Copyright
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.
AVON
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First published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2011
Copyright © Gemma Burgess 2011
Gemma Burgess asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
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Source ISBN: 9781847561909
Ebook Edition © 2010 ISBN: 9780007334018
Version 2018-06-27
February. (This year.)
I never thought I’d spend hours crying on the floor of a hotel shower.
The weird thing is that underneath the hysteria, I’m completely aware how dramatic-yet-amusing this is. I’m crying for a soul-shakingly horrible reason, my contact lenses are flipping over in my eyes from the tear-water onslaught and I don’t have the strength to get up, turn off the shower and reach for a towel . . . but I can still see that this is a teeny tiny bit funny.
Is it normal to feel so detached from reality after a heartbreak? Is this heartbreak? God, I don’t know.
And as usual, my mind is wandering. I can’t help but notice how nice the shower gel is, and how I wish I had a dinner plate showerhead at home, because crying under the pathetic trickle in my skinny white bath is so depressing.
Home, oh God, home.
Then reality hits me and I start sobbing again.
I wonder how my black eye is coming along, but I can’t bear to look in the mirror. I swear my jowls droop when I’m this tired. On top of everything else that life has landed me with (inability to tell right from left, inability to tell lust from love, inability to drink whisky without becoming really drunk), that’s just not fair.
The sick feeling I’ve had for days just won’t go away. I wonder if it ever will.
I think I’ll make the water a little bit hotter and curl up on the floor. There. I’m almost comfortable. The shower is huge, taking up about half the bathroom, which, like the rest of the hotel room, is dark and sexy with a dash of chinoiserie, and flattering lighting that whispers five star in a posh accent. Hey, if you’re going to have a breakdown, you may as well have it in the Mandarin Oriental in Hong Kong, that’s what I always say.
Perhaps I should call my sister. Sophie. She is always good at being comforting. That’s the best thing about little sisters: they spend so much time wishing they were elder sisters (when they’re waiting to go to big school, waiting to get a bike without training wheels, waiting to get their ears pierced, though wily Sophie got her ears pierced the same day as me, despite the fact that I’d been begging for YEARS and I was 13 and she was only 11) that in the end they’re far wiser than the elder ones could ever be. She’s in Chicago right now, so that’s only . . . Oh, I can’t figure out time differences.
I don’t even know what time it is here. Late afternoon?
It feels like the sun hasn’t properly risen in Hong Kong today. It’s grey and humid and thunderstormy. I love it when the weather matches my mood.