Sheer Abandon (91 page)

“Well, here she is. Only been home for a couple of days and she gets very tired, but—just a few minutes.”

“Hello, Mrs. Hartley,” said Ed. “How are you?”

“Oh, you know. A little bit better.”

“You remember Kate?”

“Yes, of course I do. It’s very good of you to come, dear.”

“It’s cool. Here, we brought you these.” Helen had chosen the flowers and they were beautiful. “How sweet of you. Peter, go and put them in water, love. It’s a long journey you’ve done,” she said to Kate.

“Oh, not really. My boyfriend brought me. In his car. He’s gone to buy something for it,” she said hastily, clearly anxious that Grace might feel she should ask the boyfriend in, as well. “It needs a new trim, or something.”

“I see.” She looked at her. “How old are you, Kate?”

“Sixteen.”

“You’re still at school?”

“Yes.”

“And what do you want to do?”

“I think I want to be a photographer. But then again, I might be a lawyer.”

“A lawyer! My goodness. Like Martha.”

“Well, yeah. And Ally McBeal.”

“Who, dear?”

“Ally McBeal. She’s a lawyer on TV. You ought to watch it, it’s really good.”

“I’ll look out for it. And how is Jocasta? That’s right, isn’t it?”

“Yes, that’s right,” said Kate. “She’s fine. She’s going to have a baby.”

“A baby! How lovely. I’m so pleased.”

“Yes.” She paused, looked at Ed for a moment, then said, “She sent you her good wishes and she said—”

“Yes? What did she say?”

“She said if it was a girl,” said Kate, and she smiled, with great sweetness, at Grace, “she said to tell you that, if it’s a girl, she’s going to call her Martha.”

ALSO BY PENNY VINCENZI

No Angel

Something Dangerous

Into Temptation

PUBLISHED BY DOUBLEDAY

Copyright © 2007 by Penny Vincenzi

All Rights Reserved

Originally published in the United Kingdom as
Sheer Abandon
by Headline Book Publishing, Ltd, London, in 2005. This edition published by arrangement with Headline Book Publishing.

Published in the United States by Doubleday, an imprint of The Doubleday Broadway Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

www.doubleday.com

DOUBLEDAY
and the portrayal of an anchor with a dolphin are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Vincenzi, Penny.

Sheer abandon : a novel / by Penny Vincenzi.—1st ed.

p. cm.

1. Abandoned children—Fiction. 2. Female friendship—Fiction.

I. Title.

PR6072.I525S54 2007

823'.914—dc22

2006035917

eISBN: 978-0-385-52314-1

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