The Sunshine And Biscotti Club Read Free Page B

check to see if life was allowed to be this good, but then want to hide their eyes at her crashing lows as she experiencedthe turbulent relationship emotions that everyone else had been allowed to experience in their teens.
    And then there was Dex, who pretty much told them he would be moving in because that was his way. He wouldn’t be there long, he’d said, he’d go when his cash was flowing again, but at that time his father had cut him off for hacking into his university’s computer system and changing his degree to a First—the result he needed to be gifted a Ferrari—and he’d been sent out to fend for himself over the summer. However, in some twisted logic, he’d been allowed to keep the Ferrari and whiled away most of time cruising the streets of Chelsea picking up rich, beautiful women and then having to apologise for the humble flat he was bringing them back to. Libby had spent many a morning having breakfast opposite a girl in some flash designer dress, It bag on her lap, tapping away on her phone while casting haughty sneers at Libby’s Primark pyjamas.
    But Dex didn’t move out after that summer; in the end he stayed for as long as they all stayed. It transpired that his billionaire dad wasn’t as squeaky clean as his punishment of Dex implied when one morning every building he owned was raided at dawn by armed police, including their flat, simply because of the connection to Dex. Libby, Eve, and Jessica stood sobbing with terrified shock as Dex went mad, desperately trying to protect them, swearing to the police that he had no clue where his dad was, the phone going to voicemail, tryingto hold back tears as a lifetime of hero worship was shattered in just under an hour.
    The raids turned up nothing, as his dad, on the phone from southern Spain the next day, assured Dex that they would, but the damage was already done. Dex drove the Ferrari to a multi-storey carpark and never went back for it.
    For three years Eve, Libby, Jessica, and Dex lived together in their second floor flat underneath medical students Jimmy and Jake and aspiring musician Miles. And over the course of those three years all their lives intertwined like vines. But it was the link between Libby and Eve that always remained the strongest. From the first day they’d met they had burrowed beneath the other’s surface. They had understood one another with a look, a laugh, an infinitesimal raise of an eyebrow.
    Jake always said that Libby placed too high an expectation on their friendship. That she set the bar and waited for Eve to fall short so she could feel hard done by. But she wasn’t convinced. To her, a mark of a true friend was how far you would put yourself out to help the other. And Eve, as always, was wrapped up tight in Eve world.
    By the time Libby pulled up at the airport, in her mind Eve had become a giant monster, so it was a surprise when the car door yanked open and instead of the vivacious, effervescent, self-absorbed blonde she was expecting, there was Eve. Tall, willowy, tired-looking.Shaggy pale hair. T-shirt half off her shoulder. Bulging handbag.
    ‘God, I always think I’m going to get done at airports,’ Eve said, breathless, chucking her bag into the backseat. ‘It’s my parents’ fault. Do you know what they used to do? Bags of weed in my teddy bear. Of course you know. I must have told you? Have I told you that? Can you imagine doing it now? Can you imagine if I was like: Maisey, Noah, just so you know, there’s a couple of hundred quid’s worth of drugs in your teddy. God, now I get nervous if I forget to even turn my phone off. Shit, that reminds me, I need to turn it back on.’ She rifled through the contents of her bag at top speed. ‘I think I’ve lost my phone. No, here it is.’ She dropped it back into her bag and then sat back with a sigh, her eyes closed for a moment. ‘Sorry. Hi,’ she said, clicking her seatbelt and leaning back against the headrest. ‘Sorry. I get so nervous at