Page 54 of For Love or Money
‘Thanks. Really, I’m so grateful.’
‘Happy to help. Well, goodbye,’ he said, waving them off. ‘And good luck!’
‘Your family are right about him,’ she murmured to Al as they went to the door. ‘He’s brilliant, isn’t he?’
Lesley was so buoyedup by her meeting with Conor, that she didn’t even mind going to rehearsal that night. Confident that it would all come to nothing in the end, she felt quite cheerful as she horsed through several rounds of ‘All of Me’ with family and friends in the playing field of a local school where one of Katrina’s friends was headmistress.
‘Well, I’m glad to see you’ve changed your tune, Missy,’ her mother said to her, eyeing Lesley’s smiling face with narrow-eyed suspicion.
‘I even brushed my hair, see?’
The routine was unbearably corny, couples waltzing around, gazing into each other’s eyes as they mouthed to the lyrics of the song blaring from Tom’s car stereo.
‘You’re a very good singer,’ Lesley said to Al as he crooned along in her ear. He had a lovely deep, rich voice.
‘Thank you. I was in the choir at school.’
‘Why am I not surprised?’
‘You’re a lovely dancer, Al,’ her mother said, as she and Lesley’s dad glided past. It turned out Al could properly waltz, and he even made Lesley feel quite graceful as he whirled them around the playing field.
‘Thank you, Miriam. I took ballroom classes for a while when I was younger.’
‘Is there anything you’re not good at?’ Lesley asked grumpily.
Al just smiled at her, unperturbed. ‘Have you thought about how you’re going to persuade Katrina to propose?’ he asked.
‘No, but I’d better do it soon. We don’t have much time.’
‘Maybe you should try and get Tom to change the song anyway, just in case.’
‘I suppose I should. Though it’ll still be a disaster.’
‘But at least the ick factor wouldn’t be quite as high.’
Lesley gasped. ‘The ick factor! That’s it! You’re a genius, Al.’
‘What?’
‘That’s how I’ll get Katrina to propose – Miranda Hobbs.’
‘Who?’
‘You know –Sex and the City. Miranda!’
He shook his head. ‘I can’t say I’m familiar.’
‘Well, all you need to know is that she was the best one, and Katrina idolises her.’
‘Bringing in the big guns, then?’
‘Believe me, pal,’ she said, patting his shoulder, ‘once I set Miranda on her, this shitshow is toast.’
Lesley didn’t wasteany time in putting her plan into action. She wanted to plant the seed in Katrina’s mind before she left for France – light the fuse and flee the country, as it were. So on Friday evening, she suggested they get a pizza and have aSex and the Citymarathon, picking three episodes each to rewatch.
‘Not counting “A Woman’s Right to Shoes”,’ she added, because it was a given they’d both pick that. She let Katrina go first, just in case, but she was confident she didn’t have to worry about her choosing ‘The Ick Factor’ – the episode where Miranda proposes to her boyfriend Steve. Sure enough, it was her first choice.
‘God, this show was so good,’ Lesley said when they were deep into ‘A Woman’s Right to Shoes’. ‘I hate when people rubbish it and say it’s all about the consumerism. Especially this episode. It so misses the point.’
