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My Best Friend’s Life
Shari Low
Want what she's got? Think again…A high-concept and heartfelt romantic comedy for everyone who’s ever fancied swapping lives.A more unlikely pairing you'd struggle to find, but Roxy Galloway and Ginny Wallis have been there for each other ever since they were five years old and Roxy beat up Kevin Smith for putting gum in Ginny's hair. Even though Roxy is now living the high life in London and Ginny is still at home in sleepy Farnham Hills, the bond is as deep as it ever was.But after her latest romantic disaster, Roxy decides she needs a city de-tox – no more London, no more reception work at high-class brothel The Seismic Lounge (guaranteed to make the earth move) and definitely no more men.Ginny's so far in a rut she needs a pair of Roxy's thigh-high boots to clamber out. Dating Andrew for 12 long years and stamping books at the local library, she's craving a walk on the wild side.So they swap lives.For Ginny, it's a whirl of champagne and parties in the lap of luxury. For Roxy, it's a case of terminal boredom in the local pub. But the strangest things can happen in the most unlikely of places…The perfect summer read to take with you on holiday or out into the sunshine. For fans of Debbie Johnson, Katie Fforde and The Note.
Copyright (#u0a891236-d197-5112-8e12-f51744cf58f9)
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 in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2008
Copyright © Shari Low 2008
Shari Low asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks.
HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication
Source ISBN: 9781847560124
Ebook Edition © 2009 ISBN: 9780007334964
Version: 2018-06-19
MY BEST FRIEND’S LIFE
by
Shari Low
To Rosina Hill, for your support, your courage
and your huge big heart…
To John, just everything, always…
And to my gorgeous, incredible boys, Callan
and Brad…Now go tidy your rooms.
Table of Contents
Title Page (#ud2ee028d-7d80-58f3-9a85-55bde5b74076)
Copyright
Prologue
Chapter One - Tom, Harry, Forget about Dick (#ulink_37d3f775-3b69-5b6c-8b46-5fd49002885d)
Chapter Two - I Feel the Earth Move (#ulink_dc68cc2c-aa9e-5d3c-bfcd-f64d95fc4594)
Chapter Three - Don’t Go Changing (#ulink_c2267957-2ed8-5f3f-a006-d2d01046f86f)
Chapter Four (#ulink_00fa51d8-dbf5-5fe7-894e-d009f810a379)
Chapter Five - We Are Family (#ulink_1e0deebe-9576-5e69-9c54-8df028cea850)
Chapter Six - The Love Shack (#ulink_92ac6f1a-a61a-54e0-9f9d-945fa16bebb3)
Chapter Seven - Do You Really Want to Hurt Me? (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight - These Boots are Made for Walking (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine - Doctor Feelgood (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten - Many Rivers to Cross (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven - Blowing in the Wind (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve - Man, I Feel Like a Woman (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen - Have I Told You Lately? (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen - Do That to Me One More Time (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen - Stop, in the Name of Love (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixteen - Easy (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seventeen - Baby Love (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eighteen - I Got You, Babe (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nineteen - If You Leave Me Now (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty - Unbreak My Heart (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty One - Signed, Sealed, Delivered, I’m Yours (#litres_trial_promo)
Acknowledgements
About the Author
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
PROLOGUE (#u0a891236-d197-5112-8e12-f51744cf58f9)
The Daily Globe 22 June 2006
The Prime Minister announced today that, in line with European legislation, the government has decided to ease restrictions currently placed on the operation of brothels within the UK.
In this controversial move, it is proposed that from 1 July this year, local authorities will have the power to license and oversee premises engaged in the business of providing sex for payment.
Announcing the new regulations, the Prime Minister released the following statement:
‘It has been clear for some time that current legislation pertaining to the adult entertainment industry is neither realistic nor effective. In recent years we have seen dramatic increases both in the number of arrests for prostitution and in the influx of sex trade workers from other EU countries. This government has concluded that the only progressive, sensible way forward is to legitimise this industry, therefore allowing it to be controlled and regulated.
I’d like to give my firm commitment that I–assisted by a focus group comprised of six cross-party MPs to be called the Adult Entertainment Regulatory Commission–will personally monitor the success of the new guidelines and be fully involved in the forthcoming months in the evolution of progressive policies to further develop this sector.’
The Prime Minister refused to confirm, however, that applications to join the Regulatory Commission reached an unprecedented level, with 91 per cent of government members requesting a position.
ONE Tom, Harry, Forget about Dick (#u0a891236-d197-5112-8e12-f51744cf58f9)
Ginny’s bedroom, the village of Farnham Hills, near Chipping Sodbury, Autumn 2007
‘So you mean, like, a penis embargo?’
‘Correct,’ replied Roxy. ‘I’m going to be an official willy-free zone. I’m on a twelve-step male-genital detox programme: Step number one, boyfriend is history. Step number two, I quit my job. Step number three, I recruit my best friend to help me get a new job. Er, Ginny, honey, that’s you.’
There was a pause so pregnant it could have applied to Social Services for free milk vouchers and child benefit.
Roxy waited for a reaction. None. Nada. Okay, so this wasn’t going to plan. Normally she could rely on Ginny to react in exactly the way she’d been reacting to everything Roxy said since they were sitting side by side in the playpen.
Act one: Rolling of eyes.
Act two: Loud tutting noise.
Act three: Adopts the approximate expression of someone who has just discovered that she is chewing a wasp.
Act four: Capitulates, offers sympathy, then digs friend out of big hole.
But no. Ginny was staring mournfully into space, as if she’d slipped into one of those cosmic, out-of-body trances that pass the time while you’re waiting in the bank queue or having a smear test.
‘Ginny?’ she probed, attempting to snap her friend’s focus back to the most important thing in life–herself.
‘What?’
‘Didn’t you hear me? I need help! Ginny, I’m single, I’m unemployed, I’m devastated…I’m desperate!’
From her cramp-inducing position on a tatty beanbag (circa 1990), Ginny looked over at her clapped-out single bed and the female reclining on it–probably the least desperate-looking woman she had ever set eyes on. Roxy’s jet-black hair hung in sleek, shiny slates from her middle parting to her shoulder bones. Her perfect, size twelve, über-toned frame was adorned in her standard uniform of black Prada boot-cut trousers, a black Nicole Farhi cashmere roll-neck and lethal four-inch stiletto Gina boots. Skin: flawless. Nails: perfectly plastic. Make-up: subtle. Breasts: pert. And Ginny just knew without looking that there were no hairs on Roxy’s legs, no hard skin on her feet, and her nethers had applied for permanent residence in Brazil.
There was no doubt about it: Roxy Galloway was channelling Angelina Jolie.
Ginny Wallis, meanwhile, was channelling the bag lady who sat outside Superdrug on an inner tube flogging jewellery she’d made out of string and discarded scratchcards.
She sighed wearily, so immune to Roxy’s perpetual melodramas that she’d slipped into a moment of reflection instead of enthusiastically participating in the panic. The contrast of her glam, glitzy, cutting-edge friend with the greyness of Ginny’s life somehow highlighted the fact that Ginny was twenty-seven and still living at home in a bedroom that hadn’t changed since the Nineties. The duvet was a tribute to the golden days when boy bands ruled the world. If the carpet ever revisited its former life it would have been baby pink and orange–now, ten years of spills and wear later, it was a delicate shade of road-kill. Even woodworm would shun the furniture. And the curtains were obviously designed by someone on LSD, bought by someone on crack and then hung by someone on two bottles of cider and a Lambert & Butler that Roxy had stolen from her mother’s handbag.
And they had paid for that wild, drunken, smoky, teenage night of fabric-hanging by being grounded for a month and having their Christmas Top Shop vouchers confiscated.
Urgh, it was depressing. Ginny pulled a bit of fluff off her hoodie, and pushed her riot of mousey-brown frizz back off her forehead.
‘Roxy, when did I become so old that I thought jogging bottoms and sweatshirts were acceptable as everyday outerwear?’
‘Honey, until four o’clock this afternoon when I resigned from my erstwhile employment, I worked with people who thought a crotch-baring French maid’s costume, nipple rings and five-inch Perspex platforms were acceptable everyday outerwear.’ Roxy’s bottom lip trembled. ‘Oh, I miss them,’ she wailed. ‘Have I made a mistake? I mean, it was a prestigious career in the hospitality industry…’
‘Roxy, you worked in a whorehouse,’ Ginny interjected, with a tut and a roll of the eyes.
Phew. Normal service was almost resumed. All they needed was the wasp-chewing face and they were back on track to Moral Support Central.
‘A classy, cosmopolitan, extremely upmarket entertainment club, if you don’t mind.’
Actually Ginny did mind. It wasn’t that she was a prude, it’s just that, well, she’d never understood Roxy’s career choice. Receptionist at the Seismic Lounge: guaranteed to make the earth move. Yep, whatever marketing genius had thought up that slogan was probably now enjoying a fulfilling career flipping burgers. Or making scratchcard jewellery next to the bag lady outside Superdrug.
Roxy had been ecstatic when she got the job. The club had opened the day after the government legalised brothels–definitely some insider information at work there–and it was on one of the most exclusive streets in Mayfair. Four hours of copulation cost the same as a second-hand Corsa, most of the girls spoke with accents that could crack windows, and the sex toys came gold-plated. It oozed class and made no apologies for targeting only the extremely wealthy. It even employed chauffeurs to collect the clients in blacked-out Range Rovers and bring them in through a private underground car park so that the paparazzi never got a recognisable shot. Actually, that wasn’t true–Stephen Knight, notorious B-list movie star, usually arrived in his open-top Aston Martin DB7 and parked it right outside the door. He was obviously channelling Charlie Sheen.
To Roxy, it was all so decadently glamorous. Short of becoming a fake-tan consultant or adopting a serial football-player-shagging habit, it seemed like the easiest way to hobnob with the rich and/or famous on a daily basis.
Glitz, high rollers, decadence and dosh–it was the life she’d always dreamt of (although, to be honest, she hadn’t exactly foreseen that the high life would carry a faint whiff of antibacterial cleaning spray and that she’d witness all the activity from behind a desk).
Roxy had always thought it was an aberration that she’d been born in Farnham Hills. She’d decided at an early age that the stork had obviously been on its way to a four-storey, three-million-pound townhouse in Belgravia when it was cruelly struck down by a shot from an armed robber’s rifle (yes, she had a very vivid imagination, even as a child) and forced to drop its precious bundle in an environment in which she clearly didn’t belong. When her classmates were splashing their pocket money on Just Seventeen, she was buying Vogue. When, at sixteen, they were fantasising about a fortnight in Faliraki, she was dreaming of a weekend in St Tropez. And when they were imagining their future husbands, children, and three-bedroom semis on the new housing estate on the edge of the village, she was imagining tunnelling to freedom and spending the rest of her life shagging an obscenely rich bloke, surrounded by walnut panelling in the master suite of his custom-built yacht.
And okay, so she wasn’t quite there yet, but when she was offered the job at the Seismic she instinctively knew that she had opened the door to the world she belonged in.
And the bonus was that, as receptionist, she only had to meet, greet and keep the customer records up to date. The money was great, the tips were outstanding and, unlike the rest of the girls, her pay packet didn’t come at the expense of cystitis.
She loved it–at least to start with. But over the last couple of months it had all seemed a little too repetitive. The same faces week after week, the endless stream of girls (who invariably quit once they’d earned enough to buy a flat, finished university or received an irresistible offer of marriage from a blue-blooded, upper-class, Eton-educated arms dealer), and the rising scepticism after yet another client did an ‘At Home with the Happy Family’ spread in Hello!. Roxy had to admit it–the job was wearing down her trust in men and turning the loving act of sex into a business transaction. Did you enjoy your ejaculation, sir? Oh, lovely–now would that be Visa, MasterCard or American Express?
She just wanted to be like normal people (porn stars and penile-implant specialists aside) and experience a daily life that wasn’t controlled or influenced by actions of the male reproductive organ.
She could probably have struggled on for another couple of months, but the latest devastation in her love life had tipped her over the edge. She winced. She still couldn’t believe that after two years of devotion Felix was history. Gone. Past tense.
But after spending three days submerged in hysterical mourning she had decided that no man was worth a forty-five per cent increase in wrinkles caused by perpetual sobbing–even if he was the first and–penis-embargo withstanding–last love of her life.
She would never, ever mention his name again.
Ever.
Except in a blatant ploy to get help and sympathy from a bored, indifferent best friend…
