The Secret of Happy Ever After

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Book: The Secret of Happy Ever After Read Online Free PDF
Author: Lucy Dillon
Tags: Fiction, General, Romance
around with. Lily who tried so hard to make everyone think she was fine, when she obviously wasn’t. Anna had never felt alone once she could read, and even if Lily refused the bedtime stories, Anna had hoped she might find a friend in Michael Morpurgo or Mr Gum.
    ‘Cheer up, Anna,’ said Michelle, dropping a notebook in front of her. ‘They’ll be off to New York tomorrow and you’ll have a week to yourself with Phil, and when they come back they’ll be full of stories about how Mum can’t cook, and American chocolate tastes like vomit, and “where’s my project you said you’d help with?”.’
    Anna stuffed another mince pie into her mouth and tried to ignore Pongo’s begging face. ‘They won’t. Sarah’s turned into one of those “my girls are my best friends” mums. They’ll be in permanent shopping mode. She’s working at head office now, not some backwater outpost in Longhampton, so it’s power meetings and manicures. And lots of spare cash for treats, which we don’t have any more.’
    ‘So let her.’ Michelle looked at Anna squarely. ‘What are you doing while they’re away? For you ?’
    She let out a long breath through her nose. ‘Having a lie-in?’
    Anna had never felt so exhausted. The first months after Sarah’s departure had been one endless whirlwind – new schools, a new car to fit three extra people in, new clothes, new routine, new meals for three differently fussy eaters. In their mutual shock, they’d all rubbed along OK, mainly because Anna had done twice the running to cushion the shock for everyone else. It was only now the novelty had well and truly worn off that the real problems were starting to show through. Problems you weren’t allowed to admit you had, like feeling you came a low sixth in the house, after the dog.
    Michelle pushed the notebook at her. ‘Come on. Do it now. Exam conditions – you’ve got twenty minutes to write down everything you want to achieve this year. Just you. Come on, I’ll do it too.’
    ‘You already know what you want,’ protested Anna. ‘You’ve probably got your list pre-written in your head.’
    Michelle passed her a pen. ‘Would you like me to write the list for you? You can start with, “Give my husband a boot up the arse”.’
    ‘No.’ Anna stared at the blank page in front of her. She didn’t need that much paper; there was really only one main objective for this year, one she’d been waiting her whole adult life to get going with. Just thinking about it filled her with a glittering sort of excitement, but it was such a delicate goal. She didn’t want to take away the magic by pinning it down, next to ‘defrost the freezer’ or ‘make Chloe write a revision timetable’.
    She looked up at Michelle who was scribbling away, making headings and sub-headings with brisk flow-chart arrows. Even though there’d been no one there to see it, Michelle had still done her full make-up, right down to her swooping black eyeliner. Maybe that should be a goal, learning to do eyeliner like that, thought Anna, admiring the staccato flicks at the edges of her round brown eyes. They were as neat and perfect as Lily’s Bratz doll.
    ‘Come on,’ said Michelle, without looking up. ‘Write it and it will come, that’s my motto.’
    Slowly, Anna wrote ‘This year’ at the top of the page, underlined it twice, and then wrote: ‘Have a baby’.
    Michelle looked up, halfway down her second page. ‘Are you done? Already?’
    Anna nodded.
    ‘Let me see.’
    She pushed the notebook across the table and watched Michelle’s face, not sure how she would react.
    Anna knew babies definitely weren’t on Michelle’s to-do list. Longhampton seemed to have the highest birth rate in the Midlands, and before Phil’s girls had moved in, she and Michelle had spent hours moaning in Ferrari’s, the local wine bar, about the ‘you don’t understand life until you have a child’ born-again earth mothers who spent a fortune in Michelle’s
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