The Lying Game Read Online Free Page B

moved into the flat above Born-Again
     Vintage, so I can look after Nell and work in the shop at the same time. We’ll be fine. I just want you to be a part of her life, even if it’s only a small part. Doesn’t
     she deserve a daddy, too?
    I can’t put you on her birth certificate unless you come with me to register her. I know you’re in Bosnia now, but we’ve still got five weeks.
     Please, can’t you do that for her, at least?
    My mobile number hasn’t changed, and you can always reach me by email. I wish you’d get back in touch, even if it’s just as friends.
    Always yours
    Zoey xxx

4
Zoey
    There was a
reason
no one wrote about London in the spring, Zoey thought as she dashed through the rain from one dripping shop awning to another. There was absolutely
nothing romantic about damp shoes and wet hair, especially when you already had the beginnings of a cold. Perhaps if she’d been gazing at a blurry view of the Eiffel Tower through the steamy
window of a warm café, her chapped hands wrapped round a
chocolat chaud,
she might feel differently. Islington had an undoubted charm in the summer, when the sun was out and Camden
Passage was crammed with market stalls selling everything from Bakelite telephones to amber bangles, and the pavements outside every bistro and café were crowded with chairs and tables. But
in the grey of winter, or on a damp, dull spring day like this, north London had
nothing
to recommend it. Oh, what she wouldn’t give to be in Paris right now, the hot buttery flakes
of a fresh croissant melting like snowflakes on her tongue; or maybe a
croque monsieur
(which always sounded so much more tempting than ‘hot ham-and-cheese sandwich’), with
butter and melted Emmental oozing down its sides – oh yes, she could almost
taste
it. Clearly she should never have gone without breakfast, not when she always seemed to forget
lunch; she was
ravenous
now. But it was hard to feel hungry at seven o’clock in the morning when all you’d done was get out of bed and stumble downstairs. It wasn’t as if
she had to
walk
to work . . .
    ‘Mum!’
    Zoey started. ‘Nell! Darling! Where did you spring from?’
    ‘I came looking for
you,’
Nell said crossly, shaking out her purple umbrella. ‘I knew you’d get lost.’
    ‘I’m not lost,’ Zoey protested. ‘Look, there’s the library. I know where I am. Why would you think I was lost?’
    ‘You’re going the wrong way, for a start.’ She tucked her arm into her mother’s. ‘Come on, we don’t want to be the last ones there or we’ll get stuck at
the back where you can’t see Angel, and then you won’t be able to follow his moves.’
    ‘Who’s Angel?’
    ‘Mu-um! I told you before. He’s the Zumba instructor. He’s Brazilian,’ she added, a little too carelessly.
    Zoey might be vague in many respects, but when it came to her fifteen-year-old daughter, she didn’t miss a thing. ‘Cute, is he?’ she asked, nudging Nell with a smile.
    ‘Maybe,’ Nell said, blushing furiously.
    ‘I can’t think why I agreed to this,’ Zoey complained as they dashed back out into the rain, huddling together under Nell’s umbrella.
    ‘Because you’re thirty-nine, not eighty-nine, and it’s time you got out a bit more and had some fun,’ Nell retorted.
‘Anyway,
if you and Richard are going
to France on that cycling holiday this summer, you need to get fit.’
    She had a point, Zoey thought ruefully. In her current shape, she couldn’t cycle to the end of the road, never mind around Provence. Quite how she’d allowed Richard to talk her into
this madness she couldn’t imagine. Her recipe for the perfect holiday involved a sunlounger by a pool somewhere hot, with a cocktail in one hand and the latest Joanna Trollope in the other.
But this year Nell had pleaded to be allowed to go to Cornwall with her best friend Teri and her family, and Richard had really wanted to try something different, something
grown-up,
he’d said, since