Verwandte Artikel zu Love & Other Scams

Love & Other Scams - Softcover

Ellis, Philip

 
9780593542477: Love & Other Scams
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0593542479 ISBN 13: 9780593542477
Verlag: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2023

Inhaltsangabe

She wants to steal the ring. He wants to steal her heart.

You are cordially invited as two con artists fake-date their way into the poshest wedding in town.

Single, broke, and about to be ejected from her London flat, Cat feels left behind by her friends, who are all either married or engaged. At least if she picked a few pockets when fellow wedding guests get handsy, no one's the wiser. No one, that is, except her favorite bartender, Jake, who has his own less-than-legal side hustle.

When she's unceremoniously fired and roped into bridesmaid duties for best frenemy Louisa, Cat can’t help but notice that Louisa’s priceless diamond engagement ring sure would solve a lot of problems. But Cat isn't as skilled a thief as Jake is, so to pull off the scheme of their lives, they'll have to pair up. From an engagement party on a boat to the bachelorette weekend in Palermo, Cat and Jake play cat and mouse with each other in a romantic charade. But who’s to say what’s real and what’s fake, when love and money are on the line?

Die Inhaltsangabe kann sich auf eine andere Ausgabe dieses Titels beziehen.

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Philip Ellis is a contributing editor for Men’s Health, covering relationships, pop culture, and LGBTQ+ issues. His work has appeared in British GQ, Teen Vogue, and Repeller, and his short fiction has been long-listed for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize. He lives in Birmingham, UK. Follow him on Twitter @Philip_Ellis and Instagram @philipellis.

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One

"You'll be next," says a woman with a tight perm and spinach in her teeth. Coming out of nowhere, this sounds vaguely like a threat, and it takes Cat a moment to realize that the lady-the bride's aunt, she remembers-is probably referring to her presence here on Pluto.

"Fingers crossed!" she replies, smiling. Her cheeks ache like the practiced muscles of an athlete.

The tables are named after celestial bodies. Bridesmaids are seated on Venus, groomsmen on Mars. Johnny and Susie and their respective parents are on planet Earth, because as he said during the speeches, she is his whole world. Mercury is for immediate family, Jupiter for close friends, Saturn and Neptune for the couple's extended circle. Uranus has been omitted, for obvious reasons.

There aren't enough unattached people at this wedding to warrant the traditional singles table, and so Cat finds herself stranded all the way out on Pluto, within arm's reach of the loos, between Auntie Gladys (of the perm) and Greg, a friend of the groom's father who is keen for everybody to know that the Porsche parked outside belongs to him.

Now, as she sits making chitchat while overcooked salmon and room-temperature chardonnay muddle in her stomach, Cat finds herself conducting a mental cost-benefit analysis. The combined train fare and taxi to the scenic country venue were extortionate, and even though the dress she's wearing was off the sale rail and she purchased the cheapest item on Susie and Johnny's gift registry, it's all still more than she can really afford.

She shouldn't have come. She hardly knows anybody here, was not granted a plus-one, and has yet to even speak to the bride. But Cat is here anyway, because she knows this is probably the last time she will ever see Susie and Johnny. Soon they will be moving out of London, and the chances of bumping into them by chance in a pub in Soho will be eliminated. Then, a year from now, they will either get a dog or have a baby-which of the two is immaterial-and their social lives will begin to revolve around Sunday walks and coffee mornings with other parents and/or dog owners. Cat has long stopped keeping track of the times she has watched various other friends and acquaintances approach this tipping point and then vanish onto the other side.

It wasn't such a big deal in her midtwenties, when the circle of single girls she knew was wider and they were all hustling to find that perfect job, perfect flat, perfect man. What she didn't understand until later was that many people move to London only so that they can one day move back out. They do their time, work their way up some ladder or another, either cohabiting with the same boyfriend they've had since school or going on a carousel of dates until they find someone whose aspirations complement their own, and then they set about planning their escape to somewhere else, a commuter town or charming village where they can afford (with an injection of money from at least one set of parents) to buy their dream house.

Cat must have been off sick the day that everybody got that memo. She spent her twenties flitting from one temp job and unserious boyfriend to the next, and only realized everyone else was working to a strict timeline after the fourth engagement announcement.

She's not even especially close to Susie and Johnny. Cat has long harbored some unsettling suspicions about Johnny's politics, which have only been emboldened by what she has seen of his family today, and if Cat's being honest with herself, Susie can be kind of a drip. But Cat feels a sting regardless, because they are going somewhere she cannot follow. That's why she attends the weddings, she supposes. Because when else would she ever actually see any of the women she used to consider her friends?

"Oh, my dear," Gladys coos sympathetically when Cat's eyes fill up, threatening to ruin her mascara.

"I always cry at weddings," she says, and excuses herself.

The bathroom is blissfully empty. Cat locks herself in a stall and retrieves the flask of vodka from her clutch, knocking it back and swishing it like mouthwash to take away the taste of bile. At twenty-nine, she is arguably too old to be sneaking her own booze into events, but the table wine lasted all of half an hour and it's a cash bar, even though she's fairly certain neither the bride's nor the groom's family is exactly poor.

Of course, that's how the loaded stay loaded, Cat thinks, popping a Tic Tac into her mouth and refreshing her lipstick. Invite everybody to the poshest hotel in the Home Counties to show off just how bougie you are, but don't actually pay for anything you don't absolutely have to. Oh, and nobody can come unless they bring a gift or envelope full of cash.

Weddings are actually a pretty great scam, now that she thinks about it. The only start-up capital you really need is a willing accomplice. Cat scans the room on her way back to Pluto, identifying at least two single-looking men: one at the bar, another on the dance floor, dutifully swaying with Johnny's grandmother. She imagines approaching one of them and proposing they get engaged, hit up everybody they know for expensive homeware and gift certificates, then divide the spoils and go their separate ways. If she can find a guy who would be up for the idea, it might just end up being her most fruitful relationship to date.

"Did it hurt?" asks Greg when she gets back to the table.

"Did what hurt?" I swear to god, if the next words out of your mouth are "When you fell from heaven..."

"Your nose stud," Greg says. "I'm always curious when I see people with those things."

"Not really," she tells him. "I mean, yes, it did. But it was so long ago, I hardly remember."

"Like childbirth," he says.

"Sure." Cat nods. "Like childbirth."

There is an awkward lull as the DJ fumbles the transition from one song to another, and then the room is once again filled with the beat of a song from the early 2000s.

"Why aren't you up there shaking your thing?" he asks. "A young filly like you shouldn't be putting herself out to pasture with the likes of us." He jerks his head at Gladys, who wrinkles her nose at being compared to a farm animal. Cat feels a pang of sympathy. She is hardly thrilled by the pastoral metaphor either, but even Greg's fumbled attempt at a compliment hits her ear like a mother tongue after years abroad.

"I'm old-fashioned," she tells him. "Waiting for somebody to ask."

"Well, in that case," he says, grinning and extending his hand, "may I have this dance?"

Greg is easily old enough to be her father, and his skin has a slight sheen to it, like glazed pork. But Cat is single at a wedding, and his eyes have been on her since she first sat down. If nothing else, she thinks, he's probably good for a vodka tonic.

Cat has nothing in her purse but a pack of mints, a crumpled five-pound note, and a blister bandage for shoe emergencies. Her freelance job hasn't been paying much lately, and the last of her money went to the wedding gift and this dress, an aquamarine number which she has to admit looks pretty damn good.

Greg's palm is clammy as he leads her into the crowd, and Cat suspects-for the second or third time today-that it isn't a cold making him sniff and sweat so much. The song is fast, retro, and apparently right up his street. He jerks around like a bargain-basement Mick Jagger while Cat does her best to keep up, shimmying as much as her dress will allow.

"See? There's life in the old dog yet," he shouts proudly.

"I never doubted you!" Cat replies, and surprises herself by laughing. She remembers when she used to love weddings: the drinking, the dancing, the chatting absolute shit with people she's never met before. She can still salvage this evening, she thinks. As long as this...

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Verlag
G.P. Putnam's Sons
Erscheinungsdatum
2023
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0593542479
ISBN 13 
9780593542477
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
337
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
preigu
mail@preigu.de

Lengericher Landstr. 19
Osnabrück
49078
Deutschland

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