Love Read Online Free Page A

self-consciously, aware of the pretentious edge. “How are you finding life as a Voguette?”
    â€œOh, you know, ups and downs. I’ve had my fair share of tears in the loos but otherwise it’s fun. Lucinda’s fantastic.” Amy tried not to wince as she downed an oyster.
    â€œYeah, she has her moments.” He drifted off into love thought, gazing at his beloved across the room. Amy looked on enviously. Why can’t a man look at me like that? she lamented. They were joined by a film producer who snapped Benjy up into industry conversation and Amy found herself on the periphery again. She just smiled on cue and surveyed the room.
    In the corner, in the midst of some particularly fine parquet flooring, the editor squealed her objection to various minor royals (they obviously hadn’t RSVP’d) and slunk up to the only gorgeous man in the room. Amy instantly recognized him as the rising young star and recently divorced (“It’s hard to keep a relationship goingwhen I’m filming in LA and he’s onstage in London,” quoth actress wife predictably in some glossy magazine) actor … she couldn’t remember his name. Seth? Gus? Tudor? Something faintly ridiculous anyway. He was so beautiful, Amy had seen him as Mr. Rochester and he’d won her heart.
    â€œForget bloody plain, dull Jane Eyre,” she’d wanted to say. “I’m here and won’t give a damn about the dodgy woman in your attic.” He was the epitome of the man Amy wanted, brooding yet sensitive. And he was talking to the editor, who evaporated in a combination of lust and a bustier hooked too tight while he was cool but charming, courteous yet aloof. Amy felt cross and desperate. What was she doing here? There was no real fun in living a glamorous life vicariously. She wanted to belong, but knew she wasn’t even approaching gossip-column material, let alone
Harpers
-cover status (as the Actor, naturally, was). Her legs were too funnel-like, her bank manager had a vendetta against her, and she hadn’t yet made it to the inner sanctum of fashion where fey men air-kissed her and pleaded with her to wear their velvet jodphurs. God, she was depressed.
    Amy the wallflower was in full bloom, her tendrils climbing the russet rag-rolled walls, her leaves clinging to her bucks fizz with all her might. Amius Wallflowerus. All those old insecurities seeped from beneath her newly glam façade. She stood with her legs twenty inches apart in an age-old bid to look shorter and less conspicuous. In her mind her lacy G-string became a pair of maroon nylon gym knickers and her hair distinctly stringy. From her hideaway beneath a potted lime tree she attempted conversation with a bespectacled columnist(poor eyesight, a definite blessing as he couldn’t see her hideousness) but she just sounded like John Major, all
Spitting Image
gray and nothing more riveting to discuss than crudités. Vegetables, for heaven’s sake. After the third Samaritan (those charitable types who can’t bear to see a lone someone fiendishly stuffing twiglets in their mouth in a bid to look busy) had tried to salvage her social reputation and fled in defeat, she thought it kinder to everyone if she went home.
    â€œDon’t look so glum, sugarplum.” It was the photographer. Memories of her very nice, Anaïs Nin summer came churning back. Art gallery openings and lessons in aperture. Cool martinis in sweltering bars and not quite as many phone calls as she’d hoped for. In a panic Amy looked down to check that it was actually her red velvet trousers she was wearing and not the brown, holey leggings she’d mentally dressed herself in.
    â€œToby, my God, hello, what …”
    He kissed her on the lips and smiled. “Good to see you, Ames.”
    â€œWhat are you doing here?” she said, wondering if she could somehow surreptitiously put some lipstick on before their