The Little Shop of Afternoon Delights

by Sarah Lefebve

  Too sarcastic.

  I am writing to let you know that due to a sudden change in my personal circumstances I will no longer be submitting the feature How Do You Know You’ve Met Mr Right for inclusion in the September issue of Love Life.

  Just right.

  Please accept my sincere apologies for any inconvenience this causes you.

  Yours sincerely,

  Rebecca Harper

  “Are you really sure you want to send this?” Katie asks me when I go round to hers. “Your article was so good. It’s such a waste.”

  I didn’t want Katie to see the letter. I knew she’d try and change my mind. But I had no choice. I don’t own a printer.

  “Yes. I was pleased with it, Katie. I really was. But it just doesn’t feel right now. I’ve proved I can do it now though so I’ll just have to write something else.”

  “Okay then,” she says, handing me the letter to sign.

  I sign it and stuff it into an envelope.

  “Can I ask you something though, B?”

  I lick the envelope. “Yes.”

  “Would you want to be with James if Emma was okay with it?”

  “Yes.” I don’t have to think about it. “But she’ll never be okay with it. I’ll be okay though, Katie. You don’t need to worry about me.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTY

  Over the next few weeks things slowly start to get back to normal.

  I fail to come up with a single viable feature idea and begin to seriously doubt my future as a writer.

  James stops phoning. And you can’t blame him. I guess there are only so many times you can phone a person who doesn’t phone you back. But I wish he hadn’t stopped. That’s really selfish of me, I know. But I miss him. I miss hearing his voice on my answering machine, telling me he still loves me.

  Emma starts dating again. She’s currently seeing a dentist. She met him at the opticians. She doesn’t think it will work out, though. He’s ‘too nice,’ apparently. But she’s sticking with it for now.

  And the wedding plans are coming along nicely. It’s just a few weeks away now. Katie’s running through her checklist. For the zillionth time. The church is booked. And the reception. The table decorations have been bought – simple floating candles and tiny gold hearts to scatter over cream linen tablecloths.

  She’s made the menus and place cards. Or, should I say – we’ve made the menus and place cards. And the orders of service. And the table plan. The food has been chosen – salmon en croute with new potatoes, broccoli and green beans with raspberry pavlova for dessert.

  I’m told it’s to die for. I wouldn’t know myself. I’ve not yet forgiven Katie for not enlisting my help with the food tasting. Wedding dress hunting, invitation assembling, place card manufacture – these things I am invited to participate in. But tasting roast beef with Yorkshire puddings, coq-au-vin with new potatoes, salmon en croute, apple pie and cream, chocolate fudge cake with ice cream, raspberry pavlova – these things I am excluded from? It hardly seems fair.

  The flowers have been ordered – posies of cream roses tied with gold ribbon for our bouquets, single roses for the boys’ buttonholes, and roses in tall glass vases twisted with gold ribbon for the centrepieces.

  The rings have been collected, the photographer booked and the cake ordered. Katie has snubbed tradition in favour of a three-tier cake with a difference. “I don’t really like fruit cake,” she says. “But everyone loves chocolate cake. And sponge cake. And carrot cake.” So they are having one tier of each.

  All the dresses and suits are now hanging in Katie’s wardrobe.

  And Emma has finally chosen a reading. She’s not telling us what it is. But we’ll love it, apparently.

  Which just leaves the hen do.

  CHAPTER SEVENTY ONE

  As hen dos go, it was not the easiest to arrange, what with all the numerous rules and regulations that were laid down the second Katie got engaged.

  “No tiaras, no L-plates, no furry handcuffs,” she said. “No devil horns, no edible underwear, no veils – especially no veils with condoms hanging from them. Promise me, Becky.”

  “I promise.”

  “No seedy nightclubs, no pole dancing lessons, no strippers. Absolutely no strippers. If you get me a stripper, I will walk out, I swear I will.”

  “It’ll be the tamest hen do in history at this rate,” Emma moaned.

  “Tame is good,” Katie said. “Tame is what I want. Promise me guys.”

  “I’m not promising anything,” Emma said.

  “Okay,” I relented. “No veils or L-plates, no furry handcuffs and no strippers, but beyond that you leave it up to us.”

  “And no condoms – don’t forget the condoms.”

  “Fine – no condoms.”

  “How about lunch at the old folks home down the road?” Emma had suggested.

  We settled on an eighties-themed weekend in a cottage in the Cotswolds. Ten of us. Katie, Emma, me, Fiona, Caroline, Matt’s sister Clare and four of Katie’s friends from work.

  We drove up here this afternoon in a convoy of three cars, packed to the brim with food, drink, party games and toilet rolls – because it was stipulated in the house rules – “you must bring your own toilet paper.”

  And in any case – we needed it for the first game.

  “You’re pulling it too hard,” Emma shouts at me, as I tear a strip of toilet paper for the third time.

  “There’s no way we’re gonna win this.”

  This is Fiona’s contribution to Katie’s hen do – Here Comes The Bride – a game she played at her sister-in-law’s hen do last year.

  She has split us into two teams – Caroline, Emma and me with Yvonne and Louise from Katie’s work in the living room and Katie, Fiona and Clare with Shirley and Anna from Books! in the dining room.

  Each team has a toilet roll. That’s it. Just a toilet roll. And we have to dress the bride ready for her big day.

  Emma is our bride.

  I hope Katie isn’t this much trouble to dress.

  I loosely tie together the strips of paper that have just broken and continue to wind the roll around Emma’s body.

  Fiona snorts.

  “She looks more like a mummy than a bride!”

  “You should be doing this, you’re the dressmaker,” I laugh.

  “I know, but it’s much more fun watching you!”

  “I’m not sure she’s going to be able to walk in this,” Yvonne says.

  Under the rules of the game each bride has to walk up the stairs and back down again, and the winning team is the one whose bride’s dress is still on her.

  Yvonne’s right. We haven’t got a hope in hell.

  But we won’t go down without a fight.

  “Keep winding!” I shout, like our very lives depend on it.

  Ten seconds later the alarm sounds on Fiona’s phone, signalling we are out of time.

  I tug the last strip of paper from the roll and tuck the end into Emma’s bra, before standing back to survey the damage.

  “We might as well just give them the prize now,” I laugh, resigning myself to not sharing in a packet of milk chocolate willies.

  “It’s not that bad,” Louise laughs.

  “You are kidding?” Emma says. “Have you seen the state of me?”

  At this, she turns and looks in the mirror above the fireplace and giggles.

  “We’re coming in,” Katie shouts from the dining room.

  Yes, we have definitely lost the willies.

  Katie’s team have created a masterpiece. They have pulled down the straps of her top and her bra and wound the toilet paper around her boobs so it looks like a bodice. And then they have tucked metre-length strips of toilet paper into her jeans, all the way around the waistband. It looks like a grass skirt, but in toilet paper.

  They haven’t stopped there. They have made her a toilet paper tiara, a toilet paper necklace, and toilet paper earrings. They were just finishing off the toilet paper bracelet when
the alarm went off.

  This outfit is so good it could be held in reserve for the big day next month. You know – just in case her other dress doesn’t fit, or something…

  “Off you go girls,” Fiona tells Emma and Katie, who begin their intrepid climb up the stairs.

  By the third step, Emma’s dress is trailing on the floor, while Katie’s is holding up as well as you might expect that of a supermodel on the catwalk.

  By the sixth step Emma’s dress is hanging on by a single tuck in her left bra strap, while Katie’s is looking more and more like something you might see in the window of a bridal shop.

  By the seventh step Emma has decided she has had enough of this game and rips Katie’s dress off her as they both fall on to the stairs in a giggling heap.

  The cottage is great. Emma and I found it on the Internet.

  The website described it as ‘a luxury five-bedroom cottage with oodles of charm and no immediate neighbours.’ We figured we couldn’t go wrong. We can make as much noise as we want and no-one will be forced to phone the police.

  There are five bedrooms, all en-suite, a big country kitchen with a huge table and twelve chairs in the middle, a living room, and downstairs toilet, which is currently being used as a storage room for fifteen bottles of wine, a bottle of vodka, a bottle of gin, six bottles of tonic water, three bottles of lemonade, three bottles of coke, six cartons of orange juice, two dozen eggs, six tubes of Pringles, four extra large bags of Doritos, two boxes of bread sticks…

  “Do you think we have overdone it on the food and drink?” Katie asks, emerging with a refill of gin and tonic, and removing a stray piece of toilet paper from the pocket of her jeans.

  “Probably, but we can always take it home with us,” I laugh. I laugh every time I look at Katie, who, in keeping with the eighties theme, we have dressed in luminous pink leg warmers, luminous pink sweat bands, and a luminous pink headband. Oh, and a luminous pink feather boa around her neck – just because we could. She said no L-plates or tiaras, she said nothing about ‘no luminous pink leg warmers and matching accessories.’

  The rest of the evening passes by in a blur, as we put a significant dent in the supplies, blast eighties music out of the iPod stereo and dance around the living room with toy microphones and inflatable guitars.

  It is past three in the morning by the time we pass out in our respective rooms.

  I’m sharing with Fiona.

  She has warned me she snores.

  Fortunately I am asleep even before my head hits the pillow.

  In the morning we cook a massive fry up to soak up all the alcohol we consumed last night, and nurse our hangovers with big mugs of tea.

  “That’s a mean impersonation of Tina Turner you’ve got there,” Yvonne says to me.

  “Oh, bloody hell, I didn’t did I?” I say, rubbing my eye, just before I remember that I didn’t take my mascara off last night.

  Fortunately I am not alone. We all did our party tricks last night – including Emma who does a fantastic Victoria Wood and Katie who can hang spoons on the end of her nose.

  We spend the day doing our own thing. The girls from Katie’s work drive into town to check out a book fair they saw advertised in the house information file. Caroline and Fiona go off to meet a supplier who is interested in selling their produce in Fiona’s shop. Which leaves Katie, Clare, Emma and I – who are stopping here, lying on the sofa watching television and working our way through an extra-large tin of Quality Streets.

  “Pass us a fudge” Emma says, the other end of the sofa to me. I have the tin wedged firmly between my thighs.

  “Is that the pink one?” I mumble, mid chomp through an orange cream.

  “Yes.”

  “None left.”

  “Yes there are, give me the tin you big fatty!” she laughs.

  Clare is reading a magazine.

  Katie is asleep.

  I only know this because she hasn’t yet attempted to raid the tin of all the green triangles.

  “How did you get on with that article you were writing Becky?” Clare asks me, looking up from the magazine.

  “Oh, it’s sort of on the back burner at the moment,” I fib. Clare was one of my interviewees. I don’t want her to know I wasted her time. And everyone else’s time, for that matter.

  “I have been really busy at work recently, what with Fiona leaving and it being the school holidays.”

  “Well make sure you let me know when it’s in the magazine, won’t you. I can’t wait to tell people I know someone who writes for Love Life.”

  “Absolutely,” I tell her.

  I miss James.

  I was fine a minute ago. I was quite happy chomping my way through all the caramels in an extra-large tin of Quality Streets. But it only takes one thing to make you think of someone. A song. A smell. A place you’ve been together. An article you’ve written that’s all about them…

  I hope I meet someone else. I hope I’m not going to be alone for the rest of my life. I hope I meet someone who makes me as happy as he made me.

  The sun is shining when the girls arrive back at the cottage so we make some lunch and sit out in the garden chatting.

  Fiona shows us some samples from the supplier she and Caroline met. They’re good. They are nowhere near as brilliant as hers, but they’re good.

  “What gave you the idea for The Pink Frog?” Clare asks her.

  “I’ve always wanted to have my own business,” she says. “And it had to be something that involved sewing because I loved it so much at school. It was actually my sister’s little girl who gave me the idea for the shop. I wanted to buy an outfit for her when she was born, but the clothes in the high street shops were all so boring, so I decided to make her something instead. I made this really cute dress with matching booties and sunhat. Everyone raved about it and said I should make more of them and sell them. After that it just sort of snowballed.”

  “Oh my god, Fi, you have just given me the best idea,” I shout, startling Katie who had nodded off again.

  “What?” she asks, excited but not sure why.

  “My next feature,” I say. “I could write a feature about women who have been inspired by children to start their own business. There’s you, Fi. And Caroline,” I say, thinking out loud. “She got the idea for the café when Molly was painting one day and put handprints all over one of her mugs. And I’m sure I could find others.”

  “That’s a great idea, B,” Katie says, half asleep. “There’s a woman at work who has just written a children’s book. You could interview her, I’m sure.”

  And just like that suddenly I feel really excited again. I feel like I can turn this around. I feel like maybe my dream may come true after all. One of them, anyway.

  Tonight Katie will be doing no cooking. Tonight we are going to cook Katie a slap up meal. Tonight we are going to wash, peel, chop, sauté, fry, boil and simmer our hearts out. We are going to bowl our friend over with our culinary prowess.

  Okay, so tonight we have a chef coming to the cottage to cook us a slap up meal.

  Said chef – Gerard Yumi – arrives at 7pm, at which point we are instructed to vacate the kitchen and “Go have fun.” Which we do.

  Tonight we all have luminous pink leg warmers on, which look pretty fetching with our party frocks. And even better with the pink sparkly boppers that Katie is required to wear for the evening.

  She didn’t say ‘no pink sparkly boppers.’ She said ‘no L plates or tiaras.’ She said nothing about pink sparkly boppers.

  Did I mention the bopper bits are willies? Bright pink sparkly ones?

  She doesn’t even protest. She knows she won’t win.

  “How do I look?” she asks, giving us all a twirl.

  “Take a look,” Fiona tells her, pointing to the mirror.

  She totters over in her heels, holding on to the boppers to stop them bouncing about on their springs.

  “Excellent,” she says.

  While we are waiting f
or dinner to be served we play more games. First up is a hen do version of Pin the Tale on the Donkey – Pin the Willy on Matt, where, blindfolded, we are each spun round three times before sticking our own cut-out Post-It Note willy on a picture of a model with Matt’s head stuck on it. Needless to say the poor lad ends up with willies all over his face.

  Next up is How Well Do You Know Your Friend where Katie is given one fact about each of us and has to guess which fact is about which friend.

  She does quite well. She guesses that Fiona met the Queen once when she was a little girl and asked her if she would like to come for tea. And she guesses that Emma once told a guy she had three children, just to get him to stop phoning her.

  I try to outwit her. I didn’t think she knew that I once sent a homemade Valentine’s card to a boy I liked at school, with a cassette recording of Abba’s Take A Chance On Me inside it. Evidently she did.

  At 8pm Gerard calls us into the dining room where we enjoy a starter of melon and parma ham and each give Katie our hen do gift. The rules were; it costs no more than a fiver and is something that would come in handy in her married life. So far she has opened a packet of penis shaped pasta, a pair of furry pink handcuffs and an edible g-string – one with multicoloured sweets like the kind you used to get on necklaces when we were kids – the ones that made your neck all sticky when you bit them off.

  Over the main course – stir fried chilli chicken with noodles – we play Mr and Mrs to test how well Katie knows the man she is about to marry.

  I got the answers from Matt last week so there’s no way of cheating.

  But Katie doesn’t need to cheat.

  She knows that Matt has blue eyes, that he lost his virginity at sixteen to his first girlfriend Liz in his mum and dad’s bed while they were out shopping at Tesco, that his worst habit is cleaning his football boots on the sofa, that his favourite food is liver and onions, that he’s afraid of mould…

  We tested Matt too. To check he knows our friend as well as he should.

  He does.

  He knew she had her first kiss at fifteen on holiday with an Italian waiter who didn’t speak a word of English, that her first love was Jason Hart, who she held hands with under their desks and whose name she wrote in love hearts on the front of her geography book, that the worst thing she ever did at school was cheat in a Maths exam and let the girl she copied from take the blame, that her favourite food is Cadbury’s chocolate buttons, that she is afraid of tarantulas, even though she’s never seen one in real life.