Second Hand Jane Read Online Free Page B

things.”
    “What does he
do now then?” Brianna had asked hopefully.
    “Oh, more
unspeakable things. My sister says that if you try to analyse what
your children do, you’d send yourself mad. She reckons life with
kids is just one continual phase after another.”
    When she wasn’t
playing happy families, however, Brianna still occasionally liked
to live vicariously through her single friends but if the truth be
known it was she, the old married woman of the trio, who got the
most action on a regular basis. So, in point of fact, it was Jess
and Nora who lived vicariously through Brianna’s sex life. She was
also a fiend for committees and belonged to everything from the PTA
at Harry’s school to Save the Manatee, the latter being a
mermaid-like sea-creature she encountered and went on to bond with
on her Florida honeymoon.
    Jess had never
figured out exactly where she fitted into their friendship
equation, not just because she was the polar opposite of Nora and
Brianna in her taste for all things vintage. Her idea of a great
day’s shopping was not trawling the High Street for the latest
fashions with them but rather rummaging through an Oxfam store or
hitting a car boot sale. She definitely had her own sense of style,
too, with her love of vintage designer clothes, and had gone
through many phases in the fashion stakes. At Uni, she had fallen
in love with the 1950s floral frock, eventually moving on to the
Boho look of the early 1970s. She was currently enthralled by all
things 80s, although she drew the line at horrendously oversized
shoulder pads. Looks wise, she was out on a limb, too, with her
green eyes and unruly crop of auburn curls that simply refused to
do what they were told, no matter how many times she singed them
between the hair-straighteners.
    She was neither
quiet nor what you could call outspoken and the three girls often
had a laugh that they were like Bananarama, the female trio from
the 80s, before launching into an off-key version of “Venus.” Jess,
however, was the only one who actually looked the part with the
side bow in her hair and pinafore smock dress. What she did know,
though, was that leaving London and arriving in Dublin back in 2001
was the best choice she ever made. The Celtic Tiger had been
roaring and Dublin was rocking when she met the girls and the three
of them had just clicked. This was surprising given their
inauspicious start:
    Jess had booked
in for a haircut with Miss Brianna—as the salon’s receptionist had
referred to her—the morning of her job interview at the Marriott,
the Marriott being an established Dublin guesthouse near St
Stephens Green where she’d wound up working for slave wages during
her first year in Dublin while she tried to establish a name for
herself as a freelance journalist.
    Brianna, who
never was a very good hairdresser and for whom half of Dublin’s
female population breathed a sigh of relief when they heard she’d
hung up her scissors in favour of being a stay-at-home mammy, had
managed to brutalise her fringe—and that’s when Nora had walked
into the salon for a lunchtime shampoo and blow-wave.
    Flopping down
in the seat next to Jess’s, Nora called out a hello to Brianna, who
was hopping nervously from foot to foot. She was gripping a mirror,
waiting to show her already unhappy client the concave she’d
attempted and which she had now decided was not such a good idea on
hair that was as thick and curly as this girl’s was. Nora took in
Brianna’s latest victim’s mortified expression as she frantically
tried to stretch her shorn bangs down over her eyebrows and shook
her head in commiseration.
    “My God, she’s
done a job on you. You’re not going to be able to do much with
that, now are you?”
    Distracted,
Jess turned her attention to the blonde woman seated next to her,
surprised that one so petite and dainty had such a big gob and
feeling a stab of envy—a proper fringe! “Fringe envy”—now that was
a new one,