Читать онлайн «A PIECE OF CAKE»

AVON

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First Published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2014

Copyright © Trisha Ashley

Cover illustration © Dominique Corbasson 2014

Cover design © Debbie Clement 2014

Trisha Ashley asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

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Ebook Edition © 2014 ISBN: 9780007585441

Version: 2014-07-30

First published as a much shorter story by My Weekly in their summer special, July 2009, and is also one of the stories on the Women Aloud charity audio cd collection for the Helena Kennedy foundation.

Table of Contents

I don’t know why girls marry footballers, because once they set eyes on the ball some kind of primal instinct takes over and everything else flies right out of their heads.

Personally, I don’t ever want to be second best to a few bits of sewn leather and a lot of air.

I tried telling that to my friend Laura when she was planning her wedding, but she just laughed and said, ‘Only on the pitch. Harry spends the rest of the time thinking about me. I don’t know what you’ve got against footballers anyway, Kate. ’

‘Have you forgotten the Shapcott reception, where they wanted individual mini-football cakes for each guest?’ I asked in amazement, because I certainly hadn’t! Making bespoke celebration cakes was what I did for a living, but by the time I’d baked two hundred tiny footballs, I never wanted to see another one again. And after that wedding, I never wanted to see another footballer again either …

‘Of course I haven’t forgotten it!’ she said. ‘It was only because I helped you deliver the cakes, and then we got invited to stay on for the reception buffet, that I met Harry – and you seemed to be getting on like a house on fire with Wes Rufford, too. ’