The Third Wife

By Crystin Morgan

The first in the LiBREttO series of short stories by Crystin Morgan

Every Friday afternoon four friends – Leah, Belle, Geeta and Effie – meet at the local hangout for women with impeccable nails, waiting-list handbags and banker husbands: Café Jamilla.

They gossip, they giggle, they bitch, they lust after rainbow-coloured patisseries. And they drink coffee. But when Effie breaks the news that her boyfriend Rhys has asked her to marry him, the sight of her sparkling emerald engagement ring reminds Belle of an extraordinary tale she heard one booze-fuelled night some years ago. A tale of a third wife. A tale of an affair, a guilty conscience, a disappearance, a suspected murder and a desperate plan that couldn’t possibly work. Could it? A tale that’s ripe for a Hollywood treatment, the four women agree.

With George Clooney playing the male lead, naturally.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Little Pig Publishing
• Release date: Nov 2, 2013
• ISBN: 9781311042392

Crystin Morgan

Crystin Morgan is a writer and journalist who lives in the wonderful city of Brighton on the south coast of England, with her husband, two dogs and cat. Originally from a beautiful valley in South Wales, Crystin has been a working journalist for many years and has been published in a number of the UK’s most popular national magazines and newspapers.

Book preview

The Third Wife

A short story by

Crystin Morgan

Smashwords edition

Copyright 2013 Crystin Morgan

Published at Smashwords by Little Pig Publishing

littlepigpublishing.com

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Contents

The Third Wife

About the author

About Little Pig Publishing

The Third Wife

Every Friday afternoon they meet for coffee and a side serving of gossip. Leah is the first to arrive. It’s four o’clock on the dot. She claims their usual table, the one next to the window framed with fairy lights and the best view for people-watching.

There are plenty of empty tables. It’s usually busier than this on Fridays. Two well-dressed women in their early 60s with matching beauty spa gift bags giggle like girls and compare notes on their hopeless husbands at the table in the far corner, drinking tea served in white china pots and eating sticky chocolate brownies. A man in his late 20s with freckles and chin-length chestnut brown hair tied back in a half-hearted ponytail sits alone on a stool at the side