A Desirable Residence by Sophie Kinsella, Madeleine Wickham

time out of London anyway,’ Ginny had pointed out. ‘Nearly all the clients I look after seem to be in Silchester. Witherstone’s is a really big account now, and there are those two property relocation companies near by.’
    ‘What about Brinkburn’s? They’re in London. And what about all the journalists? They’re all in London.’
    ‘I know,’ said Ginny. ‘But I can always come up a couple of times a week. People commute from Silchester, you know. And, I mean, I could do all this equally well from home, couldn’t I?’ She gestured around the little office at the computer terminals, the filing cabinets, the piles of property details and press releases waiting to be sent out.
    ‘But you can’t just leave me!’ wailed Clarissa. ‘We’re a team!’
    ‘I know,’ said Ginny, soothingly. ‘And we still would be a team. I just wouldn’t be here all the time. But anyway, don’t worry about it. We probably won’t go.’
    Now she tried to prepare tactful phrases in her mind. There was no point trying to conceal from Clarissa the fact that they were going to see a house. Even if Witherstone’s hadn’t been a client of theirs, Clarissa would have picked it up in no time. Not for nothing was she one of London’s foremost property PR consultants. She had generations of family connections with one of the country’s biggest estate agents, an engaging manner and an ability to wheedle gossip out of people who barely realized they had anything interesting to relate. She was also one of Ginny’s best friends and it would, Ginny realized, be a real wrench to leave their cosy office companionship and giggles.
    But she couldn’t spend the rest of her life giggling in an office. It was all right for Clarissa—she had a rich, cosseting father and a rich, cosseting husband, and a secure future mapped out. According to her, this included a baby at age thirty-two and another at thirty-four and an extra-marital fling at age thirty-six. ‘To prove to myself I haven’t lost it,’ she’d explained to Ginny in her tiny, brittle voice. ‘And to keep myself in shape.’
    They’d shared a thirtieth birthday party the year before, at which Clarissa had confided to Ginny that she was seriously thinking of postponing the first baby until age thirty-three. Or even thirty-four. ‘Then I’ll have to have the fling at thirty-eight,’ she’d said, swaying drunkenly on Ginny’s shoulder. ‘But that would be OK, wouldn’t it?’
    For Ginny, the future was certain only insofar as it existed within the four walls of her career. Several years of marriage to an actor had taught her that a steady job was not, after all, simply an interminable sentence of boredom; an endless dragging millstone to which all the tedious little people of the world chose to manacle themselves. It was a future; an income; in fact, it was a release.
    For the two years before they’d married, Piers had been almost constantly in work. He’d followed a series of badly paid, well-reviewed plays with a stunning television success as Sebastian, the hapless upper-class recruit in the police series Coppers . It was a popular programme, and by the time of their wedding, he’d almost, but not quite, reached celebrity status.
    But then Sebastian started to find police training too hardgoing, and eventually committed suicide. This, admittedly, came as no surprise to anyone, since it had been planned from the start—although it still grieved Ginny that they had not decided to make him a permanent fixture. But after leaving Coppers , Piers didn’t know quite what to do. He was by now, as Malcolm his agent had explained to both of them, slightly too well known to do extra work, but probably not quite well known enough yet to be approached by producers. It might be best if he stuck to stage work for a while.
    Which was all very well, thought Ginny, turning the corner into the street where her office was. But the little company that he’d always worked with had