Free The Secret of Happy Ever After by Lucy Dillon

that and Chloe had spent ten minutes waiting at the bus stop with no bus money. The blame cloud had nearly engulfed the sun.
    With a groan, she stretched out a bare arm behind her head and picked up the phone.
    ‘Hello?’ she said, in a tone that she could turn into a recorded message if needed.
    ‘Hi, Anna, it’s Michelle.’
    Anna struggled into an upright position on the sofa and pulled the throw around herself. On top of her, Phil groaned and sank his forehead onto her bare shoulder.
    ‘I’m not interrupting, am I?’ Michelle enquired.
    ‘Yes,’ said Phil. ‘Tell her, yes, she is interrupting our very rare mummy and daddy time.’
    Anna covered the receiver and gave him her ‘She’s on her own, cut her some slack’ glower.
    ‘Phil and I were just . . . watching a film,’ she said. ‘I thought you might have been the girls phoning home.’
    Although it was gone ten o’clock on the McQueen sofa, it was late afternoon in New York state – peak time for a call home. Chloe, Becca and Lily had only been gone two days – two heady, schedule-free days in which she and Phil had barely been out of bed, except to walk Pongo – but they still called the house at least once a day to make sure Dad was OK. Or, as Chloe put it, ‘to make sure he was missing them properly’.
    Anna wondered if there was a time difference with Michelle too, because she sounded far too focused for a post-Christmas weeknight.
    ‘Listen, when are you next going to see Phil’s mum? At Butterfields?’
    ‘What? I don’t know. To be honest with you, Michelle, I’m not really thinking about Evelyn right now.’
    ‘Tell Michelle to call you back in the morning.’ Phil slipped his hand around her waist. ‘Whatever it is can wait, and I can’t.’
    ‘I heard that,’ said Michelle. ‘Tell him I won’t be long.’
    ‘Neither will I.’
    Anna glared at Phil to stop him, but couldn’t prevent a laugh from curling around her mouth at the tragic face he pulled.
    The first time Anna had seen Phil, he’d been wearing that same expression, and it had made her want to pull him into her arms. Ironically, he’d been with Pongo and all three girls – so she could hardly be accused of not knowing what she was taking on – being dragged unwillingly around Longhampton Town Fete on the hottest day of the year. It was difficult to tell who was enjoying it least, since Phil, Becca and Lily all had their faces painted as tigers. Chloe was a butterfly, with twice as much glitter as anyone else.
    Anna had been running a cake stall for the library, and had watched the dark-haired, harassed man with the three young girls as they bickered their way over. While she was helping Becca choose the cookie with the most chocolate on, Lily plunged her baby hands right into the giant cupcakes, smearing pink buttercream icing over Pongo, who reared up in shock and knocked the whole table over, scattering cakes everywhere and indirectly adding an extra 2 kg to the Guess the Weight of the Labrador stand next door as Coco took advantage of the early tea.
    Phil had looked so helpless and horrified at the mess, and even guiltier at the wailing that ensued, that she’d found herself apologising to him as they tried to clear things up. It was hard to be cross with a single father with a melty tiger face, especially when his eyes were so dark and beautiful she almost forgot he had whiskers. The next lunchtime he appeared in the library, looking grown-up and sexy in a suit and no face paint, bearing flowers and a cash donation ‘for the cakes we squashed’, and asked if he could buy her a coffee to say sorry.
    She still saw the hangdog face now and again. Usually when Michelle came round.
    Anna pressed the mute button on the phone. ‘Two seconds. She doesn’t have the same clocking on and off function as normal people. She’s spent all her holiday in the shop as it is.’
    ‘Then she needs to get her love life sorted out.’ Phil raised an eyebrow. ‘Just