The Ice Cream Girls (52 page)

I took a slug of my champagne but it tasted like vinegar in my mouth. The croissant, carefully sliced and filled with smoked salmon, was like sawdust as I chewed. The truffles were paste on my tongue.

Still the card stared at me. Goading me
. Ignore me if you can
, it mocked.
Go on, try it.

I threw back the covers, got out of bed and went over to the card. Dispassionately, I tore it in half. Then tore those pieces in half again. I stomped into the kitchen, stamped on the pedal bin to open it and dropped the remains on top of the rotting vegetables, the greasy leftovers and discarded wrappers.

‘There. That’s what I think of that! And you!’ I hissed at the card and its sender.

I returned to my bed. That was better. Much better. I sipped my champagne and ate my food. And everything was all right again. Perfect, even. Just like it should be on my birthday.

Nothing could ruin it. No matter how much anyone tried. And they were bloody trying, weren’t they? You don’t try much harder than with that message, dressed up as a birthday card. Very clever. Very bloody clever. Well it wasn’t going to work. I wasn’t falling for that nonsense. I was going to carry on with my plan. I was going to make my thirty-second more special than my eighteenth, twenty-first and thirtieth birthdays combined.

Because when I am thirty-two I shall wear gold sequins and six-inch stilettos and brush gold dust over my cleavage,
just as I promised myself ages ago.

The door was ajar and didn’t protest as I gently pushed on it. I didn’t knock. I never knocked on an already open door because to me it always said, ‘Come, no knocking required.’

From her place amongst her white pillows she smiled as I stepped into view. ‘I knew you’d come,’ she whispered.