The Alice Network by Kate Quinn EPUB & PDF

The Alice Network by Kate Quinn EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online

• Status: Available For Free Download
• Authors: Kate Quinn
• Language: English
• Genre: Military Historical Fiction
• Format: PDF / EPUB
• Size: 2 MB
• Price: Free

May 1947
Southampton
The first person I met in England was a hallucination. I brought her with
me, onboard the serene ocean liner that had carried my numb, grief-haunted
self from New York to Southampton.

I was sitting opposite my mother at a wicker table among the potted
palms in the Dolphin Hotel, trying to ignore what my eyes were telling me.

The blond girl by the front desk wasn’t who I thought she was. I knew she
wasn’t who I thought she was. She was just an English girl waiting beside
her family’s luggage, someone I’d never seen before—but that didn’t stop
my mind from telling me she was someone else. I averted my eyes, looking
instead at the three English boys at the next table, who were busy trying to
get out of tipping their waitress. “Five percent tip or ten?” a boy in a
university tie was saying, waving the bill, and his friends laughed. “I only
tip if they’re pretty. She had skinny legs . . .”
I glowered at them, but my mother was oblivious. “So cold and wet for
May, mon Dieu!” She unfolded her napkin: a feminine flurry of lavenderscented skirts among the heaps of our baggage. Quite a contrast to me, all
rumpled and cross. “Put your shoulders back, chérie.” She’d lived in New
York since she married my father, but she still sprinkled her phrases with
French. “Do stop slouching.”
“I can’t slouch in this getup.” I was crammed into a waist cincher like a
band of iron, not that I needed one because I was built like a twig, but my
froth of skirts wouldn’t hang right without it, so band of iron it was. That
Dior, may he and his New Look rot in hell. My mother always dressed right
at the crest of any new fashion, and she was built for the latest styles: tall,
tiny waisted, voluptuously curved, a confection in her full-skirted traveling
suit. I had a frilly traveling suit too, but I was drowning in all that fabric.
Nineteen forty-seven was hell for little bony girls like me who couldn’t
wear the New Look. Then again, 1947 was hell for any girl who would
rather work calculus problems than read Vogue, any girl who would rather
listen to Edith Piaf than Artie Shaw, and any girl with an empty ring finger
but a rounding belly.

I, Charlie St. Clair, was officially three for three. That was the other
reason my mother wanted me in a waist cincher. I was only three months
gone, but she wasn’t taking any chances that my shape might announce
what a whore she’d brought into the world.

I stole a glance across the hotel court. The blond girl was still there, and
my mind was still trying to tell me she was someone she wasn’t. I looked
away again with a hard blink as our waitress approached with a smile.

For More Read Download This Book

EPUB