Read Online When Good Friends Go Bad by Ellie Campbell - Free Book Online

You'll both be rich and famous soon and I'll still be stuck in a shit job.'
    'But you do have a stud-muffin lover,' Meg reminded her. 'Nothing boring about that! Three times a night, supposedly,' she told Georgina. 'He sounds scorching. I'll bet he's got a nine-incher.'
    'Meg!' Jen slapped the American girl hard on the back, causing wine to shoot out of her nose. 'Behave.'
    Even Georgina was laughing as Meg mopped up with her napkin. 'Well?' Georgina questioned. 'Scorching?'
    'Definitely, but he is only twenty.' At that moment Jen could have bitten off her tongue. She took an enormous gulp of wine to cover up her slip. Georgina and Meg were staring at her with astonishment mixed with horror (Georgina) and glee (Meg).
    'Good for you, honey.' Meg held out her glass to be clinked. 'I'll drink to that.'
    'Jennifer Amanda Bedlow.' Georgina closed her mouth with a snap and looked regally disapproving. 'Are you telling me you're involved with a man eight years your junior, a virtual babe in arms?'
    'Yes,' Jen stared defiantly, 'and he's at uni. An engineering student.'
    'And you say,' Georgina looked primmer than ever, 'that this young man has the most gargantuan willy?'
    'I said nothing of the sort!' Jen squawked. 'That was Meg. But since you insist . . . yes, he is quite well . . . built.'
    Georgina abruptly threw down her napkin and stood up to summon the waiter. 'Girls!' she said decisively. 'I'd say that calls for champagne!'

Chapter 5
    Where on earth was Rowan? Appetisers a distant memory lingering on their lips and an oily mark on the tablecloth where Meg had dropped a mushroom, they'd given up the wait and were tucking into their main dishes. Jen kept glancing from her rack of lamb towards the door, as if she might still yet appear. Would she be as pretty? More sophisticated? Both Meg and Georgina had changed so dramatically.
    It was dark outside and in the windows Jen could see the three of them reflected. Young women in the prime of their life. Older and wiser than the gauche schoolgirls they'd been, and, in her case definitely, more cynical. Only an untouched place setting betrayed the fact that someone was missing.
    'Daddy died of a heart attack last year and Mummy lives near Godalming now,' Georgina was telling Meg, bracelets jangling as she leaned forward. 'Has the most darling thatched cottage. She's sixty-two and still extremely active. My brother Lance is a rather well-known barrister . . .' She snapped her fingers. 'Wake up Jennifer. You're miles away.'
    'Sorry.' She jumped. 'I spaced out – too much champers.'
    Meg stabbed a fork into her risotto. 'Lost in dreams of lover boy?'
    'Course not.' But there it was again, that warm feeling. For all her flippancy, Ollie already felt like something she didn't know how she'd survived without.
    'So, Meg,' she shook herself, 'what's going on with you? Are you seeing anyone?'
    'Different guys. Off and on. All extremely non-serious and I'm not mooning over them with soppy smiles like some people.' She tossed her red mane, reminding Jen of a highly strung chestnut Arabian, ready to strike or rear. Next to her, Georgina, making a little castle of her puréed yams, was more like a shiny black Friesian horse, less flighty but not without its own heavy glamour. Which would make Jen – what? The shaggy stubborn little Shetland pony at Angela's that would carry its riders out of the schooling ring no matter how hard they hauled on the reins?
    'It can't be serious though, this thing of Jennifer's.' Georgina mashed the castle flat again with her fork. 'I mean, it could never work long-term, could it?'
    How odd that Jen should find her certainty offensive when it was exactly what she'd told herself for weeks. She wondered what they'd say if they knew of Ollie's latest proposal, just two days earlier while they were lying under a tree on Primrose Hill that still held the wreckage of their runaway kite. She'd pretended to consider it a huge joke, when he rolled up on to bended knee and