Amy's Honeymoon by Julia Llewellyn

Author:Julia Llewellyn
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2007-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

23

Just as Amy and Lisa were leaving the café for more shopping Lisa’s mobile rang. Simon had spent a day trying to get pictures of Justina Maguire looking skinny and was eager for his fiancée to return to the hotel.

‘Shit, he’s probably going to want sex,’ said Lisa, slipping her Motorola back in her Fendi bag. ‘Bollocks. Still, what can you do, eh? That’s my job now. Better than sorting bras into the right sizes and putting knickers back on hangers.’

‘I guess so,’ said Amy, giggling. The two Proseccos had gone to her head. It was a long time since she’d felt drunk and carefree, she realized. Well, carefree wasn’t exactly the word – she was still eaten up over Doug, of course, but it had been a long time since she’d sat with a girlfriend in the sun and giggled and even longer since she’d flirted, however ineptly, with two strange men.

Companionably they wandered back, down cobbled alleyways and under arches. They stopped for a bit to watch a mime artist and to check out a jewellery stall manned by a grey-haired hippy. Glancing down at a drain cover, Amy saw the initials SPQR. Wasn’t that what the Roman centurions had on their shields in Asterix? The Senate and the Roman People, the phrase drifted back to her from a school lesson. For the first time Amy began to see the point of the city, to feel its charms work upon her.

‘Shame we couldn’t have gone out with the boys tonight,’ Lisa mused, as they approached the hotel. ‘But Simon wouldn’t exactly have been chuffed if I’d disappeared for the night and I doubt your poor, ill rocker would have been either.’

‘No.’

‘Fancy a drink with me and Si?’ Lisa asked, as they entered the lobby. ‘Or are you dying to get back upstairs to the invalid?’

Amy was eager to prolong any human contact as long as possible. She was also very curious about Simon. ‘No, no, Doug’s probably asleep. I’d love to have a drink.’ Out of the corner of her eye, she noted Hal Blackstock walking towards the lift. For some reason, her face flushed scarlet. Hastily, she turned her back.

Simon was waiting under a parasol on the lower terrace, in front of a very large glass of beer and some bowls of exotic-looking nibbles.

‘All right, darling?’ Lisa chirped, pecking him on the cheek as she plonked down beside him. ‘Simon, this is Amy. We’ve just been shopping. Amy, this is Simon.’

‘Hiya.’ Morosely, he held out his hand.

‘So how was your day?’

‘Crap. We had to bribe some bloke to get on his roof terrace, so we could take pictures of Justina on her roof terrace. Which is about the size of the Titanic. Bloody nightmare.’

‘But you got what you wanted?’

‘In the end,’ he admitted. ‘I got her in her bikini.’

‘Looking too skinny.’

‘Looking like a famine victim.’

Lisa smiled up at a pretty waitress. ‘Oh, ciao! Martini, please. You have one too, Amy. They’re the house speciality.’

‘OK,’ said Amy, even though she didn’t really like Martinis.

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.