Jackie Collins - The World is Full of Divorced Women

Praise for Jackie Collins

Sex, power and intrigue no one does it better than Jackie. ***** heat

A tantalising novel packed with power struggles, greed and sex. This is Collins at her finest. ***** Closer

Bold, brash, whiplash fast with a cast of venal rich kids, this is classic Jackie Collins Marie Claire

Sex, money, power, murder, betrayal, true love its all here in vintage Collins style. Collinss plots are always a fabulously involved, intricate affair, and this does not disappoint Daily Mail

Her style is pure escapism, her heroines strong and ambitious and her men, well, like the book, theyll keep you up all night! Company

A generation of women have learnt more about how to handle their men from Jackies books than from any kind of manual... Jackie is very much her own person: a total one off Daily Mail

Jackie is still the queen of sexy stories. Perfect OK!

Cancel all engagements, take the phone off the hook and indulge yourself Mirror

Also by Jackie Collins

The Power Trip

Married Lovers

Lovers & Players

Deadly Embrace

Hollywood Wives The New Generation

Lethal Seduction

Thrill!

L.A. Connections Power, Obsession, Murder, Revenge

Hollywood Kids

American Star

Rock Star

Hollywood Husbands

Lovers & Gamblers

Hollywood Wives

The Love Killers

Sinners

The Bitch

The Stud

The World Is Full Of Married Men

Hollywood Divorces

THE SANTANGELO NOVELS

Goddess of Vengeance

Poor Little Bitch Girl

Drop Dead Beautiful

Dangerous Kiss

Vendetta: Luckys Revenge

Lady Boss

Lucky

Chances

First published in Great Britain by W.H. Allen & Co. Ltd, 1975

This edition published by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2012
A CBS COMPANY

Copyright Chances, Inc. 1975, 1980, 1984

This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.
No reproduction without permission.
and 1997 Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved.

The right of Jackie Collins to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

I Fall in Love Too Easily 1944 (renewed 1972)
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc.

Yesterday Northern Songs under licence to SBK Songs Ltd,
3/5 Rathbone Place,
London W1P 1DA

Simon & Schuster UK Ltd
1st Floor
222 Grays Inn Road
London WC1X 8HB

Simon & Schuster Australia, Sydney
Simon & Schuster India, New Delhi

www.simonandschuster.co.uk

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978-1-84983-619-7
eBook ISBN 978-1-84983-620-3

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, events or locales, is entirely coincidental.

Typeset by Hewer Text UK Ltd, Edinburgh
Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Group (UK) Ltd,
Croydon, CR0 4YY

I Would like to thank the following women, Divorced, Married, or Otherwise...

JAN

HAZEL

JOAN

EVIE

LUISA

SHAKIRA

JOANNA

CHRIS

CAROLYN

and

JOHNY!

Are you bored with sex? Mike had asked the other day.

Bored? Cleo James had replied, her voice guilty, of course not. But she was bored by him, by the way he always made the same predictable moves, by the way he always touched her in exactly the same places in exactly the same way.

It was the beginning of summer in New York, a time when it is still pleasant to walk the streets. Cleo stood in a fitting-room at Saks and stared at her reflection in the mirror. She had discarded her own clothes and was trying on a beige suede dress. The dress had been altered for her the previous week and it now fitted perfectly; but still she stared in the mirror, seeing a slim girl with long straight dark hair, big eyes, a wide mouth.

Cleo wasnt really thinking about the dress. The dress was fine. She was thinking about her husband, Mike. She was thinking about him screwing that other girl.

At the onset of their relationship, sex with Mike had been fantastically exciting. Now he seemed stuck in some strange set ritual.

He never wanted to try anything new.

He never wanted to do anything different.

Marriage had changed him.

He did not turn her on any more, and she never had been good at pretending.

They didnt row much. In fact, hardly ever. They had discussions where they talked things out and analysed situations.

Mike was an executive with a record company. He was thirty-six, seven years older than Cleo. Attractive in a free rangy way with his Che moustache and come-on eyes. They had been married four years. A modern marriage where infidelity certainly shouldnt be the end of the world.

Did you fancy her? How many times had Cleo asked him that question, her stomach in knots waiting for his reply.

Sure. Mike would laugh and make a joke of it. I even fucked her a few times.

Ha, ha, not very funny, Cleo thought, and she never questioned further. She didnt want to know.

Now she knew. She had seen him.

Mike was her second husband, the first a vague memory when she was eighteen. She loved Mike, but not the white heat of love she had felt when they were first together.

It looks great, huh? The salesgirl popped her head round the door.

Yes, its fine, Cleo replied. But it wasnt fine that shed caught Mike today. It wasnt fine that his lean naked body had been bent in such obvious enjoyment. It wasnt fine that the busty blonde beneath him was one of her best friends.

She unzipped herself out of the beige fringed suede and handed it to the girl to take away to wrap.

Are you bored with sex? Why had he asked her that? She wasnt doing anything different. Were her sexual moves as predictable as his?

Perhaps the gradual lull in their sex life was her fault. But she knew it wasnt. It was Mike who had changed.

She had been unfaithful once. One man, one time. It had been beautiful, but at the same time sordid. She had made sure it was only once.

They had money, not vast amounts, but enough to satisfy most material demands. Mike was successful. Cleo worked for magazines as a freelance interviewer. They didnt need the money she made, but she enjoyed working, she loved her job.

She dressed slowly, dark brown gauchos, Sonia Rykel sweater, Biba boots, Gucci leather belt, Oliver Goldsmith brown-tinted sunspecs to cover her prune shadowed eyes.

She collected her package and walked out into the Fifth Avenue sunshine. She was supposed to meet Ginny for lunch and it was too late to cancel. The last thing she felt like doing was having lunch with Ginny Ginny of the baby blue eyes, blonde curls, and vast sexual appetite.

Ginnys a bird brain, Mike had said many times. But then he always had disparaging comments to make about most of her friends including Susan, the blonde wriggling about under him that very morning.

Maybe he had also had Ginny. It wasnt an implausible thought. Ginny was a notoriously easy lay, but she was also the last of the great talkers, and if she had been with Mike full details would be all over town.

I think you stink! an old woman hissed at Cleo as she passed on by, and Cleo took no notice of the old biddy who launched away up Fifth Avenue waving a flowered parasol before her. New York was full of nuts, and you just ignored them and hoped that one day you wouldnt get raped or robbed or attacked or shot. New Yorkers were immune to the violence amongst them, only the tourists moved uneasily. Cleo felt like a New Yorker, although she had only lived there for the four years since marrying Mike. She was actually from London, a place she had hardly moved out of before only as far as Europe for a weekend tan.