. It was exasperating to lose it, when so much of her life was stored on it, but that was life for you.
    She half-reached for the new phone, that she was still trying to learn how to use properly, and then shook her head. No, itwas naughty to talk on the phone whilst driving. And wasn’t it illegal, too? She wasn’t sure, but she thought that it probably was. Besides, when she talked to Simon she wanted to give him her whole attention and not have to worry about running into the back of a lorry.
    Just thinking about Simon Jenks gave Laura a soft glow that was part physical and part emotional.
    At forty-eight Laura had never thought of herself as the kind of woman to have an affair. She’d married Maurice straight out of university, and had fallen pregnant just at a time when she’d been seriously thinking of divorcing him. The twins’ birth had scotched that idea, once and for all. She’d been brought up traditionally, and couldn’t help but still think of herself in the same way. She’d been raised in the Tudor belt in a prosperous Sussex town, where she had attended a private girls’ school, before just about scraping a place in Cheltenham Ladies College and going on to do a useless liberal arts BA at Reading. Afterwards, she wore all the right clothes, the latest perfume, and had found herself a decent job to pass the time and earn respectable brownie points whilst waiting to get married. Neither she nor her parents had ever expected anything else from her life.
    Maurice had been her one act of defiance, since neither of her parents had particularly approved of him. Oh, he was personable and presentable enough, and had good manners, mixed well in society, and had brains enough not to embarrass anyone. But he had no money of his own, he spoke in a northern accent and he earned a living as a taxidermist, for pity’s sake.
    Her father, to his dying day, had told everyone at the golf club that his son-in-law was in the ‘arts’.
    Laura had to laugh softly to herself now.
    Again, she glanced at her reflection, this time more anxiously, looking out for wrinkles and crows’ feet, andwondering what had possessed her to waste her life and her youth on a man like Maurice.
    Still, the quick check in the mirror assured her that she hadn’t lost everything, not yet, anyway. Forty-eight was no age these days, she told herself stoutly and, if the worst did come to the worst, well, she could always have cosmetic surgery. Luckily she took after her mother, physically, and had a tall, lithe figure that would not easily run to fat, even with approaching middle age and the dreaded spread that was said to accompany it. Even then, as a last resort, there were such things as tummy tucks and liposuction to fall back on.
    Her skin looked fairly clear, and her hair had always been that ash blonde shade that kept on looking good. And if it had a little more help from a bottle nowadays, well, who was to know but herself and her