In Real Life
Chris Killen
Language: English
Pages: 368
ISBN: 1847672620
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Still friends a decade on? What are the chances? A hilarious, heart-breaking, and decade-spanning portrait of a generation.
For a while, Ian, Lauren, and Paul shared the same friends, the same university, the same dreams, and the same potential. Ten years on they are worlds apart. Call centers, charity shops, and bedrooms that smell like cabbage were never part of the plan. The real world doesn't look quite like any of them imagined. But when Lauren, in a moment of nostalgia, cracks open a long-forgotten Hotmail account, she comes face to face with the people these three friends used to be. For two of them it will mean a new beginning to an old love story.Hilarious and heartbreaking, In Real Life paints a searingly honest portrait of a generation and captures a world where human connection is easier than ever before but where relationships remain just as tricky.
Waking Up with a Rake (The Royal Rakes, Book 1)
The Perfect Poison (Arcane Society Series, Book 6)
first. Easy! a voice whispers inside me. Just go back online! I click on the wifi icon in the bottom corner of my screen, and the pop-up window opens and I scroll down the list of available networks, and there it is, unlocked as always: Rosemary’s Wireless. With great effort, I close the lid of my laptop and put it back up on top of the wardrobe. I take some big, deep breaths and do a few circuits of the room. Over by the window, I look down into the expensive-looking ground-floor flat
have forty-six unread messages and six hundred and twenty-three other notifications. I type ‘Dalisay Rivera’ into the search bar and hit return. Four different Dalisay Riveras appear on my screen. The one I’m searching for is right at the top of the list. I click on her thumbnail and it leads me to her profile page, which is almost blank unless we become friends. I move my cursor over ‘+1 Add Friend’ and click. PAUL 2014 Oh dear, Paul thinks as he puts his pen down and swigs his last half
definitely real footsteps – quicken behind him. He feels his heart quicken, too. ‘Hello,’ Paul murmurs into his cracked, silent phone. He’s not very good at acting. He doesn’t know what to say next. He pretends it’s the doctor’s surgery on the other end of the line, calling him back after a scan. ‘What a relief,’ he says. ‘That’s great news. Thanks so much for letting me know.’ But maybe talking on your iPhone isn’t the best way to scare off a mugger. It seems, suddenly, like the worst
morning when he got in from work.) ‘Oh shit. I’m sorry . . .’ she began. ‘Anxious,’ Paul interrupted, his voice quavering as he read. ‘Paranoid . . . Bad breath. Bad breath? Fucking hell. Couldn’t you have just said something. Told me to get some mints or something?’ ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered into her hands, which smelled of Kiehl’s moisturiser (a birthday present from his parents), too afraid now to look into his slapped, miserable face. ‘Fuck’s sake,’ he spat. And then he groaned, as if a
since childhood, that was handed down to her from her now-deceased grandma, and that Paul has always been scared of touching – and it smashes into tiny, irreparable pieces on the tiles. ‘Fucking shitting fuck,’ he says. This evening he ended up going out drinking by himself because Damon was busy. He sat in the corner of Kro Piccadilly, miserably eyeing up women in tight shiny dresses and drank seven pints of strong continental lager. From the all-night Spar, he bought a ten-pack of Marlboro
