Read The Wedding Countdown Online
Authors: Ruth Saberton
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Genre Fiction, #Historical, #Cultural Heritage, #Contemporary, #Historical Fiction, #Friendship, #Nick Spalding, #Ruth Saberton, #top ten, #bestselling, #Romance, #Michele Gorman, #london, #Cricket, #Belinda Jones, #Romantic Comedy, #Humor, #Women's Fiction, #Celebs, #Love, #magazine, #best-seller, #Relationships, #Humour, #celebrity, #top 100, #Sisters, #Pakistan, #Parents, #bestseller, #talli roland, #Marriage, #Romantic
The Wedding Countdown (45 page)
But Andi didn’t dare take a chance. Or more accurately she couldn’t afford to take a chance. She needed her job. Tom hadn’t worked since an episode of Holby City six months previously (he’d played a demanding patient, with alarming ease) and somebody had to pay the rent on the flat in Balham. And if that someone was her at the moment then she knew it wouldn’t be forever. Like Tom always said, his big break was probably only just around the corner. Just what and where this corner might be was something of a mystery, though. Andi had a nasty feeling that it could well be a corner very far away. Maybe Australia? Or perhaps on the moon? She was beginning to worry…
“I said, are you going to stand there all day, or what?” The man behind was really impatient now. “Some of us do have other things to do, you know!”
Muttering a hasty apology, Andi cancelled her transaction and retrieved the card. Maybe she’d accidentally used the wrong one? Perhaps Tom had placed his in her purse for safekeeping or something and because she was so stressed she’d used it by mistake? That would make sense. It wouldn’t be unlike Tom to have an overdraft that made the National Debt look small.
And neither would it be the first time he’d kept this from her…
Andi stepped aside and let the man behind take her place. Then, slowly and hopefully, she turned the card over. Please, please let it be Tom’s. They shared a PIN – to make things easier, Tom had argued. She lived with him, after all, and she loved him, didn’t she? Then what was there to worry about? Didn’t she trust him?
The sun was hot on her pale skin and heat rose from the pavement, but Andi remained icicle cold. Of course she trusted Tom. They’d had a row this morning, just a silly row because yet again he’d forgotten to pay their rent, but it hadn’t meant anything. He said he’d left the cash in a taxi and that people made silly mistakes all the time, which was fair enough. Look at her right now getting their cards confused. It was an easy mistake to make. She’d laugh about it in a minute.
Or at least she hoped she would.
The card lay flat in her palm. Miss Miranda Evans, it read. There was no mistaking it: her name was emblazoned right across the plastic in raised metallic letters. This Maestro card was undoubtedly hers, as was the emptied bank account.
Andi had the hideous sensation that she was descending very fast in a lift. This couldn’t be happening. She was good with money. Stingy and mean, Angel called her, but then Angel could afford to have a more carefree attitude when there was always a big sister on hand to bail her out. Who was there to rescue Andi if the rent was due and she’d blown it on a handbag instead? Or if she’d maxed out her credit cards and couldn’t make the minimum payment? Their father, Alex, lived abroad with his wife – he had sold the family home shortly after Andi and Angel’s mother had died – and couldn’t be expected to stump up money whenever Angel got economically sidetracked by a designer frock or the latest must-have shoes. Save a postcard or two, their father was pretty useless at keeping in touch. Not that this was anything unusual. He’d been exactly the same when his daughters were in boarding school. Holidays had been spent with housemistresses or the pitying mothers of friends; plays and prize-givings had seldom been attended, and birthdays had been rather sad affairs. Such was the life of children of a globetrotting diplomat. Andi and Angel’s father had paid the school fees, bought the tuck and then carried on as usual, moving from one glamorous embassy to another. No wonder she had, as Tom had put it earlier, “control issues” when it came to money.
Do I have issues with finances? wondered Andi. If she’d had any money left, a few sessions in The Priory might have helped answer this question. Now was probably not the best time to start thinking about her father. The point was that she only had herself to rely on. Nobody else was ever going to appear and bail her out; that was for certain. Unlike Angel, whom people seemed to fall over themselves to help, Andi had always been seen as the grown-up one, the sensible big sister who could always be relied upon. It made her feel about as exciting as a paint-drying test run in the Dulux factory, but old habits died hard. Today she had only taken a break from the office, and the huge pile of work that was going to take her half the night to complete, because Angel had phoned in floods of tears. Her latest credit card had been refused, Angel had told her, and she desperately needed some cash just to tide her over until payday. She was going to sell her Gucci lookalike bag on eBay tomorrow! She could pay Andi back by next week. Please? Please!
As usual Andi had caved in. She’d promised her sister she’d help, just this once more, and had left her desk – much to the displeasure of Zoe who, pointedly eating her wrap at her desk, had warned Andi that she needed to be back on time. Running down the Haymarket in the blazing heat had been almost enough to give Andi a heart attack, but add to this the stress of finding all her money vanished into the ether and she was now a near-certain candidate for the local casualty department. Angel might have to wait. Normally the Bank of Big Sis was pretty reliable but today it was unexpectedly closed for business. Maybe she’d check once more just in case it was a technical error?
Stepping back into the queue, Andi wondered whether Tom would know what was going on. Tom was charming and silver-tongued but he was as much use with finances as chocolate was for making teapots. In fact he was so ostrich-like when it came to ignoring calls from Barclaycard and hiding bank statements that she was considering buying him a pile of sand and suggesting he just stick his head in for a bit while she paid the bills again and cut up his cards. Fishing out her mobile from her leather satchel, Andi attempted to reach him, but her call went straight to answerphone. Typical. He was probably deep in Loose Women and oblivious. She’d try again later.
Andi sighed. Between them her sister and her boyfriend left her juggling everything. She was so good by now that Cirque du Soleil could have snapped her up, which was a far cheerier prospect than spending hours in the office with Zoe making snide comments and giving her the most difficult clients. Most of the time Andi credited herself with doing a pretty good job of holding everything together, but sometimes it might have been nice just to lean on somebody else and ask them to share the burden.
“All yours again,” said the man who’d stepped in front. He was stuffing twenties into a wallet. Andi’s heart plopped into her shoes. So the machine was dispensing money then. There went the vain hope that it was broken.
Tucking a stray curl of red hair behind her ears, she forced herself to take a deep breath and to start again. In went the card and with shaking hands Andi punched in her PIN. One balance request revealed exactly the same information as before; this was followed by a swift checking of her savings account and then her credit-card balance with paper slips, just to put the awful truth into writing.
Andi leaned against the wall to stop herself from falling over. It was at times like these she wished she hadn’t been such a swot at school, preferring to bury her nose in the library; if only she’d slunk around the back of the PE huts with Angel and the others to read illicit Jilly Coopers and learn to smoke. Andi had never had so much as a drag in her life but right now she could have killed for a nicotine hit.
Right. Standing here worrying wasn’t doing any good. She had to find out what on earth was going on. She checked her watch. Twenty minutes until she had to be back at her desk. Just enough time to nip into the bank and talk to somebody. Standing out here stressing wasn’t going to achieve anything. She was more than capable of sorting this out. It was bound to be a silly admin error on the bank’s part, that was all – nothing that a twenty-nine-year-old, (moderately) successful career woman couldn’t resolve.
Glancing in the shiny glass of the huge swivel doors, she caught sight of her reflection and was quietly satisfied. She looked every inch the professional with her neat ponytail and smart trouser suit, cut loosely to hide curves that would have been distracting somewhere as buttoned up as Hart Frozer Accounting. Her eyes were the same green as Cornish rock pools and she wore no make-up except for a sweep of mascara over her lashes and a subtle pink stain on her full lips. Why Zoe gave her such a hard time, Andi really had no idea.
Taking a deep breath she stepped into the revolving doors. It was probably just a clerical error, and putting it right would only take a matter of minutes.
Wouldn’t it?
We hope you’ve enjoyed this sneak peek at
Escape for the Summer
which is available globally in Kindle format from
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Ruth Saberton is an Amazon top ten best-selling and author of
Katy Carter Wants a Hero
. She also writes upmarket commercial fiction under the pen names Jessica Fox, Georgie Carter and Holly Cavendish.
Born and raised in the UK, Ruth is currently living in Grand Cayman, where she plans to stay for the next two years. What an adventure!
And since she loves to chat with readers, please do add her as a Facebook friend and follow her on twitter.
Twitter: @ruthsaberton
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