Lovestruck Read Online Free

the paparazzi. Let them have something decent to take a picture of for once.’ Just after
Archbishop Grace
was first screened, they’d left the flat in Neasden one Monday morning pushing the double buggy when a man with a huge camera had jumped out from behind a bush and started snapping away. It had been a bit scary, but then funny – the pictures were so dull they’d never made the papers and word had clearly got round that the Perrys weren’t worth bothering with, as after that they’d been left well alone.
    ‘Come on, Georgie,’ Jake said, as the buzzing started again. ‘Let’s see who it is.’
    ‘It might be burglars!’ Rosie cried as the pair dashed down the stairs, no doubt waking Toby in the process.
She ran into the hall in her pair of horrible old pants, which had turned yellow from too much washing. She peered over the balustrade, with its view down two storeys into the hallway. Jake was peering at the little screen by the intercom.
    ‘Surprise!’ it crackled.
    ‘Mum, bloody hell. What are you doing?’ Jake pressed the button to open the gates. Seconds later, there was banging on the front door. Rosie ducked down below the banister.
    ‘You know me and Dad,’ bellowed her mother-in-law as she marched into the hall. ‘Early risers, us old folk. It’s the hormones going doolally. So we thought: Well, they’ll be awake soon, and we jumped in the motor – hello, my little chickadee, yes, Granny
is
pleased to see you – so here we are.’
    Rupert was looking around him. ‘My word, Perry. It’s a mansion.’
    ‘I told you,’ Yolande said smugly.
    ‘Mummy!’ cried Toby from his room on the floor below. ‘What’s happening?’
    ‘Don’t worry, darling!’ replied Rosie, still crouching down. ‘Granny’s just here early, that’s all. Go down and see her.’
    ‘Come and get me, Mummy.’
    ‘I can’t, darling. I have to get dressed.’
    ‘Morning, Rosie!’
    Rosie peeked through the railings. Yolande stood in the middle of the hall, resplendent in a primrose-yellow
top and Not Your Daughter’s jeans, ash-blonde hair perfectly highlighted and coral lipstick (‘It makes your teeth appear so much whiter’) applied. Her slightly sarcastic tone suggested it was nearly noon, rather than literally the crack of dawn.
    ‘Morning, Yolande, be down in just a sec’.’ Rosie started crawling back to the bedroom. She hoped Rupert didn’t look up.
    ‘What are you doing, Mummy?’ George yelled. Rosie ignored him. Safe in the bedroom, she pulled on yesterday’s jeans and top. Oh, Yolande and Rupert. Why were they five hours early? Couldn’t they give them just a little more space? She hadn’t seen her own mother for years, but this was taking things to another extreme altogether.
    Jake had two siblings, but his mother often seemed to forget that. Fraser the oldest was, at forty-three, a surfing addict, who spent his life travelling from beach to beach in pursuit of the perfect wave, supporting himself through the occasional bartending job. Becki, the second child, led a blameless existence as a teaching assistant and slightly smug mother of four in Swindon.
    But Yolande clearly longed for glamour and excitement in contrast to her own respectable but unexciting life as an accountant, and her hopes for this were all invested in Jake. At school, he’d told Rosie, his mother had attended every single football, cricket and rugby match he took part in, yelling ‘Kill them!’ from the
sidelines. There were days’ worth of video footage of Jake in every school and uni play and, after uni, it had been Yolande who’d persuaded him to reach for the stars and audition for drama school.
    Every review from every fringe play Jake had been in, no matter how ropey or obscure, was pasted into a scrapbook. As break after break eluded Jake, Yolande had been the one to insist he kept plugging away, never gave up hope. And so now fame had finally, belatedly, arrived, she was ecstatic. She’d taken charge of