Total pages in book: 90
Estimated words: 82767 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 414(@200wpm)___ 331(@250wpm)___ 276(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 82767 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 414(@200wpm)___ 331(@250wpm)___ 276(@300wpm)
I’d had to tell her everything of course, and I guess it was a relief in a way. But if I were hoping she would put an end to my plans and shake some sense into me, I was wrong.
“You’ve got a job where?” her voice was quiet.
“Clover House, but it’s not a job, it’s an internship…”
“At Clover House. You have an internship at Clover House,” she repeated it, as if the words were somehow new to her and she couldn’t quite understand them.
“Yes, but…” I tried to wriggle out of it, to tell her I wasn’t really going to go, that it was a moment of madness, but she interrupted me.
“You’re going to go… undercover… at Clover House? To snoop?” her eyes lit up, and I realized with a sinking feeling that she actually thought it was a good idea.
“Well, no, I thought I would, but now I…” I had to stop mid-sentence as she threw her arms around me.
“I can’t believe you have the balls to do it!” She held me at arms’ length and looked at me admiringly.
“I’m not sure I do…” I smiled weakly.
“But you had an interview? You went there?” She was laughing now.
“I had an interview with Sean Callahan himself,” I couldn’t keep a touch of pride from my voice. “And he was a total letch, and I resisted telling him where to go.”
Beatrix’s eyebrows shot up and her eyes widened. She looked absolutely stunned. She sat down heavily on her bed and sighed loudly. “I can’t get my head around this. What about your travel plans?”
“What travel plans?” I smiled, because if I began to let her see my regret at postponing my plans, I wasn’t sure I could hold it together.
“Oh Freya, I’m so sorry. This shouldn’t have affected you.” She looked so tired and sad all of a sudden, and I remembered that Mom had told me how worried she was about Beatrix.
“So, are you going to dress me up with the kind of clothes that Effie Hancock might wear to her new job, or what?” I held up my arms to draw attention to the flowing balloon arms of the silver-purple second-hand gypsy blouse I was wearing. It was one of my favorites and exactly the kind of thing she hated.
Beatrix gave me a mock look of horror and jumped up, disappearing into the closet and re-emerging with armfuls of chic workwear in sensible muted tones. It had taken us a few hours, and a bottle of wine, but Effie Hancock was now the proud owner of what Beatrix called a ‘capsule wardrobe’ of ‘key versatile pieces.’ What this meant was that I could mix and match from a range of equally boring items without clashing. I was glad that we were still roughly the same size. Beatrix had always had a more athletic figure while I had inherited our mother’s hourglass shape, so the more fitted of her shirts tended to gape about my bust, and I could only imagine with a shudder how Sean Callahan might react. Eventually, we found a few shirts that didn’t make me look like a slutty secretary in porn.
We argued about my hair, of course. Beatrix recommended I get it cut, whereas I had no intention of cutting it. My hair was the only thing about my appearance that I really liked, apart from my dark blue eyes that I inherited from my father. I had never dyed my hair, and it was a mass of tumbling waves in various natural shades of auburn and copper blonde. We agreed that while Freya Hamilton ran around with her hair flying out in all directions, Effie Hancock wrapped hers neatly into a sleek bun.
Beatrix showed me how to tame the fly-aways around my face with a fine hairbrush sprayed with firm-hold hairspray, and the effect was amazing. When I was dressed in a pale gray pantsuit with a white shirt, a neat little pair of patent leather pumps that I had hidden in the back of the closet three years ago and hair tucked up into a sleek roll, I felt a surge of confidence. I felt like an actress in full costume, and I was ready to play my part.
That confidence, looking in Beatrix’s full-length mirror with my third glass of wine, had mostly evaporated by the time Monday morning came round and I found myself wrestling with my hair and rushing for the bus. It was only a half-hour journey from my apartment to the center of the city, and from there I could easily walk to the Clover House building, but I felt like I was on some kind of epic journey. I was slightly worried that I would run into someone I knew. Most of my friends had gone back home after graduation or already embarked on their careers, but there was still a chance I would see someone who would recognize me. It was almost a relief to see the shiny façade of Clover House up ahead; at least I couldn’t pull out of this now. I was doing it. It was happening.