The Wrong Girl Read online

  Contents

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  About the Author

  Zoë Foster (Blake) enjoys writing author biographies because she gets to write things like, ‘The literary world was in shock when Zoë Foster was controversially awarded the Pulitzer for the second time’, despite the fact that this is patently untrue.

  Things that are true include her roles as columnist for News Limited’s Sunday Style, agony aunt for Cosmopolitan magazine and editor of beauty blog fruitybeauty.com.au. She was previously beauty director at Harper’s BAZAAR, and prior to that beauty director at Cosmopolitan magazine, and before that, well, she was probably just flying kites somewhere.

  Zoë has written three previous novels, Air Kisses, Playing the Field and The Younger Man, as well as the dating and relationship book Textbook Romance. She also wrote the bestseller Amazing Face, a collection of her best beauty tips and tricks, which also has a handy app. Her dream is to one day come up with an impressive line for this final sentence.

  zoefoster.com.au

  Also by Zoë Foster

  FICTION

  Air Kisses

  Playing the Field

  The Younger Man

  NONFICTION

  Textbook Romance

  (with Hamish Blake)

  Amazing Face

  1

  Lily pulled her phone out of her pocket and checked the time: 7.25. Pete was meant to be here at seven p.m. He was bringing the new season of Boardwalk Empire over on his laptop, they were ordering pizza and she had a posh bottle of shiraz she’d swiped from work; things might not get much better than that.

  Lily checked her appearance briefly in the mirrored splashback above the sink as she poured some corn chips into a bowl. She was wearing her trusty denim shorts and a dark-blue singlet. A small gold chain with a tiny bird circled her neck; since her long hair was freshly washed and boofy, she’d tied it up into a high bun.

  She took the corn chips into the lounge and carefully manoeuvred her housemate Simone’s fancy aromatherapy-humidifier-thingy off the table. Even though Simone was earning terrific coin as a very successful model, she was ultimately determined to open a wellness and nutrition centre, catering to the precise kind of cool, slim, beautiful people who didn’t need help. Simone’s fanaticism for wellbeing pervaded the entire house; there was always something sprouting or fermenting on the kitchen bench, and wheatgrass growing on the windowsills. Rooibos and oolong tea, buckwheat flour and LSA had long since taken over the pantry, leaving very little room for Lily’s barbecue shapes and shake-a-pancake mix.

  After living together for three years, Lily was still resistant to Simone’s food choices. It wasn’t as though Sim had been subtle about trying . . . freshly made date and orange gluten-free cookies here, roast tamarind tofu on brown rice there – her part-time job at a health food cafe didn’t help – but Lily remained resolute in her diet of Turkish bread, Corn Flakes, pasta and white rice. In fact, the more Simone lectured and spruiked her way of life, the more Lily resisted it. She actually preferred Sim’s homemade quinoa porridge over her Uncle Toby’s sachets, but she was too far gone to admit it.

  Lily heard a knock downstairs and bounded down to get the door.

  ‘I forgot the fucking wine.’ Pete looked ruefully at Lily as she opened the door.

  ‘I have some,’ she said, as he stepped inside and kissed her on the cheek. He looked positively homemade with his scruffy brown hair, black floppy hat, vintage Led Zeppelin T-shirt and dirty old jeans. What a grub. Simone said he dressed like he was in a band to compensate for the fact he was merely a publicist for bands. Lily just thought he looked like, well, Pete.

  ‘And as if I wasn’t already the best,’ she said, walking inside towards the lounge room, ‘I ordered our pizza to be delivered at eight. Hawaiian with mushrooms and olives, and a margherita with pepperoni. Plus pistachio and white-chocolate gelato.’ Lily beamed with pride.

  ‘You’re primo, you are.’

  As she turned to see his delight at her good pizza-ordering work, her face fell. He had his phone out and was barely listening. As usual. These days he was always on Blendr or Tinder or whatever new hook-up app was cool. He had tried to get Lily to do the same, but she maintained she’d rather stay single forever than hunt on her phone for same-suburb sex with creeps.

  ‘So!’ he said as he collapsed on the sofa and kicked off his filthy brown ankle boots, crossing one ankle over the other as he lay down on his back. ‘How was Byron? Have any fun? You got back yesterday, yeah? Did Simone make you do soft-sand beach runs and drink green juice all weekend while she banged on about spiritual nirvana?’

  ‘No way. We were too busy making out with all these really cool, rich, hot guys and drinking espresso martinis.’

  ‘You were drunk and falling off stools is what I heard. It was the best of times, it was the mess of times . . .’ His eyes were flickering with mischief.

  ‘I had fun; I’m glad I went,’ Lily said indignantly as she walked to the kitchen and poured the wine. ‘Here you go,’ she said, handing a glass to Pete who had shuffled up and made room for her on the sofa.

  ‘Did you get a big dirty new year’s eve pash?’ he asked.

  Lily had, in fact, got a new year’s eve pash, but it was under the duress of Simone’s insistence – ‘Um, you’re single, you know’ – and she couldn’t recall his name or face. He’d kept calling her Eurasian, which was so tired. Her dad was half Japanese, which made her as Japanese as a taco, in her opinion. She had slightly almond-shaped eyes and almost-black straight hair, and that was the extent of it. Her freckles and light-hazel eyes felt pretty Aussie to her.

  ‘I did, actually. Wouldn’t know him if I fell over him, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t a nice guy. A gent, from memory – walked me home and bought me a kebab because Sim was busy with her millionaire lover.’

  ‘Walked you home. Please. Walked you to bed, more like it.’

  ‘Actually, I remember telling him my sister was inside sick and that he couldn’t come in,’ Lily laughed at her deception, but Pete was back on his phone.

  ‘So who was your new year’s eve prey?’ she asked, trying to gain precedence over whatever had his fingers rapidly flicking over the screen of his phone. Lily couldn’t be sure there would’ve been just one target. Pete was in turbo-single mode after a long relationship and making the most – the very most – of it. He’d even become flirtier with Lily, which she found slightly unsettling but not entirely annoying.

  ‘Reply hazy, try again,’ he said in Magic 8 Ball-speak, which they had done with each other for years. He finally jammed his phone back into his jeans and looked at her.

  ‘Why are we talking about that shit, Lil? We should be talking about how great it is to hang again
after weeks of you dying to see me.’

  Lily rolled her eyes. Case in point.

  ‘Oh, stop it. I’m adorable.’ He put his wine glass on the coffee table and lay back, sinking into the big, plush cushions.

  God, he was actually becoming a bit much, Lily thought. She didn’t really know what to make of him tonight. She’d almost prefer they were back in plain old friends mode. It was better than all of this weird, loaded innuendo.

  Lily got up and went to the kitchen again, returning with some lazy ‘guacamole’ she’d made with one avocado and some salt and pepper. Despite being a producer on the cooking segment of a TV show, she was an astonishingly average cook. She preferred being the eater, not the maker. She took a chip, scooped up some dip, and promptly dropped the whole thing on her T-shirt as she chartered it to her mouth.

  Pete chuckled. ‘Never change.’

  ‘I have to, I have guacamole all over my top,’ she said, without missing a beat.

  ‘Touché.’

  As she walked upstairs to switch tops. she heard the door buzzer go.

  ‘Can you get that? It’ll be the pizza!’ she yelled while rifling through her drawers for something else to wear. She threw on a black tank and darted back downstairs to the lounge room, just in time to see Pete going through her bag.

  He looked up. ‘I’m outta cash, and the loser at the door insists on being paid for the pizza.’ He grabbed two twenties from her wallet and shot down to the front door.

  Something fired up in Lily’s gut; he was late, and hadn’t brought wine or money. This was pretty much standard Pete, but tonight it was annoying. She exhaled and tried to just Have Fun.

  Two hours later, brimming with pizza and moving onto a bottle of white wine they’d found in the fridge (Lily hoped it wasn’t one of Simone’s expensive ones), the two friends lay watching a particularly excellent episode of Boardwalk Empire with only the TV screen illuminating their faces.

  ‘What time will you drag your hangover into work tomorrow?’ asked Pete as the closing credits ran. It was the first week in January, and many friends had already returned to work.

  ‘I don’t go back til next Monday,’ Lily said gaily.

  ‘Ah, yes, I forgot that TV stars need more holidays than us plebs.’ One of Pete’s favourite things was to tease Lily about her job, even though technically his was far wankier.

  ‘We’re not back on air until the following week; there’s not much point us all being in there this early. No one would do any work anyway.’

  ‘I probably can’t drive, huh?’ Pete asked, turning his head and sipping his wine, eyes locked on Lily.

  ‘No chance. I’ll call you a cab.’

  ‘Or . . .’ His eyes flashed with intent. ‘I could just . . . stay . . . here?’

  Lily turned and looked into Pete’s eyes, and weirdly, she just knew. Knew that finally The Moment had arrived. She shouldn’t have been too surprised; she had invited him over and shared two bottles of wine with the guy. They were both single and drunk. She knew it was a possibility; she’d assumed it might eventually happen. But still, her heart was pounding and her mouth was suddenly devoid of saliva and there was all kinds of weird twitching in her gut. She was so shit at this stuff.

  Pete leaned in to her and kissed her gently on the lips.

  ‘I’ve always wondered what that’d be like,’ he said. And Lily was surprised to find it wasn’t weird at all.

  Lily smiled and they kissed again, this time a long, slow, gentle one that did exciting things to Lily’s lower body, and confusing things to her brain. As they continued to kiss, Pete leaned back on the cushions and pulled Lily down onto him, wrapping his hands around the small of her back. He smelled intoxicating – it was the usual Pete fragrance but with the sweet, salty undertone of his skin. He gently stroked her back as he kissed her with more urgency and Lily responded, pushing herself into his body, ever so subtly. Soon he was lying entirely on his back on the sofa, with Lily directly on top of him mirroring his increasingly hungry kisses. She felt his hands move down to her arse, which he caressed and squeezed, and as she ran her fingers through his hair, gripping the occasional handful, they kissed feverishly. She knew what was happening next.

  Pete suddenly pulled back his head to look at the now quite flushed Lily. ‘Should we take this fun new game upstairs?’

  ‘Mmm . . . I guess signs point to yes,’ she said, and, deciding to just go with it – the wine happily, loudly encouraging her – she pulled herself off his body and stood up, walking upstairs, knowing he would follow.

  ‘Well, don’t be too excited,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, don’t worry, I’m not,’ she said, turning to smile at him, wondering if she was, in fact excited or not. Either way, it had been quite a while, and who better to break a drought with than a friend. More than a friend? Maybe . . . She pushed the mind-chatter away and tried to focus on the stairs, which seemed to be whooshing away much faster than they usually did. Here goes.

  2

  It was good, Lily admitted to herself. The sex was good. She grinned and allowed a small mist of gold dust to fall over the moment: she and Pete had done it. After years of being genuinely, strictly platonic, almost like brother and sister, they had done it, and it had actually been good. Although Nick from last summer – Mr-Slap-Your-Arse-Grab-Your-Ankles-Slide-You-Down-And-Flip-You-Over – had really set the bar quite high, she mused. God, was that her last time? It was. How disgraceful. She was a few months shy of wearing a nun’s habit. She shook her head and steered her mind back to Pete, who had excused himself to the bathroom after his somewhat theatrical finale.

  She pulled the sheet up over her body. Actually, she wanted her bra and undies back on; she couldn’t be all nude and stuff in bed with Pete! No, no, no, too weird. She scrambled around on the floor in the dark, trying to locate two small, stringy items that had been removed with very little care for their whereabouts. She found her bra and jammed it on as she heard the toilet flush, but no knickers. Fuck! Her fingers located her shorts under the bed and she pulled them on instead, just as Pete came back into the room.

  ‘You can’t do the post-shag dash. This is your house, remember.’

  She fell back onto the bed, her shorts undone but at least in the right general area.

  ‘What are you doing? Come on, back into bed with you. I’ll feel used otherwise.‘

  Lily laughed, doing as she was told.

  Pete kissed her shoulder softly then wrapped an arm around it. ‘You smell good, like caramel.’

  ‘It’s my natural scent. My feet smell of fairy floss,’ Lily said, smiling, relishing the human contact. Being cuddled by Pete felt oddly familiar. She tried not to let her mind race away with visions of them doing this frequently.

  ‘Feel better now?’

  ‘As in having had sex with you, or having some clothes on?’

  Pete laughed. ‘It was always going to happen. You knew it; I knew it.’

  Lily frowned. That wasn’t what you were supposed to say when you’d finally had sex with your best friend, was it? Or was it exactly what you said and she was being too sensitive? You’re supposed to tell them how you’ve been thinking about it for centuries, and now unicorns are dancing and angels are singing and everything has fallen into place . . . right? She was beginning to wig out over this, she realised. Sex always made her wig out. But she’d definitely imagined the post-sex mood between them – if it were to ever happen – would be a little more . . . something.

  Pete threw a casual arm over Lily’s chest and turned to face her. ‘Oi. You cool? What’s happening up there?’ He tapped the side of her head.

  ‘Yeah, yeah, course, just, it’s, well, I’m trying to wrap my head around the fact you’re cuddling me in your undies, I s’pose.’ She laughed lightly, insincerely, but he didn’t seem to notice.

  ‘All that’s missing are the cigarettes.’

  She suddenly felt like he was a little too confident, a little too used to this situation. It irked her.
She felt a surge of territorialism and insecurity. He noticed.

  His voice softened. ‘You know, I wouldn’t have guessed you were such a goer in bed.’

  She flushed and cleared her throat.

  ‘But you’ve always had a hot little bod.’

  ‘Jesus. Gross. Would you stop it?’

  He sighed and rolled onto his back.

  Lily propped herself up on one elbow so she could look at him properly, even though the moonlight coming into the room barely illuminated enough to distinguish a nipple from an elbow. She waited, allowing him conversational space to go on.

  ‘So, I met a good one, Lil,’ he said, suddenly. ‘Her name’s Lou. We met at a gig just before Christmas. She’s really cool, so self-contained and creative and funny . . . She has this short red hair and a mountain of tatts, which are two things I never rated on girls, but there you go . . .’

  Lily tried to calm her explosive heart with a deep breath.

  He went on, his voice tinged with adoration and wonder. ‘With her it’s just so easy, you know? I can be myself, and we have so much fun together, there’s none of the jealousy bullshit I had to put up with with Karen . . . She manages The Wolves, too, has done since the beginning, and now that they’re big in the US, she . . .’

  But Lily had stopped listening. She tried to swallow, but her mouth was arid. Surely this wasn’t happening. Surely Lily’s close friend and extremely recent sexual partner had more tact than to ramble on like a lovesick teenager about some girl he’s fallen for ten minutes after HAVING SEX WITH HER.

  ‘Wow. She sounds super.’ Her voice was equal parts sarcasm and venom.

  ‘It’s only early days and, y’know, Kaz and I only split a few months back and I’m still dealing with some shit from that, obviously, and I need to be single for a bit probably, but it could really turn into something, Lil . . .’

  Pete had missed the substantial bitterness in Lily’s voice and was now observably, unashamedly daydreaming about this Lou idiot. Lily felt something brewing within her that she had not felt for some time, probably since The Mechanic, who so thoroughly messed with her that she’d seriously considered ditching men altogether, and becoming a trendy lesbian with a cool deck of cards tattoo on her neck. It was fury. Pure, industrial-grade fury.