Just My Luck by Adele Parks (best interesting books to read TXT) 📕

anymore? He checks his watch, then smiles smoothly, as though nothing is different or wrong. “Come on, hurry up. You’ll need to get changed. An agent is arriving in fifteen minutes to take us for a viewing.”

“You haven’t seen it? You’ve bought a house and you haven’t even seen it?” I splutter.

“I saw it online. There’s nothing to worry about. It’s out of this world. Anyway, we’re just renting it at the moment, but it is up for sale so if we like it, then we can buy it. How great is that?”

I guess it is great; he has at least only chosen a rental, not our next lifelong home. I allow myself to feel some level of relief, though I’m far from reassured or relaxed. I feel rushed. Bulldozed. “You’ve already signed a contract?”

“You are going to love it, Lexi.”

“Where is this house?”

“Just a few miles past Hurtington.”

Hurtington is thirty miles from where we live now. Twenty-five miles from the school Jake has just enrolled the kids in. “How will they get to school every morning?” I ask. “Is there a bus?”

“We’ll hire a driver.”

“But is there a bus?” I insist.

“I have no idea. How would I know?”

I want to point out it will most probably say on the school website, or the estate agent might possibly know. This is the sort of question people ask when uprooting their family, but I stay silent. I would have asked that question if I had been involved in selecting their school or our home. I feel disconnected. Cut off. The kids are really excited about viewing the new house and specifically bagsying their bedrooms so they chatter throughout the journey. I’m grateful that their noise masks the silence that squats heavily between Jake and me. The slim, blonde professional estate agent has a perma-tan and a perma-smile. She drives us along a winding road that I have never traveled on before and had no idea existed.

“Nearly there,” she chirps. I look about; it’s all high walls and tall established trees. Their canopies are vast and lush, their purpose not so much to offer shade as privacy, I suspect. All the houses on the road are unique, purpose-built for people who don’t think there is a house on earth that fits their specific needs and therefore have to have one designed especially. They are all enormous and elegant, and each one elicits a gasp from the children, who have their noses superglued to the car windows. When we stop at an electric gate, the estate agent opens her car window and then with her long, polished nail jabs in a code that makes the gates open. As they slowly swing on their hinges, I do not feel any sense that we’re being welcomed—it’s more as though we are stepping inside a monster’s open mouth. The gates slowly close behind the car, swallowing us.

“You can change that code, personalize it,” says the estate agent. “Maybe to your winning lottery numbers,” she suggests with a simpering laugh.

“That would be too long,” I point out.

The house is exquisite. Breathtaking. Modern, angular, very much how I imagine houses to be in Los Angeles. It’s the exact opposite to our dated, poorly repaired home with flaky paintwork and a weed-pocked garden. This is modern, all white walls, vast windows, and the garden is expertly manicured. Our car inches along the shingled drive and grinds to a halt just outside the vast dark wooden door which the estate agent unlocks. She immediately disarms the intruder alarm by inserting another code into another keypad. I guess I would be safe here. The four of us have dressed up to come on this look round—Jake, Emily and I by tacit agreement that we had to look the part. Logan was coerced, and anyway his idea of dressing up means that he has changed out of a sweaty football top and put on a clean one.

I’m so glad we did.

I get the feeling that anyone who lives in this sort of house has to constantly dress as though they are camera-ready for a shoot with Hello! The hallway is cavernous, double the height of any house I’ve ever been into. There is a glass ceiling that allows the sun to pour onto the floor, which is covered with immense white porcelain tiles that shine like glassy ice.

We dawdle through the vast and numerous rooms. I count them up. There are three reception rooms. I’m thinking maybe one is used as a dining room and another an office, but then we are shown both of those rooms so I struggle to understand why anyone would need three reception rooms. Maybe one for the kids, one for the husband and one for the wife. Oh, dear. The dining room has a huge wooden table running its entire length. I count the seats: twenty. I suppose that would be useful at Christmas. Usually in our home we resort to pulling dressing-table stools and deck chairs up around the table to make sure everyone is seated. Although, other than Christmas, I’m not sure when we’d use the dining room. Like most families we tend to gather in the kitchen, even when we are entertaining. We’re unlikely to need an office, either, since neither of us has a job anymore. The kitchen is vast and, yes, there is a huge dining area in there, too. I try to visualize us all clustered around the industrial-looking stainless-steel worktops. The estate agent is good at her job, a people reader. She asks, “Don’t you like the kitchen?”

“It’s stunning. Very modern.” She waits. “Maybe a little clinical for my taste,” I admit.

“You can have it ripped out of course, if you buy the place. It is three years old.” She rolls her eyes at me and pulls her mouth into a wide grimace; her neck looks like a turtle’s. I think I’m supposed to be horrified at the idea of a kitchen being more than three years old.

There are