The Beach Hut by Veronica Henry Page A

would have far preferred . . . well, anything, quite frankly.
    And Ian always had a plan these days, a scheme, a scam, usually something that had been planted in his head by one of the partners at work. Sarah had questioned these plans at first, but always glazed over when he got the figures out. The first had been to purchase a flat in the rather ugly new block that had been built at the end of their road, to let out.
    ‘The figures add up,’ he told her. ‘If we buy it on an interest-only basis, the rent we get will cover the repayments. It’ll wash its face, easy.’
    Wash its face? Where did he get these expressions? Sarah couldn’t argue with him - she didn’t have a clue about interest rates or APRs - and so suddenly they were the owners of a four-bedroomed house and a flat. Then another one, which he had been tipped off was going cheap. Then another.
    ‘It’s good for the girls,’ he assured her. ‘Even if we don’t benefit, it’s a legacy for them.’
    Sarah couldn’t help feeling that the whole exercise was to make Ian feel as if he was one of the gang. She hated it when they were out and he talked about their ‘property portfolio’. It made her cringe.
    He wasn’t like that all the time, thank goodness. Just enough to put her teeth slightly on edge. Like they did when he pulled on his Armani jeans - since when had Levis not been good enough? And when he polished his BMW at the weekend - what on earth was wrong with a bit of dirt?
    And sometimes he looked at her critically when they were going out. He had suggested once or twice that she smarten herself up a bit, and she had been outraged. Did he want her to be all fake tan and blond highlights, like the rest of the wives in their coterie? They had no sense of expression. She might not be smart, but she knew how to dress as an individual. She wasn’t going to put on their uniform of designer jeans and sparkly tops and six-inch heels. She was quite happy in her little dresses and vintage cardigans and biker boots, her hair piled into a messy topknot. She certainly wasn’t going to change to make him feel as if they belonged.
    Once he had looked at her hands. There was paint under her nails, which were short and ragged, and the skin was chapped from white spirit and wiping them on rags.
    ‘Why don’t you get your nails done?’ he asked, and she realised he wanted her to have hands like the other women, soft and pampered, with their false nails, square-ended with white tips. The very idea made her shudder. They had hands like porn stars, hands that were made for rubbing themselves suggestively over a man’s chest in a meaningless gesture.
    And anyway, the people they mixed with didn’t put her under any pressure to don their uniform. The women always cooed over what she wore, admiring her bravery. ‘You’re so arty,’ they sighed, ‘so boho. ’
    ‘I’m just me, ’ she would reply, though she wanted to retort that she wasn’t a sheep. She didn’t put her name down for a designer handbag at the local boutique, she bid for one on eBay or found something in a charity shop.
    She could tell Ian disapproved, but he hadn’t always. He’d once loved her for her kookiness. He’d been proud of the fact she was an artist. He’d shown everyone the fairy mural she had done for the girls’ bedroom in Harbourne. He’d loved that she decorated their Christmas presents with potato prints and shells she’d sprayed silver. Now he seemed embarrassed. He wanted to buy everything in Selfridges and have it gift-wrapped, all shiny paper and sharp edges. If he had his way, he’d book her an appointment with a personal shopper and have her made over from top to toe, until she looked like a clone. A fully paid-up member of the Terracotta Army, as she privately dubbed them, on account of their permanent spray tans.
    In fact, the only thing she had done lately that he had approved of was buy the beach hut. It had been her idea. She had seen the For Sale sign