Hubble Bubble Read Online Free PDF Page A

have a proper job. One where I can wear a suit and drive a hatchback and produce business cards from my designer wallet and—’
    ‘And pigs might!’ Doll snorted into the fun-fur cushion. ‘If he wanted to shack up with the businesswoman of the year he should have thought of it long before he moved you into his yuppie barn.’
    ‘It’s a loft,’ Lulu said. ‘A young executive’s loft apartment. I think he saw me as a challenge and thought he’d convert me in time.’
    ‘Like the loft,’ Doll giggled. ‘No, sorry … go on then – why does he want you to give up your job? Apart from the fact that you spend all day in that weirdo animal charity shop amongst other people’s junk and dirty clothes and earn slightly less than a paper boy.’
    ‘That’s about it really,’ Lulu sighed. ‘He says he’s had enough of me earning a pittance and not contributing enough to the communal outgoings and always being out on protests. And when we go to his business functions he says I look like a bag lady. And he said I wouldn’t know a designer label if it sat on my shoulder and introduced itself. And he says I fill his space with clutter and forget everything … All of which is true and I’m fed up with arguing about it – so I think we’ve just got to accept that we’re incompatible.’
    ‘And it’s only taken you three years to realise this, has it? Everyone else knew it straight away. I never understood why you got together with him in the first place. You were always chalk and cheese – me and Brett reckoned you’d end up with a Big Issue seller, which would have been far more acceptable. It’s not even as though Niall’s good looking. A good-looking prat would at least have some advantages.’
    Lulu shrugged. ‘I think I was a bit impressed by him. He was so – well – different from the other blokes I’d been outwith. At least he had a job … no, a profession. As a recruitment consultant he’s a few steps up the status ladder than a bloody postman.’
    ‘Ooooh! Hark at you! You who swore to forgo all material things in the worthy pursuit of animal welfare. And what the hell is a recruitment consultant anyway? He’s just another flashy suit in an office trying to keep his own job by putting other poor sods into unsuitable occupations and—’
    ‘It’s better than riding a bike and carrying a sack and stuffing things through letter boxes!’
    ‘Girls …’ Mitzi intervened as she had for more years than she cared to remember. ‘Before we get too far down this well-trodden path and you start pulling one another’s pigtails, does anyone fancy coffee?’
    ‘Not for me, thanks.’ Doll uncurled her long black-stockinged legs and stood up. ‘I ought to be going. It’s early surgery tomorrow and I’ll be up to my elbows in decaying molars before you know it.’ She leaned over the back of the sofa and tugged a couple of Lulu’s braids for good measure. ‘Cheer up, Lu. If you’ve really left him this time and are moving in, at least you can help Mum choose her tank tops and fluffy slippers and advise her on the pick of the daytime telly programmes—’
    Mitzi beat Lulu to the fun-fur cushion by a nanosecond and hurled it at Doll’s departing back.
    Having made sure that Doll was safely in her car – not that there was really any likelihood of her being abducted on the front path – and waved until the tail lights turned the corner, Mitzi shivered and locked the front door behind her. The house snuggled and settled round her in cosy warmth. It was her cocoon. Once the novelty of endless days with no work had worn off it might well be different, but for the first few weeks she could surely convince herself she was on holiday, couldn’t she?
    Lulu’s bags had disappeared from the hall and the living room was empty. There was to be no return to the minimalist loft or the unlovely Niall tonight, then. Mitziswitched off the fire and the lamps and wondered if Lulu’s heart would be broken by