The Cinderella Reflex Read Online Free PDF

crawling all over my face, and I’m worn to a thread between work, and sweating it out at the gym three times a week, trying to keep my figure. And do
I
have the money for new boobs, if I needed them? No!
    But Helene had forced all those feelings to the back of her mind, and lay down and invited Richard to inspect her new Brazilian wax. Afterwards she’d convinced herself they were back on track again. Richard was feeling edgy, that was all. But sooner or later, he was going to leave Louisa for her.
    He had better, Helene thought now, a feeling of fury sweeping over her suddenly. She banged her coffee mug down on the table, vaguely alarmed at both the force of her feelings and the way the coffee splattered all over everything: the table, her handbag, her shoes, the flagstones on the floor. It was the thought that somehow, after everything, she might actually have to continue to make her living in this job for the next two and a half decades that made her want to break something. Or else curl up and cry with exhaustion.
    “Are you okay?” Helene looked up to see the cafe owner hovering over her, concern in his eyes. She came back to the present with some difficulty. What had he said his name was again? Matt ... yes, that was it.
    “I’m fine ...” Helene’s hands fluttered vaguely in the direction of the upended mug.
    “Your coffee – you’ve spilt most of it.” Matt wiped a cloth over the table, mopping up the liquid. “Here, let me get you a refill.” He reached over to take her mug.
    “No. No more coffee. I have to be going anyway,” Helene protested, but Matt had crossed the room and was back in an instant with a fresh cappuccino and a pile of white napkins for her to dry off her bag and shoes. Helene was surprised to see her hand was shaking slightly as she shoved her notebook and biro back into her bag.
    “Thanks,” she said and meant it. She felt slightly guilty now for snubbing him earlier. She looked around the cafe. “It looks as if you have a lot of work to do here still?”
    “I have ... but it will be worth it.” Matt’s face lit up as he started to tell her about his ambitions for the cafe. “I’m going to call it the Travel Cafe and I’m hoping backpackers and gap-year people – travellers of all sorts, really – will use this place when they are planning or living their big adventure. They can have breakfast or lunch, drink coffee, use the internet, buy their maps and guidebooks and travel journals all under one roof. I’ve just come back from travelling myself and so I can offer first-hand advice.” His enthusiasm was catching, and Helene found herself looking around the dusty, run-down room through Matt’s eyes.
    She saw now that he had pinned an enormous map of the world onto one wall, with yellow pins stuck on various locations from South America to Africa to Australia. He followed her gaze.
    “They’re all the places I’ve been,” he said a bit wistfully.
    “Really?” Helene was impressed. She’d only ever been abroad on holidays and never further than Europe. “So what on earth brought you to Killty?”
    If she’d gone to the bother of travelling to the four corners of the earth it would be an anti-climax of quite stunning dimensions to end up in Killty.
    “Ah, you can’t keep moving forever. And my folks live around here,” he said easily.
    Helene stared at the map, trying to picture Matt arriving at all those places, and then, just like that, leaving them again in a few weeks or months or whenever the fancy took him. And just for a moment, sitting there in the dilapidated cafe, she felt her own world expand. To somewhere beyond Atlantic 1 FM and the constant worry about Ollie Andrews and his flop radio show and Richard and his complicated family setup and his two children with the Peter Pan Syndrome. The small yellow pins seemed to be shining at her, offering her a way out, whispering that her life might hold possibilities she had never thought of before.
    And