Four Weddings and a White Christmas by Jenny Oliver

Author:Jenny Oliver [Oliver, Jenny]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781474036535
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2015-03-13T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirteen

New York was all so big and so bright. Exactly like the movies. In the cab Hannah had watched the skyscrapers appear, the view almost unreal it was so familiar. As if a theatre backdrop had been rolled down from the sky. She’d opened her window to breathe in the warm air but the cab driver had shouted about the air conditioning so she’d closed it again. The noise had distracted Emily, who had been nattering on to Annie and Hannah while simultaneously texting and she’d glanced up from her phone. Annie had stopped rummaging through her bag on her lap and looked up too and there was a moment when all three of them were silent, just watching as the view of the New York skyline unfolded. No thoughts in Hannah’s head of homesickness and jet lag, just a realisation that this was a weekend like no other weekend in her life would ever be. She’d been a bit tearful leaving Jemima and her mum at the airport but now, seeing this, she was in the moment. She was in New York.

And Emily’s New York certainly wasn’t the New York that Hannah had been to when she was seven with her family. There was no budget hotel, McDonalds for dinner, queues for the Empire State Building.

When they had pulled up outside the house in Greenwich Village that Emily had borrowed off a friend for the weekend, Annie had leant over the Hannah and said in a loud whisper, ‘See these are the perks of putting up with her.’

Emily had done her loud, horsey laugh and sauntered off ahead to tell the cabbie where to deposit the bags while handing over dollars like candy.

Hannah had stood back, trying not to gawp at the red-brick townhouse with its dark-green shutters, red geraniums in pots on the windows, black railings flanking the steps up to the red front door, London plane trees dappling the sidewalk, and surreptitiously snapped a photo ready to send to the family WhatsApp as soon as she had the Wi-Fi code.

The second cab pulled up and two of Emily’s friends from work stepped out, followed by Jane Williams, the fabric designer. Hannah immediately stopped taking tourist-esque photos and put her phone away, trying to look as if she was taking all this in her stride.

They’d all met with a quick wave hello at the airport but been seated separately on the plane. Hannah had heard so much about Jane that she’d been expecting a bolder, more forceful figure to match her fabric designs but, in reality, she was much more laid-back boho. All big, white-toothed smiles and shaggy hair, the tips bleached from the sun. It was clear she’d been travelling for a while from her tan that was complimented to perfection by a thin white vest and a string of turquoise beads with a gold disc and red tassel as a pendent. Alongside that, the knees of her rolled-up skinny jeans had tartan patches and she wore beaten-up yellow Converse high-tops.

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.