Free The Girl Next Door by Elizabeth Noble Page B

I’m seeing Tom tonight.’
    Charlotte had no idea who Tom was. ‘Have fun!’
    ‘You know me. I always do. Good to meet you, Emily. Have fun yourselves, with your garden stuff.’
    Was Emily paranoid, or was Madison smirking?
    Charlotte closed the door behind Madison, who had left it slightly ajar.
    ‘Woah! She’s lively.’
    ‘She is. She’s nice, though.’ Emily raised an eyebrow. ‘Really. She is.’
    Emily knew Charlotte was nice. About Madison she was not convinced.
    Next door, standing in just a bra and panties as she pulled clothes from her closet, throwing rejected items on to the bed carelessly (they’d end up at Tom’s tonight, she knew – he had a high floor on 1st Avenue and a great view of the East River), Madison reflected that Emily was just a little too good‐looking for her liking. Unpolished, maybe. A natural beauty. But a beauty nonetheless. And friendly with Charlotte already. She’d have to keep an eye on her.
    Madison was the type of girl who knew within five minutes of walking into a room at a party, or a restaurant, or a boardroom, whether she was the most attractive woman in there or not. Normally, she was. She knew what designer you were wearing, whether your hair colour was natural or enhanced, and what you weighed, to within 10lbs or so. Emily was pure Banana Republic (this was a minus, not a plus), a natural platinum blonde, and 120lbs dead, lots of muscle.
    One to watch indeed.
    Eve
    Eve wasn’t at all sure about this outfit. It came from the right store. It bore the right label. It was a good colour for her. Hadn’t the girl in the shop said so? Mind you, she’d gushed so enthusiastically about everything Eve had dared leave the changing room wearing that Eve had been tempted to come out in her underwear and see if the girl said what wonderful things the flesh tones of her bra did for her eyes. She’d rather lost her credibility when Eve had heard her tell the somewhat matronly woman in the cubicle next door that leggings were a look that worked at any age.
    The perils of saleswomen on commission. They practically rushed you the minute you walked into the store – ‘My name’s Claudia, if you need any help. Have you seen this new shipment that just came in?’ This dress was green – apple green. Not a colour she would ever have worn at home. And a dress. Who wore those at home? On and on the woman had gone, about how incredibly simple a dress was to wear, leaving Eve to wonder what exactly was so complicated about wearing trousers and a top. Getting them on the right way around? She said Eve ‘just had’ to buy the dress. That the colour ‘just popped’ on her. And that it would look adorable with a cute little flat, which Eve took to mean a shoe. So literally that she’d gone straight downstairs to the shoe department and told the tall man with his hands clasped neatly behind his back that she was in desperate need of a ‘cute little flat’ to go with it, pulling out a corner of the dress to show him the colour. They meant ballet shoes. These were cute, actually. They had a little silver cut‐out at the front, and all important ‘toe cleavage’, apparently. This meant that Eve’s slightly square feet were pushed into the shoes in such a way that the lines between her toes were clearly visible, and was, she gathered, a good thing. She thought it looked a little like the foot fetishist’s equivalent of builder’s bum, but what did she know? She was just grateful the dress she’d chosen did not require a four‐inch heel of the sort that New Yorkers appeared to be able to long‐distance run while wearing.
    She’d let a woman at the make‐up counter ‘do’ her face, too, which was very unlike her. She remembered being goaded by Cath into having it done at the Guerlain counter in Harrods once, just before she married Ed. She’d looked ghastly – like Barbara Cart‐land’s love child, Cath had snorted – and she’d gone straight to the