Strictly Love Read Online Free PDF

people did.
    Instead of which she was practically chained to her desk, and when she wasn't, she was out late schmoozing people she was coming to despise, or partying like there was no tomorrow with so-called friends with whom she had increasingly little in common.
    This wasn't how she'd planned things, back when she'd startedlaw school in Cardiff, all those years ago. Then she'd been full of naïve optimism about how she was going to take on cases like her dad's (languishing at home a semi-invalid thanks to the incompetence of the firm he'd given most of his life to). She felt ashamed that she'd ended up at Mire & Innit – a small media law firm which specialised in defending the low-level famous, in cases which, in the main, were pretty indefensible. Her boss Mel had promised her the earth at her interview seven years ago.
    ‘This is a small firm,’ she'd purred silkily, ‘but we are going places, and for the right person the rewards are high.’
    The rewards had certainly been high financially. Emily was earning far more than in her previous job, but the mortgage on the cottage was correspondingly high too. And the promised promotion to senior associate seemed as elusive as ever, while Mel continued to pile on the work. One thing she'd failed to mention at interview was that, being a small firm, they were constantly short-staffed. Great in one way, as it had given Emily opportunities she would never have had elsewhere, but not so good in terms of having any kind of decent life outside the workplace.
    Emily sighed. It had all seemed so glamorous when she'd first come to London. Now it just seemed tawdry to be raking through the muck of zedlebrity lives.
    Callum, too, had seemed the height of glamour when she first met him – the gorgeous public school boy with the golden tongue had bowled her over from the start, and though she'd always known he was incredibly bad for her, now he was like a bad habit she couldn't quite shake. When Callum deigned to let her, she was allowed into his world, in small bite-sized pieces. He had perfected the knack of just keeping her interested. She hated herself for giving in to him.
    Take this weekend, for instance. She had resolutely ignored his calls all day Friday, cried off a party that Ffion was going to,claiming a headache, and crashed out in front of the TV with a pizza and a bottle of wine.
    But come Saturday, after a desultory morning spent catching up on household chores, and a dull afternoon alone trailing round the shops in Crawley, Emily had let herself into the flat to find three messages from Callum on the answerphone. When she switched on her mobile (which she had purposely left behind), she discovered he'd inundated her with messages.
    ‘
Come on, babe
,’ the last message had urged her, ‘
what else do you have to do tonight but come out clubbing with me?
’
    What else indeed? In the end, she'd given in and driven up to his flat in town, where they had made up over a bottle of wine, before dancing the night away at a local grungy club that Callum and his less salubrious friends liked to frequent.
    ‘I promise to be good,’ Callum had said as they left the flat. He'd looked so solemn and schoolboyish when he'd said it, Emily couldn't help but laugh.
    ‘You better had be,’ she'd said. And then he'd kissed her, and she'd forgotten why she'd been so cross with him in the dizzying intoxication she always felt when he was near.
    Callum had been as good as his word, in that he hadn't taken any drugs in her presence, which wasn't to say that he hadn't taken any at all, but it was enough for her to maintain the fiction that all was right with the world.
    They had got up late on Sunday, gone for a pub lunch, and though Emily had known she should really have headed back home on Sunday evening, Callum's urgent plea of, ‘Stay, babe,’ coupled with the thought of another long, lonely evening, was enough to keep her from going back. Maybe that was why she couldn't quite let