Free The O’Hara Affair by Kate Thompson

preppie girls, Barbie dolls, tramps. Wannabes and It girls, Latinas and Goths. Goddesses and nerdy girls and cheerleaders and vamps. Girls with names like Tinkerbell, L’il Monkeypaws and Puss. Or plain Emily and Martha and Jennifer and Luce. The pages of Facebook were adorned with girls galore.
    ‘Hi, Miriam,’ Fleur murmured, clicking on a link. ‘Welcome.You had a birthday recently, didn’t you?…Come on in, Rosa. Don’t be sad about your boy breaking up with you. You have a holiday to look forward to…Hi, there, Nelly. You’ve got to get those red shoes you’ve been hankering after. If you shimmy down to Fleurissima this afternoon, maybe you’ll find they’ve been reduced by fifteen per cent…Hi, Kitten; hi, Angel; hi, Naomi; hi, Paige…’
    Glancing at the time, Fleur saw that it was nearly half-past ten. Time to jump into a shower, pull on her disguise, and get her ass down to the community centre. But a new notification on Daisy’s wall made her click one last time.
    Oh! Bethany had the most candid eyes she had ever seen. Her birth date told Fleur she was eighteen, but she looked younger. She had the other-worldly appearance of one of Cicely Mary Barker’s flower fairies – tousled hair, delicate bone structure, translucent skin. She was Pisces, a Friday’s child, an incurable dreamer. She loved cats and cuddles and jacaranda-scented candles. She played piano, loved to paint, and was no good at games. She adored Harry Potter and the music of A Camp and Muse. She haunted art galleries. She was partial to Dolly Mixtures. She hated polystyrene cups. She was going to be in Lissamore this weekend. She was looking forward to visiting Madame Tiresia.
    And Madame Tiresia was looking forward to meeting her.

Chapter Four
     
‘It is quite possible for the gazer to be able to see things in the crystal at one time and not at another. This being so, you should not be discouraged if such images fail to appear at the gazer’s command.’ Dr R A Mayne
    If Madame Tiresia fails to detect your aura, there will be no charge for your consultation.
     
    Bethany regarded the disclaimer on the placard outside the fortune-teller’s booth. It was a bit like that terms-and-conditions-apply-share-prices-may-go-down-as-well-as-up stuff that voice-overs rattled off at the end of bank ads on the radio. In other words: let the buyer beware. Still, it was worth a try. Her horoscope had told her to heed the advice of a wise woman this week, and since Daisy de Saint-Euverte had been raving about Madame Tiresia on Facebook, Bethany had to assume that this was the wise woman in question. Bethany believed in horoscopes, even though she pretended to be cynical about them.
    Although they had never met in real life, she had been thrilled when Daisy had accepted her as a friend on Facebook. It didn’t matter that Daisy had thousands of friends, it still felt kinda cool. Bethany’s friends numbered just over ahundred now, but she had to admit that she was a bit indiscriminate about the friendships she’d acquired. What must it be like to be as popular as Daisy de Saint-Euverte? Bethany had never been popular at school: she hadn’t been bullied as such – just ignored. She had been in awe of those girls who seemed so effortlessly confident, whose hair swished like something out of a shampoo commercial, and who spoke in loud D4 accents. She’d never been part of a crowd that screamed and hugged whenever they met, and who threw pink pyjama parties where they necked vodkatinis and watched the singalong version of Mamma Mia while texting their boyfriends. She’d been invited to one of those dos by a cousin, and she had screamed and giggled and sung along on cue, but she had felt like a complete impostor. She had been glad the next day to return to the fantasy realms that lay beyond the portal of her Xbox.
    The other reason for Bethany’s low self-esteem was the fact that she had never had a boyfriend. She reckoned it was because her