Something Spectacular (Something Fabulous, #2)

by Alexis Hall

That was the problem with loving someone who didn’t love you the way you wanted: it was too easy to lose who they were in your own feelings.

You’ve read the same books I’ve read. Beheld the same world I have. Love is supposed to be our consolation.” “Your what now?” “Our consolation. For the fact we have fuck all else.”

This tear-your-skin-off breaking up of two people who had never really been together. “I’ll be your lover and your companion, and never ask for more.”

how’s that working out?” “Terribly,” declared Belle. “I’ve ravished half of London, to no avail.” “Poor you.” “There’s no need to be mean, Peggy. It has had its compensations, I will admit, but it’s been hard work, and I’m getting quite bored.”

And then I thought if I could just . . . be a heroine, as the books describe, then maybe love would find me, and everything would finally make sense. But

But she had never been good at governing her heart. It always over-spilled inside her like a too-ripe fig. Then again, she had always known it would.

any case, Peggy liked the crocodile. For whatever reason, the taxidermist, perhaps not knowing very much about crocodiles, had positioned it on its hind legs, with its front claws extended before it and its long-snouted mouth open in an expression of mild exasperation. It was as if it was saying “Oh, what the fuck now,” and it was exactly how Peggy wanted her visitors to be greeted.

“My problem,” Peggy told no-one in particular, for she lacked both dog and decanter, “is that I have a type.” And her type was people who saw the world on their own grand terms, to whom Peggy’s small world—even if it did contain pineapple-shaped summerhouses and disgruntled crocodiles—was always going to hold less significance.

“Darling, the guests are mostly English. You are culturally incapable of enjoying yourselves at parties unless you are in someone else’s country, in which case you embarrass yourselves beyond all reason.

“I’d rather be someone who gets their heart broken than someone who never dares their heart at all.”