The Goddess Rules Read Online Free Page A

receptionist (albeit a pretty one), and the pop pop of corks at their low-key but exclusive Chelsea registry office, then on to the Ritz wedding. And nobody had looked back since. The only dark specter looming in the background of the fairy tale was that thus far, and not for want of trying, the Hirsts had not had a baby. But as everyone reassured them, often protesting a little too much for the couple’s liking—there was plenty of time yet.
    “But it’s good, isn’t it, if she wants to commission you?” Tanya reasoned with Kate. “I mean, if you paint one cat well, there’s a whole bunch more animals to do out in Africa or wherever.”
    “I just don’t like her,” Kate said as the girls left Tanya’s study and headed for the kitchen. Which was a brisk three-minute walk away through the vast, Belsize Park house. Because not only were the girls’ love lives a world apart, but their homes were so incomprehensible to the other that each time one of them visited the other’s place, it felt like an adventure to a strange, undiscovered land. Tanya, cushioned by riches and love, was deprived of the disaster that for many people is everyday life. And she was always riveted to hear what life was like in Kate’s world of boyfriends and living in sheds and getting dumped and having a drawer stuffed with unopened bank statements. So her trips to Kate’s world were filled with wide-eyed, grass-is-always-greener-type admiration for her friend’s fabulously bohemian existence.
    “Is that a snail?” Tanya would try not to sound too impressed as she watched one of the many creatures that inhabited Kate’s shed amble leisurely across the floorboards. Equally, when Kate came to Tanya’s house she would run her fingers over the smooth granite surfaces, slide her hands along curved glass walls, and marvel at the five stories of light-infused, vaulting-ceilinged rooms filled with spectacular art, and long for marriage and a future of never having to worry again about not having someone to spend New Year’s Eve with.
    “Kate, what are you talking about? You’re never fussy about what work you take on. And it’s not like you’d have to paint
her.
It’s her cat.”
    “I don’t know, she’s just not particularly nice. In fact, she’s a rude old cow and if she ever comes into my home again without knocking, I’ll put her and Bébé on the first banana boat back to Mozambique.”
    “She’s that bad?”
    “She walked in on me and Jake having sex yesterday.”
    “What?” Tanya froze in midair as she was handing Kate her drink.
    “Oh yeah. That,” Kate replied sheepishly. She’d been meaning to get around to telling Tanya about her and Jake being back together, but she’d been waiting for the right moment. Like one when Tanya wasn’t listening so she couldn’t be disapproving and disappointed and worried about Kate. “I didn’t mention it, did I?”
    “You had sex with Jake?” Tanya put the glass back on the counter and looked incredulously at Kate. “Wait a minute, you
saw
Jake? You
spoke
to Jake? You had
sex
with Jake?”
    “Did you make this barley water yourself?” Kate asked, picking up her drink and hiding her shame behind the rim of the glass.
    “Tell me. Everything.” Tanya glared at Kate.
    “Not much to tell,” Kate said, trying to make light of the incident but unable to prevent a thrilled grin from spreading slowly across her face when she remembered that she and Jake were on-again.
    “I can’t believe you slept with him.” Tanya shook her head as she navigated her way through the French doors, out onto the terrace, and into a garden chair without once taking her eyes off her friend.
    “Nor can I, really,” said Kate, who followed obediently in her wake. “I haven’t had a second to think about it. I’ve been too preoccupied with Mirabelle Moncur and the parade of Louis Vuitton steamer trunks that were arriving on Leonard’s doorstep when I left. Honestly, it’s like Rose Dawson