I Should Be So Lucky Read Online Free

teased. Viola hadn’t seen the funny side. You don’t, she’d thought grimly, at thirty-five.
    ‘If she had her way, I would be. Probably for life,’ she’d groaned, glaring at Naomi, mentally j
ust daring
her to stride up to the car and demand of the tree-planter precisely what he thought he was doing, bringing her daughter home
at this time
. For a woman who’d spent her long-ago teenage years hanging out in the smoky all-night jazz clubs of Soho, Naomi worried an awful lot about after-dark danger.
    ‘Will you give me a call tomorrow, just so I know you got your car back OK?’ he’d said, grinning with either sympathy or suppressed hilarity – it was hard to tell in the dark. He leaned over and handed her a card through the open window.
    ‘I will, and thanks for the lift and everything. I must go, sorry …’
    ‘Yes, you must! I’m guessing you’ll be packed straight off to bed with a big telling-off!’
    She’d heared him laugh as he swung the car round on the gravel and drove out through the gate, which she took plenty of time to close after him so as to gain a few moments to calm her fury at her mother, otherwise there would have been serious danger of her calling the tree man back to dig another deep hole, this time to plant a human. She’d then gone into the house, giving Naomi the most minimal explanation, feigned tiredness and raced into the flat, shutting the door firmly after her. Rachel, the only one who had any real claim to be worried, had been fast asleep.
    ‘Mum, burst tyres happen to everyone,’ Viola said now as she dealt with the boiling kettle.
    ‘But coming home with an unknown man doesn’t,’ Naomi lobbed back, determined to have the conversation she’d been denied the night before. She wasn’t being jocular, as she had been earlier. ‘Now he knows where you live, anything could happen.’
    ‘Oh God, Mum, I’m not
twelve
!’ Viola laughed off the implied threat but it was a brittle kind of sound, covering rising annoyance. ‘It wasn’t what you’d call a Big Risk.’
    She felt mildly dishonest here – after all, she’d been the one who’d suspected her rescuer of secretly burying a corpse. She hadn’t mentioned the tree-planting aspect to Naomi. No such details were required, she’d decided, otherwise she’d never hear the end of it. ‘What does anyone want to go gardening at night for?’ would be the first question, and, to be honest, that was something any half-sane person might ask.
    ‘And risk or not, he was very kind, as people mostly are,’ Viola insisted. ‘Thanks to him, I got home fast and safely and the car is now at the garage having its tyre sorted. I can pick it up later this morning before I go into work. I’ve only got one afternoon session today. A
Wuthering Heights
intensive with four boarding-school chuck-outs, though this close to the exams it’s a bit late for them to …’
    ‘You didn’t tell him
who you are
, did you?’ Naomi interrupted, not looking at Viola. She expertly prised the lid off the old biscuit tin and scrabbled about among the contents to find a chocolate digestive.
    Viola had known that question was coming, because it too often did after Rhys had died and she’d moved in here. Waiting for it made her feel tense, that and the effort of not snapping about being treated like some silly adolescent.
    ‘I’m not anyone, Mum,’ she replied wearily, it being far from the first time they’d had this discussion.
    ‘You know what I mean. You know what folk are like.’
    ‘It’s been over a year now. I think I’m a long time off the tabloid-interest radar, don’t you? I bet there’s hardly anyone out there who even remembers who Rhys was.’ She felt an unexpected ripple of pity for him, faithless bastard though he’d been. He’d so adored both his fame (which he was supremely confident would escalate any day soon from the level of soap star to superstar) and his infamy, but the waters of interest swiftly close over