Could It Be I'm Falling in Love?
Read Could It Be I'm Falling in Love? Online
Authors: Eleanor Prescott
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Contemporary, #Contemporary Fiction, #Literary
First published in Great Britain in 2013 by
Quercus
55 Baker Street
7th Floor, South Block
London
W1U 8EW
Copyright © 2013 Eleanor Prescott
The moral right of Eleanor Prescott to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 0 85738 717 2 (PB)
ISBN 978 0 85738 718 9 (EBOOK)
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
You can find this and many other great books at:
www.quercusbooks.co.uk
Eleanor Prescott worked in PR for ten years. She lives in Kent with her husband, son and daughter.
Could It Be I’m Falling in Love?
is her second novel.
You can visit Eleanor at
www.eleanorprescott.com
and follow her on Twitter
@eleanorprescott
.
Also by Eleanor Prescott
Alice Brown’s Lessons in the Curious Art of Dating
‘It’s awful to be famous and then not famous.’
E
LTON
J
OHN
To Gerran and Carrie
All references to real-life celebrities, TV programmes, radio shows, newspapers, magazines and the like are entirely made up and should be treated as nothing but whoppers.
Absolutely nothing in these pages is true.
In the blue-lit nightclub toilet, Roxy peered into the mirror. Several Roxys squinted back. She was a mojito or two drunker than she’d thought. The checklist was going to be tricky tonight. She closed one eye to blot out the extra Roxys. She needed to concentrate – this was important stuff …
HAIR. Hah! She didn’t need twenty-twenty to know her hair rocked; it was blonder than vanilla ice cream! She clumsily teased the ends with her fingers – missed – and ended up teasing an earring.
MAKE-UP. Tricky – but she could definitely spot some lippy in there. That was one of the benefits of scarlet: maximum beer-goggle visibility. She leant closer to spot anything else.
‘Bollocks!’
Her nose bounced painfully off the glass.
Blinking back the pain, she rooted in her handbag for her eyeliner and expertly applied an extra layer. ‘Ifinn doubt …’ she advised the empty loos. She was proud she’d worn makeup every day since she was eleven. She might be too drunk to walk in a straight line, but she wasn’t too drunk to draw one.
TEETH. She bared them. Dazzling – just as her dentist had promised.
TAN. She was
loving
this new Winter Clementine! Although – was it her imagination, or was the blue light tingeing her ever so slightly green?
TITS. Well, she could see two, so she wasn’t
that
drunk! She delved into her dress, rummaged for a grip and then hoisted her breasts upwards. She plumped them up like St Tropez cushions.
‘An’ last but not leasss …’ She bent over and looked up her own skirt. This was always the trickiest bit of the checklist, particularly in heels with a skinful. Many a time she’d wobbled, headbutted porcelain and given her forehead a shiner. But, it was worth it. The mags were
desperate
for cellulite. The newsstands were crammed with pictures of knickers wedged into celebrity bottoms. Last week’s
Heat
had had four pages on celebrity waxing under the headline ‘Private Stars Go Pubic’, and the week before they’d done a montage of famous buttocks, complete with pimples arrowed in pink. It was all very funny, but it had turned getting in and out of a taxi into a minefield. Photographers used to be grateful if you stopped and smiled … now they lay on the pavement to get a shot of your arse. Roxy had no problem with her arse being in the papers – but only with apricot airbrushing. A pap-shot definitely didn’t qualify.
At last, the checklist was over. Dizzily, Roxy straightened up. She grinned. She looked hot. Hotter than hot – she was Viagra in a mini-dress! She could see her work diary filling itself up already.
She grabbed her iPhone, squinted at the screen, and started tapping.
2.09am @foxyroxy
Fuckme – I ROCKK!! New dresss seriusly fierce. #ROXYSAYS: mustn passany mirrors or I might try2pull me mysellf!
She slung her phone back in her bag, pushed through the door of the ladies and strutted unsteadily towards the front door of the club. This would be child’s play. OK, so the world had partied itself stupid last night, but the smart girl-about-town partied cleverer. Today was 1
st
January – officially the deadest night in the celebrity calendar. And if you wanted to shine, you had to make sure you wouldn’t be eclipsed. Only amateurs partied large on a Saturday; the big guns waited for Sundays and Bank Holidays.
Just before she stepped outside, she quickly slapped on her sunglasses. She never went anywhere without shades – especially at night. Everyone knew wearing shades out of a nightclub was imperative. In the dark, the flash of the cameras was blinding. It was impossible to breeze past the banks of paparazzi with your cool intact. Instead, the imprint of their flashes seared your retinas so you couldn’t see straight, let alone walk straight. Even if you’d stuck to water all night – which, admittedly, in all her years of clubbing, Roxy never had, so this bit of her theory was untested – the paps’ flashes still made you look like a bleary-eyed alky. Roxy was a rock ‘n’ roll kind of gal, but she fancied herself more as a young
Debbie Harry than a wasted Courtney Love. Sexy rebellion was employable. One-drink-from-wipeout was not.
‘Evening, lads!’ She greeted the waiting paparazzi, and paused dramatically in the doorway for their shots. A collection of miserable-looking blokes, clasping Burger King coffee cups, were chain-smoking in the cold night. They all wore dark-coloured puffa jackets, their cameras on stand-by around their necks.
Photographers always looked grumpy. Must come with spending your life hanging out on street corners, waiting for the beautiful people to finish having fun, Roxy reckoned. She liked to be one of the lads with the paps. It wasn’t good to be untouchable. Nobody liked a celeb who was stuck up their own arse.
‘Slow night?’ She sashayed towards them. ‘Cheer up! This’ll help pay the mortgage!’