The Midnight News by Jo Baker EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available For Free Download
- Authors: Jo Baker
- Language: English
- Genre: Friendship Fiction
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 2 MB
- Price: Free
Late
‘Sorry, sorry, sorry.’
Charlotte has been scanning the pavements these past twenty minutes,
between glances at her watch and at the posters of the new releases, and yet
Elena still appears out of nowhere, in a pistachio linen dress and crocheted
gloves, straw hat clutched in her hands. She’s looking flushed and irritated.
‘There you are!’ Charlotte says.
‘I am so sorry.’
She pulls El to her, holds her slight frame close, breathes in her scent:
roses and lemon sherbets and cigarettes – essence-of-El. She is warm and
slightly damp in Charlotte’s embrace. Charlotte lets her go, looks her over.
That familiar unkempt beauty, like a scruffy Snow White. Her impish green
eyes. And, today, a line between her brows.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘Just that I’m outrageously late,’ El says. ‘And after treating you so
abominably, putting you off and putting you off, I wasn’t sure you’d wait.’
El claps her hat back on her head, then digs her hands into her pockets,
squinting in the low September sun. ‘I’m so sorry, Lotts. Can you ever
forgive me?’
‘Already have. Always will.’
‘You’re too good.’
‘Au contraire,’ Charlotte says. ‘Shall we go in? We can still catch the
feature.’
El glares up at the grand frontage of Tussaud’s Cinema, as though it
were to blame for the afternoon’s delays and frustrations. ‘You know, to tell
you the truth, I don’t really want to spend what’s left of the day sitting in
the dark.’
‘It is glorious,’ Charlotte says, touching her own hat brim the better to
shade her eyes. ‘The park, then?’
‘Yes. Why not?’
Charlotte offers her arm. They walk along, linked, skirts rustling
together, in the drenching honeyed sun. Omnibuses and taxis and vans
rumble by; the air tastes of traffic fumes. Charlotte asks about work, about
family, about any fun she might have had, and though El replies, she seems
somehow out of step, at one remove. They turn into the shade of York Gate,
past the cool white-columned façades, and Charlotte looks sidelong at her
friend. That line between her brows hasn’t gone away.
‘D’you know who I saw recently?’ Charlotte tries.
‘No?’
‘The Astonishing Vanessa.’
El brightens. ‘Vanessa Cavendish?’
‘Is there any other Vanessa worth the mention? She was giving her
Ophelia. You know, those Shakespeare matinées at the Vaudeville?’
‘Was she good?’
‘Was she good? She was heartbreaking. Beautiful. Brilliant. Everything
one would expect.’
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