Flawed
The stunning YA debut from internationally bestselling author Cecelia Ahern.
Celestine North lives a perfect life. She’s a model daughter and sister, she’s well-liked by her classmates and teachers, and she’s dating the impossibly charming Art Crevan.
But then Celestine encounters a situation in which she makes an instinctive decision. She breaks a rule and now faces life-changing repercussions. She could be imprisoned. She could be branded. She could be found FLAWED.
In this stunning novel, bestselling author Cecelia Ahern depicts a society in which perfection is paramount and mistakes are punished. And where one young woman decides to take a stand that could cost her everything.
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First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2016
HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd,
1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF
The HarperCollins website address is: www.harpercollins.co.uk
Copyright © Cecelia Ahern 2016
Cover photograph; girl © Trevillion Images
Cover photograph; road ©; Shutterstock.com
Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2016
Cecelia Ahern asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of the work.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental
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Ebook Edition © MARCH 2016 ISBN: 9780008125103
Source ISBN 9780008125097
Version 2017-05-16
For you, Dad
Table of Contents
FLAWED; faulty, defective, imperfect, blemished, damaged, distorted, unsound, weak, deficient, incomplete, invalid.
(Of a person) having a weakness in character.
Never trust a man who sits, uninvited, at the head of the table in another man’s home.
Not my words. The words of my granddad, Cornelius, who, as a result of saying them, landed himself the farthest away from this table, and won’t be welcome back anytime soon. It’s not necessarily what he said that was the problem; it was the person he said it about: Judge Crevan, one of the most powerful men in the country, who is once again, despite my granddad’s comment last year, sitting at the head of our dining table for our annual Earth Day gathering.
Dad returns from the kitchen with a fresh bottle of red wine to find his usual place taken. I can see he is put out by it, but as it’s Judge Crevan, Dad merely stalls in his tracks, jiggles the wine opener in his hand a bit while thinking about what to do, then works his way around the table to sit beside Mum at the other end, where Judge Crevan should have sat. I can tell Mum is nervous. I can tell this because she is more perfect than ever. She doesn’t have a hair out of place on her perfectly groomed head, her blonde locks twisted elaborately into a chignon that only she could do herself, having had to dislocate both shoulders to reach round to the back of her head. Her skin is porcelain, as though she glows, as though she is the purest form of anything. Her make-up is immaculate, her cornflower-blue lace dress a perfect match for her blue eyes, her arms perfectly toned.
In truth, my mum looks this beautiful to most people every day as a model in high demand. Despite having the three of us, her body is as perfect as it always was, though I suspect – I know – that like most people she has had help. The only way you can know that Mum is having a bad day or week is when she arrives home with plumper cheeks, fuller lips, a smoother forehead, or less tired-looking eyes. Altering her appearance is her pick-me-up. She’s pernickety about looks. She judges people by them, sums them up in a sweeping once-over. She is uncomfortable when anything is less than perfect; a crooked tooth, a double chin, an oversized nose – it all makes her question people, distrust them. She’s not alone. Most people feel exactly as she does. She likens it to trying to sell a car without washing it first; it should be gleaming. The same goes for people. Laziness in maintaining their outside represents who they are on the inside. I’m a perfectionist, too, but it doesn’t stretch to physical appearances, merely to language and behaviour, which bugs the hell out of my sister, Juniper, who is the most unspecific person I know. Though she is specifically unspecific – I’ll give her that.
