Before She Was Mine Read Online Free PDF Page A

Land of the Dead , then mocking the soppier of the love messages from the local paper. Happy hours, where I’d felt
as though Melody was just about the only person I knew who was on my wavelength.
    I’d thought we might do something similar tonight. She could bitch about Nicky and Christian and the Engaged in general, and I could scold her, and we’d both enjoy ourselves.
    Except she was going out and leaving me to eat unwanted fish.
    I did try before she went. While she was fiddling with the cap on the wine bottle, I related the story of Christian’s proposal and Nicky’s reaction.
    ‘Jesus!’ was Melody’s first response, but then I realised she’d cut herself on the metal edge of the screw top. So while she sucked her finger, I gave her the news again,
in summary.
    ‘Oh yeah, Mr Posh-Pants,’ she said.
    ‘Don’t call him that.’
    ‘Why not?’
    ‘Because I might come out with it myself.’
    She dabbed her hand on her skirt and grimaced. ‘When’s the date?’
    ‘Not sure yet. Mad, aren’t they, though? She’s only twenty-three. Don’t you think that’s too young?’
    ‘Totally.’
    She glanced round the room, frowning.
    ‘What feels weird—’ I began.
    ‘Shit, you haven’t seen my phone, have you? It was on the window sill, I’m sure it was on the window sill. I definitely put it there.’
    So we stopped to hunt. All the cushions off the sofa, her bag tipped upside down on the carpet, every pocket in every coat turned out. She found a tenner she didn’t know she had, and a
mysterious number on a scrap of paper. No mobile, though. Next she got dust in her eye, and I had to follow her to the big mirror on the landing while she poked under her lashes and swore. I was
still trying to talk about Nicky, but she wasn’t listening.
    ‘Who is it you’re meeting?’ I asked as she repaired her eyeliner.
    ‘Joe.’
    ‘Joe who?’
    ‘Sounds like a knock-knock joke.’
    ‘I meant, what’s his particular strangeness? Have you a nickname for him yet?’
    Melody bared her teeth at her reflection, then started down the stairs. ‘Nah. I only met him a couple of months ago.’
    Two months? Plenty of opportunity to have dismantled his character , I thought as I followed her.
    ‘Will I meet him?’
    ‘Soon, hun. Promise.’
    She looked back over her shoulder at me and she was doing this twinkling thing, this cutesy half-smile at me. I swear, if she’d had a fan she’d have fluttered it.
    ‘What’s he do?’
    ‘He’s a shop manager at Comet. Pass me my coat, will you?’
    Hanging by the front door was the Union Jack blazer; she’d had to order it online in the end. It looked tiny, like a child’s garment. I’m only a size twelve, but I feel like a
cart horse beside her sometimes.
    ‘Do I look OK?’ she said, hooking the blazer off its peg and slipping it on over the camisole.
    ‘You want to stop shrinking into the background. Stand out from the crowd for once.’
    She smiled sweetly. ‘Says the girl with the fluorescent hair.’
    A car horn bibbed. Melody grabbed her bag.
    ‘Where’s he taking you? If you haven’t got a phone and anything happens – you’ve not known him that long. Stranger danger.’
    ‘Don’t be a div.’ I caught a whiff of her perfume as she opened the front door. ‘Finish the wine, watch a DVD. Eat anything you can find. Don’t wait up.’
    And then I was on my own. Again.
    I binned what was left of the fish, then sat and zapped through the TV channels, eventually settling on a stupid romcom where we were supposed to believe the gorgeous glossy
lead was actually a moose. ‘If only I could get him to notice me,’ she simpered, flicking her hair about like she was in a shampoo ad. These films do your self-esteem no good at
all.
    Then the bell rang. I assumed it was Melody, back after a row, or to retrieve some vital piece of kit. But it wasn’t. It was Michael, returning the missing phone.
    ‘She swore she hadn’t taken it to work,’ I told him as he