Lovestruck Read Online Free Page B

Rupert go and fetch it, love. Perry, you can help.’
    ‘Why does Granny call Daddy “Perry”?’ Toby asked as the men went outside. Out of the corner of her eye, Rosie could see them unloading things from the back of the ancient Range Rover. Oh no. Oh help.
    ‘Mummy,
why
?’
    ‘Darling, you know the answer to that.’ Oh bugger. Not that hideous carpet that looked like a homage to a Tarantino shoot-out.
    ‘No, I don’t!’
    ‘You do.’ She smiled. Toby loved hearing the same things again and again; it reassured him.
    ‘It’s his real name, love,’ Yolande said. ‘Peregrine. Peregrine Merlin Jake-Clements. I loved the name Peregrine when I was pregnant, it reminded me of a falcon sailing through the skies. We all called him Perry when he was a boy. Grandpa and I still do.’
    ‘But why is he Jake Perry now?’
    Less posh
, Rosie thought, as her mother-in-law explained. ‘Shorter. Peregrine Jake-Clements is a terrible mouthful for people to have to remember.’
    ‘So his real name is Perry?’
    ‘Yes. But he’s been Jake for ages. Since he was twenty-two and went to drama school.’
    ‘But
I’m
Toby Perry?’
    ‘You’re Toby Perry, love,’ Yolande agreed. ‘Daddy
changed his name by something called deed poll. And George is George Perry and Mummy is—’
    ‘And Mummy is Rosie Prest,’ Rosie said firmly. She’d always vowed never to change her name if and when she got married. It was the most pointless, old-fashioned exercise she could imagine. Yolande shook her head as if George had said something cute.
    ‘And Mummy
was
Rosie Prest until she married Daddy.’
    ‘She’s still Rosie Prest,’ Rosie said firmly. ‘Yolande, have you seen the house yet? Do you want Toby to give you a tour?’
    ‘Come and see the lounge, Granny.’ Toby pulled at Yolande’s arm.
    Yolande blenched. ‘Living room, darling.’
    Rosie concealed a smile, as Rupert in the hallway yelled: ‘Come and look!’
    Just as she’d feared – a pile of ancient furniture sat there. Well, that was going straight to the tip.
    ‘We really don’t need all this any more,’ Yolande said. ‘But it’ll be so much help to you in this enormous space.’ She picked up a pair of violet flowery curtains that Rosie dimly remembered seeing in their spare bedroom. ‘Look at these. We thought we’d get shutters in that room but they’d be ideal for you. Look what good-quality they are. Lined and everything.’ She waved a fake gold vase in the air. ‘And this’ll be useful for all the flowers everyone’s sending Perry.’
    ‘This is good too,’ said Rupert proudly, patting a
huge dark mahogany dressing table. ‘Excellent quality. Antique. It’ll be murder to get up those stairs, mind. Still, I think I’m fit enough. Did I tell you I’ve joined a new gym? Shall we try after lunch, Perry?’
    The boys were beating each other round the head with ancient tennis rackets with half the strings missing.
    ‘You could get those restrung easily and then the boys could start learning. I’m sure my friend Dorothy’s granddaughter already does toddler tennis. It’s never too early, you know.’
    To garner ingredients for Yolande’s lunch, they took her for a walk around the Village.
    ‘It’s delightful!’ cried Yolande as they stood at the Village pond, the boys throwing handfuls of grain (which cost an extortionate fifty pence a bag, chucking in old bread crusts was strictly forbidden) at the overfed ducks, who showed no interest whatsoever in their bounty. ‘Thank goodness you’re out of that horrible place.’
    ‘I didn’t mind Neasden, actually,’ said Rosie. All right, it had had its rough edges, but she loved the feeling of so many people from all over the world living so closely together and largely getting on, the way nineteen different languages were spoken by the children at the nursery. The Village, she could see already, wasn’t like that at all. Nearly everyone, apart from the men who served them in the little