Before I Met You by Lisa Jewell Read Free Book Online

of the Piccadilly line. And I could be in Soho in twenty-two minutes flat.’
    ‘But you don’t understand. When you’re on a tube, you’re
leaving
Soho. I don’t want to leave Soho. I want to
live
there.’
    Her mother had sighed again. ‘So. You’ve got enough rent money for ten weeks. Then what happens?’
    ‘It’s fine,’ Betty had assured her. ‘I’ll get a job. I won’t need Arlette’s money for long.’
    ‘A job? In London? With a B.Tech in General Art and Design ? And no work experience? Oh my God.’ Her mother had clasped her ears as though trying to keep Betty’s ill-thought-out plans from torturing them.
    ‘It will be
fine
.’ Betty folded her arms across her chest.
    ‘There’ll be thirty people lined up behind you for every job you apply for. All of them with more experience than you!’
    ‘Yes!’ she’d snapped. ‘I know! But they won’t be
me
, will they?’
    She’d paused then, and stared at her mother for a second or two. She had shocked herself. She had always been a self-confident girl. Especially since moving to Guernsey and being picked out for special favour, first by Bella and then by Arlette. In all her years on that little speck of rock and soil in the middle of the English Channel, Betty had always floated somewhere above everything, in her big house, high above the sea, with her beautiful face, her quirky style, and latterly, of course, her saint-like commitment to the care of an age-ravaged lady right up until her final, unheard exhalation. Everyone knew who Betty Dean was. Everyone knew where she lived.
    So it stood to reason, in Betty’s opinion, that she and Soho were made for each other, that they were soul mates, a perfect fit. She had no concerns about being accepted and about fitting in. She was, she believed, entirely to the manner born.
    Except that this girl called Marni didn’t seem to have noticed. This girl called Marni was not here to greet her, to welcome Betty warmly and effusively to her new life. Instead, Betty was standing alone in the dark, invisible and slightly terrified. She breathed in deeply to stop herself crying and then scanned the street up and down for a payphone. She spied one to her left but it was at a critical distance from the flat. If this Marni girl arrived while she was on the phone, she would not know she was there and might just flit away again. She cast around helplessly, hoping for inspiration, and then she saw a man, late twenties, early thirties, hauling old LPs into boxes on the stall closest to where she stood.
    ‘Excuse me?’
    ‘Yes,’ he replied, slightly impatiently.
    ‘I need to make a phone call, but I’m supposed to be meeting someone here.’ She pointed at the front door. ‘Will you be here for the next few minutes?’
    He looked at her uncertainly as though she had just spoken to him in Mandarin.
    ‘What?’ he said.
    Betty sighed. She had had a very long day and she could see that charm and articulacy would be wasted on this man. ‘I’m going to make a phone call,’ she said abruptly. ‘If a woman turns up here, can you tell her I’m over there? Please?’
    She didn’t wait for him to reply, just hitched her rucksack over her shoulder and stomped off to the phone booth.
    The interior of the booth was rank, urine-sodden, damp and covered in graffiti. As Betty tapped in Marni’s phone number, she looked at the patchwork of calling cards attached to the walls with blobs of Blu-Tack. Asian babes. Earth mothers. African queens. Busty beauties. Naughty schoolgirls. Basques, whips, boots, lips, stockings, nails, heels. A dazzling collage of commercial sexual opportunities.
    ‘Oh, hello,’ she began as the phone was answered by a man with an Asian accent. ‘Is Marni there, please?’
    ‘No, she’s not, I’m afraid. Who is this calling, please?’
    ‘My name is Betty Dean, I’m …’ But she tailed off as a face appeared at the window of the booth and beamed at her. The face was dark and