Read Online Whatever Love Is by Rosie Ruston - Free Book Online Page B

he hadn’t uploaded anything for weeks. Even his last message, congratulating her on her prize, didn’t contain one single joke, which for William was a sure sign that things
weren’t right.
    She needed to hear his voice: she would phone him as soon as she got home.
    It didn’t take Frankie long, while queuing for her latte, to spot Lulu. She was sitting at the rear of Leopold’s, the newest café in Northampton, in a red
leather chair, legs crossed, skirt hitched up and arms gesticulating wildly at a guy sitting opposite her.
    Typical , thought Frankie with amusement, balancing her coffee in one hand and a chocolate-chip muffin in the other and edging her way towards the spare seat next to her friend. Lulu was
the kind of girl who struck up conversations with total strangers on trains and buses, particularly if they were male and under twenty-five.
    ‘Hiya!’ Lulu waved at her and pulled the chair back at the same moment that the guy stood up and turned round.
    A bystander would have been hard-pressed to decide which of them looked the more amazed.
    ‘It’s you!’ he said to Frankie.
    ‘What are you doing here?’ Frankie replied.
    ‘Do you two know each other?’ Lulu asked.
    ‘This,’ said Frankie, ‘is Henry Crawford. I was telling you about him.’
    ‘All good I hope.’ Henry smiled.
    ‘All true ,’ murmured Frankie and went to find a paper napkin and compose herself.
    ‘Well, thanks for nothing! You frightened him off,’ Lulu moaned when Frankie returned to the table. ‘I was just getting somewhere.’
    ‘Lulu! I told you about the way he came on to Mia the very night she got engaged.’ She had decided to keep quiet about the way he’d flirted with her too – somehow it was
humiliating to admit to being cast aside so easily. ‘And now he’s chatting you up – you didn’t even know his name!’
    ‘Oh puh-leese ! You are so uptight! Honestly, you’re like something out of a bygone age.’ She leant across and pinched a piece of Frankie’s muffin. ‘Hey,
look!’ She pointed to the floor. ‘He’s left his books behind.’
    Frankie bent down and picked up the two paperbacks and a Rexel sleeve stuffed full of pages of illegible scrawl.
    ‘I don’t believe it,’ she said. ‘ Little Dorrit and Mansfield Park.’
    ‘Little who?’ Lulu’s taste in reading was limited to chick-lit and Grazia magazine.
    ‘And they’re annotated,’ Frankie mused, flicking through the pages. ‘I wouldn’t have thought he . . . I’ll just go and see if I can catch up with
him.’
    ‘I’ll do it,’ said Lulu.
    But Frankie was already halfway to the door. She had hardly left the café when she spotted Henry hotfooting it up the hill towards her.
    ‘You found them! Thanks so much,’ he panted, taking the books from her. ‘I don’t know what I would have done if I’d lost these. I haven’t got round to
transferring my latest notes to my laptop yet, lazy sod that I am.’
    ‘So, you’re actually reading these?’
    ‘Don’t sound so surprised!’ He laughed. ‘It’s part of my course. I’m doing film and theatre design at Ruskin and my summer assignment is to design two sets
– a film set for Dorrit and a stage set for the Jane Austen. Trouble is, I can’t seem to break away from stereotypes – you know, all rats and clanking chains or lace
bonnets and fans!’
    ‘Mmmm,’ Frankie said. ‘Trouble with Austen is that she’s been done to death. Great movies and all that, but most of them are clichéd and half of them nothing like
the original.’ She screwed up her face. ‘You know what? I’d forget all that and focus on the starkness of Dorrit’s life experience and the shallowness of the society of
Austen’s time. In fact, you could do a modern . . .’ She stopped short, furious that she could be so influenced by his choice of reading material.
    ‘A modern . . .?’
    ‘Nothing, I must go. Lulu will be getting in a strop,’ she said hastily.
    ‘And I’m due at the