Another Country Read Online Free Page A

Day was celebrated with a barbeque, and a student world of working in a Mexican restaurant in Auckland, and not getting New Year’s Eve off. For each girl, the other’s home was non-concrete, but superstitiously to be believed, in the way of a story heard in infancy; it held a reality that had nothing to do with experience. Both knew it, and it made them feel tender, as though for their own lives, which might have been continuing elsewhere.
    â€˜I was wondering whether to bring him to Kate’s party, eh?’ Nina said.
    â€˜Party?’
    â€˜They’re having a party on Friday, remember? Kate said we could bring people.’
    Leela thought she would ring Patrick; she could legitimately invite him to a party, with real French people. Surely he’d be glad. She turned self-consciously to the page in front of her and looked for mistakes.

Chapter 6
    In the métro, Leela scrubbed surreptitiously at her cheeks. They flamed. It was possible she’d overdone the highlighting gel, which she’d found in the beauty department of the Monoprix while making last-minute preparations for the party.
    She tried to catch her reflection in the window of the train; she was sitting on one of the fold-down seats near the door. Against the darkness of the tunnel, the glass was smeared with swiftly passing yellow lights and their comet-like tails. She glimpsed herself: hair up, brown skin, and large, comically anticipatory eyes. The person in the reflection was someone she recognised, but who it was hard to believe represented her. The cheeks, yes, they were sparkling away. She sat back. She would reassess, at Kate’s.
    In the last few years, she and Amy had made a ritual of getting ready. Wine, cheap and horrible, was procured; Amy blasted out her favourite music on the stereo; they would dissect the feelings and motivations of their friends and current love interests, long circling discussions that adduced, with all the precision of the legal mind, pieces of evidence and conversations and inferences from them, amounting, often, to an extenuating and essentially uncertain summation of psychological ontology: ‘Maybe he’s just insecure.’ A phrase that became a joke between them.
    Those moments of preparation contained aspiration, but also nervousness and self-obliteration – Amy, taking a palmful of foundation, would rub it all over her face, till her features were all but erased, then draw them back with eye- and lipliner, eyeshadow and mascara. In both girls, there had been a primitive uncertainty about cause and effect that still subsisted in Leela. It was what had led her to put a minimal dab of highlighter on her cheekbones then, unsure this would work, daub the stuff on her browbones, her temples, her collarbones, even her shoulders. The world was one thing, and it was colossal. One, next to it, was perpetually in danger of being forgotten. Tactics would have to be employed; but anxiety persisted about whether they would bear fruit.

    â€˜Have you seen our bathroom? Oh my God. You’ve got to see it. It’s horrific.’ On the last words, Kate’s voice dropped to a stage whisper. She pushed the door.
    Leela peered into a narrow chamber painted in black gloss. ‘I love it!’
    â€˜Really?’ The other girl looked disappointed. ‘I think it’s hanging, completely hanging. The girls’ father did it.’
    â€˜Our dad is crazy,’ Eloise said cheerfully to Leela. She and her elder sister liked Leela, who basked in their approval. Amandine was a sweet girl, reserved but warm, and would have been nice to anyone. But she nodded silently at her sister’s summing up. ‘Nina is sweet. But your French is better.’
    Kate’s room was unusual too: the walls were a deep, blue-red gloss that made it feel like a Chinese lac box. There was a single inadequate lamp, a sullen globe on the bedside table. Leela put down her bag. ‘Stay over,’