Walking Back to Happiness Read Online Free Page A

upstairs ‘researching’ some online game. ‘I appreciate this.’
    ‘It’s not a problem. I’d never forgive myself if Toby got some dog hair in his yoghurt.’
    ‘No one’s—’
    ‘Dogs aren’t all slavering killers, you know.’
    ‘I’m not saying they are,’ said Louise. She didn’t have the time or the inclination to let Juliet get on her doggy soapbox, but she could feel herself being drawn into one of their routine squabbles. ‘But Mum can’t be everywhere at once. She’d never forgive herself if Toby shoved a pencil up Coco’s nose or something. Look, why are you taking this so personally? It’s not personal.’
    ‘I’m not.’
    ‘Is it because I didn’t ask you to babysit?’
    ‘No!’ Juliet sounded horrified. ‘I just . . .’
    There was a pause at the end of the line that Louise might have listened to more carefully if she hadn’t been trying to juggle the phone and extract Toby from his chair, while indicating to Peter that the washing machine needed emptying before he left the house. ‘Fine,’ she said instead. ‘I’ll see you at Mum’s. Fifteen minutes.’
     
    Juliet’s Victorian villa was in a suburb of Longhampton called Rosehill, a pub-and-church village that had been swallowed up as the town sprawled outwards in the prosperous years before the war when Longhampton had temporarily been the jam-and-preserve capital of the Midlands.
    Her parents lived on the other side of town in an executive new-build estate that had what her dad called ‘decent-sized garages’. Getting over there meant tackling Longhampton’s complicated one-way system, something Juliet only enjoyed doing at night. At night, she could sweep around the empty lanes, letting the signs dictate her route round the ornate red-brick town hall and the park with its stiff-necked tulips that Ben had always laughed at. At rush hour, however, it was clogged with angry, impatient traffic.
    Juliet was only at the first of five roundabouts, and hadn’t moved for ten minutes. The tension headache that had started as she left the security of her house intensified as the radio kept reminding her that she was going to be late, then later, and her knuckles whitened on the steering wheel.
    The van was heating up, and it seemed to release traces of Ben’s familiar smell. Soap. Earth. Sweat. But there was nowhere to pull over and cry, like she could at night, so Juliet swallowed and turned up the radio, forcing herself to sing so she wouldn’t think.
    It wasn’t great, but it was an improvement on the weeks when she couldn’t even open the van door, and her dad had had to run it round the block for her to keep the battery charged.
    She struggled through the traffic, keeping her cool for Minton’s safety’s sake, and finally parked outside her mum’s house, behind Louise’s Citroën Picasso. Coco was sitting on the doorstep, an anxious expression on her elderly face. If she’d had a label and a little suitcase, she couldn’t have looked more tragic, thought Juliet.
    ‘At last!’ Diane came rushing out. She had a pinny tied over her navy slacks, a J cloth in one hand and Dettol spray in the other. ‘Are you OK?’
    ‘I’m fine,’ said Juliet. She opened her door, leaving Minton sticking his nose out of the gap in the passenger window.
    ‘We were starting to get worried.’ Diane was peering at her, checking for signs of widowly meltdown. ‘We thought you . . . Well, you’re here now. Come on in, Louise is just getting Toby settled.’
    Juliet wanted to point out that Louise was only going back to work, not going into space. It was just another step in her perfect life plan. She was the one who no longer had a life plan.
    ‘Oh, finally,’ said Louise when she entered the kitchen.
    It was spotless. Diane’s standards had ramped right up with the arrival of Toby. She’d even bought a steam cleaner to meet Louise’s exacting criteria on hygiene, and the kitchen smelled pine-fresh. Juliet noted that she was the