Chapter One
The thing about dropping a full tray of drinks onto a table full of businessmen in expensive suits is that it happens in slow motion. The tray starts tilting, your grip starts slipping, and there’s just enough time to think "Oh, bollocks" before gravity takes over and ruins everyone's day.
Including the day of the unfortunate waitress that had, up until fairly recently, been holding said tray of drinks.
"You're fired," Tony had said, not even bothering to look up from wiping red wine off his precious leather banquette. "Clear out your locker and don't come back."
Sasha Fox stood in the unseasonably sweltering heat outside Bella Vista, former workplace, current scene of her latest career disaster, and wondered what cosmic force she'd offended this time. The July sun beat down mercilessly on the Manchester pavement, making the air shimmer like a mirage. She'd managed to keep this job for nearly four months, which was practically a record. Not that it mattered now.
She trudged through the sticky afternoon heat toward the flat she shared with Ambrose, her uniform clinging uncomfortably to her back. A group of tourists clustered around a bus stop, fanning themselves with maps and looking miserable in theoppressive weather. At least they were going somewhere. Sasha felt like she was going in circles, just like she had been for the past three years.
The thing was, she genuinely didn't know what she wanted to do with her life. Everyone else seemed to have it figured out: careers, five-year plans, pension contributions. Sasha, on the other hand, had managed to accumulate an impressive collection of jobs she'd either quit or been fired from: shop assistant, receptionist, dog walker, coffee barista, and now ex-waitress. She was twenty-eight and professionally directionless, which was both depressing and embarrassing.
She pushed through the front door of their Victorian terrace conversion, grateful for the slightly cooler air inside, and immediately knew something was wrong. Ambrose's voice carried down from upstairs, high-pitched with panic and accompanied by what sounded like drawers being violently ransacked.
"Shit, shit, shit. Where are my good swimming trunks? The blue ones, not the ridiculous pineapple ones Sophie bought me for Christmas…"
Sasha climbed the stairs, dodging a flying sock. "Having a breakdown, are we?"
Ambrose Sullivan appeared in his bedroom doorway, looking like he'd been electrocuted. His usually perfectly styled dark curls were sticking up at odd angles, and there was a wild look in his blue eyes.
"Sasha! Perfect timing. Crisis. Major crisis." He grabbed her arm and dragged her into his room, which looked like a hurricane had hit a very expensive clothing shop. "I need to be on a train in three hours and I can't find anything and my entire family is going to know I'm a complete disaster and—"
"—and breathe," Sasha said, kicking aside a pile of shirts to sit on his bed. "What's happening? And why does your room look like Harrods exploded?"
"Cornwall," Ambrose said, as if that explained everything. "The usual summer tradition. Two weeks at the estate with everyone pretending we're still living in 1953 and that Grandmother isn't slowly turning into a judgmental raisin."
Sasha had heard about the Cornwall house, some massive pile that had been in the Sullivan family for generations, complete with grounds and staff and probably a few ghosts for atmosphere. The sort of place where people said things like "shall we dress for dinner?" without irony. Not that she’d ever been there, or, indeed, had any desire to go there. There were enough Downton Abbey knock-offs on television without having to live the life.
"Right," she said slowly. "And this requires panic packing because…?"
"Because I completely forgot until Archie rang an hour ago asking if I was bringing anyone this year, and when I said no, he got that tone in his voice, you know the one, like he's adding it to his mental list of ways I'm disappointing the family legacy, and then he called me a coward, and then he said that grandmother was asking questions, and then…"
"And then what?"
Ambrose sat heavily on his suitcase, which immediately popped open and expelled half its contents across the floor. "And then I might have said something about finding a girlfriend to come with me."
"Ah." Sasha surveyed the chaos with new understanding. "A girlfriend who doesn't exist. And will never exist, given how incredibly, stupendously, amazingly gay you are."
"There is that," Ambrose said miserably. "Everyone except grandmother knows, but everyone except grandmother also saysthat grandmother can’t possibly know. She’s a mad old bat and controls all the purse-strings. I think they’re afraid of her cutting us all off. Or dropping dead when she hears. Not that it’s been a problem up until now, since I’ve been single for the past year."
"Two years," Sasha corrected.
"Two years, thank you for that, very helpful…"
"Could be worse. Could be three years like me."
Ambrose stopped his frantic pacing and looked at her properly for the first time since she'd arrived. "Rough day?"
"Got fired. Again." She flopped backwards onto his bed, staring at the ceiling. "Apparently dropping an entire tray of drinks on the monthly sales meeting is 'unacceptable customer service.'"
"Bastards," Ambrose said loyally, though his mind was clearly elsewhere. "Look, I know this is terrible timing, but I don't suppose you'd want to… no, forget it, stupid idea."
Sasha propped herself up on her elbows. She'd known Ambrose for three years, ever since they'd met at some dreadful house party where she'd been hiding in the kitchen eating crisps and he'd been hiding from a girl who'd been following him around all evening reciting poetry. They'd bonded over their mutual desire to escape and had been best friends ever since. She'd moved into his spare room six months later when her previous flatmate had decided to become a yoga instructor in Thailand. And despite the fact that Ambrose was clearly loaded, family money, she assumed, though he was too polite to flaunt it, they got along brilliantly.
"What kind of stupid idea?" she asked.
"The kind where I ask my best friend to pretend to be my girlfriend for two weeks so my grandmother doesn't drop dead or leave my entire family destitute."
