Spellbound by Jane Green Read Free Book Online

occasional rumours about her husband, but she chooses to ignore them. Infidelity is something she is simply not prepared even to think about.

4
    The cab driver pulls up with a screech outside the gallery in Cork Street and even from this distant vantage point Alice can see Joe is already inside, standing head and shoulders above everyone else, chatting animatedly to a couple they see from time to time at gallery openings such as these and the odd dinner party.
    Not friends, exactly. Acquaintances. Alice and Joe don’t have many of what Alice calls friends, not friends in the sense that Emily is a friend, not friends in the true sense of the word.
    Of course there are people who consider Alice to be their friend, particularly those who feel it may benefit them in some way to be seen with Alice Chambers, but Alice is fully aware they mix in superficial circles, and she has learnt to judge each overture of friendship with just the right amount of friendliness and suspicion.
    Yet people want to be friends with Alice. They want to know more about her, want some of her luck and success to rub off on them. Women are drawn in by Alice’s natural warmth, and intrigued by her air of mystery.
    They don’t know where she came from, just that Joe, hugely eligible and unlikely ever to settle down, suddenly announced he was getting married, and to a woman none of them had ever heard of.
    And they have tried to get close to her, but with a charming smile she always manages to turn the conversation back to what they are doing, what they are thinking and feeling, and these women so love talking about themselves that after a while, flattered and charmed, they find that they haven’t found out anything more at all.
    Of course people have talked about her. The cattier women in the circle claim she was a waitress, claim to have seen her serving sushi at parties many years ago. Others say it was her own business, that she was a hugely successful businesswoman in her own right, that the current hot caterers – Rhubarb and Mustard to name but two – modelled themselves on her unique and innovative style.
    Neither is true, but they love to talk. Particularly when they have so little to go on.
    Alice is frequently at their lunches, always impeccable in the latest designer outfits, always gracious as the others gossip away, but she doesn’t ever let anyone get too close, and the longer she has been married, the more rumours have started swirling.
    She refuses to have sex with Joe, they say, which of course is why he’s off sleeping with anything in a skirt. She’s into swinging, they say, and in fact the two of them have been known to share Joe’s racier girlfriends. She’s clearly a dominatrix, they say, and a friend of the architect said the cellar had been converted into a dungeon complete with torture rack and chains.
    The fact remains that the ladies who lunch are fascinated by Alice Chambers because they simply don’t know who she is. They long to be a fly on the wall in her bedroom, love seeing her walk into a restaurant, or a première, or an opening, to see what she’s wearing, whether she might do anything that would give them more fodder for gossip.
    Alice pushes open the door of the gallery and gives Joe a half-wave and a smile. She has to squeeze through hordes of tightly packed people to reach him, and already she has seen more than half a dozen familiar faces, and she knows by the time she air-kisses and does the ‘Hellohowareyous?’ it will be several minutes before she reaches him.
    No one is looking at the paintings. The loud buzz of conversation fills the air as people talk, and laugh, and constantly turn to see who else has walked in the door.
    Clearly the gallery is the place to see and be seen tonight. Look over there, at the platinum blonde in the one-shouldered top, isn’t she the famous It girl? And the tousle-haired brunette with the miraculously growing pout, isn’t she you-know-who? And the fresh-faced pop