Revelry
One summer can change everything…What happens when a friend breaks the one rule that should never be broken?Best friends Bella and Poppy are living the dream – Notting Hill glamour, Shoreditch lofts, exclusive parties and drop-dead gorgeous men. But sometimes living life to the max catches up with you, and even the strongest friendships can be pushed to the limit.Poppy, Bella and their friends spend the summer having as much fun as they possibly can – from the hedonistic escapades of Ibiza to doing Glastonbury in style. But amongst the laughter come tears, betrayal and backstabbing and one devastating decision threatens to bring it all crashing down. And, once the sunglasses have come off, Bella is forced to question if her lifelong friendship has been broken beyond repair.The perfect escapist read, Revelry will have you laughing, crying and gasping with shock.
Читать Revelry онлайн беплатно
LUCY LORD
Revelry
To my husband, with love.
Table of Contents
Last summer was meant to be perfect. Unbridled sunny hedonism with all my favourite people in Ibiza, Glastonbury and the rest of the latter-day Sodom and Gomorrah hotspots we creative, civilized people have colonized over the last few decades. How we were looking forward to indulging in excesses that Nero’s subjects might have considered over-the-top, smug in the knowledge that tiresome, bourgeois rules didn’t apply to professional free spirits like us. As I say, it was going to be perfect. But somehow, somewhere, something went wrong.
Chapter 1
Let’s start in Ibiza. It’s the beginning of June and we’ve hired a villa for a week to coincide with the Space and Pacha opening parties. A fairly loathsome thing to do, I’m sure you’ll agree, but some of my friends have started to think they’re so cool it hurts. The renovated finca is a typically Ibicenco whitewashed cuboid affair, with roof terrace, tropical gardens kept verdant with horribly eco-unfriendly sprinklers and a big floodlit pool. Divided by ten, it wouldn’t have been too pricey were it not for the dreaded strong euro. But hey – that’s what credit cards are for.
In varying states of undress, sobriety and attractiveness, my fellow revellers lounge around the pool. To my right, talking nineteen to the dozen, feet dangling in the water, is my oldest and dearest friend Poppy. We were new girls at school together and bonded at the age of ten over a shared love of Frazzles and Enid Blyton. The rest of the class thought we were weird.
Tiny, with long, straight, honey-blonde hair (dyed, but not obviously) and smooth golden skin, Poppy’s the sort of girl you could easily hate if you didn’t already know and love her. After getting a first in History from Oxford, she travelled round the world on her own, bribing bent Colombian border guards, replanting rainforests in Borneo and volunteering in a Zimbabwean lion sanctuary. She’s now doing very nicely thank you in TV production. Her apparent fragility belies enormous resources of stamina. How she manages to combine outrageous partying with her high-flying job is anybody’s guess.
I suspect she’s still pissed from last night. It’s just gone 2.30, we haven’t been up for long, and she should, by all rights, be feeling like death. Instead, she’s babbling away like nobody’s business, and – sure enough – finishes her sentence with ‘… I think the sun is well and truly over the yardarm by now, don’t you?’ She jumps to her dainty little feet, making for the bar the other side of the pool. I hear a heavy sigh and look up to see Alison rolling her eyes at Alison.
Alison and Alison are a pair of killjoys if ever there was one. Not people I’d ever have chosen to come on holiday with, they are the girlfriend and fiancée of Charlie and Andy, who have been my brother’s best mates since their Cambridge days. Max and I unwisely decided to hire the villa together, to share with our respective friends – then the bugger bowed out at the last minute over a bust-up with his latest boyfriend.
Skinny Alison is in full-on Bridezilla wedding planning mode. If I hear another word about bridesmaids, flowers or seat placements, I won’t be responsible for my actions. And somebody really ought to tell her that the strings on string bikinis are adjustable for a reason. I’m itching to give her boobs a good hoick.
I’m not normally such a bitch, honestly, but the Alisons have been determined to ruin everyone’s holiday from the moment we arrived. Moan, moan, moan – and another bloody moan for good measure. It’s too hot, they don’t want to stay out too late, the food’s not up to scratch, they don’t like beaches. I mean, how can you not like beaches? They didn’t like it at all when Poppy and I brought a Croatian couple back to drink absinthe by the pool at dawn, I think, giggling to myself at the memory. But really – if neither beaches nor a laissez-faire attitude to partying is your bag, the question remains: why come to Ibiza in the first place?
‘The problem is that Andy wants to invite some old school friend who I haven’t even met, and who’ll probably turn up drunk anyway. It’s not meant to be a hooley, it’s my day …’Skinny is telling Plump Alison, who is hanging on her words, seemingly enraptured. I shut my eyes and turn my face up to the afternoon sun, allowing myself to drift off for a second.
‘So I’ve told him, we just don’t have the numbers.’ It’s no use: sleep is not an option within earshot. Andy and Charlie have driven into the village to buy provisions. I’d bet my life’s earnings (not a lot, I grant you) that they’ve stopped for a couple of sharpeners, if only to escape Alison’s inane witterings for half an hour.
