An Ideal Wife Read Online Free Page B

briefly. “Yes, absolutely smitten. And he’d also have to be gorgeous. Tall. Rich, definitely. He’d have a sports car. And maybe a private jet. He’d whisk me off to Barbados on holiday when I’d had a bad day at work. Not that I’d have to work because … well, why would I? He’d be loaded.”
    I shook my head in exasperation. “That’s it? You want someone rich and handsome who has a jet?”
    “And who’s crazy about me,” Helen reminded me. “That’s the crucial piece of the jigsaw. C-R-A-Z-Y.”
    I laughed. “Fair enough.”
    “Talking about crazy,” Helen said, leaning forward suddenly, “have you heard from Ivana lately?”
    Ivana was a friend of ours. More Helen’s, actually, but I’d gotten to know her pretty well during the whole Project Marriage thing, when she’d coached me in the art of flirtation. Ivana was a kind of stripper or lap dancer—none of us was entirely sure exactly what she did for a living, and to be honest we didn’t really want to. She was Russian, beautiful in a voluptuous leather-wearing kind of way, very domineering, and married to a guy from Manchester called Sean, who absolutely adored her. Helen had met her a few years before when she was making a documentary about strip clubs, and somehow Ivana had become a firm fixture.
    Except now things had changed slightly.
    “Not since—” I said tentatively.
    “The baby?” Helen interrupted, an amused expression on herface. “No, I didn’t think so. You know, I went round there a week or so ago and she made me take off my shoes.”
    I stared at her in confusion. “She what?”
    “She said she didn’t want me bringing germs into the house.”
    “Ivana? Ivana said that?”
    I’d been to Ivana’s studio flat only once; it was on Old Compton Street in Soho, and it stank of bodily fluids mixed with heady perfume and didn’t look as if cleaning products had ever made their way through the door.
    “She wouldn’t even let me see Giorgio, either. He was asleep, and she said that he didn’t like having his routine disturbed.”
    “Giorgio?”
    “As in Armani. Apparently the baby looks just like Ivana.”
    I met Helen’s eyes and suppressed a giggle. “Seriously?”
    She was giggling, too, holding a hand over her mouth to try to make out that she wasn’t. “That’s what Sean said.”
    I nodded seriously, trying to get the image out of my head of a baby boy dressed in leather hot pants with thick black eyeliner scrawled on his face. It was too much. I snorted.
    “We should go round together,” Helen said suddenly, leaning forward. “We should go this week.”
    “Good idea,” I agreed.
    “Great.” Helen sat back in her chair. “So, look, do you think I should call John to catch him off guard, or do you think I should leave it up to him to call me?”
    “I think I’d leave it a day or two,” I said.
    “Yeah, good idea. I won’t obsess. I’ll just relax. Not think about it.”
    “Exactly,” I said. “Think you can do it?”
    Helen nodded firmly, then shook her head, grinning. “Not in a million years. But I’ll give it a go.”

Chapter 3

     
    ON MONDAY MORNING, I found myself studying Max as he indicated right and pulled into the Milton Advertising car park. He was so handsome, I thought. So noble and good, and funny, and clever …
    “You all right?” Max asked. “You haven’t said a word all morning.”
    I nodded vaguely. “I’m fine.”
    Someone that amazing deserved someone better than me. Someone who really
was
perfect.
    “Jess?” Max looked at me worriedly.
    I shook myself and forced a smile. “I’m really fine,” I assured him. “Honestly.” Someone who didn’t lie to him all the time, too, I was thinking.
    “Well, okay, then,” Max said, getting out of the car. “If you say so.”
    “I do,” I said quietly, as I followed him into the office, my shoulders slumped. Was Helen right? Could I
never
tell Max? Did that mean I was beholden to Hugh forever? Did that mean that