Summer at Shell Cottage Read Online Free PDF Page A

longest. (The short answer: none of them. At each of the last three summer weddings she’d been to, she’d resorted to bare feet after a single glass of Pimms, blisters popping up all over her tender pink toes. And she certainly
couldn’t stay in the knackered silver Converse she was wearing right now, which had the unfortunate habit of making farting noises when her feet got too hot and sweaty.)
    She glanced surreptitiously at the woman opposite her – a Nordic blonde looking cool and elegant in a crisp white dress with bronze Gladiator sandals – and wished that she could look
so effortlessly glamorous. Even once would be nice. How did anyone keep a white linen dress clean on the
Tube
, unless they were some kind of goddess with magical powers? Harriet would have
sat in pink bubblegum or dropped a leaky biro into her lap by now, or a bird would have pooed on her during playground duty.
    If only she looked like white-dress woman, she could stride into the party tonight with supreme confidence. Instead, she was short with an avocado-shaped body and chunky calves that looked weird
in a skirt (‘Legs like a pit pony,’ as Evil Simon had always teased, which still made her feel like punching him, seven years down the line). She had dark brown hair, currently cut in a
boring, boyish crop, freckles like spilled demerara sugar and a faint, fuzzy moustache shadowing her top lip, which she absolutely
must
bleach into non-existence before a single person at
the cocktail party could see it and snigger. Once a teenage acne sufferer, she still had the habit of putting her hand up to her face when she felt insecure in social situations. She pictured
herself at the party: a blushing moustachioed hobbit covering her face amidst the confident, beautiful people – the literati! – and cringed. It was going to be a nightmare. It was going
to be such a bloody nightmare!
    Her eyes fell back onto the
Metro
and despite her earlier irritation, she found herself reading up about the juice camp in Wales at which the journalist had apparently lost half a stone
in a week. Hmm. Maybe there was something in this idea, after all. (Why hadn’t she booked herself in to a Welsh juice camp in readiness for this party? Why was she always so
ill-prepared?)
    Oh, right. Closer reading revealed that it cost over eight hundred pounds for the five-day break, and the campers had endured gruelling six-mile runs and freezing river swims every day. Sod the
juice camp, then. If Harriet had a spare eight hundred quid, she’d sooner blow it on a luxury weekend away in Paris with Robert, ta very much. If they really put their minds to it, they could
probably shag enough to lose half a stone each anyway,
and
tuck into
steak frites
and a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon afterwards.
    The train suddenly braked, and came to an abrupt halt, and Harriet lurched against the sweating man in a too-tight suit next to her, her elbow squelching into his McDonald’s paper bag. ‘Sorry,’ she mumbled as a weary, please-God-no tension spread through the carriage. Breaking down mid-tunnel was always grim but on a roasting hot day, with barely room to breathe,
they’d be melting into puddles within seconds. Besides, she wanted to get home in plenty of time so that she could titivate herself for the party: all that hair-removal and outfit-agonizing
would take forever. She would make an effort for Robert’s sake, though, to show how thrilled she was at his amazing career turn. No problemo.
    Goodness, but she was proud of her husband! Not every person had the courage he’d had, giving up a steady job to follow his dream of writing a novel. Admittedly, he’d hated working
as a cycle courier, and yes, okay, so he hadn’t really talked it through with her before quitting in a fit of pique one day, but he’d knuckled down and slogged through a first draft in
six short months. A first draft that was now, by all accounts, the talk of literary London, no less!
    She