Love @ First Site Read Online Free Page B

Janice has disappeared into her walnut-clad corner lair, I wait a few moments, then retrieve the notebook I'd hastily stuffed into the top drawer of my desk as she loomed.
    "That's a good morning's work there," smiles Tab, tapping the cover with a plum-colored talon. "I have a strong feeling the future Mr. Monroe may be among them."

    I t's 6 p.m. and I'm sprinting, well, more lolloping really, towards the station, my overstuffed handbag on one arm, an overnight bag on the other.
    It's Olivia and Michael's seventh wedding anniversary today and he's booked the honeymoon suite at the Dorchester for them. Rather than fork out for a babysitter overnight and have all the worry of the children possibly waking up and being upset by the presence of an almost stranger, I said I'd happily stay over.
    It's absolutely no bother for me; in fact, I really relish my own little slice of what I see as an idyllic family life from time to time. I can fantasize that one day I, too, will be living in domestic bliss with a man I adore and our two beautiful children.
    It baffles me that women who choose to do that are often regarded as inferior to those who slave away in an office for fourteen hours a day before going back to their empty "home" and heating up a quick microwave meal for one, before falling exhausted into bed and starting the whole soulless process again the next day. I'm all for people doing what they want, but not when they sit in judgment on other people's choices in life, as if they are somehow selling out by opting to concentrate on a successful relationship and parenthood.
    To my mind, if you're prepared to study and work hard, and have the gift of the gab, then you can succeed at pretty much any career in life. But achieving a well-balanced, happy home life that takes the concerns of others into account? Well, that's never guaranteed for anyone, however rich, clever, or hardworking you are. Achieving
that
takes maturity, wise choices, and more compromise and emotional plate-spinning than even the best magician could ever aspire to.
    My sister Olivia has the perfect life, the one I would give my right arm for but don't even know where to begin to achieve. She and Michael met in Bristol, where he was studying medicine and she was doing a three-year physiotherapy course. She says that as soon as she clapped eyes on him in her local pub, she knew he was "the one."
    Our mother always told us we'd know when
he
came along. She'd spin us magical tales about when she first saw Dad, and how it felt as if she'd been struck by a thunderbolt. She often chose to omit the less flowery fact that, at the time, he'd been selling her a two-seater sofa in orange tweed.
    As an adult, I now realize the circumstances and their alleged exchange of dialogue would change a little with each telling, as she reinvented history in her starry-eyed pursuit of romance. But as children, Olivia and I had unquestioningly absorbed every word and carried the ideal through to adulthood; a giant expectation we would either fulfill or fail dismally at.
    Olivia had hit the jackpot with Michael, but my giant expectation had become a millstone round my neck, weighing me down with the assumption that, unless I feel like I have been struck by no less than Zeus himself, the man I'm dating isn't "the one."
    The "experts," as they like to call themselves, always say those from broken homes are disadvantaged when it comes to finding lasting love, because they have no blueprint to work from. But what if you have a blueprint of near-perfection, as drummed into me through my formative years by my mother? What then? Believe me, it can be just as inhibiting.
    Olivia and Michael live in a large Victorian house at the end of a long, leafy street in Dulwich village, the place where those who previously occupied Clapham's "Nappy Valley" move to once they have acquired a bit more money. Their main reason for choosing the area was so six-year-old Matthew would be well placed to attend