It Happened at Boot Camp: Exclusive Novella

by Molly Hopkins

Genres: Friendship; Romance

Synopsis

Digital download exclusive novella: a fun and uproarious read from the hilarious Molly Hopkins, ahead of her new novel It Happened in Venice.

Give up men for 2 weeks? Impossible!

But Evie Dexter has challenged her flirtatious, man-addicted best friend Lulu to do just this. And Lulu never shirks a bet.

In a flash of deranged inspiration Lulu books them both on a week's stay at an all-female military-style Boot Camp in the boringly beautiful English countryside - surely a guaranteed man-free zone. But with one meagre gym visit between them, a shared passion for white wine, saturated fats and sitting in front of the television - just how long can Evie and Lulu stick it out?

This story is sooooo good it has three different endings, but there can only be one winner! You decide.

Release date: July 19, 2012

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Print pages: 112

Sample

Evie: (Our heroine) Evie went to the gym once last year, so she knows what to expect from a military boot camp experience. After all, how hard can this be? Er… What exactly is an assault course?

Lulu: (Evie’s flatmate) Lulu is looking for sisterhood bonding, to compliment her self-imposed two week man famine. An all-female military boot camp is the answer, she’s sure of it! Her iPod and false eyelashes are packed.

Anna: Anna must lose seven stones if she is to hold on to her philandering husband. Anna needs motivation, encouragement, inspiration and drive. But will her fellow boot-campers provide it? Can they? She’s hoping so… her marriage depends on it.

Tiffany: Tiff’s getting married. The ten-tier wedding cake is paid for, the dress with a mile of organza and tulle is a work in progress, and the pink Cinderella carriage with six white horses has been hijacked from another wedding booking. Tiff wants to get in shape, and she will, at boot camp! Surely the fact that she’s never worn a pair of trainers in her life is totally an inconsequential detail?

Sarah: Sarah is sixty-five-years-old. She decides to spend a week at a military boot camp whilst her beloved bowling green is being returfed. She’s looking forward to it. The boot camp offers a fabulous selection of herbal teas – she saw it herself on the website.

Grace: Sarah’s twin sister, (obviously also sixty-five). Grace would have preferred a week in Corfu. But the fear of her sister losing weight and being slimmer than she is, has kept her awake and writhing in her bed sheets for the past two weeks. So here she is.

Lorna: Obsessed with sit-ups, squats, press-up and circuit training, she is an all-round bloody irritating show-off who worships the Goddess Belinda, deity of bliss, happiness and contentment.

Rhonda: Lorna’s cousin. Loves a workout. Jogs in an enthusiastic ‘S’ bend to the toilet. Addicted to lettuce, water and getting out of bed at 5am.

Judy: The fitness instructor, with a bum as small, round and tight as a crash helmet, and the biggest show-off of them all.

Join them all for a week in It Happened at Boot Camp.

The car crunched off a beaten track and onto a graveled road. A plaque swung from a tree. NUYOU FITNESS FACILITY it stated in black italics.

‘We could die here,’ Lulu threatened, twirling a long strand of hair into a spirally pasta loop.

Die? As if.

I gripped the steering wheel.

‘Hardly likely,’ I said with vague concern, although privately I wasn’t totally ruling that out as a possibility. This was a boot camp, a place where high intensity physical training is just for fun and you’re force fed nutritionally balanced food; a place where you’re deprived of alcohol and you get out of bed before your alarm goes off. And we were going to be staying here for five days! Five whole days! Why did I let her talk me into this? Why? I mean, it’s not as though we’re gym bunnies. In fact, Lulu has never been in a gym. And I’ve only been once.

I slid her a sidelong glare.

‘Coming here was your idea,’ I reminded her sharply.

She straightened, scooped her long Nordic-blonde hair into a ponytail, jammed her sunglasses onto her face and scowled at the even rows of conifers flanking the sprawling driveway.

‘I’m joking,’ she said, with a stretched smile. ‘This boot camp experience will kick-start a whole new lifestyle for both of us, we’ll be different people. We could end up addicted to sit-ups and water, instead of kettle chips and white wine,’ she said, accentuating the sentiment with a bicep curl.

’A whole new lifestyle, is that why we’re here? I thought we were here because you know that if we stayed home, and you went out, you would meet a man, have sex and lose our bet.’

She folded her arms, spring-boarding her 34D cups into a tipping forth arrangement, and turned to me, indignantly.

‘Evie, our bet has got nothing to do with us coming here. It’s not as though we’ve taken a space shuttle to the Planet of the Apes, I’m sure there will be men here to tempt me,’ she said with a wave at the view. ‘Although I will not be led astray,’ she added forcefully, bending to gather the tattered pages of Heat Magazine, Snickers wrappers and her empty gin and tonic cans. ‘I simply thought it high time we did something recreational other than eating and drinking, and nursing our hangovers,’ she argued. ‘We need to lose weight and get fit.’

I gave my tummy an evaluating glance. OK, that much I agreed with, totally. And that’s why I’m here… to lose weight and get fit, I’m determined. Well, I’m kind of determined.

‘Anyone would think I was a nymphet or something the way you go on,’ she said, affronted.

Actually, I couldn’t have put it better myself – that’s exactly what she is, I thought as I dropped down a gear. Lulu has what can only be described as having raw sex appeal. Her hair is a sheet of spun vanilla silk, her eyes are almond shaped pools of chocolate fringed with long feathery lashes and her complexion is peachy and flawless. She entraps men first with her good looks and furthermore by her witty banter. Men love Lulu, and Lulu loves men. Subsequently she’s never without one. Ever.

‘It’s mind-blowingly simple,’ Lulu maintains. ‘If you want to keep a man interested, talk to him about himself. When you want to get rid of him, change the subject.’

Quite a formidable best friend and flatmate, I know. But for all her bravado Lulu is not a man’s woman, she is a girl’s girl, her friends come first, always. And there’s not a conceited bone in her body.

‘You can out-blonde any blonde I know, with that explosion of chestnut hair, and those fluorescent blue eyes,’ she often tells me. ‘Your look is different – mine is samey,’ she maintains.

I flicked my eyes towards her. Her profile was haloed by the afternoon sun as she studiously tapped out a text on her phone. Her expression piqued.

‘One night stands are not supposed to contact you again!’ she said forcefully. ‘Are they?’ she asked, turning to me for confirmation.

‘Of course not,’ I agreed loyally.

‘I shouldn’t have to be making that clear,’ she complained, rapping her thumbs on her iPhone keypad.

A smile played on my lips at her reasoning.

Lulu operates on a totally unique frequency, an example of this being she has absolutely no conscience. Lulu is able to justify everything she does. And in taking the role of best friend seriously she will loyally justify everything that I do. This gives me a glorious feeling of liberation, (if only on a temporary basis), because however badly I behave, I’ll (a) never behave worse than she does, and (b) she’s able to rationalise with conviction that everyone has rocketing overdrafts, gets fired a couple of times, has the odd pregnancy scare, and gets thrown in a police cell at least once in their life. And I believe her, because she vehemently believes herself. When it suits me, Lulu leads me astray, and I quite like it that way, because most of the time I am the sensible one.

She put her phone in her bag and stared into the middle distance in a preoccupied way. I had a sudden flashback of the first time Lulu and I met, age six, when her family moved in three doors from mine. She had been trying to feed the stone duck in our front garden. I had. . .