The Wedding Diary (Choc Lit) Read Online Free PDF Page A

Adam saw she had a very sweet, good-natured face and gorgeous jade-green eyes. ‘You probably need a good night’s sleep.’
    ‘Yes, perhaps,’ said Adam, who had hardly slept at all since Maddy left and was sure he’d never have a good night’s sleep again.
    ‘We haven’t done business with you in the past, so I’ll need a deposit,’ said the girl as she tapped on her keyboard. ‘What about a hundred pounds – would that be acceptable to you?’
    ‘Yes, that’s fine.’ Adam rummaged in the inside pocket of his jacket and then in all the pockets of his jeans. ‘I don’t seem to have my cards,’ he said.
    ‘We do take cash,’ Cat told him.
    ‘I should have just about enough.’ Adam started going through his pockets once again, pulling out some tenners, fivers, half a dozen coins, more tenners and then two more fivers, until he had managed to assemble eighty-seven pounds. He put the money on Cat’s desk. ‘I usually carry more than this, but I—’
    ‘Why don’t you give me eighty now?’ Cat wrote out a receipt. ‘Then you can pay the balance on delivery. I’d better let you get off home,’ she added. She handed him a couple of business cards. ‘One’s Barry’s and one’s mine,’ she told him. ‘Do you have a card?’
    ‘I’m sorry?’
    ‘Oh, it doesn’t matter – just give me your mobile number. Then we’ll call you when we’ve found your tiles. We ought to be in touch some time next week, if not before.’
    ‘Thank you,’ Adam said. He turned his collar up and then slouched off into the rain.
    As Cat locked up, she thought about the man. What a miserable so-and-so! Then she thought of Jack, who was always laughing, joking, fooling round and making her laugh, too.
    Who could Jack be laughing, joking, fooling round with now? She’d give almost anything to hear one of his awful jokes again.
    He’d always told her she was too damn serious. She seriously needed to lighten up a bit. If she was as grumpy as the man she’d met this afternoon, perhaps it was no wonder Jack had left? Memo to myself, she thought – whatever I feel like inside, put on a happy face.
    She rummaged in her bag and found her mobile.
    ‘Hi, Tess,’ she began. ‘What are you doing this evening? Do you want to go and see a film? Yeah, let’s make it something funny. Something that will cheer me up a bit. I’ve just spent the past half an hour with a guy from Doom and Gloom R Us.’

Monday, 9 May

    Adam was on the roof of Redland Manor when the guy from Chapman’s Architectural Salvage brought the tiles. The previous week’s torrential rain had given way to beautiful spring sunshine. The builders had their shirts off and were working on their tans.
    ‘Mr Lawley?’ someone shouted up to him.
    Adam looked down and saw a stocky forty-something man standing by a pickup full of tiles. If this was Barry Chapman or one of his drivers he was early. Adam was impressed because, in his long experience, suppliers were almost always late. It was encoded in their DNA.
    ‘I’ll be with you now,’ he called. He made his way along the rafters, over sheets of bright blue polythene that covered half the roof, through a dormer window and back down to the ground.
    ‘Hello, Mr Lawley, good to meet you,’ said the fair-haired man, offering his hand to Adam. ‘Barry Chapman, boss of Chapman’s Architectural Salvage.’
    ‘Good to meet you, too.’ Adam shook Barry by the hand. ‘I’m sorry I missed you at the yard last week. But your assistant seemed to know her stuff.’
    ‘Yeah, she’s good, is Cat.’ Barry Chapman nodded. ‘Great all-rounder – brilliant organiser, makes the office run like clockwork, takes an interest in the stock, and she’s always pleasant to the customers and suppliers. She’s getting to be quite a fair negotiator, too.’
    ‘She told me you’d been called away.’ Then, feeling it would be polite, he added, ‘How’s your wife?’
    ‘Annie’s doing great.’ Barry Chapman found his