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Back The Model Wife Save as PDF
Chapters (48)
  1. Cover
  2. Praise
  3. About the Author
  4. Also by Tricia Stringer
  5. Title Page
  6. Dedication
  7. One
  8. Two
  9. Three
  10. Four
  11. Five
  12. Six
  13. Seven
  14. Eight
  15. Nine
  16. Ten
  17. Eleven
  18. Twelve
  19. Thirteen
  20. Fourteen
  21. Fifteen
  22. Sixteen
  23. Seventeen
  24. Eighteen
  25. Nineteen
  26. Twenty
  27. Twenty-One
  28. Twenty-Two
  29. Twenty-Three
  30. Twenty-Four
  31. Twenty-Five
  32. Twenty-Six
  33. Twenty-Seven
  34. Twenty-Eight
  35. Twenty-Nine
  36. Thirty
  37. Thirty-One
  38. Thirty-Two
  39. Thirty-Three
  40. Thirty-Four
  41. Thirty-Five
  42. Thirty-Six
  43. Thirty-Seven
  44. Thirty-Eight
  45. Author’s Note
  46. Acknowledgements
  47. Excerpt
  48. One

“Your mum’s gone on a holiday.” Milt stood just inside the kitchen door, his phone clutched in his hand. A grubby damp mark circled his brow where his hat had been. “She’s gone to Aunty Brenda’s for a break.”

The three of them stared at him as if he’d started speaking in another language.

“It’s not school holidays yet, is it?” Kate broke the silence.

“Does that mean I have to do all the cooking?” Laura gaped at him.

“But we’re tailing,” Bree said.

“Yes we are, and we’ve a hungry team to feed. Let’s get going.” He clapped his hands and they galvanised into action, carrying lunch to the car.

Bree was the last to leave the kitchen. Knowing her mother wasn’t there, hadn’t really been there for a while now, left her with a hollow feeling as if her mum had simply evaporated, gone for good. She shrugged away her unease and strode out the door, pulling it shut with a thud behind her.

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A hundred kilometres south Natalie was sitting in a bakery making up for last night’s missed dinner and the breakfast she hadn’t eaten that morning. There was a glitch in her escape plan, well, there’d been two but she’d dealt with the first one. When she’d spoken to Paul he’d said it was short notice for her to take three days’ leave. She’d surprised herself and him by firmly declaring she had plenty of leave and she was taking three days of it and he’d have to organise it, whatever it took. That done, she’d tried Brenda again. She’d got her voicemail the first time. The second time she’d tried, a breathless Brenda had answered. She was on her way to the airport. Her daughter and son-in-law did business in Thailand and they were taking Brenda along as babysitter for their one-year-old.

“As if that would be a hardship,” Brenda had chortled. Her only grandchild was the centre of her world these days. “We’ll be gone a couple of weeks and there’ll be time to have a look around, see some sights. We’re going to finish up in a resort in Phuket before we come home.”

Natalie swallowed the gloom of her own disappointment and instead focused on the joy she heard in her friend’s voice. Losing her husband, selling the property and moving halfway across Australia had been such a tough time for Brenda. She deserved some happiness.