Читать онлайн «Tempting Fate»
Автор Джейн Грин
Jane Green
TEMPTING FATE
Contents
PART ONE
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
PART TWO
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
PART ONE
Chapter One
It’s just a night out with girlfriends, not the Academy Awards, thinks Gabby, frowning at her wardrobe as she endlessly pushes hangers back and forth, hoping something compelling, something worthy will suddenly appear and jump out at her: the perfect shirt, the perfect dress. It shouldn’t matter, this being a girls’ night out, but of course it matters far more than on a night out with Elliott. Tonight Gabby is dressing for the other women.
She has heard that on these girls’ nights out it is not unusual for men to gather round the girls, not seeing – or, rather, ignoring – the wedding rings they all have on their fingers; ignoring the wedding rings so often on their own. But Gabby doesn’t care about these men; she simply wants to fit in. She wants to at least look like she has made an effort. She wants to show that she too can scrub up into something of a glamour puss, that she deserves her place at the bar, just like the rest of this particular group of friends.
She settles on black trousers all the better to hide her thighs with, and knee-high boots, the only pair in her wardrobe that have any heel. These boots are almost twenty years old, old enough for them to have gone completely out of fashion and then revolve full circle to be not dissimilar to all the boots she passes in the store windows in town.
She bought them when it seemed important to look good, before life, children, motherhood got in the way, before it was easier to slip her feet into furry Merrells and be done with it.
In their thirties, all her friends wore the same dull uniforms, but suddenly, in their forties, these same women are breaking free of their self-imposed cocoons, eschewing the dull blanket of grinding motherhood and emerging in a flurry of bright chiffons and silks. And now that their children no longer needed babysitters they are tripping out on girls’ nights out in impossibly high heels, their hair silky and blown-out, wanting to be
Gabby does not have bright chiffons and silks,
