Read A Minor Indiscretion for Free Online

you been busy this morning?” I ask, and sound as if I’m talking to my children.
    â€œSteady,” Christian replies with a shrug. “I hoped you’d come back. I’ve been hoping all week.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œWhy?” He laughs. “Do you believe in fate, Ali?”
    â€œNot really,” I say. I actually believe in paying your credit-card bills on time, washing strawberries before you eat them and always wearing clean underwear in case you’re involved in an accident that requires hospital treatment and showing a young, attractive doctor your pants. See my earlier discourse on the tooth fairy, if you want to be assured of my essentially skeptical and unromantic nature. “Do you?”
    â€œOf course.”
    I want to say, “But that’s because you’re a child and you haven’t been worn away by the daily grind of just getting through life and your head is still filled with ideas and hopes and fanciful notions.” I don’t, because behind that boyish facade there is a developing man and I don’t want to crush his unfettered spirit. Not on a bright, sunny day like this. I turn and smile at him. “Let’sgo for the cake option instead,” I suggest, and he grins back and we head for the nearest place, which looks tatty, but at least has tables outside.
    La Place Velma serves enormous cakes. Christian opts for the no-holds-barred full fruit stall on a cream doughnut affair. My children eat like horses and look like stick insects too. It isn’t fair, is it? I plump for the more sedate strawberry tart and I think of my sister. Not because she’s a tart, but because she called me one, if you remember. And I think at this moment she might be right. Although I’m sure Christian isn’t trying to impress me, because he dives straight into his cake and pulls bits out with his fingers, something I’d go mental at if Elliott did it, and he has cream on the end of his nose and he must know but he seems entirely unconcerned. He eats with relish and is taking such joy in a simple cake that I can’t stop watching him. It makes me smile. A smile that comes from deep down inside my tummy.
    â€œWhere do you live?” Christian asks as he wipes his mouth.
    â€œRichmond.”
    â€œNice. Big house?”
    I shrug. “Yes. We bought it when property there cost an arm and just half a leg.” I’m horrified. I sound as if I’m talking to my bank manager, and can do nothing about it. “It was a wreck when we bought it. We’ve done a lot of work.”
    â€œYou and your husband?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œAnd you travel in to your design studio every day.”
    â€œIt’s not my studio. I just work there. But, yes, I travel in every day.” And the weird thing is, Ed works just down the road. Well, in Soho. His office is a stone’s throw from the Groucho Club. Very trendy address if you’re a media type. But, you know what? We never travel in together. Never. Well, once in a blue moon, but that’s all. Ed’s often out on location, I suppose, and he works later than I do, but it’s never occurred to us to meet up for lunch, and I always belt back the minute I finish to collect Elliott from his school, so a relaxed drink at the end of the day is out of the question. It seems such a waste. Maybe I’ll suggest it to him. I realize I’m drifting and turn my attention back to Christian. “What about you?”
    â€œNotting Hill,” he says. “We get a great view of the carnival.”
    â€œExpensive?”
    â€œYeah. Where isn’t?” He flushes slightly. “My parents still help me out. Until I get myself settled, of course.”
    â€œOf course.”
    â€œI’ll write down the address for you,” he says, scrabbling in his rucksack for a pen. And I wonder why on earth I’ll ever need to have his address. He grabs a business card from