After Ever After Read Online Free

town of Berkhamsted. Smalltown Land. Smalltown Middle-Classville. Landrovertown. You get the picture.
    Now Fergus.
    I can remember very clearly, the way that women do, the night that I met Fergus. It had been raining like it is tonight, but different rain. Summer rain, light and cooling in the city. The sort of rain that might precede a thunderstorm. I remember every detail the way girls do remember everything about the day they meet their true love.
    We’d finished work about an hour earlier, or at least I had – finishing on time in the human resources department of a major record label was difficult, especially with our borderline personality-disorder boss, but Camille made an art of working late, and not because she was dedicated to her work. Camille was still working on a spreadsheet she should have finished hours ago, a routine consequence of her endless office-hours phone calls to her mum, with whom she enjoyed the kind of mother–daughter intimacy that I had only daydreamed about. (
But Mum, do I need two eggs or three? Do I sift the flour? Mum, Mum, what do you think about invisible panty liners? The black ones?
That sort of thing.) Still, I consoled myself when jealousy crept up on me, if my mum were still alive there would be a good chance I wouldn’t make it to parties on time, so there’s always a bright side.
    ‘Oh God, oh God, wait for me,’ she’d cried as I blotted my lipstick and checked my evening outfit inch by square inch in my make-up mirror. I looked at the back of her head. She was never ready on time. Never in the five years I’d known her.
    ‘Come on, Camille, if we don’t leave soon all the celebs will be gone!’ Maybe it wasn’t fair to pick on Camille too much. If it hadn’t been for her we’d never have got invites to this latest industry party. Camille knew everyone who counted and everyone who counted was in love with her. From executive producers to post-room boys, Camille had inside tabs on everyone and everything at Starbrite Records.
    Which was great, because we only worked as assistants in the human resources department and our brushes with glamour would have been few and far between without her contacts. There was no mystery to how she did it: her hundred-watt smile and ‘it could be you’ eyes swung it every time. Maybe if her fan club knew just how much she loved her boyfriend they wouldn’t have put out quite so much with the freebies and VIP passes, but Camille had an ingenious way of never letting it come up.
    ‘I know, I know, I’ve just got this one last set of figures to put in and then I’m …’ She caught sight of one of her cornrow plaits over her shoulder. ‘Hey, listen,’ she said, changing her own subject with her usual continuity carefree aplomb, ‘what do you reckon to me going blonde the next time I get a weave done?’
    I shook my head at her and shoved her out of her chair. ‘Budge over. I’ll finish this and you get ready.’
    She smiled at me gratefully, probably certain that my infamous impatience with tardiness of any kind would force my co-operation eventually and result in me finishing her work for her.
    ‘Cheers, you’re a doll, but really – blonde, maybe? Like her from Destiny’s Child?’
    I gave her a quick appraisal and tried to imagine her with blonde hair instead of the shiny black plaits that framed her oval face now. Camille was a beautiful girl, slim and sexy in a way that belied her couch potato loved-up weekends. She somehow emanated a bronze glow that made her dark skin faintly luminescent, powering the sparkle in her almond-shaped, amber-coloured eyes. I couldn’t see how blonde extensions could improve on that.
    ‘Maybe something different from plaits, but not blonde. Stick to the natural look, babe,’ I’d said. ‘It suits you.’
    ‘Natural-ish look. One day my own hair will grow long enough to do something with …’ she said wistfully, and applied the lipgloss that was the only cosmetic she wore, or needed