The Look of Love Read Online Free Page B

luckier than she was) shagging, and yet really there wasn’t much, frock/shoe/bag-wise, that you couldn’t get in Selfridges; the jet lagwas vile and the rushing around exhausting, and in the time between handing over your credit card and the monthly statement dropping on to the doormat, something calamitous would have happened to the exchange rate. She would write that to be cost-effective you have to fly cattle class among the hen parties, and you need to overcome any fear of plummeting to earth from 37,000 feet above the Atlantic while watching – on a titchy, badly lit screen – a movie you’ve seen only the week before. You get a stomach upset from inflight food and a hangover before you land and …
    Oh God, I do moan on, don’t I? Bella thought as she typed the flow of vitriol. But that was what this job required: for her to deconstruct those things that most folks took for granted as being universally wonderful. She’d covered so many things in her ‘I Really Don’t Get …’ column over the past year: skiing (scary, cold, and yes your bum DOES look big in that), George Clooney (the thinking woman’s estate agent), giant shopping malls (hideous, manipulative, soporific air con), farmers’ markets (tomatoes at about 50p EACH? And what kind of farm grows falafels?) and elaborate pubic topiary decorated with Swarovski crystals. She’d had a lot of emails about that one … too many of which invited her to sample the process in premises alone with the kind of strange man her mother had warned her about.
    A fast hour passed while Bella tapped away at the Mac, getting up enough speed and momentum for the piece to be written almost as stream of consciousness. It was now past midday but there was no sign of Molly, who was still upstairs in her room, either sleeping or sulking. With teenagers, it was often hard to tell the difference. The night before, Bella had been too exhausted to have the mother-and-daughter conversation that needed to be had about entertaining boys in the household beds, and now, still enfeebled by travel and trauma, she was quite glad that the teen need for long hours of shut-eye meant the inevitable confrontation was a bit delayed.
    It was probably one of her best ‘I Really Don’t Get’ pieces. The spontaneity of it had given her a sharp and elegant turn of phrase. Feeling rather pleased with herself, Bella checked through for accurate spelling, grammar and blips of punctuation, sent a quick email to the features editor, attached her work and pressed send, now very much revived. She would take the rest of the day off, do the kind of satisfyingly large supermarket shop that would give her the illusion of being a Proper Domestic Woman. She might, she thought, even make a batch of bread – or was that taking the domestic thing too far? Or maybe roast a luscious lemony chicken and do some Molly-bonding. Perhaps invite Giles too? She liked Molly’s boyfriend, and he’d had many a supper inthe house with them in the past few months … but somehow all she could see in her head when she thought of him was his slim naked body, those broad but bony shoulders leaning against her pillows, in her bed. No, maybe he was best absent from their house today. It would be early pasta, a Molly chat which would be more sympathetic and friendly than the girl was probably anticipating. Then Bella would try to catch up on sleep, maybe watch Frock Shock on her bedroom TV, find out if the makeover-guru couple had any suggestions for women like her who’d blithely yet wrongly always assumed they looked pretty hot in black.
    She had another quick look at the emails, checking for any acknowledgement from her editor that the piece had arrived safely. Charlotte usually said a quick hello and thanks. And yes, there was one. Bella clicked on the message and was surprised to see it was a lot longer than the usual ‘Hi, thanks for that!’ sentence.
    ‘ Bella, hello … we’ve just crossed in the ether. Thanks so