Love Nest by Julia Llewellyn Page A

and swallowed them.
    ‘Sorry. I need to take so many vitamins to keep myself in shape and the best way to benefit from them is to have a few every few hours or so.’
    ‘Of course,’ said Miss Porter-Healey. Karen felt embarrassed, like she always did when Phil went through this pantomime. She could understand why; he’d been at death’s door, after all, but the fussing and obsessing still – quite unreasonably – annoyed her.
    Phil put his arm round her shoulder. ‘There seems to be a very special energy here.’
    ‘I think so,’ said Miss Porter-Healey.
    ‘I’ve been very ill, you see.’ He held up a hand to silence any platitudes. ‘Don’t worry, all is well now. But it’s forced me to take a good look at my life. Make many changes.’ He smiled ingratiatingly at Grace in the way he used to when he wanted to persuade someone to hand over a huge percentage of their company for a tiny sum of money.
    ‘I hope you don’t mind me saying so, but this place seems to hold so many opportunities. It could be opened to the public. Weddings. Corporate bonding days.’
    ‘Absolutely.’ Grace smiled, although she seemed a little sad. ‘I was considering ventures like that, but then my mother got ill and nursing her took priority. But it would make me so happy to let everyone share Chadlicote’s beauty. And it would certainly help with the overheads, which are substantial, I’m afraid.’
    ‘Well, that’s pretty obvious,’ Phil said, but in a very friendly way, and everyone laughed. ‘But it sounds as if it could be ideal for us. Karen’s a bit apprehensive about jacking in her job and this would be a project for her.’
    He said it as if restoring Chadlicote was the equivalent of – say – buying and wrapping forty Christmas presents, a bit of a hassle but fun really. Another rictus grin from Karen. Her jaw was aching from so much fake smiling, her head from calculating what this would all entail. Years, probably decades, of builder hell; long, freezing winters. And all for a future discussing marquees with stressed brides and bulk-buying white wine to serve junior executives on away-days.
    A lifetime of being exiled from the friends she’d taken such an age to make, who’d promise to visit but wouldn’t. Of seeing the career she adored knocked brutally on the head.
    Of being stuck in the middle of nowhere with a man she was no longer sure she loved.
    Karen would have forever to live with the secret that although she was obviously overjoyed her husband was still alive, she sometimes fantasized about life if he had died. She and the girls would have been devastated, of course they would. But she would have been alone, starting again.
    For Karen was in the nightmarish position of being still married to a man who bore virtually no resemblance to the one she’d married. The Phil who had survived his cancer was nervier, more anxious about silly little things and careless about big issues like money. He said he wanted to spend more time with the girls, to appreciate the finer things in life, to watch the grass grow, but then he wasted hours slumped in front of sport, or – worse, in Karen’s opinion – on the internet communicating with other cancer ‘survivors’, swapping tips about vitamin supplements and homoeopathy.
    All the burdens he had used to shoulder, like dealing with bills or little household repairs, tended to get passed to Karen, because he said stress was bad for him. He wouldn’t go on holiday to hot places any more because he was frightened of the sun, and he insisted on a vegetarian or vegan diet, which was tricky since the girls ate virtually nothing but sausages, chicken and bolognese sauce (which Bea inspected forensically for any trace of hidden vegetable).
    The result was that Karen had changed too. She was a far angrier person than she had been. Angry with her husband for suffering so unstoically. For his demands – which, while being utterly reasonable, were still infuriating.