Summer at Shell Cottage Read Online Free PDF

just had to hope she wouldn’t look too out of place tonight; the sole pleb in a sea of glittering brainiacs. Would they be able to tell she hadn’t been to university? Would it be
obvious she only read two books a year, usually juicy psychological thrillers while on holiday, and that she couldn’t name a Booker Prize winner even with a gun to her head? And what if one
of the hipsters asked what she thought of her own husband’s book? Apparently the publisher had called it ‘that rare thing – a comic literary novel’, but from the few
chapters Harriet had been permitted to read, it was about three male characters arguing about the meaning of life in a way that was actually quite slow and boring. That was probably just her being
thick, though. Surely. What did she know about books?
    The train started moving again, a slow, dragging shuffle before finally accelerating into a more thunderous pace.
Just smile and nod to the other guests
, she reminded herself.
Smile
and nod, have another cocktail, and if all else fails, talk about how clever Robert is.
    Ahh, East Finchley station. At last! Her cotton blouse sticking to her in the heat, Harriet was grateful to emerge blinking into the daylight and start striding towards home, her shoes gently
trumping with each step. Sod it, she thought, she would not let herself feel overawed at the party. Just that day at school, she’d spoken to Latisha Baldock – angry, defensive Latisha,
who’d been suspended last year for breaking a boy’s nose – and sensitively tackled the subject of her mother’s latest health problems. To the surprise of them both,
hard-faced Latisha had let down her guard for once and cried actual tears in the sanctuary of Harriet’s little office. She’d even allowed Harriet to hug her and comfort her, and
accepted that it would be good to talk to a counsellor who could help. ‘Fanks, Miss,’ she’d said, tucking a soggy tissue in her skirt pocket, when she eventually left. It was like
being awarded a gold medal in the Social Work Olympics. And how many brainbox authors at the party could claim that kind of job satisfaction, eh?
    The party would be
fine.
It was only one evening. And if it was awful, she and Robert could giggle about it in the taxi afterwards and slag everyone else off. So there.
    An hour later, Harriet had scrubbed and moisturized, bleached her tache into non-existence and then applied a stinky depilatory cream to de-hair her legs. Unfortunately the
cream had been ancient – from the summer before, she realized belatedly – and made her itch horribly to the point where she couldn’t wait the full treatment time but ended up with
first one leg in the bathroom sink and then the other, hastily rinsing the burning goo straight off again and yelping the whole time. Of course, wouldn’t you know it, her skin promptly sprang
up with a scarlet rash, forcing Harriet to smear on gallons of EasyTan bronzing lotion in a panicky cover-up attempt. The only silver lining in the whole disastrous episode was that her daughter
Molly had vanished off to her best friend Chloe’s for tea, so wasn’t there to snigger and post photos of the strangely orange, hairless, pit-pony-resembling limbs on Instagram. Small
mercies.
    What next? Eyebrows. The plucking didn’t go too well first time around so she had an emergency glass of wine and tried again (even worse). Then she resorted to drawing on new eyebrows,
which gave her the surprised air of someone who’d just had a dart fired into their bottom. Well, it was a talking point, she supposed. That or the death knell of any future invitations out
with Robert, anyway.
    ‘Hello? Where is everyone?’
    Oh, thank goodness. Now her husband was home and he was sure to make her feel better. He would kiss her and tell her she looked sensational in a hessian sack, and didn’t she know, big
pencilled eyebrows were totally the in-thing this year, and he’d always adored her strong legs,