The Mistake I Made Read Online Free PDF Page A

mood.’
    ‘Hey, Georgie boy!’ he said, slapping George’s raised hand. ‘How are you, my friend?’
    ‘Very well, thank you … under the circumstances,’ replied George a little stiffly, and Vince shot me a look.
    ‘Are we very late?’ I said, avoiding.
    ‘No more than usual,’ Vince shrugged before turning his attention back to George. ‘C’mon, kiddo,’ he said, ‘let’s get you armed with sugar and a ton of E numbers, ready to face the team of petites dragonettes upstairs.’
    Vince was more at home in the company of kids. After a couple of beers you would find him wearing mascara (applied badly), and with one of Petra’s underskirts on his head (long, princess hair), after he’d been attacked by his daughter and her bossy little friends.
    He was good with the girls, but it was common knowledge that Vince craved a son. Petra had managed to quash that idea by selling the notion that her death was an absolute certainty if she became pregnant again. This was on account of the high blood pressure and gestational diabetes she had suffered when carrying Clara.
    So Vince had to make do with George. Not ideal, since George had no interest in football, rugby and motor racing. But they had recently found some common ground when playing poker. And the occasional game of crib.
    In the kitchen Vince poured me a glass of champagne with something bright and syrupy-sweet floating on the top. ‘Can’t I just have it on its own?’ I asked him, frowning at the glass.
    ‘Not an option.’
    My sister went through these phases. Adding stuff to make things more exciting and ruining them in the process was one.
    With his head cocked to one side and a quick sideways glance, Vince said, ‘Nadine had these at her fiftieth,’ mimicking his wife, ‘and they went down very well with the crowd.’
    ‘Oh, well, if Nadine had them,’ I replied, playing along.
    Nadine and her husband, Scott, were Petra’s current fixation. Petra was prone to these obsessions – as I said, at the moment it was Nadine and Scott Elias, but it could just as easily have been slow-cooked shin of beef or National Trust lighthouse properties.
    The women had become friends whilst watching the men play charity cricket, and at the moment Petra would slip Nadine’s name into almost every sentence, though not in a boastful way; I think it was involuntary. Much like when you’re in those early, exquisite stages of a relationship, and your lover’s name trips from your tongue so readily that you couldn’t stop it even if you tried.
    Vince took a can of Fanta from the drinks fridge, pressing it into George’s hand, saying, ‘Good luck up there, my friend,’ and George scooted off upstairs, but not before telling Vince that all our furniture had disappeared.
    ‘What?’ said Vince, turning to me, while I glared hard at George’s back.
    But I waved away Vince’s concern, telling him it was a temporary blip, before striding out into the garden.
    I had Petra’s present (sparkly, hooped earrings) in one hand, a bottle of champagne in the other, and announced my presence by asking loudly, ‘Where’s the birthday girl?’ with a lot more jubilance than I had cause for.
    There is always a compromise to be made with property on this side of the lake. Planning restrictions in the National Park dictate that people are stuck with the houses they’ve got – unless you’ve got a spare three million to buy the 1950s bungalow on the lakeshore, and then you can bulldoze it and pop your McMansion in its place. The rest of the community buys what they can afford, and then make do Usually, forfeiting internal space, and as often as not, a decent garden.
    No one has a regular-shaped lawn in Windermere and Bowness – either the terrain is too steep or it’s cut off at an angle by a brook or, commonly – and this was before the planning department became unwaveringly strict – residents built second homes on their plots to generate some extra cash.
    The