The Model Wife Read Online Free PDF

So the fact Poppy had managed to net a rich husband first had put her nose seriously out of joint.
    Her mother, who was in a bad mood anyway after yet another romance had fallen through, was even less delighted.
    ‘I can’t believe you’ve been so stupid, Poppy. You’re making exactly the same mistake I did.’
    ‘No, Luke is standing by me,’ Poppy said, then realized too late that as usual she’d said the worst possible thing.
    ‘He may be standing by you, but he’s leaving a wife and three children. What kind of man is that? Do you really want him to be the father of your child? Poppy, you’re so pretty. I’ve always thanked God for your looks because heaven knows there isn’t much else to recommend you. I always hoped you’d marry a lovely guy, not shack up with some shit.’
    ‘He’s not a shit.’
    Louise sighed. ‘Poppy Price, how did I raise such a clueless child?’
    ‘You didn’t raise me, the au pairs and Gran did.’
    ‘I was doing my best,’ Louise hissed. ‘You have no idea how hard being a mother is. Well, you’ll soon find out.’ She put her hand to her brow. ‘Now I can feel one of my migraines coming on. I feel nauseous. I’d better lie down.’
    3 1
    Poppy didn’t bother saying that she felt permanently nauseous herself. After four months her ballooning belly meant she had to stop working. She greeted her new life as a stay-at-home mother-to-be with enthusiasm, but it turned out to be a lot lonelier and a lot more boring than she’d expected. She had found modelling scary, but at least it had given her something to get up for in the morning and there had been people to chat to all day. In contrast, Luke was almost never at home – sometimes she thought she’d seen him more when he was her lover. He went out early and returned often about midnight, tie askew, the smell of Chianti on his breath and his BlackBerry still buzzing.
    ‘Entertaining contacts, darling,’ he’d say, crawling into bed. ‘That’s what my job’s all about. That’s what enables us to live in this beautiful flat.’
    ‘But I don’t care about a beautiful flat. I’d rather just see more of you.’
    He shrugged. ‘This is my life. I’ve lost my family because of you. You can hardly expect me to give up my job as well.’
    In the dark, tears stung Poppy’s eyes. She was learning not to cry in front of him, because it only made him angry.
    ‘I didn’t ask you to lose your family. You left them; I didn’t make you.’
    ‘Didn’t you?’ he muttered and rolled on to his back.
    There was a brief silence.
    ‘I felt the baby kick today.’
    ‘Did you? Poppy, I’m really tired. I’m going to sleep now.’ And within seconds she heard him snoring.
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    So Poppy spent her days and nights in front of the television, waiting to hear Luke’s key in the lock, gently stroking her growing stomach and flicking through her pregnancy book to see what her foetus was doing this week (somersaulting, kicking, possibly sucking its thumb). She did ask Luke if she could attend some of these work dinners with him, but he sighed and said he hardly thought it would be suitable.
    ‘Most of these people know Hannah from way back. I can hardly just wheel up one day with you.’
    Hannah rushed through a divorce on grounds of adultery. Poppy didn’t know many of the details, but she gathered Luke had made her a huge settlement. When Poppy was eight months pregnant, she and Luke married.
    ‘We don’t have to do this, you know,’ Poppy said as they sat in the back of the taxi en-route to Marylebone Register Office. Of course she wanted to more than anything else, but Luke looked so bleak you’d have thought he was on his way to a funeral, not his own wedding.
    ‘Don’t be silly,’ he said, trying to smile, ‘of course we do.’
    And so they plighted their troth in a small room that reeked of Pledge, with Poppy in a blue-and-white maternity dress from Topshop rather than the Princess Diana meringue she’d always