The Difference a Day Makes Read Online Free PDF Page B

pick up a book of poetry than a spade. ‘Now we’ll be living the dream!’
    The only thing is, that it’s my husband’s dream and not mine.

Chapter Eight
     
     
     
    O ur home, it turns out, is the place where all the spiders in England come on holiday. It’s a good job that I haven’t seen Arachnophobia recently or, indeed, suffer from it otherwise I’d be in a permanent state of terror. Some of them have hairier legs than Will and are wearing hobnail boots.
    Our furniture eventually arrived as darkness fell and - all credit to the removal men they unloaded the van in double-quick time.Two charming young men, Paul and Daniel of ShiftIt - movers to the clearly insane - worked frantically until midnight to make sure that we all had beds for the night. The rest of the furniture has been arranged haphazardly in more or less the appropriate rooms.
    Despite still being in a state of shock that my husband is happy to swap what we had for this , I have forced myself to get out of bed even though I was tempted to stay there with the covers pulled over my head, hiding from bitter reality. From the wealth of packing cases, I’ve somehow managed to locate my oldest, skankiest clothes. Now, the next morning, Maya and I are setting to in the vast farmhouse kitchen with mops and buckets and gallons of pine-scented disinfectant. Mr and Mrs People Who Lived Here Before were clearly strangers to Mr Muscle. I haven’t yet risked opening the Aga as I feel there might be a body in it. Same reason I’m not going anywhere near the cellar.
    Maya is still weeping gently as she mops.
    ‘It’s not so bad,’ I try to reassure her. ‘Once we get it cleaned . . .’ I falter as I realise that this could take about three years. There are mouse droppings everywhere and I didn’t actually think that I knew what mouse droppings looked like. The glass in the windows is opaque with years of grime.
    What I don’t like to bring to Maya’s attention is that she could simply - and justifiably - walk away from all this, whereas I’m trapped by marital duty. When I said ‘I do’, frankly, I had no plans to be ‘doing it’ in the country. My nanny could, on the other hand, tell me and Will and the kids to get stuffed and head back to London to find another less mad family to nurture. I hope against hope that she doesn’t think of this. She is a girl after my own heart and has the city in her veins. And, like me, she probably feels like slitting one of those veins right now.
    Inside, the house is spacious with large, airy rooms - for that read ‘draughty’. Maya and I have already cleaned out two of the six bedrooms which have now been designated the children’s bedrooms and they’re quietly unpacking their toys and games, too shocked to think of squabbling. Never have I seen my offspring so subdued.
    We should have got a company in to give the house a thorough clean before we moved in, but I had no idea that it would be so bad. Plus, the truth of the matter is, we are now officially broke. Virtually all of the money from the sale of the house in Notting Hill has been poured into this place. It means that we don’t have a mortgage - thankfully - but it also means that we have very little left for day-to-day expenses now that we’re both officially unemployed. My husband is convinced that I’m going to be able to get freelance work to top up the pot, possibly at Yorkshire Television or at Granada in Manchester. But I’m not so sure. At best that would be a three-hour round commute for me. Could I do that on a daily basis?
    Will, from what I can gather, is planning to turn his hand to country pursuits - whatever they might be - and the words ‘bed and breakfast’ do still keep slipping into his conversation rather more frequently than I’d like.
    My husband is wandering round the house, his rich baritone voice soaring through ‘Oh, What a Beautiful Morning’ very loudly. And I can honestly say that I’ve never heard him sing songs