Winner Takes It All Read Online Free PDF Page B

thoughts until a
piercing call came shouting over the top of the loud
music.
    ‘ Alex!’
    She looked up and almost
staggered in shock to discover Melanie Williams behind the bar.
They’d been best friends during those heady days of her first year
at university. Around the time Alex met Tim, Mel had discovered
academia wasn’t for her and dropped out. As was the norm, the girls
promised to keep in touch and for a few months Alex did receive the
odd postcard from Mel, telling of her travels around the world, but
gradually they tailed off and they lost touch. Alex had often
wondered what had become of her wild, Liverpudlian friend and never
dreamt she’d find her here!
    Stepping up to the bar,
Alex saw time had done nothing to change Mel. She was still one of
the most beautiful women Alex had ever seen. Like she had at uni,
she still wore her blonde hair in a cropped, almost masculine
style; her body was skinny and androgynous and yet she had the most
beautiful, feminine face. She reminded Alex of a young Annie Lennox
with almost feline blue eyes and cheekbones that could cut you.
Even dressed in a scruffy blue t shirt and jeans, she still looked
like a goddess.
    ‘ Mel!’ Alex
cried. ‘Is it really you?’
    ‘ What the fook
happened to you girl?’ Mel asked in that broad Liverpudlian accent.
‘You look like you’ve been dragged through a hedge
backwards!’
    Mel was one of those
people who could get away with saying something like this. She
never meant to be insulting. It was just her way of being helpful
and she could remember Alex at her most gorgeous. Before Tim and
his feminist friends got to her.
    ‘ I’m not
nineteen anymore!’ Alex laughed. ‘I can’t still look like Britney
Spears!’
    ‘ Rubbish, you
were always hundred times better looking than her. Anyway, what yer
doing ‘ere?’
    ‘ My
boyfriend’s band’s playing in there.’
    ‘ The Bell
Jar?’
    ‘ Yeah.’
    Mel wrinkled her nose
up.
    ‘ You’re not
still going out with that drip Tim Bradbury are yer?’
    ‘ Tim and I
have been together for eight years thank you very much,’ Alex
laughed. She noticed the man next to her looking rather agitated at
witnessing these two girls catching up and not much serving being
done.
    ‘ You’d better
serve this man,’ she said. ‘I can wait.’
    Mel did as she was told
and served the guy next to Alex. As soon as he was satisfied, she
moved back to her friend.
    ‘ So what you
doing these days?’ she asked.
    ‘ I’m working
for Sheridans,’ Alex replied. ‘I was Head of PR up until the other
week. Now daddy’s given me a major project so I’ve got to
concentrate on that. Do you work here full time?’
    ‘ Nah, I do a
bit of this, a bit of that, you know what it’s like la. I’m trying
to save the money to buy a bar in Ibiza.’
    ‘ Sounds great.
Look do you fancy meeting for a coffee tomorrow?’
    ‘ I’d love to.
I’m doing me beauty counter in Selfridges tomorrow so meet me
outside at one.’
    ‘ Great,’ Alex
beamed. ‘I can’t wait. It’s great to see you Mel.’
    Mel served her with her
drink and she made her way back into the stage area. Toby was now
reciting poetry over a musical background and Alex wished she’d
bought her iPod just so she could plug it into her ears and drown
out the noise! She sat and sipped her drink, thinking about Mel and
how ironic it was she’d come back into her life on this night when
she’d been feeling so reminiscent. The two of them had spent some
wild nights together sharing a flat in Colchester, often bringing
back boys from nightclubs and partying with them until the break of
dawn. Mel had always been far more sexually adventurous than Alex;
going in for threesomes and sometimes shagging boys whose name she
didn’t even know. Alex had thought she was great and couldn’t help
but feel a little excited to be reunited with her once
more.
    She decided not to tell
Tim about meeting Mel. He never liked to talk about her life before
meeting