You Make Me Feel Like Glamping by Daisy Tate

Author:Daisy Tate
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2019-06-28T17:00:00+00:00

Chapter 6

Sleep might have helped. So would flinging her phone into the fire and watching it melt away into nothing.

As things stood, Charlotte wasn’t in the best frame of mind to host a birthday party.

Calling it off was out of the question. Too many wheels in motion. The caterers, for example, would be arriving any time now.

Almost involuntarily, her thumb flicked her phone from the home page to Instagram. Cyber-stalking, it turned out, was rather addictive.

Xanthe was terrifically young and beautiful. No surprise there.

Xanthe had well over two thousand followers, could ski, scuba, and loved a quality organic facial.

Xanthe – she thumbed a bit further down the page – also went out to nightclubs where her husband doled out kisses like lollipops. She looked happy and comfortable. As if it were perfectly normal to have another woman’s husband plant kisses on her dewy young cheek.

Charlotte pocketed the phone and stared helplessly at the yurts where her friends peacefully slept away.

As certain as she’d been that she must tell them what was really going on, morning brought with it the dawning realization that if she were to veer off script now she might lose what little traction she had in her marriage. Putting on ‘a good show’ was paramount to the Mayfields. And today, which came complete with the full complement of in-laws, would be no different.

It wasn’t as if Charlotte would ever go completely mad. Not like Marcy Cunningham had at last year’s sports day. Imagine! Putting her husband’s entire Dr Who collection in for the tombola. No. She wouldn’t corral their guests together only to announce she planned to take Oliver for all he was worth. Wouldn’t show up at his office and make a scene, demand to meet The Other Woman. Wouldn’t shrivel up and die.

Not yet, anyway.

Mostly because everything seemed one step removed from reality. As if discovering her husband was a cheat had dropped triple-glazing between her and the life she thought she’d been living.

She remembered the advice that some of the older wives at the law firm had given her in the early days of their marriage; giving her the lowdown on what being a ‘seasoned wife’ meant, and what was in store for Charlotte when Oliver became the youngest partner in his firm. Don’t complain about supper drying out in the oven. It will happen frequently. Never moan about the long days. Those billable hours were keeping her in Chloé and Stella McCartney. And most importantly, don’t fight about the affairs. It was simply how it worked. That will never happen to me, she had thought.

The affairs, she’d learnt that night, had tiers. The secretaries slept with the junior partners. The junior partners slept with the senior partners. The librarian slept with everyone.

She took a sip of her tea and watched, through the steam, as the morning sun edged its way from the woodland into the large meadowscape where, soon enough, she’d be celebrating her birthday.

Forty years old. She’d got her first party-planning job the year her mum had turned forty.

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