Read Online Every Good Girl by Judy Astley - Free Book Online Page A

going. They liked me, but they liked about ten others as well and we’ve all got to go back next Thursday for a re-call. I think we’ll have to try some of the clothes on. That’s what usually happens. And if they don’t look good on us we don’t get it.’
    â€˜Barbados though, that’ll be lovely won’t it, darling? I’m sure you were easily the prettiest, you’re bound to get it.’
    â€˜Don’t build her hopes up, she might
not
, you know.’ Nina murmured a warning to her mother. Monica frowned at her.
    â€˜Oh don’t be so defeatist, let the girl fly while she can.
You
did, in your day. Of course she’ll get it. She usually does, doesn’t she? And of course you’ll get to go as well, chaperoning, but if you don’t want to, I’ll go.’
    â€˜Last time I got a hot country job, we only went to Ealing to a big shed. They’d made scenery and got loads of palm trees.’ Lucy laughed. ‘It was really cold and we had to dance about and pretend it was a party on a beach. That was an advert for Tropi-choc sweets. They were disgusting.’
    â€˜Joe isn’t very keen. He says it interrupts her school work,’ Nina admitted.
    â€˜But it was him who got her involved in all this in the first place, wasn’t it, taking her to a casting for some awful ad for, what was it, yoghurt?’
    â€˜Yes, but he thought it would just be that one-off, just for fun. We used to argue about it quite a lot.’
    Monica sniffed. ‘Well, you know what I think. You could have found a way of sorting it out withoutresorting to
words
. You let that man slip through your fingers, simply because you’ve never managed the art of quiet subtlety. There’s many a way to skin cats, you know. Perhaps if you’d given him a son . . .’ She made it sound like a gift, or a bribe, Nina thought, as if for the sake of a son he’d have stopped showing off his manhood with a succession of dozy young girls and stayed home being dutiful. Sally, though, had ‘given’ each of her two husbands a son and they’d still gone off and left her, but then
she
was of the opinion that if you had a boy-child, they were so utterly treasured by their doting mothers that the husbands got jealous anyway . . . Either way, the female of the species, daughter, wife or mother, clearly couldn’t win.
    â€˜Come on Genghis, let’s go, shall we?’ Nina took the lead from Lucy and started running. The Common was Sunday-afternoon busy. Lunches were being walked off, lone fathers were having parental access, quality time with sweets and promises. Children ran and squabbled and kicked footballs. Men and women, arms linked in domestic solidarity, strolled together and sorted their weekend differences. Dogs more biddable than Genghis were running loose, sniffing for rabbits and for each other.
    â€˜â€œSlipped through my fingers” did he? I’d say he prised them apart and forced his way through,’ she whispered to herself as she ran. The dog loped gently just ahead of her, his big golden ears flopping. If she let the lead go he’d run till he dropped, unseeing and purposeless, for miles and miles and miles.
    â€˜The doorbell’s ringing,’ Catherine murmured into the pillow. Joe didn’t move. He lay sprawled and exhausted beneath the duvet, trying not to fall asleep because, wise grown-up as he was, he knew he’d be infor a restless night later if he gave in now in the late afternoon.
    â€˜Joe. It’s ringing.’
    â€˜Just ignore it,’ he said, staring at the ceiling, conscious that he hardly had the energy left to blink.
    â€˜I can’t. It might be Simon. I’ll just have a quick peek.’ Catherine sighed and hauled her naked self out of the bed, pulling on a pink satin robe and tying the belt tightly. Joe was conscious of a small display of impatience in the act of the tying. The sharp