Chapters (40)
- Cover
- About the Author
- PENGUIN BOOKS
- Dedication
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-one
- Twenty-two
- Twenty-three
- Twenty-four
- Twenty-five
- Twenty-six
- Twenty-seven
- Twenty-eight
- Twenty-nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-one
- Thirty-two
- Thirty-three
- Thirty-four
- Thirty-five
- THE BEGINNING
‘What is it then?’ Juliet put her hands on her hips and stared hard at her. ‘Worried that someone might just notice you? That you won’t be able to hide in a corner in your grey skirt?’
‘No! I don’t know. I just can’t …’
‘Cinderella shall go to the fucking ball. I want to buy you a dress. It would give me pleasure.’
‘I’ll try it on then. But it’ll look dreadful on me.’
‘Let’s see.’
She tried it on again later, when Jem and Juliet had gone to bed and she was restlessly far from sleep. She pulled the silky folds over her head and felt them fall softly around her. She stood on tiptoes in front of the mirror and stared at her head and shoulders, then climbed up on the chair and examined the rest of her in sections. Then she put the dress carefully back on its hanger and hung it from a nail on the wall. Several times during the night, when she lurched awake out of one of her dreams, she saw the dress there and thought it was a person standing quietly in the room beside her, waiting for her.
On Thursday morning she worked hard. She collected the beef from the butcher’s and also bought three ready-cooked chickens for that evening, when all of Juliet’s Irish contingent would be there, as well as two wheels of Camembert, and a dozen thick baguettes. She filled up the bike pannier with tomatoes, lettuces with soil on their roots, large radishes, thin, bendy cucumbers, and a paper bag of purple figs for the wedding breakfast. On her second trip into the village, she bought two huge tarts, a bag of tea lights which she was going to put round the garden in jars, and an armful of blowsy yellow roses whose scent reminded her of home. On the third trip, she and Jem took her car into the city and collected the wine, the glasses, several bags of pistachio nuts, cashew nuts, crisps, and olives in plastic pouches, and a sack of ice that they jammed into the small freezer. She pumped up the double lilo and contemplated putting the borrowed tent up at the end of the garden, but decided she’d wait for them to arrive.
‘It’s been lovely,’ she said to Jem.
‘For me too.’
‘I won’t have a chance to say this properly later. I really, really …’ She stopped. ‘You know,’ she said. ‘Everything. I wish you both everything you want.’
‘Thanks,’ said Jem awkwardly. ‘I know. You too.’
‘I know.’
