Marrying Up Read Online Free PDF

her
     father’s job in a supermarket warehouse to ‘commodities dealer’. Mum’s part-time post in the chemist’s shop, meanwhile, was
     repackaged as ‘consultant to a cosmetics house’.
    Things had gone well at first. As it was relatively straightforwardduring Freshers’ Week to join the shooting, beagling and hunting groups and the most right-wing political societies, Alexa
     was soon running after small yappy dogs through muddy woods and pondering the finer points of Conservative policy. She soon
     realised, however, that politics did not interest her and shooting was not only harder than it looked, but even less enjoyable.
    Fortunately, this hardly mattered; Alexa had managed acceptance in a set who spent weekends in each other’s country houses.
     Her calling card was her sexual availability; the warm and reliable welcome she gave to any titled corridor-creeper who happened
     to be passing her room, irrespective of whether he was attached, or even married. As many of them were, however, the women
     affected took action and eventually even the thick-skinned Alexa realised that the nickname ‘Sit Up And Beg’, stuck above
     her pigeonhole, posted on her Facebook page and pinged through in anonymous text messages, might refer to a reputation as
     the university bike.
    But again, it didn’t matter, as by then her efforts had paid off in the unprepossessing but nonetheless titled shape of a
     stammering Border baronet called Sir Lancelot Ffogge. His own prospects were unspectacular – he was the penniless heir to
     a ruin – but he had the connections Alexa needed. The somewhat ironically named Sir Lancelot, so physically unlike his dashing
     namesake, was her ‘starter’ aristo; the boyfriend-cum-platform from which she would jump higher up the social tree.
    ‘The
bugger
!’ now boomed her father from downstairs, evidently in response to the TV again. In the room above, Alexa felt misery clench
     her concave stomach. Her mother had been concerned at her thinness on her return from university, but Alexa, used to picking
     at expensive morsels, was unable to eat the vast piles of mashed potatoes and sausages as thick as forearms, swimming in thick,
     viscous gravy, that were regularly plonked in front of her. ‘You need feeding up,’ her mother would chide in mid-chew from
     the other side of the sauce bottle.
    It was a remark that filled Alexa with horror. There wasnothing ‘up’ about feeding. The grand were rarely fat, the women, never.
    Alexa had stuck with Sir Lancelot for the first year, but the second had brought promotion to the etiolated and freakishly
     tall Lord Atticus Pump. From him, Alexa planned a raid on a duke’s son – until fate unhelpfully intervened.
    The relationship – and Pump’s life – met a sudden end when, as high on crack as he was up the building, he fell out of a top-floor
     window at a party. Alexa’s counter in the game of social snakes and ladders now slid down a python almost as long and thin
     as Lord Atticus himself.
    This inconvenient setback had been reversed only when, out of sheer desperation, Alexa had at the start of the next term barged
     up to the richest fresher, a banking heir called Reinhardt Silverman, and introduced herself as his second-year mentor.
    His actual mentor was a bombastic member of the female rowing team called Caroline Squareside, but by the time Reinhardt,
     who was not very bright, and the even-less-so Caroline found out, Alexa had been mentoring him for some time in her own very
     special way. Her hopes of an engagement were high. Then the shocking news broke that Reinhardt’s father had absconded with
     the contents of his financial management portfolio and was wanted by Interpol.
    As Reinhardt fled and markets plunged all about her, Alexa was left only with her own wrecked dreams of riches. Worse still,
     as Reinhardt’s conceit and appalling manners had alienated everyone whose acquaintance she had previously nurtured so