Alice Brown's Lessons in the Curious Art of Dating

by Eleanor Prescott

Genres: General Fiction; Contemporary Romance; Romantic Comedy

Synopsis

Looking for love? Call in the expert. Alice Brown is a matchmaker extraordinaire. She has never, ever failed to find her clients the man of their dreams, and she doesn't intend to start now. As she tells her clients: Life's more exciting when you let yourself be surprised. But Alice's latest client Kate is proving her biggest challenge yet. Kate is a on a mission: she wants the perfect man. Trouble is, Kate could find fault with George Clooney and reject Johnny Depp. Will Kate be the first client for whom Alice fails to find love? Truth is, Alice has failed once before - she is the one person who remains resolutely single. In helping Kate, will she finally learn to take her own advice too?

Release date: April 12, 2012

Publisher: Quercus Publishing

Print pages: 384

Sample

‘Where are all the men?’ Kate whispered as she clutched her orange juice and looked nervously around the room. She tried to stop the disappointment reaching her face.

‘In the pub with the normal human beings,’ Lou snorted loudly. Despite already having a full glass of wine in one hand, Lou lunged at the circulating drinks tray and liberated another. ‘Jesus, Kate, what the hell are we doing here?’

Kate was beginning to wonder. It had seemed such a good idea on paper. But now that she was here, in the overheated function room of the Holly Bush Hotel, she wasn’t so sure.

‘I’m all for doing things for a laugh, but this is beyond a joke,’ Lou observed harshly. ‘They’re freaks, the lot of them!’

‘Shhh! . . . You promised to be nice!’ Kate frantically tried to quieten her. She tried to look on the bright side; after all, she hadn’t expected to actually find a man tonight. ‘They’re just people,’ she reasoned lightly. ‘Just like us. We’re all in the same boat.’

‘We’re absolutely not in the same boat,’ Lou insisted. ‘We’re luxury yacht kind of girls, Kate: speedboats, catamarans. This lot look like they’re on a menopausal cruise ship with a broken rudder. Christ, it’s no bloody wonder they can’t get laid. Look at the state of him!’

Lou was pointing at one of the room’s few men. Kate hadn’t noticed him before. Tiny and fifty-something, he was clutching his wine like it was the last float on the Titanic. He was totally beige; even his skin was the colour of porridge. His only distinguishing feature was a thin veneer of perspiration on his upper lip. As Kate looked, he turned and held eye contact just long enough to show he’d overheard. Kate’s heart leapt into her mouth and her cheeks tingled with shame. She quickly ushered Lou away into a corner of the room. She should’ve known bringing her would be a bad idea. But these were desperate times, and desperate times called for desperate measures.

As Lou busied herself with draining her glasses of wine, and the discreet tap on the shoulder and polite request that they should leave didn’t materialize, Kate allowed herself to relax into some form of normality again. She ventured another look around the room. What kind of people came to a talk on ‘The Secret to Finding Mr/Miss Right’ anyway? She studied the groups of heads huddling around the nibbles table. Mainly they were late thirty-, early forty-something professional-looking heads, adorned with discreet highlights and the occasional expensive autumn-coloured tint. Then there were the exhausted on-the-point-of-giving-up heads, hair brushed that morning and then forgotten about, at best tucked behind ears or pulled into lumpy ponytails. And finally there was the hairdo brigade: the grittily determined, heavily lipsticked fifty-ups, with barnets carved from Elnett. Dotted amongst the sea of hair, a couple of shiny bald spots bobbed under the strip lighting, boosting the room’s quota of men to a meagre handful. And steaming through the middle of it all, a red-cheeked woman with a halo of frizzy orange hair was loudly instructing everyone to visit the little boys’ and girls’ rooms ‘toot suite’, because the talk would be starting in five minutes.

Kate’s eyes followed a few apologetic backs as they scuttled to the door in search of the loo. She gazed into the corridor beyond. What did they all look like to the outside world, she wondered? Would a passer-by be able to tell that everyone in the room was incapable of pulling? Was a telltale smell of sexual desperation seeping out, giving their secret away?

‘We’ve got to face facts, Lou,’ she declared matter-of-factly, although she wasn’t sure whether she was trying to rouse her friend or herself. ‘This is the level we’re at. There’s got to be a reason why we never have boyfriends; it can’t all be down to bad luck. Maybe we’re intimidating to approach; maybe we’re giving off the wrong signals, or looking in the wrong places. Whatever, just like him’ – she discreetly inclined her orange juice towards the beige man – ‘there’s something we’re not doing right, and we need to find out what.’

‘Speak for yourself,’ Lou replied drily. ‘I’m only here for the free booze. And if Twinkletoes over there really is my level, there isn’t enough booze in the world. I’ll be settling for an intimate acquaintance with my right hand for the rest of my life, and considering it a lucky escape.’

On the other side of the room, Alice hugged her cardigan around her and looked happily at the gaggle of anxiously expectant faces. She loved coming to Audrey’s talks and was always the first (and only) member of staff to volunteer to help out. She’d arrive early to set up the room, unstacking the chairs, pouring the wine and checking that Audrey’s lighting was kind and that her microphone was working. And then she’d open up the packets of biscuits and miniature sausage rolls, and lay out the brochures before greeting every member of the audience with a hello and a smile. She’d reassure them over their worries and give soothing answers to their uptight questions. Despite the regular orders barked in her direction by Audrey – and the fact that she’d never hand back the function room key before ten – Alice always went home with a spring in her step and a giddy, fluttering feeling in her tummy that was a bit like being drunk but a million times better. This was the kind of night she lived for; it was the kind of night that changed everything.

‘The lavatories are in the lobby,’ Audrey chivvied loudly. ‘Chop-chop; you’ve got the rest of your lives to chatter. The talk will be starting at 7.30 prompt. Cupid won’t wait for stragglers.’

Alice’s smile wavered for a moment, but then her mind deliciously drifted. How many faces from tonight’s throng would she see again, she wondered? How many would make it to the office next week? A lot, she hoped; as many as the books could take without bursting. She suddenly imagined the audience as a queue, starting at her desk, continuing out through the office front door and snaking the whole way around the block: a laughing, chattering ribbon of love-hopefuls, all waiting to be matched with their perfect other halves. Who knew: maybe romance might even blossom whilst they were waiting in line!

As she daydreamed, the melee of people hovering between the nibbles table and the exit shifted, and Alice suddenly caught a glimpse of two young women standing apart in the corner. One was striking, dark-haired and seemed to be drinking two glasses of wine at once, but it was the other woman who caught Alice’s eye. Shorter and softer-looking than her friend, she was dressed in a smart skirt-suit and heels. But her sophisticated clothes were at odds with the expression on her face. Beneath the shiny hair and blunt, obedient fringe, her smile was clenched. Alice knew that smile. She’d seen it many times before, and at least one person always wore it on nights like tonight. Translated, it said Be positive; breathe deeply; look relaxed. It was a smile of jumbled-up hope, disappointment and a desperate determination to see things through.

Instinctively Alice stepped out from behind the Bourbon biscuits and started moving towards her. This woman was interesting. She was more than interesting: she was exactly the reason why she volunteered for nights like this. She had to speak to her, reassure her, make sure that she was one of the ones who made it into the office next week.

‘Alice!’ Audrey hissed violently from nowhere, making Alice jump from her path. ‘Lights!’

Reluctantly, Alice faltered. The melee moved again and the woman disappeared from view.

‘In your own time . . .’ Audrey was eyeballing her sharply.

Alice turned back towards the electronic control panel hidden discreetly behind the nibbles table and started to dim the room’s lights. The audience instantly stopped their conversations and spilled forward into the empty rows of seats. She faded up the apricot spotlight positioned over Audrey’s lectern, and her boss was illuminated, revealed to the room. Alice searched the darkness to see where the woman with the smile had sat. She’d make sure she spoke to her later. Alice was a firm believer in following her instincts, and all her instincts were telling her she could help the woman with the sharp suit and soft face.

Theatrically, Audrey cleared her throat and laid her hand to her bosom. Everyone was seated and silent; the room was emphatically hers. Alice flicked a final switch and Audrey’s microphone gently hummed into life. As if on cue, the audience leant collectively forward in edgy anticipation as they prepared to learn the elusive secrets to finding their Mr and Miss Rights.





‘It’s all the bloody Daily Post’s fault.’ Kate picked up her glass of wine and took an angry gulp. ‘If it didn’t keep going on about how impossible it is to conceive after the age of thirty-five, we wouldn’t even be thinking about this.’

Kate and Lou were in Luigi’s wine bar for a ‘Secret to Finding Mr Right’ post-mortem. Kate liked Luigi’s, with its battered wooden tables and soft candlelight. It had everything she wanted in a bar nowadays – booze, a seat and near-pitch-black lighting.

‘We’re not thinking about it. You are,’ replied Lou, giving the barman her best, unmistakably lascivious look. Lou didn’t believe in being ambiguous.

‘Of course you are,’ Kate contradicted her. ‘Every woman who’s in her thirties and single is thinking about it. It’s all we think about. If you’ve not bagged a man and got yourself pregnant by thirty-five, you might as well skip straight to the end and reserve a single room in the retirement home.’ In the half-light of the bar, Kate glowed with righteous indignation.

‘But you’re not thirty-five! And you’re talking rubbish.’

Kate shook her head. ‘Once we hit our thirties it’s over. Men don’t want us any more.’

‘That’s the spirit,’ Lou deadpanned, her eyes scanning the bar for talent before settling back on the barman. He gave her a wink and twiddled – quite suggestively, Kate thought – with the beer taps.

‘I’m just being realistic,’ Kate reasoned. ‘And the Daily Post’s enough to kill off anyone’s positivity. It does a “time’s running out” article every bloody week. You know what it said yesterday? There are twenty-eight million single women over the age of thirty-five in America, and only eighteen million single men. That means ten million women are going to spend the rest of their lives on the shelf just because of impossible maths.’

‘Better cancel the emigration plans then.’

‘Everyone knows that where America leads, we follow,’ Kate stressed. ‘The Daily Post says that in the next few years Britain’s going to have an epidemic of single women. Apparently we’ve got a bleak future of longer working hours and later retirement to look forward to with none of the good stuff like babies, families and a husband to top up our pensions with. I’m telling you, Lou, Sex and the City wasn’t a comedy: it was a warning!’

‘Bollocks,’ Lou scoffed. ‘And since when did you believe everything you read in the papers? And what’s with the hang-up about thirty-five? It’s not like all the men suddenly fall off the face of the planet. Besides, we’re forever hearing about those granny mums popping out kids in their sixties. When they smile you can see their dentures. You’re only thirty-three and you’ve still got your own teeth – you’ve got bags of time.’

Kate twirled the stem of her wine glass. Lou was right about one thing: she shouldn’t believe everything she read in the papers, not least because so many of the stories she’d planted there herself. Kate worked in PR – or ‘in lies’ as Lou liked to call it. She should know how much of what was written was exaggerated for the sake of a titillating daily read, because she was part of the machine that served it up. It was what she got paid to do.

But this seemed different. Surely it was an indisputable medical fact that your fertility dropped at thirty-five? And it certainly seemed that the number of men who looked your way decreased with every year you got further away from your twenties. What if it was just nature’s way . . . the dating equivalent of survival of the fittest? Just as the old, wobbly zebra at the back of the pack always gets eaten by the leopard, maybe men couldn’t help getting less interested in you the less able you were to breed? Could it be that – for the survival of the species – all men aged fifteen to a hundred were naturally programmed to fancy fertile twenty-one-year-olds? Judging by the number of men who’d been interested in her recently, Kate was sure this was true. Men were divining that any moment now her gums would recede and her ovaries collapse. She was, she realized with a sickening lurch, the wobbly zebra at the back of the pack. Good for a quick snack, but nothing more nutritious.

Kate looked up, ready to share this realization with Lou, but her friend had pulled out her make-up bag and was flipping open her compact with the speed of a fast-draw cowboy.

Kate watched with a grudging admiration. She loved Lou, even though they were opposites. Lou was lots of the things she wished she could be: confident, brave, dramatic. She was the kind of woman who could emphasize both her eyes and her lips and not give a damn about whether she looked slutty. Slutty! That was another thing that Lou was that Kate wasn’t. Kate admired Lou’s promiscuity. She wished she could be more free and easy, but it just wasn’t in her DNA. She fantasized about having reckless one-night stands in the way that Lou so regularly did. She thrilled at the idea of having sex with a stranger in an alley. But she just wasn’t that kind of girl. She was more of a TV, pyjamas and early night kind of girl. And the pyjamas had to be Egyptian cotton and ironed with a crease down the front.

Suddenly she realized Lou was talking.

‘For God’s sake, Kate, wake up!’ Lou barked as she multi-tasked drinking, applying sparkly black eyeshadow and simultaneously eyeing up the barman. ‘You need to stop fannying about and get out there. Stop worrying about everything. You’re way too young to be thinking about babies. You should be thinking about getting out of the office more. Having fun! Getting laid!’

Lou put down her make-up and looked at Kate seriously. ‘I mean, Jesus, Kate, how long is it since your last shag?’

Kate choked in embarrassment.

‘Use it or lose it!’ Lou drained her glass and started packing away her armoury of make-up.

‘You know what . . . you’re right,’ Kate agreed suddenly. ‘Which is why I wanted to go to the talk tonight.’

‘What, that pathetic excuse for dating advice?’

‘It wasn’t all bad . . .’

‘You’re joking!’ Lou gawped in shock. ‘It was the biggest pile of shit I’ve ever heard! Honestly, what was that madwoman on about? Do you think she’s ever had a date in her life? And has she not heard of conditioner? I’ve seen better-hydrated pubes.’ She poured them both another glass of wine. ‘And hey; what was with you with the orange juice and the notes? You’re such a swot!’

Kate coloured. ‘I didn’t want to forget anything.’

‘It was a crappy talk, not an exam!’ Lou was momentarily distracted by a bottom zigzagging back from the bar, its very drunk owner slopping his pint as he went. The bottom found its friends and sat down. Lou’s eyes returned to Kate. ‘And really, Kate, you’ve got to promise you won’t do any of the things she recommended. Her advice was ridiculous. If you do what she says then you’ve probably already had the last shag of your life. She was a living, breathing handbook on what not to do to get a man.’

‘Says the woman who hasn’t had a boyfriend in living memory,’ Kate mumbled.

Lou’s face darkened.

‘Listen.’ She leaned forward, jabbing a finger at Kate. ‘If you want to stay single and childless and let your ovaries moss over, just like the Daily Post says they will, then go ahead and do what that demented woman said. It’s like taking the fast track to spinsterdom. I mean, what was that rubbish about “accidentally” dropping your groceries into a man’s shopping trolley? Please! I can’t see anyone rushing to ask you out after you’ve dropped wine and Tampax on his veg.’

‘I get my groceries delivered,’ Kate said thoughtfully. ‘The only opportunity there’s the delivery man, and he’s missing teeth.’

‘Not to worry – there was always Audrey’s brilliant suggestion of joining a club! What was it? Ah, that’s right . . . Join a toastmaster’s association. Fuck me, what a truly fantastic idea! I’m always hearing about young, attractive, thrusting man-about-town toastmasters. I bet their clubhouse is awash with sexed-up man-totty.’

‘You’re right; her advice was . . . questionable . . .’ Kate paused as Lou snorted explosively. ‘But that Alice lady was great. And the fact remains: we’re single and we’re knocking on a bit. And, as you so delicately pointed out, I’m hardly swamped with offers.’

‘Swamped by your job, more like.’

‘All I’m saying is, whether Audrey Cracknell is right or wrong, we’re single. We’re always single. I know you say you like it, but I don’t. I’m sick of it. I don’t want to suddenly wake up and realize it’s too late. I want a man’ – she saw Lou’s eyes mentally undressing the barman – ‘. . . a nice man! Someone who isn’t frightened of growing up and getting off the shagging-about merry-go-round. I want a boyfriend to take me out for dinner, to go for country walks with. Someone who’s not going to be freaked out at the thought of meeting my mum. Someone to have kids with. But he’s not going to land in my lap and I can’t just leave it to chance. You know me; I don’t like taking risks, and I can’t risk getting any older and letting my face drop and my knees sag and my fertility dwindle and still being single. I’m not going to bang my head against a brick wall any more.’

There was a long pause. The two women looked each other in the eye, Lou’s painted and kohl-heavy, bristling with scorn, Kate’s more discreetly made-up in Bobbi Brown nudes, steady and determined. In the background Kate heard the owner of the bottom scrape back his chair, loudly declare he was off to ‘siphon the python’ and then fall over his briefcase, smacking face first into the wooden floor. As his mates burst into loud frat-boy laughter Lou broke eye contact.

‘Well,’ she said as she picked up her glass and drained it, ‘you might be fed up with banging your head against a brick wall, but I’m happy banging mine against my headboard, thanks. Or his headboard tonight, if he plays his cards right.’ She picked up her handbag and headed back to the bar, her eyes fixed on the barman like a hawk focused on a fluffy field mouse.

‘Same again?’ she called back to Kate as she pulled out her purse and closed in.

Kate sighed, shook her head and reached for her mobile. She scrolled through her address book for a cab. All of a sudden she yearned for her bed. She looked up. Sure enough, Lou already had her hand on the barman’s chest and was suggestively fingering a shot glass. It was definitely time to go home. She pulled on her coat.





At exactly 8.30 a.m. Audrey Cracknell swept through the doors of the Table For Two dating agency, her coat billowing behind her. As ever, she was the first to arrive, and she had precisely thirty minutes to mentally prepare herself for the rigours of another day at the front line of matchmaking.

She flicked on the kettle and surveyed the empty office. This was her favourite part of the day, before the office became littered with staff and clients. She ran a finger over the surface of her desk to quality-test the work of the cleaners. Her finger came back perfectly pink. A burst of optimistic January sunshine filtered through the windows and bathed the room in its wash. It was a most satisfactory start to a Tuesday morning.

Audrey turned on her computer and set about tidying her desk. She couldn’t countenance a messy desk. ‘Always start with a clean bottom,’ her father used to tell her. He’d served in the Royal Navy as a chef, and it probably applied to food hygiene but it made perfect sense to Audrey, who liked to start every day with a clean bottom.

At fifty-one years old, and a bracing five foot ten, Audrey was what was kindly described as solid. Her bosom was a large and heavily bolstered shelf. Sturdy underwear ensured it rarely, if ever, moved. Her rounded shoulders gave way to fleshy arms that wobbled when she moved. Her frizzy, bright-orange hair sat awkwardly next to her farmer-red cheeks, like traffic lights stuck on both stop and wait.

Audrey stirred her coffee and took stock. Not only had last night’s talk at the Holly Bush Hotel swelled the coffers with the admittance fees from a full house of singles wanting to discover the secret to meeting their future spouse, but according to Alice’s text (which had taken Audrey several exasperated minutes to remember how to open), there’d been an exceptionally high number of converts signing up to join the agency too. And not just the online dating function, but the one-to-one optimum-fee-paying premium service! In all, there were fifteen new premium service members. It was probably Table For Two’s most successful night ever.

The Table For Two dating agency was now in its eleventh year, and its eighth of profit. When Audrey’s father died he’d left her a semi in the suburbs and £15,000 in cash. With her mother long departed, no siblings and a stifling job at the city council, the world had suddenly revealed itself – at the not-so-tender age of forty – as Audrey’s dazzling oyster. What had seemed an inescapable path of paper-pushing and spinsterdom had suddenly widened to reveal infinite, sparkling possibility. She could go on a cruise, sell the house, lavish thousands on a chin-lift.

But what she really wanted was to be important. Although single for her entire adult life, Audrey was nevertheless enchanted with the idea of old-fashioned courtship; of gentlemen who stood up when a lady entered a room. Plus she loved nothing more than a good nose into somebody else’s business. While Audrey’s own life was woefully lacking in gossip, other people’s romantic fortunes were a source of intrigue for her, even if those other people were just the constant friends she found in the characters she watched on her soaps. What better way, she thought, to have an inexhaustible supply of real people’s lives to feel important in than running a dating agency? And so Audrey decided to extend a plump, unmanicured toe into the invigorating waters of small business and set up her own matchmaker’s bureau.

And here she was, eleven years later, still geographically living in her father’s semi, but metaphorically a country mile away from her previous existence. Whereas the old Audrey had sometimes gone from one end of the week to the other without the sustaining fuel of a personal conversation, now she had hundreds of lonely people on her books, all reliant on her. And she got to hear – first hand! – the intimate stories of countless clients. Over the years, Table For Two had instigated 6,000 lunch dates that had led to nineteen church weddings and forty-two registry dos. And that didn’t even include the online matches which – frankly – were anyone’s guess. Audrey firmly believed that if you were paid peanuts, it was usually by monkeys. If a client wasn’t prepared to invest in the one-to-one premium service to find a loving partner with whom to spend the rest of their lives, it stood to reason that they wouldn’t be bothered to reply to a simple emailed enquiry to ascertain whether they’d left the online service because they’d successfully found a love match.

As Audrey scanned her emails, her eye was distracted by a framed photo on her desk. It was of a distinguished-looking man, dressed in a dinner suit. His jacket was open and his arm draped casually on the back of the chair next to him. He was smiling, his striking blue eyes crinkling warmly at the corners. Tied to his chair was a pale-pink balloon, and in the background a large round banqueting table was littered with the debris of a good night. Audrey had taken the photograph at the Dating Practitioners’ Society annual ball years ago, and she’d kept it on her desk ever since. It wasn’t the first Practitioners’ Ball she’d attended with John, but it was the first time she’d taken her camera. She’d been longing for a photograph of him, and she’d finally plucked up the courage. Her hands had shaken with nerves, but miraculously the shot was perfect. Audrey looked at it hundreds of times a day. When the client on the phone described her perfect man, Audrey sometimes felt it was uncanny. It was as if her ladies could see what she was looking at, so often did their descriptions match John. She carefully traced her finger over his photograph.

‘Morning!’ a voice chimed across the office.

Audrey jumped. Alice was making her way across the room to her desk, her long woollen scarf trailing on the floor behind her. Audrey felt her hackles prickle. There was something about Alice that never failed to get her back up.

‘Did you get my text? Wasn’t it a fantastic evening?’ Alice asked cheerfully as she pulled off her coat and slung it over the back of her chair, creating the day’s first eyesore of mess. ‘So many people, and so nice too! We all chatted for hours afterwards; it was such a shame you couldn’t stay.’ She pulled the lid off her coffee and blew across its steaming surface, her eyes finally resting on Audrey expectantly.

‘Yes, fantastic,’ Audrey murmured, trying to appear engrossed in her emails. This was one of the moments when she wished she’d invested in something more solid than glass for the partition to her office. At the time she’d thought a glass wall an ingenious idea. Not only did it create her own private office, a boss-like distance away from the open-plan area where her staff sat, but the clear pane meant she could still make sure they weren’t wasting time on personal chit-chat. She’d even considered learning to lip-read for those moments when her office door was closed and she was sealed into her see-through kingdom with only muffles penetrating through.

At this particular moment, though, Audrey’s door was wedged open, and Alice was peering through with all the perkiness of a cartoon bunny.

‘Fifteen new premium service clients! That’s got to be some kind of Table For Two record, hasn’t it?’

‘The premium service is the only sensible option,’ Audrey lectured chillily. ‘Anyone who’s serious about meeting their future husband or wife knows the internet’s not the place to find them. All this online dating nonsense is just a silly vogue that will soon go out of fashion. If you want a genuine love match, you do it face to face with a professional matchmaker. Between the internet and all the other so-called matchmaking bureaus out there, the road to happiness can be a dangerous place. Those fifteen new clients are lucky they found us.’

‘Absolutely!’ Alice nodded vigorously. She seemed at a loss as to what to say next, so she bowed her head and set about her paperwork.

Audrey wondered what it was about Alice that annoyed her so. She wasn’t unpleasant, she supposed, and she was helpful in her own sort of way. But there was just something about her . . . She always claimed to be busy, but was forever staring out of the window in a daze. And then there were her clothes. Underneath the cardigans and corduroy there was probably a perfectly decent figure; it was just drowning in wool. Where was the girl’s colour? Her vibrancy? And that hair! How old must Alice be? Twenties? Thirties? Audrey wasn’t sure. But she was sure that, whatever her age, Alice was too old for plaits. It was bad for business. The staff of a dating agency should be attractive, romantically successful individuals. Gentlemen clients should look at her girls and hope to be matched with a woman just like them.

Audrey grimaced and returned to her emails. Today was a good day, she reminded herself. Not only were there fifteen more clients, but there was also the matter of this year’s Dating Practitioners’ Society annual ball . . . and only three weeks away! The ball was the highlight of Audrey’s year, and this one would be better than ever. Table For Two was finally catching up with Love Birds, its biggest rival, run by the dreadful Sheryl Toogood. The ball would give Audrey the chance to point out that Table For Two client numbers were up twenty-three per cent. She was sure Sheryl Toogood couldn’t come close to matching that, no matter how hard she bluffed it.

And then there was John. She couldn’t wait to have him sitting at her side, attentive and urbane. She’d have to call Geraldine and make sure the date was in his diary. She couldn’t believe she hadn’t done so already. She’d attend to it tonight as a priority.

There was a kerfuffle at the door and in came the rest of the Table For Two staff: Bianca and Cassandra, with Hilary, the website co-ordinator, puffing in their wake. Audrey frowned. Hilary was pregnant again, and getting larger by the day. She’d be disappearing on another stint of maternity leave soon, leaving Audrey with the double inconvenience of having to ba