True Colours Read Free

and in love. Katie felt a small twinge of envy.
    ‘He looks great. Very dishy,’ she said. ‘Did you say his name was Rex?’
    Sophie nodded. ‘Ghastly, isn’t it? More like a dog’s name. But somehow he couldn’t be called anything else.’
    Katie was about to make a joke about collars and leads but bit her tongue just in time. Somehow her jokes all seemed to come out sounding wrong. ‘And you say he’s an illustrator. Does that mean he works from home – freelance?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Like me,’ Katie volunteered. ‘It’s pretty precarious if you don’t have a day job too. I work as a sales assistant in Fantaisie, in the King’s Road. Do you know it?’
    ‘No.’ Sophie said. Her face coloured. ‘Rex doesn’t need a day job. He can hardly keep up with all the work he’s offered. He’s very much in demand.’
    ‘Oh, I’m sure he is.’ Katie winced inwardly, noticing Sophie’s heightened colour. There she went again, putting her foot in it. She looked at her watch. ‘My train’s due,’ she said. ‘I’d better get on to the platform.’ She reached for Sophie’s hand and squeezed it. ‘It’s been so lovely to see you again and have a good old gossip,’ she said. ‘You will get in touch again, won’t you?’
    Sophie nodded. ‘Of course. Give me a ring any time if you want a chat. Take care, Katie. I’ve really enjoyed today.’
    Katie got out of the car and stood waving as Sophie drove away. The three of them had exchanged addresses and phone numbers but now she wondered rather wistfully whether she would in fact ever see either of them again. They were poles apart – Fran in her restored manor house with her son and wealthy husband, Sophie with her arty lifestyle, all loved-up with her handsome other half. They had always been poles apart of course but back in the old days they had had school in common, plus the fact that they’d all had problems at home like most teenagers. They’d been the Three Musketeers – all for one and one for all. She sighed and walked through the ticket hall and on to the platform just as the train came in.

CHAPTER TWO
SOPHIE
    After I’d dropped Katie off at the station I headed for the motorway. If there wasn’t too much traffic I reckoned that I should be home by six. But as I drove down the slip road and merged into the stream of traffic it began to rain which was bound to slow things up.
    On the whole I didn’t regret organizing the reunion. It had been lovely to see my old school friends again but talking to Katie and Fran had been quite an eye opener. Who would have foreseen that shy little Fran would blossom into the glamorous wife of a successful businessman? As for Katie – endearing little Katie; she’d always been one to embroider her life with glamorous fantasies but
fashion designer
! That took some swallowing, like all the stories she was always spinning. The thing was, she managed to make her outrageous fibs sound so much fun that we let her get away with it. She’d always been quite clever with a needle of course. I couldn’t help smiling, remembering the way she’d earned a few pence to augment her pocket money by subtly altering those awful uniform skirts we had to wear, turning up the hems and whittling down the side seams to give the more clinging look we all craved, to enhance our budding teenage curves. Oddly enough, none of the teachers ever seemed to notice, or if they did they must have decided to turn a blind eye.
    But now the day was over and as I peered through the streaming windscreen through the mist thrown up by the endless stream of vehicles, I wondered what was awaiting me at home. Would Rex have begun working on the kitchen? It was doubtful – with footballon the box. I couldn’t help wondering, not for the first time, if buying Greenings had been an enormous mistake.
    I remembered how excited I’d been the first time I’d seen the house. It had been a showery spring afternoon much like this one, almost two years