The Look of Love Read Online Free

would have put the shopping down and challenged me to a proper game, right there in the store. Rick didn’t really do fun, not unless it was something you had to get tickets for so he could show off that he’d got special ones, Access All Areas or a box at Covent Garden, anything that would impress . He’s a bit … proper.’
    Jules frowned. ‘ Proper? Are you mad? Bella, do the words “maybe he’s a tosser” mean anything to you? You’ve always been useless at picking boys. Remember that dork when we were Molly’s age – the one who pretended he was Simon Le Bon’s brother? You fell for it, no problem. Even though he had a Glasgow accent and Simon’s a bit Surrey.’
    Bella laughed. ‘Yeah, yeah, you’re right! But generally, kind of on the whole … Rick was good to be with in so many ways. And he was … there , you know? I mean, how many available men are out there, of the right age, own teeth, own hair and …’
    ‘Own platinum Amex? Not that I’m saying money was an attraction …’ Jules backtracked hastily.
    ‘No, it wasn’t!’ Bella protested. ‘I earn my own, pay my way. Always have. Except for the house … this is still half James’s, I suppose, technically.’ She looked at thekitchen units as if she was slightly surprised to see a full set of them still on the premises. James … she knew that if he were still in residence he’d be scrubbing every smear and fingerprint from the drawer handles. They were looking a bit dulled, it was true. Dulled and dated, like the rest of the kitchen. It used to be such a pretty room, very big, being part of an outsize glass extension, built twenty years ago all across the back of the house, unusual enough at the time to have featured in three home-style magazines.
    The space itself still looked contemporary (dark walnut floor, pale walls, all the glass), but the units were all reclaimed pitch pine and oversized lamp-black hinges and handles which just looked … clapped out was the term that came to Bella’s mind. More than slightly embarrassed to exist in the twenty-first century. It was all far too farmhouse for south-west London, especially in a room that had twenty feet of slideable plate glass as a back wall. It had been installed in the days when stencilling was every city woman’s weekend hobby and the design statement du jour was country-feel strings of dried hops. The hops (looped above the Aga like leftover Christmas streamers) had gone the minute James had noticed their dust-gathering capacity, the stencilling was long since painted over, but the rest would have to be lived with till the lottery gods smiled on Bella.
    ‘So did you and Rick …’ Jules persisted with unashamed nosiness.
    ‘Didn’t get the chance!’ Bella laughed. ‘Got to our room, which was lovely but not exactly enormous, as per usual, apparently, in New York, and he gave me the present. Er … red underwear …’
    Both women grimaced and giggled. ‘I know,’ Bella said. ‘Another warning sign. It was hugely expensive – he’d left the Amex receipt in the bag, which I now think was accidentally on purpose, to impress me. Anyway, I just said, “Oh how lovely,” because what else could I say, but I made the excuse that my black dress needed sleek smooth underwear, not lacy stuff, though I said it in a way that made him think I’d try it out for him later. I had a shower and got all dressed up. Funny …’ She drifted off and watched a squirrel stealing from the bird feeder, hanging upside down, looking as if it was showing off. It saw her, flicked its tail at her impudently and stared at her as it munched a pawful of peanuts.
    ‘What? Tell me!’
    ‘Nothing really, except that he did seem to get more and more nervous. I couldn’t understand what was bugging him; we’ve stayed in hotels together before. There was the one in Devon with the cows outside the window and another in Dublin … But hey, over now.’ Bella got up and put her plate in the