The Birthday Party by Veronica Henry Read Free Book Online Page A

relieved of the responsibility of being the breadwinner and to take a back seat?
     She’d felt so tired of late. Not physically, necessarily, though it did take a little more effort to bounce out of bed in
     the morning than it had in her youth. But mentally. She was tired of juggling everything in her head. Trying to assess what
     mental state each of the girls was in. Trying to assess what mental state Raf was in. Finding ways to keep her show fresh
     and exciting and inspiring, as well as her books, in a market that was fiercely competitive. Keeping herself looking good,
     without resorting to anything extreme. Did anyone have any idea how much work it took to look youthful, to keep her figure
     just the right side of fulsome without running to fat? It was easier to be thin than aesthetically curvaceous. If she dieted
     too much it instantly went off her breasts, yet if she ate too much her stomach ballooned. Being the woman every woman wanted
     to be and the woman every man wanted to shag was exhausting. You didn’t get a day off, you couldn’t go out looking anything
     other than fabulous, even if it was an artless fabulous that suggested she had just thrown on the first thing that came to
     hand. Those sneaky photos that made you look bloated and unkempt could do untold damage, and the papers and magazines seemed
     particularly enamoured of them these days, as if they were trying to reassure their readers that glamour and beauty were just
     smoke and mirrors.
    Which, of course, to a large extent they were. You had to tick a few boxes to begin with, but walking out of the house looking
     a million dollars took time, effort and money, even ifyou went for the casual, natural look.
Especially
if you went for the casual, natural look and you were breathing down the
     neck of fifty.
    Fifty. Where had all those years gone? Somehow it was only when something momentous happened that you took the time to look
     back and wonder how you had got here.
    Delilah was originally Deborah, an ordinary girl from Bradford on Avon with extraordinary looks who worked in a travel agent.
     She and her friends had gone on a day trip to London, where she had been spotted by a talent scout at the Hard Rock Café.
     On her agent’s advice, she’d changed her name from Deborah to Delilah (her mother was a Tom Jones fan), and it had taken her
     more than six months to remember to respond to the name when someone called her. She had taken to modelling like a duck to
     water, being unselfconscious and imaginative, but most important of all hardworking.
    She’d come to the public’s attention when she’d starred in a series of television adverts for a popular chocolate bar. She’d
     been filmed devouring it with sensual pleasure along with uninhibited moans in a variety of inappropriate places – in a box
     at the opera, at a board meeting, in the middle of a wedding – and the ads had developed a cult status, sending sales of the
     chocolate bar soaring. Delilah had found herself a public figure overnight, unable to walk down the street without people
     humming ‘Mmmm …’ as she passed. A whole new world had opened up to her. She’d worked hard and played hard, jetting all over
     the world, never out of work because of her versatility, her professional attitude and her constant smile.
    Then one day she was offered a part in a film. She had shied away at first, until she learned that she didn’t actually have
     to act. She was to play the object of the leading man’s obsession – a fantasy figure he lusted over from afar, in a bucolic
     coming-of-age love story that ended in tragedy. It was being heralded as the next
Tess
, a sensual, passionate tale with ‘tasteful’
     nudity. Delilah had agonised over whether she should agree to beingfilmed without her clothes on, but the director’s credibility was so high that in the end she gave in. Polanski hadn’t done
     Nastassja Kinski any harm.
    Everyone had warned her about Raf: her