Marrying Up Read Online Free PDF Page B

carefully,
     she had become
persona non grata
. After three years of frantic social climbing, she was left right at the bottom with precisely nothing and no one.
    Not even a degree; as studying had seemed irrelevant if she was going to marry Reinhardt, whose sexual demands had anyway
     precluded time in libraries, Alexa had failed her end-of-year exams. Back home she had come, her purse empty and her suitcase
     stuffed with tweed shooting suits and designer partyoutfits. She had had no money even for a cab home. Waiting at the railway station for her parents’ battered Micra to come
     and collect her, she had restrained herself with difficulty from throwing herself under a passing express.
    ‘Is anything wrong, Allison?’ her mother kept turning to ask as they drove home. Alexa, in the dark safety of the back, shrank
     against the seat so the overhead street lights could not illumine the expression of utter misery that for once even she could
     not disguise.
    Once home, she was tortured by the possibility of redemption, of email invitations, of friendly messages on Facebook. The
     upper classes had short memories – most of those she had known had no idea what day it was; perhaps, in her absence, she had
     been forgiven. Rehabilitated. But as her parents had no computer, she had to walk miles to the local library, where invariably
     the computers were out of order. Or else monopolised by tramps or tense men in baseball caps jiggling their legs agitatedly
     as they pounded the keys. If she managed to log on, there would be only spam in her inbox, while on the Facebook pages of
     those few who hadn’t yet managed to unfriend her, she saw her former acquaintances falling out of exclusive nightclubs, hanging
     with the band at hip music festivals or playing drunken hide and seek at weekend house parties. None of which she was invited
     to, and obviously never would be again.
    She would clench her fists with helpless envy at this glittering life she had once been so close to, but which now seemed
     further away than the moon.
    Her social life these days consisted of sitting at the pine kitchen table opposite Dad with his mug of tea beside his brown-sauce-smeared
     plate as he made sausage sandwiches with Mother’s Pride. But at least he rarely spoke, being more involved in squinting at
     the distant – and always on – television. Mum, on the other hand, liked to pore over the local freesheet, and in particular
     the large adverts for coach trips it contained. But at least if she was weighing up the opposing merits of ‘LakelandLoveliness’ and ‘Dutch Bulb Field Spectacular’, she wasn’t asking about Reinhardt, who Alexa had mentioned briefly in a rare
     unguarded moment and whose fate she could not bring herself to speak of, any more than she could bring herself to acquaint
     her parents with her failure in the exams.
    Death seemed the only option; having briefly, histrionically, considered suicide, Alexa realised that a demise was in fact
     necessary. Allison Donald must be killed off. Only then would the social disaster of university be eradicated. She would change
     her name, regroup, rebrand. Allison Donald would die and Alexa
Mac
Donald rise from her ashes like a phoenix, smart-sounding in an untraceable, vague, castle-in-Scotland sort of way. She was
     pristine, full of potential and had never been called Sit Up And Beg. She was the future.
    But where, otherwise, was this future? Alexa had no idea. Certainly it was not at home. Home was so small! Horribly,
vilely
small. There was barely a stride between the entrance to her room and the side of her bed with its hideous frilly bedspread.
     Oh, the bedrooms she had stayed in at weekend country house parties! Bedrooms where you walked for minutes on end from the
     wide, high entrance before encountering any inanimate object, often human, male and awaiting her services.
    ‘You should get out,’ Mum had advised at tea earlier this week. ‘You should meet up with