Sophie Kinsella: Shopaholic and Baby

“Well, then.” I suddenly have a thought. “We should invest the baby’s trust fund in Bangladesh too. We’d probably make a fortune!”

“Are you crazy?” He stares at me.

“Why not? It’s an emerging market!”

“I don’t think so.” Luke rolls his eyes. “In fact, I’ve already spoken to Kenneth about the baby’s fund, and we’ve agreed to invest it in a range of secure unit trusts—”

“Wait a minute!” I raise a hand. “What do you mean, you’ve spoken to Kenneth? What about my opinion?”

I can’t believe they haven’t even consulted me! Like I don’t count. Like I didn’t used to be a financial expert on television and get hundreds of letters a week asking for advice.

“Look, Becky.” Luke sighs. “Kenneth is very happy to recommend suitable investments. You don’t need to worry.”

“That’s not the point!” I say indignantly. “Luke, you don’t understand. We’re going to be parents. We need to make all important decisions together. Otherwise our child will run around hitting us and we’ll end up hiding in the bedroom and never have sex again!”

“What?”

“It’s true! It’s on Supernanny!”

Luke looks totally baffled. He really should watch more TV.

“All right, fine,” he says at last. “We can decide things together. But I’m not putting the baby’s trust fund in some high-risk emerging market.”

“Well, I’m not putting it in some stodgy old bank account where it doesn’t make any profit!” I retaliate.

“Stalemate.” Luke’s mouth twitches. “So…what does Supernanny recommend when parents have fundamentally differing approaches to trust fund investment?”

“I’m not sure she’s covered it,” I admit. Then a sudden brain wave hits me. “I know. We’ll split up the money. You invest half and I’ll invest half. And we’ll see who does best.” I can’t resist adding, “I bet it’s me.”

“Oh, I see.” Luke raises his eyebrows. “So…this is a challenge, is it, Mrs. Brandon?”

“He who dares wins,” I say nonchalantly, and Luke starts to laugh.

“OK. Let’s do this. Half each, to be invested in anything we choose.”

“You’re on,” I say, holding out my hand. We shake gravely, as the phone starts ringing.

“I’ll get it,” Luke says, and heads over to his desk. “Hello? Oh, hi there. How are you?”

I am so going to win this! I’ll pick loads of brilliant investments and make the baby an absolute mint. Maybe I’ll invest in futures. Or gold. Or…art! I just need to find the next Damien Hirst and buy a pickled cow or whatever, and then auction it for a huge profit at Sotheby’s, and everyone will say how farsighted and genius I was….

“Really?” Luke is saying. “No, she never mentioned it. Well, thanks.” He puts down the phone and turns to face me with a quizzical expression. “Becky, that was Giles from the real estate agents. Apparently you had a long talk earlier this week. What exactly did you say to him?”

Shit. I knew there was another tricky subject I had to broach. I should really start a list.

“Oh yes, that.” I clear my throat. “I just told Giles we were willing to be more flexible in our requirements.” I straighten some papers on my desk, not looking up. “Like you said. Expand our search area a bit.”

“A bit?” echoes Luke incredulously. “To the Caribbean? He’s sending us the details of eight bloody beach villas and wants to know if we’d like to arrange flights!”

“You’re the one who said we had to look further afield, Luke!” I say defensively. “It was your idea!”

“I meant Kensington! Not Barbados!”

“Have you seen what we can get in Barbados?” I counter eagerly. “Look at this!” I push my office chair across the floor to his computer, click on a browser, and find my way onto a Caribbean realty page.

Property Web sites are the best thing ever. Especially the ones with virtual tours.

“See this one?” I point at the screen. “Five bedroom villa with infinity pool, sunken garden, and guest cottage!”

“Becky…” Luke pauses, as though thinking how to explain the situation to me. “It’s in Barbados.”

He is so hung up on that one detail.

“So what?” I say. “It’d be fab! The baby would learn to swim, and you could send all your e-mails from the guest cottage…and I could go running on the beach every day….”

I have an alluring image of myself in a string bikini, pushing one of those jogger prams along a glistening white Caribbean beach. And Luke would be all tanned in a polo shirt, drinking a rum punch. He could get into surfing, and put beads in his hair again—

“I’m not putting beads in my hair again.” Luke interrupts my thoughts.

That’s so spooky! How on earth did he…

Oh, OK. I possibly may have shared my Caribbean fantasy with him before.

“Look, sweetheart,” he says, sitting down. “Maybe in five, ten years’ time we can think about something like this. If things go to plan, we’ll have a lot of options by then. But for now it has to be central London.”

“Well, what are we going to do, then?” I close the Barbados Web page crossly. “There’s nothing on the market. It’ll be Christmas and we’ll be out on the streets, and we’ll have to go to a homeless shelter with the baby, and eat soup….”

“Becky.” Luke lifts a hand to stop me. “We won’t have to eat soup.” He clicks one of his e-mails, opens an attachment, and presses Print. A moment later the printer springs into action.

“What?” I say. “What are you doing?”

“Here.” He collects the pages and hands them to me. “This is why Giles rang. In case we were ‘still considering London,’ as he put it. It’s just come on the market, round the corner from here. Delamain Road. But we need to be quick.”

I scan the first page, taking in the words as fast as I can.

Elegant family house…ideal for entertaining…grand entrance hall…magnificent luxury kitchen…

Wow. I have to admit, this looks amazing.

Garden with architect-designed play area…six bedrooms…dressing room with walk-in shoe cupboard…

I catch my breath. A walk-in shoe cupboard! But surely that’s just another way of saying—

“It’s even got a Shoe Room.” Luke is watching me with a grin. “Giles was pretty pleased about that. Shall we go and see it?”

I am so excited about this house! And not just because of the Shoe Room. I’ve read the details over and over, and I can just see Luke and me living there. Taking a shower in the frameless limestone RainJet cubicle…making coffee in the Bulthaup kitchen with its state-of-the-art appliances…and then maybe strolling out into the secluded west-facing garden with its range of mature specimen shrubs. Whatever they are.

It’s later that day and we’re walking along the leafy Maida Vale road on the way to our appointment to view it. I’m clutching the printout of the details in my hand, but I barely need to; I practically know them by heart.

“Twenty-four…twenty-six…” Luke is squinting at the numbers as we pass. “It’ll be on the other side of the road….”

“There it is!” I stop dead and point across the street. “Look, there’s the impressive pillared entrance and double doors with attractive fanlight! It looks fab! Let’s go!”

Luke’s hand holds me back as I’m about to hurry across the road. “Becky, before we go in, just a word.”

“What?” I’m tugging at his hand like a dog trying to get off the leash. “What is it?”

“Try to play it cool, OK? We don’t want to look too keen. First rule of business dealing, you should always look as though you could walk away.”

“Oh.” I stop yanking his hand. “All right.”