The Ice Cream Girls by Dorothy Koomson

Author:Dorothy Koomson
Language: eng
Format: azw3, mobi, epub
Tags: Contemporary Women, Fiction
ISBN: 9781455507122
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2012-04-23T23:00:00+00:00

poppy

‘You look incredible,’ Alain tells me. ‘Simply . . . incredible. Beautiful.’

‘Thanks,’ I mumble. I want to smile, but I feel a bit strange doing it. It’s been so long, I forget how to take compliments. He is full of compliments, not only for the way I look, the things I say, the way I paint, even the way I hand him coffee. He notices little things about me and then comments on them with a compliment. It’s hard not to be caught up in it, not to want to hear those lovely words aimed at me trip off his tongue.

It’s been a bit of a natural progression to where we are now. Weather permitting, he would come by after work – he’s a college lecturer – or whenever he had free time and continue to sand and prime and paint the hut with me. Then we’d go for a drink or two afterwards. Last week he suggested we just go for a drink, and we did. Ten days later, we’ve been on a series of ‘dates’, like they do on the telly.

‘You don’t look so bad yourself,’ I say to him. He is wearing a white collarless dress shirt with the top two buttons open, black suit trousers and that is it. He is wearing them because he looks so fit in them. It’s the simplest outfit but, God, he looks tasty in it. There’s a hint of smooth collarbone and muscular chest visible through the open shirt buttons; that shirt flows inviting down his body, disappearing into the top of the trousers. The trousers fall in such a way that they emphasise his slender hips, rock-hard arse and muscly legs. I’m guessing about the details of his body, of course, since I’ve yet to see anything beyond the odd flash of chest and the smooth skin below the fair hairs of his forearms. He is freshly shaven, while his dark hair has a just-washed glisten, all coming together to give him a youthful, scrubbed-up look. Beside him on the pub sofa is his suit jacket, with his silky bow tie peeking out of the top pocket. We’re going to the theatre, so I’m dressed up too.

I have rescued a blue silky gown my mother had hidden in the back of her wardrobe. I used to try it on when I was twelve – padding out the breast cups with toilet roll and climbing into her heels. Whenever she caught me in it, she used to tell me about the parties she and Dad used to go to, wearing it along with her pearls and diamonds (paste and plastic). She’d tell me how much fun they had, how this dress had become her favourite of all the others she had. She gave it to me when I was fourteen because, she said, she wasn’t going to be wearing it again and I looked so sweet in it. Then she obviously took it back.

When they moved and recreated my bedroom,

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