Laura Ziepe - Essex Girls

Table of Contents

Title Page

Dedication For my special and much loved Nan, Eileen. I know you would have been so proud.

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Epilogue

Jade’s Guide to Essex

Extract of Made in Essex

About Mischief

About the Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

For my special and much loved Nan, Eileen.

I know you would have been so proud.

Biggest thanks to my lovely agent Hannah Ferguson, editor Caroline Hogg and Avon editorial director Claire Bord for all their hard work; I’m incredibly grateful that you’ve made my dream become a reality. Also to the fantastic team at Avon and everyone involved in making this happen. Thank you so much!

I would also like to thank my parents; the most support-ive, selfless and loving people I know. One of my best and oldest friends, Claire Honey; thank you so much for encouraging me to write this book and for offering advice and help when I needed it. You always believed in me!

The irritating sound of the alarm was instantly switched off.

Jade stretched lazily in bed and turned to her boyfriend, Tom, who was about to get up.

‘Oh, stay a bit longer,’ she pleaded. ‘Please.’

Tom sighed, glancing at the clock on the wall. ‘I’d love to, but you know I can’t be late.’

As he pulled himself up, she tugged at his arm playfully and he collapsed beside her, laughing. ‘Okay, you win. Just for a minute though.’

Cuddling under the covers, Jade began to kiss his neck.

‘Oh no, not my weak spot,’ he groaned. ‘You know I’ll never leave and I have to.’

Jade held on to him tightly until he pulled away from her warm embrace, reluctantly.

‘I’ll be back before you know it. Keep the bed warm, gorgeous.’ He winked at her and then left.

It was the same every Saturday morning. They would spend Friday nights together, Jade would stay at Tom’s parents’ house and then he’d have to get up early to coach a kids’ football team. He didn’t really need to as he had a full-time job in a bank, but he loved it. Jade had always thought it was really sweet. She could picture him running around in the back garden with their own future sons, teaching them how to play. Though of course she didn’t tell Tom that; she didn’t want him to get scared and run a mile.

Jade tried to doze back off to sleep, it was far too early to get up. Besides, she had nothing to do until he returned. Thoughts of Tom were keeping her awake though; she was so happy with him. She’d been worried when she first started university three years ago. It was a massive change in her life – and leaving her best friends Kelly and Lisa in Essex for a life in quiet Bath hadn’t been easy. Embarrassingly, she’d even cried when she waved goodbye to them and saw their sad faces through the window of the car.

‘Sugar Hut won’t be the same without you,’ they’d shouted. ‘Don’t forget about us!’

Of course she hadn’t, and at first she went home to Essex every other weekend. But when she met Tom the visits home decreased. She still managed to rack up an eighty-pound phone bill from time to time, often going over her free minutes allowance because she was talking to her best friends for too long. Her friends were happy she’d met Tom; Jade had never had a serious boyfriend until she’d met him, and now to her delight they were planning on renting a flat together in Bath. As much as Jade loved her home town Chigwell, she also loved how different Bath was. The people were friendly, a lot more down to earth and low maintenance, and though it had taken her a long time to get used to it, she had to face the fact that fake tan just wasn’t an option here. When she’d first arrived on campus, the other girls had looked at her like she was from another planet. She’d had her nails done and a spray tan for her first day; after all, she’d been single and on the lookout to meet some new hot men, and surely there was no better place than university, swarming with gorgeous guys in football and rugby shorts? To this day, she could have sworn the girls singing the Oompa Loompa song were aiming it at her. Okay, so she did look a few shades darker than everyone else, but she most certainly was not orange. She’d only had one spray, not her usual two, and the colour was called ‘Bronze Beyond’. She’d made friends quickly enough and realised it was probably better to fit in with the pasty crowd, despite the fact she preferred her sunkissed look. It took some getting used to, and she always de-tagged every photo put up by her university friends on her Facebook page, just in case someone from Essex saw her looking as white as a ghost, but Jade had grown to love the carefree nature of the city. She didn’t have to make as much effort when she went out, just a light layer of make-up and a brush of the hair like everyone else. Simple, quick and a nice change from the two-hour preparations she would have gone through back in Essex. Tom was always saying he loved the natural look and fancied her most when she was bare-faced, though deep down Jade just assumed he wanted her to believe this so she wouldn’t go out dressed to the nines and catch the eye of another bloke. In her opinion she looked like Worzel Gummidge first thing, especially after a night out.

Yes, Bath was a lovely place to live and Jade had fallen in love with it. Before she moved in with Tom though, she needed a job, and for the past two weeks she’d done nothing but send her CV off to agencies and various companies. So far, she hadn’t heard a thing, so she guessed what she’d been told was true; getting a job after university wasn’t always easy. It was likely she was going to get a 2:1 grade in Psychology, as her results from her second year had only been a few marks away from a First and she felt she’d done just as well on this year’s exams; the main problem was that she didn’t actually know what she wanted to do with her degree. If she was honest with herself, she was worried that she’d cave in and end up getting a job as a teacher, which everyone else she knew seemed to do. But deep in her heart she knew she didn’t want to do that. The thought of trying to teach a class of pubescent teens terrified her – she’d had a bad enough time at school herself, and there was no way she could go back there. Her senior school in Essex had been so bitchy; it was all about what shoes, bag and coat you had, with girls constantly bragging and showing off. If it hadn’t been for Kelly and Lisa, she would have hated it. When the three of them were together they felt invincible and it helped that everyone had loved Kelly, because she was so ditzy. She often had the class in stitches with her ridiculous answers to the teacher’s questions. Jade had always enjoyed her school work, not that she’d admitted it; saying you liked writing essays on Pride and Prejudice would have been social suicide. She could always teach younger kids, but the thought of snotty noses was enough to make her gag.

At first, she’d loved having the free time to think about what she wanted to do with her life, whilst waitressing part time in Café Rouge. With no alarm to wake her up after late nights and no coursework it seemed perfect, but only a few weeks later Jade was starting to get bored of doing nothing. Sitting in her pyjamas until three in the afternoon searching for jobs online had definitely lost its appeal.