Ed’s eyes twinkled and he flashed a wide grin at me.
‘Suitably chastened, m’lady,’ he said, giving a little bow as we got up to return to the store. But in the doorway he grabbed my sleeve and pulled me to him. ‘However, this topic won’t go away, Rosie Duncan. It’s definitely one To Be Continued.’
Read on for an extract from Miranda’s second novel, Welcome To My World
CHAPTER ONE
How It All Began …
Right at the start, there are two things you should know about Harri: one, she doesn’t usually make a habit of locking herself in toilet cubicles during parties; and two, she is normally one of the most sane, placid individuals you could ever meet.
But tonight is an exception.
Because this evening – at exactly 11.37 p.m. – the world Harri knew ended in one catastrophic event. In the space of three and a half minutes, everyone she loved collided in an Armageddon of words, leaving mass carnage in its wake – sobbing women, shouting men and squashed vol-au-vents as far as the eye could see. Powerless to stop the devastation, she resorted to the only sensible option left available – seeking refuge in the greying vinyl haven that is the middle cubicle in the ladies’ loo at Stone Yardley Village Hall.
So here she is. Sitting on the wobbly toilet, black plastic lid down, head in hands, life Officially Over. And she has no idea what to do next.
It was all Viv’s idea. Harri should have said no straight away but, being Harri, she decided to give her first Sunday school teacher the benefit of the doubt.
‘You know how useless Alex is at finding suitable girlfriends,’ Viv said, lifting a steaming apple pie from the Aga and in advertently resembling a serene tableau from Country Life as she did so. ‘He’s hopeless! I mean, twelve girlfriends in the last year and not two brain cells between them. Danielle, Renée, Georgia, Saffron, two Marys, three Kirstys, an India, for heaven’s sake – and the last two I can’t even remember …’
Harri smiled into her mug of tea. ‘Lucy the weathergirl and Sadie the boomerang.’
Viv looked up from her flour-dusted Good Housekeeping recipe book. ‘The boomerang?’
‘Yeah, you know, the one who keeps coming back when you chuck her,’ Harri grinned.
‘Harriet Langton, you can be awfully sharp for someone so generally charitable.’
Harri gave a bow. ‘Thank you, Viv.’
‘So, anyway, about Alex …’ Viv smiled – and then presented her Big Idea. So subtle in its introduction, it seemed so inn ocuous that nobody could have predicted the devastation it was about to cause.
It began with a nib feature in Juste Moi, Viv’s favourite women’s glossy magazine. Between articles on the latest fashions that Hollywood starlets were scrapping over, and scarily titled features such as ‘Over 50s and the Big-O’, was a small column entitled ‘Free to a Good Home’.
‘People write in,’ Viv explained, ‘and nominate a man they know, to be recycled.’
‘Recycled?’ Harri repeated incredulously. ‘Into what? That sounds horrific.’
‘It’s not like going to the bottle bank, Harri. It’s presenting a man who’s been unlucky in love – you know, divorced, recently separated or just plain rubbish at finding the right girl – to a whole new audience.’
‘I can’t believe that works,’ Harri giggled. ‘I mean, who writes in to a magazine to ask out a guy they’ve never met?’
Viv shot her a Hard Paddington Stare. ‘Plenty of people, apparently. You would be amazed at how many responses this column gets. Listen to this. “Our February ‘Free to a Good Home’ candidate, Joshua, received over two thousand letters from women across the UK, all keen to prove to him that true love is still very much alive and well. Josh thanks all of you who replied, and is currently whittling the responses down to his top ten, whom he will contact shortly to arrange dates. Good luck, ladies!” How about that? What does that tell you, Harri?’
Harri wrinkled her nose. ‘It tells me that there are too many desperate women out there. Two thousand sad, lonely and deluded individuals letting their dreams get abused in the name of journalism.’
Viv’s enthusiasm was unabated. ‘It does not. It means that concerned friends and mothers – like, well, me, for example – can have the opportunity to find someone truly worthy of the men they care about. After all, we mothers know our sons better than anyone else, so who better to pick the perfect girlfriend for them?’
‘It sounds kind of creepy to me. And what about the women who write in? How do you know that the guy you’re pinning your hopes on isn’t some sad loser who’s single for a very good reason – like halitosis, or strange hobbies, or an unhealthy aversion to personal hygiene?’
‘It’s all very well for you, Harriet, you have a lovely boyfriend. You’ve been in a relationship with Rob for so long that you’ve forgotten the pain of being single. Alex doesn’t have that luxury, remember. So I’m just acting in his best interests.’
‘You aren’t thinking about nominating Alex, are you?’ Harri felt like her eyebrows were raising so high they would soon be visible above her head, making her look like a Looney Tunes cartoon character. ‘No way, Viv! How would he feel if he knew his own mother had put him up for auction in this meat market?’
‘I’m not suggesting I nominate him, sweetheart,’ Viv said with a reproachful motherly smile.
‘I’m glad to hear it.’
‘I’m suggesting you nominate him.’
The suggestion hung in the air between them, sparkling in its audacity. Harri needed a few moments to take it in.
‘Sorry?’
‘Well, I can’t do it, can I? Al would instantly dismiss the notion on the grounds of me being an interfering mother.’
‘And he wouldn’t do the same with an interfering best friend?’
Viv looked sheepish and folded her hands contritely. ‘Harri, I honestly wouldn’t ask you if it wasn’t the only way to help my son. I’m worried about him – despite what he thinks about me being a nosy old busybody.’
‘It’s a really bad idea. He’d be mortified by it – I know I would.’
‘But he doesn’t need to know about the magazine part. And we could vet all the replies he gets.’ She pointed at the picture of the last successful candidate. ‘Over two thousand replies for him – and, let’s face it, he’s not exactly a supermodel. Just imagine the choice we could have for Alex!’
Harri had to agree that Joshua the ‘Free to a Good Home’ nominee had a face only a mother could love. Alex, on the other hand, had no problem attracting the opposite sex. It was just attracting the right kind that he struggled with.
‘I know he needs help, Viv, but is this really the best option?’
‘You know better than most how woefully inept my son is at forming meaningful relationships. You’ve had the pleasure of living through each disaster with him. I know he confides in you.’
‘All the same, it sounds like a nutty idea to me.’
‘Well, my son seems to live his life by nutty ideas. You don’t just walk out of a perfectly good job and go travelling around the world for ten years if you’re in any way sane, do you? The point is, Harri, Alex is a lovely, honest, good-looking young man and he will be a fantastic catch for the right young woman. Besides, you’re always saying that he goes for the wrong sort of girls – so this is the perfect opportunity to find the right sort of girl for him. Don’t you think?’
Viv had definitely missed her true calling, Harri mused. She would have made a great prime minister, or UN negotiator, or crazed terrorist … But despite it all, Viv was right: Alex possessed a near legendary bad taste in women. It was also true that Harri suspected Alex deliberately pursued women he had little intention of settling down with.
Of course, if Harri could have seen into the future, she would have refused, point blank. She would have laughed it off, changed the subject, or just grabbed her coat and left. But right then, she decided it was better to be involved and keep Viv in check than it was to
risk Alex’s mother doing it alone.
So Harri said yes. And that’s when the trouble started.
Read on for an extract from Miranda’s third novel, It Started With A Kiss
CHAPTER ONE
The most wonderful time of the year
When it comes to telling your best friend that you love him, there are generally two schools of thought. One strongly advises against it, warning that you could lose a friend if they don’t feel the same way. The other urges action because, unless you say something, you might miss out on the love of your life.
Unfortunately for me, I listened to the latter.
The look in Charlie’s midnight blue eyes said it all: I had just made the biggest mistake of my life …
‘Sorry?’
Perhaps he hadn’t heard me the first time. Maybe I should say it again?
‘I said I love you, Charlie.’
He blinked. ‘You’re not serious, are you?’
‘Yes.’ I could feel a deathly dragging sensation pulling my hope to oblivion.
Gone was the trademark Charlie grin that had been so firmly in place only moments before. In its place was a look I didn’t recognise, but I knew it wasn’t a good alternative.
‘H-how long have you …?’
I dropped my gaze to the potted plant beside our table. ‘Um – a long time, actually.’ Maybe I should have worn something a bit more ‘potential girlfriend material’ today? But then this morning when I pulled on my trusty jeans and purple sweater dress I wasn’t expecting to have this conversation. And judging by the look of sheer horror on Charlie’s face, it wouldn’t have made a difference if I had been sitting opposite him in a designer gown and diamonds. This was such a mistake …
‘But … we’re mates, Rom.’
‘Yeah, of course we are. Look, forget I said anything, OK?’
He was staring at his latte like it had just insulted him. ‘I don’t know how you expect me to do that. You’ve said it now, haven’t you? I mean it’s – it’s out there.’
I looked around the busy coffee shop. It was overcrowded with disgruntled Christmas shoppers huddled ungratefully around too-small tables on chairs greedily snatched from unsuspecting single customers. ‘I think it’s safe to assume that none of that lot heard anything.’
As attempts at humour go, it wasn’t my finest. I took a large gulp of coffee and wished myself dead.
Charlie shook his head. ‘That doesn’t matter. I heard it. Oh, Rom – why did you say that? Why couldn’t you just have …?’
I stared at him. ‘Just have what?’
‘Just not said anything? I mean, why me? Why put this on me now?’
I hated the look of sheer panic in his eyes. He’d never looked at me that way before … In my perennial daydream about this moment it had been so very different:
Oh Romily – I’ve loved you forever, too. If you hadn’t told me we could have missed each other completely …
‘We’re fine as we are, aren’t we? I mean, if it’s good then why change it? I can’t believe you actually thought this would be a good idea.’
Well, excuse me, but I did. Somewhere between my ridiculous, obviously deluded heart and my big stupid mouth, my brain got pushed out of the picture and I – crazy, deranged loon that I am – found myself persuaded that I might be the answer to his dreams. That maybe the reason for the many hours we’d spent together – cheeky laughter-filled days and late night heart-to-hearts – was that we were destined to be more than friends. Everyone else noticed it: it had been a running joke among our friends that Charlie and I were like an old married couple. The ‘Old Folks’ – that’s what they called us. We’d lost count of the number of times complete strangers mistook us for partners. So if it was this blindingly obvious to the world, how come Charlie couldn’t see it?
Of course, I couldn’t say any of this to him. Sheer embarrassment stole the clever arguments from my mind so that then and there, in the crowded café packed with people who couldn’t care less about what I was saying, I found that all I could say was:
‘I’m sorry.’
Charlie shook his head. ‘I did not see this coming. I thought we were friends, that’s all. But this – this is just weird …’
‘Thanks for the vote of confidence, Charlie.’
He stared at me, confusion claiming his eyes. ‘I-I didn’t mean … Heck, Rom, I’m sorry – you’ve just got to give me a moment to get my head round this.’
I looked away and focused on a particularly harassed-looking couple talking heatedly at the next table over enormous mugs of cream-topped festive coffees. ‘You don’t appreciate me,’ the woman was saying. Right now, I knew exactly how she felt.
‘The thing is,’ Charlie said, ‘you’ve always been just Rom – one of the guys, you know? You’re a laugh, someone I can hang out with. But now …’ He was digging an impossible hole for himself and he knew it. He gave a massive sigh. ‘I’m sorry. I’m really not sure how to deal with this.’
This was awful – I’d heard enough. I rose to my feet, intense pain and crushing embarrassment pushing my body up off the chair. I opened my mouth to deal a devastating parting shot, but nothing appeared. Instead, I turned and fled, stubbing my toe on a neighbouring customer’s chair and tripping over various overstuffed shopping bags, almost taking a packed pushchair with me as I beat an ungraceful retreat from the coffee shop and out into the bustling street beyond.
Outside, Birmingham’s famous Christmas Market was in full flow, packed with shoppers grabbing last-minute Christmas shopping and crowding around the wooden beer stalls. The coloured lights strung overhead glowed brightly against the greyness of the December afternoon sky and Christmas music blared relentlessly from speakers along the length of New Street.
‘Rom! Where are you going? I’m sorry – please come back! Rom!’ Behind me, Charlie’s shouts blended into the blur of crowd noise and Christmas hits of yesteryear. I picked up my pace, making my way blindly against the tidal flow of bodies, their countless faces looming up before me, unsmiling and uncaring. I had humiliated myself enough already: the last thing I needed was for Charlie to come back for Round Two …
As I passed each shop front the sale signs began morphing into condemnatory judgements of my actions, screaming at me from every lit window:
Insane!
Stupid idiot!
What were you thinking?
As the jostling crowd propelled me involuntarily towards the marble pillars of the Town Hall, Paul McCartney was singing ‘Wonderful Christmastime’ like it should have an ironic question mark at the end. Unable to wriggle free, I found myself moving along with the throng. But I felt nothing; my senses were numbed by the faceless bodies hemming me in, and my heart too beset by ceaseless echoes of Charlie’s words to care any more. At a loss to make sense of the total catastrophe I’d just caused, I surrendered to the irresistible force of the crowd and, quite literally, went with the flow.
What was I thinking telling my best friend in the whole world that I loved him? I hadn’t even planned to say it at all – and now I couldn’t quite believe I had blurted out my biggest secret seemingly on a whim. One minute we were laughing about last week’s gig, his smile so warm and his eyes lit up in the way they always do when he’s talking about music; the next I was confessing the feelings for him I’ve been carrying for three years. What on earth made me think that was a good idea?
Maybe it was the impending arrival of the ‘Most Wonderful Time of the Year’ (thanks for nothing, Andy Williams) or the deliciously festive atmosphere filling the city today that had caused me to reveal my feelings to Charlie like that. Perhaps it was the influence of watching too many chick-flick Christmas scenes that had tipped my sanity over the edge and made the whole thing seem like such a great idea (Richard Curtis, Nora Ephron, guilty as charged).
Dumped unceremoniously by the crowd at the base of the grand stone staircase in Victoria Square, I managed to squeeze through a gap in the tightly-packed, slow-moving
shoppers and emerged breathless into a small pocket of pine-scented air by the barriers around the base of the huge Swedish Christmas tree. Tears stung my eyes and I swallowed angrily in a vain attempt to keep them at bay. What was the matter with me? How did I get it so devastatingly wrong?
All the signs had been there, or so I had thought: hugs that lingered a moment too long; snatched glances and shy smiles during nights out with our friends; moments of unspoken understanding during conversations begun in the early evening and ending as birdsong heralded a new day. Then there were his unexplained silences – times when I felt he had something more to say, when unresolved question marks sparkled magnificently in the air between us and the room held its breath – ultimately in vain. There had been more of these lately, peppering almost every occasion we spent together with an irresistible spice of intrigue. If they didn’t mean what I thought they meant, then what on earth were they all about?
My mobile phone rang in my bag, but I couldn’t face answering the call, so Stevie Wonder continued his tinny rendition of ‘Sir Duke’ unhindered by my usual intervention. Reaching into the crummy depths of my coat pocket, I retrieved a crumpled shopping list and read down the list of scribbled names: my ‘To-Do’ list for the afternoon. It was the last Saturday before Christmas and my final chance to buy everyone’s presents. Christmas shopping waited for no one, it seemed – not even thoroughly embarrassed owners of newly-shattered hearts.
Mum & Dad
Wren
Jack & Soph
Uncle Dudley and Auntie Mags
When I Fall in Love Page 38
