1784160199 by Tammy Cohen

Author:Tammy Cohen [Cohen, Tammy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781473509597
Publisher: Transworld
Published: 2016-04-20T16:00:00+00:00

26

Amira

‘Do you think someone did it deliberately?’

Amira would have laughed if Paula hadn’t looked like she was blinking away tears. She’d been taken aback when the older woman had knocked on her hotel-room door just a few moments ago asking for a ‘chat’. She and Paula had always got on well enough – at least until Rachel practically offered her Paula’s job and it all became awkward – but they’d never been intimate. Now Paula was slumped like a bag of boiled rice in the armchair by the window, asking her if someone could have deliberately tampered with her safety cord.

‘Blimey, not you as well.’

Paula blinked at her, not understanding.

‘Charlie was convinced someone had poisoned him the other day,’ Amira explained. ‘Hey, have you two been at the skunk again?’

‘Skunk?’ Paula looked more confused than ever and Amira stifled an impatient sigh.

‘Skunk. You know – weed. Gives you paranoid delusions.’

‘Oh. Right. Yes. Funny.’

Amira felt a pang of guilt. Paula was entitled to feel paranoid – her boss was trying to get rid of her. Maybe not by dropping her off a rope bridge but scheming behind her back to replace her was just as soul-destroying.

‘You look nice,’ Paula said now, as if to compound Amira’s guilt. The automatic reply ‘so do you’ died on Amira’s lips as she surveyed the outfit her companion had selected for the evening’s dinner activities: the familiar voluminous beige tunic over baggy black trousers. Low-heeled black court shoes of a type that were last in style in the early eighties and a shapeless black cardigan completed the look.

‘You’re so lucky,’ Paula continued. ‘You can wear anything with your colouring. Which one of your parents do you take after?’

Amira shrugged, uncomfortable as always with this line of questioning.

‘Neither really. My mum is Indian and my dad was Irish, so I ended up this mutant creature who doesn’t look like anyone. What do you think of this dress? Be honest.’

She had got used to heading off enquiries into her complicated heritage, but immediately she regretted her choice of topic.

‘It’s gorgeous,’ said Paula sincerely. ‘Is it new?’

The guilt was instantaneous. Amira’s fingers flew to the bold-flowered-print Ted Baker dress she’d agonized over a couple of days before. She hadn’t meant to go shopping. She and Tom had banned themselves from buying any new things for the next, oh, fifty years or so. But as she’d been walking to the Tube after work she’d started thinking about Rachel and how she always looked so perfectly put together, and she’d allowed herself to think for the first time about the possibility of promotion. If she took the job – of course, she wasn’t committed yet – she’d need to start looking smarter. And that had got her thinking about the weekend and how she had absolutely nothing decent to wear. What would be the harm in just going to have a look? She wouldn’t buy anything. She’d only be thinking ahead to when she got the . . . well, when she’d need to dress better, and would have the salary to do it too.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.