The Lie of Love Read Free Page A

agreed with a
chuckle. As well as being a femme fatale her friend was also slightly barking
mad. Darcy often thought that was the reason she liked her so much. 
‘Though I’m not sure I’d go all that far. I didn’t realise her mum was in
hospital. What’s she had done?’
    ‘Hysterectomy…’ Amanda smoothed
back a perfect blonde wave. ‘Poor thing – only forty-five.’
    ‘Poor thing
indeed. Was it cancer?’
    ‘Oh no, I don’t think so. I think
she was having problems… you know, with her monthlies. And I think they all
came to the conclusion that there was nothing else for it but to get rid.’
    Darcy raised her eyebrows. She
was used to her friend’s blunt statements but sometimes they still made her
want to laugh at things she wasn’t supposed to laugh at.
    ‘Whatever doctor she saw, remind
me never to see them if the same thing happens to me.’
    ‘Oh I think you’ll be perfectly
healthy and lovely forever. I mean, who decided it was fair to give you the
ten-years-younger genes and not me? Five years between us and yet I could pass
as your mother.’
    ‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ Darcy
giggled. ‘I’ve spent half the morning plucking out new greys.’
    ‘Greys? At thirty-six?’
    ‘Thirty-seven, actually...’
    ‘Oh! I forgot your birthday
again?’ Amanda squeaked, looking mortified. ‘Every year, you must hate me!’
    ‘I could never hate you. In fact,
I will always forgive you, right now, in advance, for every year that you will
miss until we’re both dead,’ Darcy smiled.
    ‘I suppose it means that whatever
favour you’re going to ask me this morning I will have to say yes to.’
    Darcy looked up as Rachel
returned with their order. She gave her a smile as the girl placed coffee and
cake in front of them. ‘I never thought of it like that. ‘I suppose it does.’
    ‘Thank you, Rachel, darling,’
Amanda said as she reached for the sugar bowl.
    ‘No problem, Mrs Gale.’
    ‘Oh, dear God, don’t call me Mrs
Gale – it’s simply hideous. Amanda will do just fine.’
    Rachel blushed, but far from
looking like a vein-ridden tomato as Darcy always felt she did when she
blushed, she did almost look like a very pretty, real-life version of Disney’s
Snow White. Darcy felt herself struck by an emotion she had never experienced
in quite that way before, and it had come from out of the blue. And no matter
how she might want to, she could not deny what that emotion was: it was envy. Perhaps
Amanda’s comment about wicked fairytale queens was just what Darcy herself was
really thinking but would never dare admit.  Amanda might joke that Darcy
looked young for her age, and indeed, many had said it, but that wasn’t how
Darcy felt when she woke every morning to find a new wrinkle that hadn’t been
there the previous day. Every day she seemed to be choked by a new awareness of
the passing of time, of how the days of her life now seemed to fall away like
autumn leaves, and in many ways she knew that the time she spent devoted to her
family was a way to deny herself those creeping fears, to focus on something
else other than the recognition of her own mortality.
    ‘Sorry,’ Rachel said. ‘I’m so
used to it now.’
    ‘Well, I think eighteen is a good
a time as any to start seeing yourself as an equal to other women and not as a
girl anymore…’ Amanda turned to Darcy. ‘Don’t you agree?’
    ‘Sorry?’ Darcy shook her head to
clear the sudden melancholy thoughts that muddled it.
    ‘I was saying that eighteen is
old enough to see yourself as an equal to other women.’
    ‘You’re eighteen now?’ Darcy
asked. ‘Wow, that went fast. I can still remember when
you were playing down on that beach with your water wings on and it feels like
last year.’
    ‘I’m twenty in two months,
actually,’ Rachel said.
    ‘Oh hell, more birthdays I’ve
missed!’ Amanda rolled her eyes heavenwards theatrically.
    Darcy laughed, her friend’s
infectious humour lifting her from her own sombre