Kisses and Lies by Lauren Henderson Read Free Book Online Page A

Mademoiselle Fournier if I could stay over at Lizzie’s tonight, she sounded happier that Lizzie had someone to stay with than that I had someone to visit.”
    “Honestly, I could have told my aunt Gwen I was staying with a pedophile I met when he picked me up in the knickers section of Marks and Spencer’s, and she wouldn’t have batted an eyelid,” I said sourly.
    “Yeah, but your aunt Gwen hates you,” Taylor pointed out with brutal frankness.
    “She doesn’t think much of Lizzie, either. She sniffed when I said who I was staying with. And when I said she was a friend of ours, I know she didn’t believe me.”
    Taylor shrugged. “Well, maybe we’re the closest she’s got.”
    “That’s pretty sad. We should be nicer to her.”
    Taylor pretended to gag, but beneath that tough exterior is a slightly—slightly—softer heart, and she was actually quite polite to Lizzie this afternoon as Lizzie proudly showed us to our rooms. (Yup, we have one each, and they’re huge, and they’re both en suite. All this in Chelsea, the most expensive area in the whole of London. Lizzie’s dad clearly has more money than God.)
    We didn’t realize there was a swimming pool, though. Lizzie was too absorbed in showing us her built-in handbag and shoe cupboards, plus her wet room and Jacuzzi. We found that out from Lucia, the Romanian live-in housekeeper, who let us in when we got back from the club.
    “You want something to eat?” she asked, stone-faced, when we’d finished apologizing for making her get up to let us in. (“Is okay. Is my job. Miss Lizzie say perhaps you not come back with her.”)
    “No, that’s fine,” I said wistfully, kicking Taylor, who always wants something to eat. But I knew if we said yes, Lucia would have to get it for us, and she had clearly got out of bed to let us in—she was in her dressing gown and slippers, and her eyes were all blurry with sleep.
    “You have drink?” Lucia asked. “Watch film in cinema? Swim?”
    “I’m sorry,” I said blankly, “I must have misheard you, but I thought you said  .  .  .”
    Five minutes later the lift doors pinged open, and Lucia led us out and down a beautifully tiled corridor. She pushed open a door. We gasped.
    “Hot towels there. Swimming clothes there. Sauna there,” she pointed, though we were too mesmerized by the delicate cloud of steam rising off the bright blue water of the swimming pool to really focus on her directions. “Toilet also.” She indicated the far side of the pool, which is set in pale pink–tinged marble. “Behind the pillars.” Those were marble too, of course.
    “Thank you so much,” Taylor said fervently.
    “No problem.” Lucia actually cracked a tiny smile. “You good girls. Not drunk. I not smell drink when you talk.”
    “Um, thank you,” I said, profoundly grateful we hadn’t had a cocktail in Coco Rouge.
    Lucia turned to leave.
    “You drink water now,” she said over her shoulder. “For the sauna.”
    “Yes, Lucia,” we chorused.
    I surface from my underwater swim, wishing my aunt Gwen were more like Lucia. I don’t mind a bit of tough love. And Lucia was nicer to me than Aunt Gwen’s been my whole life.
    “Show me how you spin round so fast in that somersault you do on the trampoline,” Taylor calls, pulling herself out of the pool with one smooth flex of her powerful upper body.
    “I’m not really feeling like it,” I mumble, treading water.
    “Oh, come on, Scarlett!” Taylor puts her hands on her hips. “I know tonight was disappointing, but we’re in a private swimming pool—that’s got to cheer you up a bit!”
    Now I feel like I’m being a misery guts, and dragging Taylor down with me. Guiltily, I instruct her:
    “You need to get into the tuck as fast as you can. Snap your arms down like you’re throwing a ball, and by the time they come down, your knees should be tucked tight into your chest.”
    “Throwing a ball,” Taylor says, raising her arms above her head and