The Lost Sister by Kathleen McGurl (i can read book club .TXT) 📕

not. You know what Steve’s like when he gets his teeth into a project. There’s no one better than him at getting things organised and done.’

‘Do you really think we should do it? Sell our house and everything?’

‘Well, what’s the alternative? Neither of us are working anymore. I’m not ready to just vegetate in front of daytime TV for the next thirty years. So, yes, I think we should put our house on the market as soon as possible. We’ve been saying we should thin down our possessions ready for downsizing anyway. This’ll force us to actually get on and do it. And living with Steve, Manda and Gray will be awesome. It’ll be like being twenty again – regaining our youth!’

‘Ha. Except we are nearly sixty. But I agree, we do want to downsize and release some equity. So we might as well get on with sorting our stuff out. I reckon the boys will take some of the spare furniture. And it’s probably time I threw out all their old schoolbooks and nursery artwork.’

‘God, Lu, have you still got all that?’

I grimaced and nodded. ‘In the attic. About five boxes of it.’

Downsizing. Not moving to France. That’s all I’d agreed to, wasn’t it?

So the following week I began clearing the attic, while Phil started on the garage and arranged for valuations from estate agents. We cleaned and tidied ready for the agent’s photographer, and then put the house on the market. It felt good to make a start on this – we’d been talking about selling up for at least a year.

A week later we heard that Gray already had an offer on his place, and that Steve was away in France looking at potential properties.

‘Already!’ I said to Manda, when she phoned to tell us. I couldn’t believe they were really this serious about it all, but it looked like Steve was, at least. My heart lurched. I’d accepted the idea of selling our family home, but moving abroad was a much bigger step, one I didn’t entirely want to take.

‘He spent days online scrolling through endless possibilities, then two days ago said to me it’d be easier to be “on the ground”, and next thing I knew he’d booked a flight to Nice.’

‘Didn’t he want company?’ I asked. I’d have thought he’d have taken Manda or Gray with him.

‘I think his plan is to whittle his short list down to a proper shortlist – there are over a hundred on it at the moment – and then let us have a look at the details. Then if any really stand out and we’re still all keen, we can go en masse to view them.’

‘Sounds good.’ The rest of us hadn’t the first idea how to buy property abroad, but Steve would have looked it all up already, spoken to suitable people for advice, and would know exactly what he was doing. He was a born project manager.

‘Lu, I’m so excited about this, aren’t you?’ Manda said. I detected a tiny bit of worry in her voice, as if she was frightened Phil and I might have had second thoughts. She was right – I’d been having second thoughts all the way through. But I refused to be the one to spoil things.

‘Definitely! Just can’t wait to get on with it now!’ I forced myself to sound enthusiastic. Whatever happened, I was not going to put a dampener on it. There was still a strong chance the plan would fall apart.

‘Phew! I told Zoe, too. She thinks it’s a great idea. I was worried, you know, that she’d somehow think we were abandoning her …’

‘But she lives in Australia – actually you’ll have moved a little closer to her!’

‘I mean more that when, or God help me if, she comes home to England, we won’t be there.’

‘No, but you’ll be a short flight away. And she can come “home” to France. Home is where her heart is.’

Manda answered with a little wobble in her voice. ‘You’re right. It’s the only thing that worries me, though. That our kids won’t like it.’ She took a deep breath. She’d struggled with empty nest syndrome ever since Zoe first left home to go to university. ‘What do Tom and Alfie think?’

This was my chance. I could offload to Manda here, now, tell her my misgivings about the whole project, using the boys as an excuse, perhaps. She’d talk to Steve, and maybe it’d all be quietly put to bed, for surely if we weren’t all happy with the idea, we shouldn’t do it? After all, moving to another country is a big step, at any time of life. But no. I wasn’t going to be the party pooper. They’d never think quite the same of me again if I did that now. And I was still convinced the plan would die a natural death if I just let events run their course.

I smiled, to make my voice sound happy. ‘They’re delighted. Tom sees it as a base for cheap holidays. Alfie’s dictated we need to have a swimming pool, and a butler serving iced cocktails at all hours.’

‘Fair enough. I’ll let Steve know the new requirements.’ We had a giggle about this, before going on to talk about Gray’s house sale.

‘Steve and I have said he can move in here if need be, if his sale goes through really quickly. Actually that’d give us some capital for a deposit, if we need it. It’s all working out, Lu. We’ve got the skiing holiday coming up, then it’s possible we might be ready to move in the summer!’

Well, I hoped Phil and I would be ready to move by the summer. But with luck, not to France.

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