Never Close Your Eyes Read Free Page A

overuse”. Well, how often do people talk or write about lips dangling like ripe cherries?’
    There was silence.
    â€˜Precisely,’ Nic said triumphantly. ‘So I think Evie’s perfectly justified in choosing the simile, even if you may have heard it once or twice before.’
    Pamela’s lips pursed, her mouth set in a thin, jagged line. Evie found herself wondering for a moment if she’d ever kissed anyone, really kissed them – a proper snog. She guessed not. There was nothing ripe and cherry-like about Pamela’s lips. In fact she didn’t really have any.
    Neil, now, was a different matter. He knew how to kiss. His kisses were sexier even than making love. But when was the last time he’d kissed her? She scrabbled around her mind, like someone desperate to recall the blurred face of a long-dead loved one.
    But Neil wasn’t dead. Oh no. He was giving all his kisses to someone else. Evie felt a stab of misery. She straightened up, pulled down her shoulders, forced herself back to the present. No point dwelling on that. She must look forward to the future. Everyone said so.
    â€˜Shall I continue?’
    Tristram waved his hand grandly. ‘Of course, of course.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Good Lord, you’d better get a move on, too. It’s half past nine. When I was at boarding school it was lights out at half past nine every night even in the sixth form. Of course we all read under the blankets until Matron came and smacked our bottoms and confiscated our torches.’
    No one laughed.
    Carol, a woman in the second row who was probably in her late fifties, clicked her tongue. ‘He’s such a bore, isn’t he?’ she said loudly, flicking her straggly, shoulder-length grey hair off her face. Tristram didn’t seem to hear.
    Pamela scraped back her chair theatrically and turned away from Carol. The two women must be of a similar age, Evie guessed, but they could hardly be more different. While Pamela was outwardly genteel and damned only in snide, veiled terms, Carol had a wild, anarchic, tell-it-as-it-is streak.
    She was quite batty, of course. She rode her bicycle in all weathers and wore ancient cardies covered in cat hair. There was always a faint whiff of something about her, too – cat pee? Evie didn’t like to think about it.
    Pamela, on the other hand, favoured neat slacks and twinsets and never had a hair out of place. She smelled of Yardley Lily of the Valley eau de toilette spray. She could scarcely bring herself even to look at Carol, let alone speak to her, and made no secret of the fact that she thought her a fool. But Evie rather liked Carol. She was eccentric but there was also something deep about her.
    Evie caught Nic’s eye and found herself starting to giggle. She sucked in her cheeks. She was aware of a few other titters coming from different parts of the room, like the beginnings of a Mexican wave.
    Carol, picking up on the atmosphere, threw back her head and roared with laughter herself. ‘It’s all right,’ she snorted, showing off a set of yellowy, stained teeth, ‘the old fool’s deaf as a post.’
    â€˜God, I need a drink,’ Nic whispered as she, Evie and Becca pushed open the heavy wooden doors of the church hall and stepped out into the night.
    â€˜Me too,’ Evie agreed. ‘I’m sorry but I loathe Pamela. She’s a mean cow. It’s not as if she’s God’s gift to writing either. She’s got such a gloomy outlook on life. Her writing makes me want to slit my wrists.’
    â€˜I know,’ Nic agreed. ‘But don’t let her get to you. You just keep at it. I love the way you describe how Neil – er, sorry, Spiculus the gladiator is suddenly seeing your heroine in a totally different light. It’s as if he’d never looked at her – really looked – before.’
    Evie pretended not to notice Nic’s slip of the