Summer in the City Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Acknowledgements

  Praise for Weekend in Paris

  “Delectable images of Paris create an ideal backdrop

  for 48 hours of kisses and croissants.”

  —People

  “Really fun.”

  —Boston Herald

  “Who should read it: spring breakers who wish they were heading

  to a location more glamorous than Walt Disney World. Why: Paris is

  the ‘in’ chick destination right now . . . Lots of name-dropping about

  landmarks, just enough to give this escapist fantasy the kick you

  need to escape your, um, escape.”

  —Forth Worth Star-Telegram

  “Escapist fantasy . . . Sisman pens plots that have the irresistible

  charm of French Kiss.”

  —Gotham magazine, LA Confidential

  “Readers will enjoy this delightful character study that hooks the

  audience the moment Molly learns why she is going to Paris

  until the final good-byes.”

  —Midwest Book Review

  Robyn Sisman was born in Los Angeles and grew up in various parts of the United States and Europe. She is the author of Special Relationship, Just Friends, and Weekend in Paris, all of which were bestsellers and have sold worldwide in over twenty languages. She currently lives in England with her husband, the biographer Adam Sisman, and their children.

  Praise for Just Friends

  “Refreshing . . . Sisman delivers pleasant prose, clever repartee,

  and insight into the differences between men and women . . .

  A pleasure to read.

  —The Boston Globe

  “Just Friends is just bliss. Witty, warm, and wise, it’s as good as an

  old movie for romantics.”

  —The Times (London)

  “A sparky, well-written take on why men and women can never be

  just good friends.”

  —Marie Claire (UK)

  “The gorgeous and witty characters live Sex and the City lives,

  and the plot has enough amusing twists and turns to be

  believable and delightful.”

  —Booklist

  “With a dash of British humor and an adroit insight into family relationships

  and what really makes love work, Sisman’s latest offering

  has what it takes.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Finely observed characters, vivid set pieces, and laugh-aloud wit.”

  —The Mail on Sunday

  BY THE SAME AUTHOR

  Special Relationship

  Just Friends

  Weekend in Paris

  PLUME

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

  Penguin Group (Canada), 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2 (a division

  of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland

  (a division of Penguin Books Ltd)

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  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Published by Plume, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Previously published in a

  Michael Joseph edition, under the title Perfect Strangers, in Great Britain.

  First American Printing, March 2005

  Copyright © Robyn Sisman, 1998

  All rights reserved

  REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Sisman, Robyn.

  Summer in the city / Robyn Sisman.

  p. cm.

  eISBN : 978-0-452-28612-2

  1. British—New York (State)—New York—Fiction. 2. Women in the advertising

  industry—Fiction. 3. Exchange of persons programs—Fiction. 4. Americans—

  England—Fiction. 5. Advertising agencies—Fiction. 6. New York (N.Y.)—Fiction.

  7. London (England)—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3569.I75S86 2005

  813’.54—dc22

  2004058374

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

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

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

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  http://us.penguingroup.com

  For Adam

  Chapter One

  The rain had started during dinner, some time between the removal of the red snapper with herb polenta and the triumphant arrival of Bridget’s homemade tiramisu. This was not the usual diffident English drizzle, but a drenching deluge that cascaded out of the sky, rat-tatted against curtained windows and gathered in splashy pools in basement wells. Two hours on, it was still spraying across the slick London pavements in fierce gusts. Standing on a street corner somewhere at
the nastier end of Kensington, desperate for a taxi, Suze felt as if she had been hosed down like a horse. An animal tang rose from her ruined leather jacket. Wet crawled like spiders from her hairline. Only a blaze of indignation kept her warm.

  I will never get married, she vowed. Never will I be as smug, as patronizing, as boring—she leaped away from the curb as a newspaper delivery van shot an arc of dirty puddle-water at her knees. The Sun, she read, in the rat-eyed glimmer of its taillights. How very appropriate. Cold water trickled down her tights and seeped into the new suede shoes she had worn to impress Bridget’s spare man. Vanity, thy name is woman. Bridget, thy name is mud. Suze, thy brain is mush.

  She should have known better. Bridget used to be a lark back in the good old days when they’d worked together in a publisher’s publicity department, Suze as a design minion and Bridget as the youngest and prettiest of the “puffettes”—publicists prized more for their legs than their brains. The two of them had become best mates, flirting heartlessly with anything in trousers and spending their lunchtimes in designer shops trying on clothes worth a month’s salary. They went clubbing together—sometimes all night, readying themselves for another day of toil with a double espresso in a Soho café and a quick facial repair in the office loo. But ever since Bridget had lured Toby to the altar—Suze had an image of him hacking his manly, deluded way like a portly Prince Charming through a fairy-tale thicket of posies and ribbons and swathes of ivory taffeta—Bridget had acquired an air of quiet condescension that drove Suze wild. In quick succession Bridget had given up work, cigarettes, alcohol and all power of original thought. Within a couple of years she had acquired a Madonna smile and a baby. Nowadays she regarded Suze’s life with a mixture of matronly disapproval and drooling curiosity. Suze’s career, she implied, was no substitute for a husband. Yet when Bridget had invited her to dinner, Suze had felt the tug of friendship and accepted. She had gone prepared to sparkle.

  There had been eight of them: three married couples, one single man and herself. Subtle stuff. The single man was a work chum of Toby’s, a mortgage broker called Charles. He was blond and well fed, confident in City suspenders and striped shirt. After the initial introduction he ignored her utterly, possibly out of the same embarrassment that made Suze feel like an exhibit in an ethnological museum. “Unmarried urban woman, late twentieth century,” the label would read. “Note the mating-display rituals of scarlet lipstick and short skirt.”

  For the first ten minutes she had been marooned on the sofa between Katie and Victoria, while they discussed childbirth in chilling detail. The men stood at the other end of the room, doing important stuff with wine bottles. Toby’s elder brother, Hugh, was a wine merchant, said to be awfully sound on claret. Suze had sipped her Pinot Noir and smiled brightly into the middle distance, trapped in the counterflow of alien jargon. Epidural . . . tannin . . . blackberry nose . . . placenta . . . pethidine. She drained her glass much too fast and, on the pretext of getting a refill, escaped to the kitchen, where she found Bridget peering anxiously into her wall oven.

  “Can I do anything?”

  “All under control,” Bridget said, in a strangled falsetto. “At least—could you be an angel and reprogram the video machine? The timer’s gone up the spout, and there’s a football match Tobe wants to record. Machines aren’t really his thing.”

  Suze loved gadgets. Returning to the living room, she parted the men like Moses at the Red Sea, and reset the controls under their silent, critical gaze.

  “Not just a pretty face, eh?” Toby winked at Charles.

  “They say a four-year-old can do that,” Charles replied crushingly.

  Suze just laughed. “Unfortunately, Toby’s nearer forty.”

  Dinner was an elaborately grown-up affair, complete with candelabra, tablecloth, three sizes of glassware and matching bone china. Suze was placed between Charles and Toby. Conversation flitted over the usual topics: holidays, films, restaurants, whether it was pretentious to have a Jeep-style car in town, the ethics of private medicine, the price of Agas, how they would spend their lottery millions, the best place to buy fresh pasta. Nigel and Katie, who spoke in stereo, found a lot to say about their experience of attending childbirth classes. Charles explained to Suze, quite confidentially, that he could probably remortgage her flat at a lower rate. “I’d have to come and see it, of course,” he hinted. He and Toby then spent the whole of dessert discussing office politics across her chest. Suze tried to open a line of communication with Katie by offering her some wine, but gave up when Katie placed her hand virtuously across the top of her glass and simpered, “The baby.”

  Suze was almost relieved when Toby turned his attention to her—until she heard his question. “So, young Susannah,” he trumpeted, “how’s your love life?”

  Instantly the room went quiet. Seven pairs of eyes turned to stare at her.

  “OK,” she said lamely. What was it with married people? Was a tact lobotomy a compulsory part of the marriage vow?

  “Still no one special?” Bridget asked sympathetically.

  “Well—”

  “Poor you.” Katie’s hand rested complacently on her pregnant stomach, which seemed to begin about three inches below her chin. “I honestly don’t think I could bear to go back to those days of ‘And what do you do?’ and ‘Ohmygod, is he going to ring?’ ”

  The other women groaned.

  “Don’t remind me . . .”

  “The agony . . .”

  Suze rallied. “But that’s the fun of it.” She tossed back her hair and leaned her elbows on the table. “Who wants to know you’re going to go home with the same man for the rest of your life? If you’re single, every night’s a magical mystery tour. Surely you can still remember? Parties, clubs, the excitement of the chase.”

  “Tally-ho!” Charles yelped excitedly. He was now looking at Suze with distinct approval.

  “It’s not the same, though. Is it, Hugh?” Victoria put a hand on her husband’s plump thigh.

  “Absolutely,” he agreed, gazing at Suze’s breasts. “I mean, no way. Ouch, Vicky, that hurt.”

  “The thing is,” Nigel pontificated, “once a girl’s past her prime, the best chaps have already been nabbed.”

  “Fact of life,” Toby agreed smugly, smoothing his balding head. “Loads of females at work, over thirty and still single—little crackers, too, some of them. Eh, Charles?”

  Charles said nothing for a moment. Then a sly grin spread across his features. “Karen Wiggins,” he pronounced. Both men guffawed.

  Suze flushed. “I’m not past my prime,” she squawked. “Anyway, what’s so great about washing socks and cooking dinner for someone who’s just going to lose his hair and spend the rest of his life reading the sports pages?”

  There was a silence. The others looked away, embarrassed for her.

  Hugh cleared his throat. “What do we think of the wine?”

  There was a burble of praise. Suze realized she had drunk about ninety-five glasses without tasting a thing. Still smarting, she sipped ostentatiously, then frowned. “Perhaps just a soupçon more pethidine for absolute perfection?”

  “How’s work?” Bridget asked quickly. “Suze is on the design side at Schneider Fox, the advertising agency,” she explained to Charles. “What’s your latest project, Suze?”

  Suze pretended to think. “Weight Watchers,” she said at last. “This week I had to supervise a photo shoot for the ad campaign—make sure it fits in with the new company profile and all that guff. Anyway, the idea is that there’s this naked man lying on the floor. All you can see is his view looking down—just a vast dome of hairy stomach, then some feet sticking up. The copy line reads, ‘Where has it gone?’ ” She giggled. “Then at the bottom it says, ‘You can find it again with Weight Watchers.’ What do you think?”

  “Naughty, naughty.” Charles leered. He had perked up considerably since the public discussion of Suze’s love life.

  “Bloody feminist propaganda,” Toby pro
tested. “It’s normal for men to fill out a bit as they mature.” He patted his middle-aged spread fondly.

  “As Nigel said,” Suze reminded him gravely, “once you’re past your prime . . .”

  Suze’s recollection of this ignoble triumph was interrupted by a familiar throaty roar. Sure enough, a taxi was miraculously drawing to a halt about twenty yards away. She splashed toward it and wrested the open door from the hand of the previous occupant.

  “Islington,” she panted, then threw herself into the back before the driver could say he was going off duty.

  “Blimey, love. Been swimming?”

  Suze wiped the water from her eyelashes and eyebrows, wrung out her hair and leaned back stickily against the seat. Opposite her was a poster for a dating agency. “LONELY?” it asked in giant letters. She closed her eyes.

  During coffee Bridget had stiffened, laid a warning hand on Toby’s arm and shot out of the room. She returned, bearing what looked to Suze like a surprised pork sausage. “Timmy-wimmy’s lonely,” she crooned. “He wants to join the party.”

  The baby stared cross-eyed at the flickering candles for about two seconds, then burst into a head-banging wail. He was jiggled and juggled, held upside-down, thrown over shoulders and shown how the oven timer worked while the six parents and parents-to-be discussed infant sleep patterns, before moving on to brands of diapers and trainer cups.

  In desperation Suze cleared the dishes from the table. As she rinsed and stacked them in the dishwasher, she was aware that Charles had followed her into the kitchen. He shut the door and leaned against it, lazily looking her up and down.

  Suze wished she was not wearing her new hip-hugging leopard-skin skirt. “This is what we women call ‘washing-up,’ ” she enunciated, as if to a foreigner.