Before I Met You by Lisa Jewell Read Free Book Online Page A

large-featured, kohled eyes, full lips, black hair hanging straight and glossy from underneath a cream pull-on hat, studded nostril and hoop earrings. She was clutching a folder under her arm and mouthing the word ‘sorry’.
    ‘Actually,’ said Betty to the man on the phone, ‘don’t worry, it’s fine.’ She hung up.
    ‘Oh God,’ said the girl, ‘I am
so sorry
. I got called away to an emergency. Another tenant.
A rat
,’ she hissed conspiratorially. ‘But , oh God, I probably shouldn’t have told you that. Seriously. You do not need to worry about rats. You’re on the second floor. This one was in a basement. In Paddington. I hate basement flats. Never, ever live in a basement flat. Especially not in London. No light at all.’
    ‘And rats,’ said Betty, drolly.
    ‘Well, yes, and rats. Anyway,’ Marni beamed, ‘I’m here now.’
    ‘Did that guy up there tell you where I was?’
    ‘Yes,’ she smiled. ‘He did. Told me there was a moody girl in a fur coat waiting for me up here.’ She laughed.
    ‘Oh,’ said Betty, picking up her rucksack and letting the door of the phone booth close behind her. ‘I think he’ll find that he was the grumpy one, actually.’
    She followed Marni back towards the flat, deliberately averting her gaze from the trader.
    ‘She found you then?’ he asked brusquely.
    She looked at him and nodded, feeling a warm flush rising up her neck. ‘Yes,’ she said, matching him in tone. ‘Thank you.’
    ‘Come on,’ said Marni, holding the door ajar for her, ‘let’s get you settled.’
    Betty nodded and followed her into the downstairs hall, past a payphone on the wall with all its wires hanging out like entrails, and up a tight staircase painted buttermilk and streaked with mildew.
    ‘Da-dah!’ announced Marni on the top landing. ‘This is it.’
    She unlocked the door and pushed it open.
    Betty didn’t really know what she’d been expecting. She hadn’t really thought beyond: FLAT IN SOHO. Or NEWLY DECORATED. She hadn’t considered the possibility that NEWLY DECORATED might mean CHEAP WHITE PAINT SLAPPED ALL OVER LUMPY WALLS. And CORK FLOORING PEELING SLIGHTLY IN PLACES. And OLD METAL VENETIAN BLINDS GIVEN A WIPE DOWN WITH A DAMP CLOTH. Not to mention NEWLY REPLACED BARE BULBS HANGING FROM DUSTY LIGHT FITTINGS and NASTY AZTEC-PRINT SOFA COVERS GIVEN A QUICK SPIN AND SHRINKING SLIGHTLY BEFORE BEING STRETCHED BACK OVER TOO BIG SOFA.
    Neither did her fantasies about FLAT IN SOHO really sufficiently prepare her for a living room that was, fundamentally, a low-ceilinged box with a kitchen counter glued to one wall and a small window on the other, with barely enough room to stretch out on the sofa without scuffing your toes against the skirting board on the other side of the room. This, she quickly concluded, was not a flat. This was a corridor with a piece of furniture in it.
    Yet still the effusive Marni smiled at her with sheer delight, as though she had just shown her the presidential suite at the Savoy.
    ‘Here’s your kitchenette,’ she said gleefully, pointing to the three cheap units screwed to the wall, an elderly brown microwave and a two-ring Baby Belling.
    ‘Fridge here,’ she announced, pulling open the rust-speckled door of a miniature fridge, just large enough to house two pints of milk and a box of eggs. ‘And there’s plenty of storage space.’ She opened and closed a couple of flimsy doors, one of which almost fell off completely as she did so. ‘Having said that, we do find that our tenants in this area tend not to have much need for kitchen space. Why cook, when you can eat out every night at a different restaurant?’
    It seemed to Betty that this girl, Marni, had looked neither at her nor in any detail at this flat. If she had, Betty pondered, it would be immediately obvious that she had just stepped off a ferry, that she had all her worldly possessions in a tatty rucksack and was clearly going to be paying so much rent for this tiny