The Making of Us Read Online Free

growling behind her, ‘are you ready for me?’
    She heard Bendiks laugh, slightly nervously, and then Lydia pushed through the swing doors towards the changing rooms, her personal training session over for another day.
    Lydia Pike lived not far from the exclusive health and fitness club where she was trained every other day by a beautiful Latvian man called Bendiks Vitols. The club was so exclusive that it was almost impossible to guess it was there, tucked away up a small St John’s Wood mews, looking for all the world like someone’s rather pretty house. Lydia only knew it was there because it was where Bendiks worked. She’d read about him in a glossy magazine that had been slopped through her letterbox three months ago. ‘Want to get fit for spring?’ said the by-line. ‘We talk to three local fitness experts.’ And there was Bendiks, a head-and-shoulders shot, thick dark hair in a side parting, a black fitted t-shirt, smiling at a third party out of view as though disturbed by a cheeky comment. At the time Lydia had dearly wanted to get fit for spring. She’d wanted to get fit not just for spring, but for summer, autumn and winter too, and the moment she saw Bendiks’ face she knew that she’d found the person to do it. It wasn’t just that he was beautiful, which he was, but there was a softness to his features, a sort of humour about him. She knew he’d put her at her ease. And he had.
    From her external appearance you might not imagine that Lydia was in much need of fitness training. She was lean and spare, there was no extra meat on her, except perhaps for a little softness around her belly button. But Lydia knew the truth about her body. She knew that it was a shell behind which ticked a time bomb of unnurtured organs and neglected arteries.
    Lydia dropped her gym bag in the hallway and said hello to Juliette, her housekeeper, who was halfway up the stairs with an armful of freshly laundered clothes. She stopped when she saw an Ocado delivery man approaching the front door. ‘You want me to take care of this?’ asked Juliette.
    ‘No, no, it’s fine. I’ve got it.’
    Juliette smiled and continued up the stairs. The man from Ocado unpacked Lydia’s shopping on to her kitchen table while Lydia fingered the contents of her purse for a couple of pound coins with which to show the Ocado man her appreciation for sparing her the inconvenience of doing her own shopping. After the man had left, Lydia began to sort the goods into her kitchen cupboards. Lydia rarely dealt with her kitchen cupboards. She had a vague idea what each cupboard contained, had herself allocated each unit a function during the unpacking process, but really, some of them were slightly mysterious. Where, for example, she wondered to herself, do I put rice vinegar?
    Juliette came upon her, a moment later, wafting vaguely around the kitchen with a packet of rice noodles in her hand. ‘Here.’ She took them from Lydia and placed them deftly in a pull-out cupboard next to the fridge. ‘Let me finish.’
    Lydia acquiesced and pulled a bottle of sugar-free Sprite from the fridge. ‘I’ll be in my office,’ she said in the strange new tone of voice she’d developed for talking to the woman she paid to deal with her domestic affairs; it said, ‘I am not your friend, no, but neither am I the kind of heartless, overpaid St John’s Wood resident who sees you as nothing more than a paid-for slave. I know that you are a human being and I am aware that you have a meaningful and real life outside my home, but I still do not really wish to discuss your children with you, or to find out what brought you from the palm-lined shores of a Philippine island to our dirty old city. I am a nice person, and I too have travelled a long way to get where I am today, but I would like to keep our relationship purely professional. If that’s OK with you? Thank you.’
    Lydia had only had a housekeeper for a few months. It hadn’t been her idea. It was her