Summer at Tiffany's Read Online Free PDF Page A

was beginning to wriggle on Suzy’s lap now, the amusement factor of travelling on public transport diminishing with the crowds. Suzy reached into her bag and pulled out a small Tupperware of carrot sticks, handing one to her eager child.
    The doors closed and the train pulled away again, Cassie still lost in thought about her friend’s problems.
    â€˜So, are you all set for Ascot? You said it was a big gig,’ Suzy asked.
    â€˜Oh . . . yes. We’ve got sixty covers and three separate sittings to cater for: champagne breakfast, lunch and high tea. I’ve got to bake a hundred and eighty eclairs today, once I’ve picked the car up after this.’
    Her cream Morris Minor was back in the garage again. Henry had warned her about the unreliability of the alternator and radiator, but she’d been so adamant it looked right (much as the teeny-tiny flat had looked right) – so shiny! so post-war! – parked beside the bell tent on their big-set, yesteryear picnics that she’d gone ahead and bought it instead of a new Golf. Now it was in for ‘touchups’ every other month and she knew Jim, the mechanic, so well she took him tins of home-made rainbow-coloured macaroons for his wife’s birthday.
    â€˜How is Jim?’
    â€˜Really pleased. Kayla got her first-choice school.’
    â€˜Yeah? That’s great,’ Suzy murmured distractedly about the family she’d never met.
    The train was already slowing again and they were pulling into the platform at Fulham Broadway, their destination.
    â€˜We’re here,’ Cassie said, getting up and walking over to the doors.
    â€˜Yes, but are they?’ Suzy asked as the train slowed almost to a stop.
    â€˜Hmm, I can’t see them,’ Cassie said, pressing her face as close to the glass as she dared. ‘Oh, wait!’ Cassie laughed suddenly as she caught sight of Henry racing into view like he’d been catapulted, his blond-brown scruffy hair flying behind him, his tie flapping like a windsock by his shoulder as he ran over the bridge and descended the stairs three at a time, coming to a stop
just
as the doors opened. Jammy devil.
    They stared at each other for a beat, him panting hard, before he grinned. ‘What took you so long?’ he asked, kissing her on the mouth and straightening his tie as he stepped back onto the very carriage he had disembarked from four stations earlier. Mission accomplished. Winner of the Annual Tube Dash six years running.
    A gaggle of other sprinters, all racing for second place, hove into view moments later, jumping down the stairs like grasshoppers – missing four at a time – and flying into the carriage with roars of delight, slapping each other and highfiving, as they too had successfully negotiated twenty-seven roads, four Tube stations and thousands of pedestrians to sprint the 1.5-mile course and beat the train.
    â€˜Oh Jeez, where’s Arch?’ Suzy asked, resignedly throwing the nappy bag over her shoulder and lifting Velvet as she stood up. The runners seemed more in need of her seat than she did. ‘Anyone seen him?’
    Henry shrugged. ‘Sorry, Suze. I wasn’t looking behind me,’ he grinned.
    Suzy swatted him about the head – as his big sister by thirteen months, it was her prerogative.
    â€˜I overtook him at the hospital if that helps,’ one of the other guys laughed, holding his arms up protectively in case she came and walloped him too.
    â€˜It’s OK – I can see him, Suze,’ Cassie said, pointing to the bridge.
    Archie and a couple of the other runners were not so much running as lurching their way across, their eyes on the train already at the platform.
    â€˜Come on, Arch!’ Suzy bellowed, leaning out from the carriage. She had the lungs of a pufferfish. ‘You can do it!’ She turned to Cassie. ‘Oh, please, God, let him do it. If he can just do it this one time, then he can give it