- •I type a full stop, take a sip of coffee, and turn to the second page of the press release.
- •Extract 2
- •Extract 3
- •I should say something. I should say, “Janice, I don’t fancy Tom. He’s too tall and his breath smells.” But how on earth can I say that?
- •Extract 4
- •I’m absolutely stunned. I’ve never seen anything like this at a press conference. Never!
- •I head toward the back to get another cup of coffee, and find Elly standing by the coffee table. Excellent. I haven’t seen Elly for ages.
- •I’m sorry, but I can’t go and sit back down there. I have to hear about this.
- •Extract 5
- •I stare at him blankly.
- •I have never before worked so hard on an article. Never.
- •I can’t do this. I can’t speak to Luke Brandon. My questions are jotted down on a piece of paper in front of me, but as I stare at them, I’m not reading them.
- •I’ll show Alicia, I think fiercely. I’ll show them all, Luke Brandon included. Show them that I, Rebecca Bloomwood, am not a joke.
- •Extract 6
- •Extract 7
- •It’s basically my idea of heaven.
- •I close my eyes and, after a few seconds, feel a cool, creamy liquid being massaged into my face. It’s the most delicious sensation in the world. I could sit here all day.
- •I almost want to laugh at the incongruity of it. What’s she doing here? What’s Alicia Bitch Long-legs doing here, for God’s sake?
- •Is that me? Oh God, I don’t want to be a leading industry expert. I want to go home and watch reruns of The Simpsons.
- •I look around for support and see Rory gazing blankly at me.
- •I watch in a daze as he picks his way across the cable strewn floor toward the exit, half wishing he would look back.
- •Extract 8
- •Extract 2
- •Extract 3
- •Extract 4
- •Extract 5
- •I’ll just have a really quick look.
- •I mean, what is wrong with these people? Are they complete philistines?
- •Extract 6
- •It’s only as we're approaching a department entitled ‘Gift Wrapping’ that I realize what’s going on. When I said ‘gift’, she must have thought I meant it was an actual–
- •I take the card from her, and as I read, my skin starts to prickle with excitement.
- •Extract 7
- •I stare at him, agog.
- •I can’t tell him I’ve actually got three. And two on hold at Barneys.
- •Extract 2
- •I wish bridesmaids got to say something. It wouldn’t have to be anything very much. Just a quick ‘Yes’ or ‘I do’.
- •I’ve always been a teeny bit awkward around Tarquin. But now I see him with Suze – married to Suze – the awkwardness seems to melt away.
- •Extract 3
- •I glance into the mirror, feeling quite grown-up and proud of myself. For once in my life I’m not rushing. I’m not getting overexcited.
- •I remember that cake. The icing was lurid green and the lawnmower was made out of a painted matchbox. You could still see ‘Swan’ through the green.
- •I have never worn anything less flattering in my life.
- •Extract 4
- •Extract 5
- •Extract 6
- •Extract 7
- •I’ll be a grown-up, go along to the cake studio and break the news to her face to face.
- •I had no idea wedding cakes could be anything like this. I flip through, slightly dazedly, looking at cake after spectacular cake.
- •I can see Alicia’s brain working hard.
- •I can see Robyn and Antoine exchanging looks, and I’m dying to ask them what they think of Alicia. But... It wouldn’t be becoming in a bride-to-be.
- •If I’m really honest, hand on heart – I feel exactly like someone who’s going to have a huge, luxurious wedding at the Plaza.
- •I put the invitation into my bag and snap the clasp shut, feeling slightly sick.
- •I look at him, my attention finally caught.
- •Extract 8
- •I stare at him in utter stupefaction. What does he think he’s doing?
- •I stare at him in horror.
- •I follow his gaze, and see Danny’s brother Randall walking across the floor towards us.
- •Extract 9
- •I stare at her, momentarily halted.
- •I stare at the page, my heart pounding. It’s a typed sheet, headed terms of agreement. I look straight down to the dotted line at the bottom – and there’s my signature.
- •I haven’t said a word about anything to Luke. In The Realistic Bride it says the way to stop your fiance getting bored with wedding details is to feed them to him on a need-to-know basis.
- •I feel a stab of shock.
- •Extract 10
- •I put the phone down and smile at Robyn, who’s wearing a bright pink suit and a headset and carrying a walkie-talkie.
- •In fact, it’s completely true. I’m beyond nervous. Either everything goes to plan and this all works out. Or it doesn’t and it’s a complete disaster. There’s not much I can do about it.
- •I’ve never seen a wedding dress like it. It’s a work of art.
- •Extract 11
- •I reach out and hug her tightly.
- •I can't move. I can't breathe. I need my fairy godmothers, quick.
- •I don’t believe it. It’s Luke.
- •Extract 12
- •I feel a huge spasm of nerves as I see the familiar sign. We’re nearly there.
- •I’m getting married. I’m really getting married.
- •I freeze in terror, one foot inside the car. What’s happened? Who’s found out? What do they know?
- •I think I’m the happiest I’ve ever been in my life.
- •I feel a spasm of nerves inside. Here it comes. The last bit of my plan. The very last cherry on top of the cake.
- •Extract 2
- •Extract 3
- •Extract 4
- •Extract 5
- •Extract 6
- •Extract 7
- •Extract 8
- •Extract 9
- •Extract 10
- •Extract 11
- •I’m fantastically well-organised, basically. And very self-disciplined. The early bird catches the modeling contracts, after all.
- •Extract 13
- •I am such a deluded moron.
- •Extract 2
- •I draw myself up short with a jolt. “I’m sorry,” I say, and exhale sharply. “You don’t want to hear all this.”
- •Extract 3
- •I bet they do.
- •I was so totally mortified, I never told anyone. Especially not Mum and Dad.
- •Extract 4
- •Extract 5
- •I don’t think so.
- •Extract 6
- •Extract 7
- •I watch in total disbelief as Jack settles comfortably down on the rug. He was supposed to be rescuing me from all this. Not joining in. Slowly I sink down beside him.
- •I stare at her blankly. Since when have Kerry and I ever socialized together?
- •Extract 8
- •I am never visiting a zoo again.
- •Revenge is Sweet (by c. Fremlin)
- •It worked like a dream, exactly as she’d planned.
- •The Way up to Heaven (by r. Dahl)
- •For Services Rendered (by j. Deaver)
- •I can help you and you can help me...
- •I can help you and you can help me...
- •Makeover (by b. Callahan)
- •Interrupting her in mid sob, Monty said, “Hold on there, Steph. Gotta pay our bills. Time for a commercial.”
I can help you and you can help me...
He lifted an envelope out of his briefcase. He handed it to her.
“What is this?”
“My bill.”
She opened it. Took out the sheet of paper.
At the top was written: For Services Rendered. And below that: $10 million.
“Are you crazy?” Patsy gasped.
Harry had to laugh at her choice of words. “Peter was nice enough to tell me exactly what you were worth. I’m leaving you a million... which you’ll probably need to pay that slick lawyer of yours. He looks expensive. Now, I’ll need cash or a certified check before I testify at your trial. Otherwise I’ll have to share with the court my honest diagnosis about your condition.”
“You’re blackmailing me!”
“I guess I am.”
“Why?”
“Because with this money I can afford to do some good. And help people who really need helping.” He nodded at the bill. “I’d write that check pretty soon – they have the death penalty in New York now. Oh, and by the way, I’d lose that bit about the food being poisoned. Around here, if you make a stink about meals, they’ll just put you on a tube.” He picked up his attache case.
“Wait,” she begged. “Don’t leave! Let’s talk about this!”
“Sorry.” Harry nodded at a wall clock. “I see our time is up.”
Makeover (by b. Callahan)
On our first wedding anniversary thirteen years ago, Todd gave me a diamond tennis bracelet to mark the occasion. A firm believer in romantic rituals, I insisted that Todd slip the bracelet on my wrist and clasp it firmly shut on every subsequent anniversary as a symbol of our unbroken marital bond. In the years one to ten, the bracelet slid on as smoothly as the glass slipper onto Cinderella’s foot.
On our eleventh anniversary, Todd raised his eyebrows tolerantly as he squeezed my wrist to make the bracelet fit. On our twelfth, he grimaced along with me as he squeezed harder to circle it around my wrist. On our thirteenth, an anniversary that should be skipped on the basis of numerical toxicity, Todd gritted his teeth as he forced the clasp shut and sent the diamonds skittering across the carpet on our bedroom floor.
“Maybe we ought to have the bracelet made into dangling earrings, Emily. Your earlobes seem to have escaped the padding you’ve systematically applied to the rest of your body courtesy of every fast-food chain in town.”
Taking more care not to trample on the diamonds than he did on my heart, he neatly arranged his workout clothes in his duffel bag and left for the gym.
Addressing each diamond as if it were a daisy petal, I choked out the words, “He loves me, he loves me not” until reaching the final glittering traitor – an “He loves me not.”
Of course he loved me not. How stupid of me not to recognize it sooner. If Todd had loved me, he wouldn’t have insisted on his fortieth birthday, three years ago, that I cook him those dreadful meals. He claimed that a Spartan diet of brown rice, tofu, and veggies would fend off the “forties fifteen”, the inevitable weight gain attested to by his friends who had lumbered into that decade before him. And if Todd had truly loved me, he would not have insisted that I enroll in that exercise class led by a bouncy anorexic dedicated to eradicating the “forties flab”. Unlike Todd, whose workouts energized him, mine propelled me home to the restorative comfort of the living room sofa.
No wonder that I supplemented my diet with Taco Toros, Pizza Parnassian, and Seriously Sinful Shakes. No wonder that I skipped exercise class so often that my fellow sufferers awarded me a fake Olimpic gold medal for truancy. And no wonder that after Todd’s cruel remark I headed immediately out to Le Barbeque d’Andre to buy Le Grand Burgaire and a side of the Fries of France.
En route, to distract myself from my own pain, I turned on the car radio to listen to the problems of strangers. Monty Malaise, the talk-show host of Misery Loves Company, was inviting a tearful young woman to “share your own misery and whine to your heart’s content because we’re here for you, Buttercup”. Monty addressed all his women callers as Buttercup and the men as Hydrangea, a technique that invariably made the callers divulge their first names.
“My name’s not Buttercup, Monty, it’s Stephanie.”
“Okay, Stephanie, now tell Uncle Monty and all those audio voyeurs out there in their kitchens and cars what’s making you miserable.”
“I’m in love with a married man,” she wailed.
“Poor baby,” yawned Monty.
“And he loves me too,” she sniffed.
“So what’s the problem?” asked Monty in the interested tone of one who is busily buffing his nails.
“He won’t ask his wife for a divorce.”
“Why not?”
“She inherited a lot of money three years ago and controls all their finances. If he leaves her, we’ll have to make do with his salary as a junior accountant and mine as a secretary, and that’s barely enough to keep up the payments on the twin Ferraris we must have.”