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Original Cyn: A Novel - Softcover

Margolis, Sue

 
9780385337342: Original Cyn: A Novel
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0385337345 ISBN 13: 9780385337342
Verlag: Delta, 2005

Inhaltsangabe

From the acclaimed author of Breakfast at Stephanie’s comes a hilarious new novel about falling in love, breaking the rules, and other sinful pleasures.

A junior copywriter at a London ad agency, Cynthia Fishbein is the original good girl. She works hard, never complains, and takes care of everyone around her. Even Cyn’s therapist tells her she’s too nice. But all that’s about to change when a catty co-worker steals one of her ideas.

So Cyn goes her one better: She steals the woman’s identity.

Suddenly she’s breaking out of her shell, concocting a wickedly brilliant scheme to salvage her career–and maybe get a little revenge in the process. And once Cyn gets started, she just can’t stop. Soon she’s breaking the #1 rule of group therapy by dating Joe Dillon, the group’s sexy commitment-phobe. Leading a thrilling but terrifying double life, embroiled in a deliciously forbidden affair, she is having the time of her life–until her scheme starts to backfire in a major way. And unexpectedly Cyn is faced with a crisis that threatens her career, her relationship–and just might finish off her sterling reputation for good.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Sue Margolis was a radio reporter for fifteen years before becoming a novelist. She is the author of four previous novels: Breakfast at Stephanie's, Apocalipstick, Spin Cycle and Neurotica.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Chapter 1

“Elizabeth Taylor died? Ah. Still, the old girl was getting a bit past it.” As Cyn switched her mobile to the other ear she felt the taxi slow down and turn left. “Are you sure you’re OK?” her mother asked tenderly. “I know how much she meant to you.”

“I’m fine,” Cyn said, rubbing at the condensation on the rain-speckled window and peering out. “I mean, it wasn’t entirely unexpected.”

“The vet did all he could,” her mother was saying. Cyn’s mind immediately conjured up a frantic scene in pet ER. She could hear the vet instructing everybody to “Stand clear” as he turns poor Elizabeth onto her shell and shocks her scaly chest with two tiny tortoise-sized resuscitation paddles. Half a dozen attempts later he wipes his brow and announces, “OK, I’m calling it. Time of death, ten after four.” His face etched with failure, he snaps off his rubber gloves and throws them into the bin. Meanwhile, a tearful nurse sniffs and covers Elizabeth with a tiny white sheet.

“I remember the day I found her,” Cyn’s mother went on. “It was February 1981. The Canadian cousins were over and I’d gone to the garage to get some vol au vent cases out of the freezer. And there she was, hibernating inside a pile of sunlounger covers.”

Elizabeth Taylor was by no means the only animal her mother, Barbara, had “rescued.” In the years before and since the tortoise joined the Fishbein household, there were assorted stray cats, lost budgies and the odd hamster. There had even been an actual lame duck, which, having been attacked—probably by a fox—had somehow managed to waddle the half mile from the park pond to find sanctuary in the Fishbein kitchen. Barbara found homes for all the other animals. Even the duck was nursed back to health and eventually, with much ceremony, released “back into the wild” of the local park. She wasn’t so lucky with the tortoise. Despite “tortoise found” notices stuck on virtually every lamppost in the neighborhood, nobody came to claim her. In the end the Fishbeins adopted her, but it was Cyn who loved her. It was Cyn who spoiled her with slices of tomato and painted ET Fishbein on her shell in Wite-Out, and it was Cyn who worried obsessively every winter about her not waking up from hibernation.





Back then it wasn’t just tortoises and lame ducks Barbara had taken in. She also rescued people: best friends going through messy divorces came to stay for weeks on end—usually with several badly behaved, bedwetting children. For a few years she did emergency short-term fostering for the local council. This meant that every couple of months an “at-risk” baby or toddler would be delivered by social workers and stay a few days. Barbara loved the babies as if they were her own, but they were never around long enough for Cyn or her brother, Jonny, to get jealous.

Not long after Elizabeth Taylor’s arrival, the miners went on strike. Straight away, thousands of them headed down to London for rallies and marches. Being on strike they couldn’t afford accommodation. Barbara, whose father, Sid, had been a union shop steward all his working life and had raised her in the old-fashioned Labour Party tradition, which regarded the working man as nothing less than a hero, immediately phoned the Miners’ Union HQ and offered to take in half a dozen. To her everlasting dismay, all the Hampstead and Highgate middle-class liberals had gotten there first and there weren’t any to be had for love or money.

Sometimes when the crying babies or sleeping bags all over the living room floor got too much for Cyn’s father, Mal, he would escape to his shed. Cyn would find him with his feet up on the workbench playing his John Lennon LPs or listening to the cricket on his old Roberts radio, muttering about how the house was turning into “the blinkin’ Inn of the Sixth Happiness.” But he never asked Barbara to put a stop to her rescue missions. Cyn knew that deep down he loved and admired her far too much.

Barbara’s mother, Grandma Faye, had accused her of having a Mother Teresa complex. Barbara just shrugged and said, “Call it what you like. I’m just doing my small bit to make the world a better place.”

Barbara was in her sixties now, and although she still took in the odd stray cat and wrote the occasional outraged letter to the Guardian about cuts in education and the health service, there hadn’t been any friends, babies or oppressed workers needing a bed for years.

“You and your brother named her Shelley,” Barbara said about the tortoise. “Then she kept getting ill. The vet brought her back from the brink so many times that Grandma Faye started calling her Elizabeth Taylor.” The name stuck, despite the vet having informed Barbara on at least five occasions that Elizabeth Taylor was a boy.





Cyn carried on looking out the window, vaguely aware of her mother chortling to herself. She was pretty sure the car showroom was about half a mile farther down on the right. Her heart rate started to pick up. Her very own shiny, freshly minted, brand-spanking-new Smart Car was sitting there, waiting for her to claim it. What’s more—and this was the truly amazingly fabulous bit—she was getting it for free.

Cyn was a junior copywriter at a cutting-edge and very much on the up advertising agency, Price Chandler Witty. Occasionally, companies whose accounts they handled would, after a particularly successful campaign, express additional gratitude and appreciation by offering the agency a car for an employee to have on long-term loan. The “long-term” bit was fairly ambiguous, but it pretty much meant that unless the recipient left the agency, nobody would ask for it back. The deal was that the car would carry advertising for whatever it was the donor company manufactured. Of course nobody at the agency minded, since it was generally thought that driving around advertising a sleek PalmPilot, digital camera or laptop was a pretty fair exchange for a new car.

Whenever a car came up—usually once or twice a year—the names of all the agency staff, from the directors to the cleaners, were put into a hat. The draw always took place in the function room at the Bishop’s Finger across the road and afterward there would be a bit of a party. Last week there had been a couple of cars up for grabs. Although they were from different companies, both happened to be Smart Cars.

Cyn took no more than a passing interest in cars. It was partly that like many women she found the subject less than fascinating and partly that taking a proper interest would have led to yearnings, and yearnings ended up costing money. She had just bought her first flat. What with the mortgage payments and the loan on her new Ikea kitchen, she couldn’t even contemplate replacing her old Peugeot. Nevertheless she adored the Smart Car. Its tiny, almost cartoonishly cute wedge shape made her laugh. She liked the way its straight back gave the impression that it was in fact the front end of a much larger, longer vehicle from which it had somehow been severed. Even though it looked like the transport of choice of a circus clown, there was no doubt that the Smart Car had style. She was aware, of course, since it was the coolest, most must-have two seater on the market, that everybody who drove one looked like a fashion victim, but that night, as she’d sat in the pub drinking with her little gang from the office, Cyn had decided that if she were ever lucky enough to own one, she would find a way to live with the...

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Verlag
Delta
Erscheinungsdatum
2005
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0385337345
ISBN 13 
9780385337342
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
400
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Purmerul LTD
https://strengholt.nl/en/

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