Love Lies by Adele Parks Read Free Book Online

relationship to the next level and she will confirm that I am within my moral rights and in my right mind. She’ll find me a solution. A dignified way of moving this on. That’s what friends are for.

6. Fern
    Lisa staggers back from the bar carefully balancing a bottle of Chablis in an ice bucket and three glasses on a tray. She weaves her way precariously through the boisterous crowd; her face is tight with concentration. I hope she’s thinking about my dilemma with Adam but it’s more likely that she’s thinking about not upsetting the glasses. Not that we need more glasses – we already have them – as this is our third bottle of the night. Bugger. How many units is that? Too many.
    ‘I’ve got to stop drinking,’ I mumble.
    ‘Why?’ asks Jess, who rarely stops drinking until she falls over.
    ‘Because it’s not helping me think straight,’ I say.
    Plus I can’t afford to do this. If I’d known we were going to drink this much I’d have suggested that Lisa come over to our place. You can buy this exact same brand of wine for less than half the price in the supermarket. But I always feel like a killjoy if I suggest a night in. Lisa looks forward to her up-town bids-for-freedom, as she jokingly calls our decreasingly frequent gettogethers. But then, Lisa has no concept of watching the pennies, although she does think the pounds look after themselves as her cash appears like magic. Charlie gives her an enormous allowance, plus he unquestioningly pays off her credit card at the end of every month. Lisa gave up her job as soon as she and Charlie got engaged and is entirely dependent on him financially. This can cause contention in some families but Lisa is delighted with the arrangement – she likes to see a plan coming together.
    I remember Lisa pointing out that her job as a PA paid less than they’d have to shell out for a wedding planner, so there was no point in her working in the run-up to the wedding since she could save some cash by organizing the wedding herself. Lisa’s reasoning seemed logical, once I accepted that real people actually have wedding planners. I thought they were something Hello! magazine had invented to torment brides-to-be who were suffering at the hands of their interfering mothers. Although the odd thing was that Lisa employed a wedding planner anyway, so that she had someone to discuss lace and stationery with ( Jess and I had a very limited interest in the subject at the time). After the wedding Lisa was flat out remodelling the house (apparently managing interior designers demands a lot of time), and now they have the children no one would dream of suggesting that Lisa ought to go back to work, she’s busy enough – even with the help of a nanny and a cleaner. And somehow, knowing all of this makes me a little shy about admitting to Lisa that I’m a bit short cash-wise; I don’t think she’d understand.
    ‘Plus binge drinking is V fattening,’ I add aloud.
    ‘Oh, don’t worry about that, you’ll lose weight without even trying soon,’ says Lisa as she starts to pour the wine.
    ‘Why, because Adam is going to leave me and I’ll be too heartbroken to eat?’ I wail, with a touch of melodrama that I just can’t resist.
    Lisa tuts. ‘No, because as soon as you are engaged you’ll turn into a weight-obsessed freak and go all “nil by mouth”. Everyone does.’
    ‘You think he’ll ask me to marry him?’ I ask excitedly. I want a confirmation from Lisa that my plan is on track.
    ‘Probably,’ she says with more honest caution than I want. Why couldn’t she have said certainly? ‘He should do, if he knows what’s good for him. You’re gorgeous, the best thing that ever happened to him. He’d be mad to let you go. You two are so brilliant together.’
    ‘One of the happiest couples I know,’ confirms Jess with a small hiccup.
    ‘But?’ I can hear the ‘but’ hanging in the air.
    ‘Well, men…’ Lisa trails off.
    It’s an articulate enough