Family Pictures by Jane Green Read Free Book Online Page A

blissfully unaware that at that precise moment, Eve is on her knees in front of the toilet, three fingers reaching for the back of her throat, retching and gasping until finally, finally, the croissant, barely chewed, has entirely left her body.
    *   *   *
    The women are chatting away on the sofa, the men standing at the other end of the room admiring the view, an occasional burst of laughter drifting across the room.
    Angie’s house is the diametric opposite of Sylvie’s. Despite the concrete and glass; the clean, simple lines; Sylvie, sipping her champagne and listening to the chatter, feels as comfortable there as she does in her own home.
    Admittedly, she wouldn’t want to live there full-time, does not understand how Angie’s daughter can live there so neatly and tidily, or their nonchalance at entire walls made of glass, affording neighbors multiple and constant views of their lives, but each time she walks up the glass staircase and into the giant room that serves as kitchen, living room, family room, and study, Sylvie is instantly calm.
    Angie tells everyone she is hopeless at anything to do with the home, cannot cook to save her life, could not choose a fabric if her life depended on it, but looking around at this room, Sylvie knows that isn’t true.
    Angie may have paid Lars Bernal, decorator to the stars, to furnish the house, but she also gave him a stack of photographs torn from magazines, homes she wanted to emulate, rooms she admired, showing him exactly what sort of design would work for her.
    Lars found the low-slung Balinese daybeds, big enough for a dozen people, covered in soft white pillows, but Angie was the one who e-mailed him pictures she took on vacation at Parrot Cay, with a note telling him these daybeds were exactly what she wanted.
    Lars found the huge stone Buddha, who now casts a benevolent eye over the room from his perch in front of the windows, but only after Angie sent him a picture of a similar one. Angie found the hand-tinted black-and-white photographs above the modern fireplace, itself a simple rectangle in the wall, and guided Lars to replace the gas fire logs with polished river stones.
    Obsessed by candles, Angie’s current fixation is Bamboo by NEST, the soothing smells of which arise from every corner, creating a haven of peace and tranquillity that slightly offsets the whirlwind that is Angie.
    “Okay!” Angie raises a hand, casting an eye over to the coffee table, where the gifts are currently piled. “I know the polite thing to do is to wait to open gifts, but I’m a gift whore. Can I open them now? Please!”
    “Would you?” Kirsty says in mock exasperation. “I didn’t want to say anything, but frankly I was about to take it home.”
    “Can I squeal if I love it?” Angie reaches for a gift with a big grin as Simon comes over to refill their glasses.
    “Uh-oh,” he says. “Girl time. I think I’ll take the men downstairs to do manly stuff.”
    “ Manly stuff?” Sylvie snorts. “Are you going hunting, shooting, and fishing?”
    “We would if we were in Montana,” Simon says. “Speaking of which, I thought the four of us were going to go to that dude ranch? What-ever happened to that?”
    “I’d love to go to a dude ranch!” Kirsty sits up. “I’ve always wanted to go! Can we come?”
    “We should all go!” Angie says. “The problem is finding the right place.”
    “Right place?” Simon shakes his head in exasperation. “It’s a dude ranch, my love. Not a Four Seasons. The whole point is to be rustic.”
    “You can do rustic,” Angie says, “and we’ll do luxury. I know there’s somewhere out there where we’ll all be happy.”
    “We should go to the ranch and let you guys go to a spa,” Simon says. “We’re not going to find a Four Seasons dude ranch. Hey, Mark!” He calls him over. “Dude ranch. What words come to mind?”
    Mark wanders over. “Horses. Cowboys. Long days. Fun nights. Drinking. Great sleep. Good honest