Sweet Temptation Read online

  ‘Lettuce,’ she said, and did this silly buck-teeth rabbit impression that had us all laughing like morons.

  It’s funny, isn’t it – you look at someone and so often you make a snap judgment about them instantly. Nah, you think. Not my kind of person. Nothing in common except that we’re fellow members of the human race (although sometimes even that was questionable when it came to Love Hearts’ romance-seekers). In my job, first impressions were everything – and yes, I prided myself on having a good instinct about people. And yet that evening in The Hat and Feathers showed me just how wrong I could be.

  Take Jess, for instance. Without wanting to sound like a total bitch, I’d written her off as a wimpish crybaby after the biscuit chin-wobble. And Maddie I’d pegged as a bit bossy and square, a frumpish middle-aged mum who’d let herself go. Neither of them the sort of person I’d usually be seen dead with down the pub.

  But as we sat there, drinking our dismal, low-cal drinks and swapping stories, I realized I’d misjudged them both. Maddie was cracking us up within minutes with stories about her evil boss, and, before long, Jess had perked up and we were all nattering away like old friends.

  ‘Where is it you work, Maddie?’ I asked when Jess went to the bar. It’s always good to network when you’re self-employed, after all.

  Maddie hesitated as if wondering whether or not to tell me – interesting! – then replied. ‘Brum FM,’ she said in a slightly lower voice, glancing around furtively as if she was worried about eavesdroppers. ‘My boss is one of the DJs – Collette McMahon. She does the lunchtime show.’

  ‘Are you kidding? I always listen to her,’ I said – then the penny dropped. ‘Oh my God. You’re not involved in this Make Birmingham Beautiful campaign, are you? I thought I heard her mention FatBusters the other day …’ My mouth swung open. ‘Is that you?’

  She blushed scarlet. ‘Me and my big gob,’ she sighed. ‘Yeah, that’s me, lamb to the slaughter. And the horrible woman has only decided we’ve all got to report on our progress live on air this week. Can you imagine?’

  Jess was putting another round of drinks in front of us and looked aghast. ‘Oh no!’ she said, overhearing. ‘That’s awful. Do you have to do it?’

  Maddie shrugged. ‘If I still want a job there, yeah, I reckon I do,’ she said. ‘I’m dreading it.’ She exhaled. ‘The stupid thing is, I always thought I’d like to be a DJ and have my own show, but now that I’m actually faced with a microphone, the thought of talking on air and the whole city listening to me wittering on makes me feel like wetting my pants with fear.’

  I patted her arm comfortingly. ‘Well, I won’t listen if it makes you feel better,’ I told her.

  ‘And I—’ said Jess, but then her phone started ringing. She’d been smiling, a little pink in the cheeks, but as soon as she saw the caller display on her phone, she blanched. ‘Excuse me,’ she said to us, and turned away to take the call. ‘Hi!’ she said in this fake bright voice. ‘Everything all r—?’

  I didn’t want to eavesdrop, but even a total idiot could tell someone was having a go at her down the line. ‘I just—’ she tried to say. ‘I thought—’ Her shoulders slumped. ‘Okay,’ she said quietly. ‘I’ll be right back.’

  She clicked off the call and Maddie and I had to pretend we hadn’t heard the ear-bashing coming from her phone. She smiled at us, but it was a brittle, not-very-convincing smile. ‘That was Charlie, my fiancé,’ she said. ‘Just checking up on me.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘Gosh, is that the time?’ she said. ‘I’d better go.’

  The phone call had broken the spell of us fatties having a nice chinwag together. Ah yes. Back to the real world. Jess was like Cinderella hearing the midnight chimes, scuttling away on her glass slippers – or rather her black ballet pumps. And Maddie was suddenly talking about having kids’ school uniform to iron, and needing to check in on her mum.

  ‘I won’t be at FatBusters for the next few weeks,’ she said as we stood in the pub doorway. ‘We’re off on holiday. But you’ve got my mobile number now, haven’t you, so do call me if you need your new diet buddy, yeah?’

  ‘Sure,’ I told her. ‘And you go easy on those holiday ice creams, mrs. Alison will be waiting for you with her scales when you get back, don’t forget!’

  She laughed. ‘Nice to meet you, Lauren. And you, Jess. See you soon.’

  Jess disappeared into the shadows, looking pale and anxious. Poor kid.

  ‘You’d never catch me running obediently to some bloke like that,’ I said to Eddie when I got in, scratching him under the chin so that he gave great rumbling purrs of satisfaction. ‘Mind you,’ I said, ‘maybe that’s why I’ve ended up with just you to snuggle up with at night, eh?’

  The thought niggled away at me for the rest of the evening – Jess going off to a bloke who’d shouted at her (and who, perhaps, was the cause of the forbidden calorie consumption) and me going home to nobody. Who was right? Who had the best deal?

  Well, me, clearly – there was no way I was about to put up with anyone ordering me home from the pub or bawling me out down the phone. But all the same, being on my own night after night wasn’t exactly my idea of perfect either.

  I sighed, gazing glumly around my poky living room. When Brendan and I had split up and he’d moved in with Marriage-Wrecker Ruth, he’d taken his belongings with him, but so many things here still reminded me of him, unfortunately. He’d chosen the colour of the walls (Caramel Cookie), the curtains (John Lewis), the sofa (Habitat). He’d bought me the framed Rothko print he knew I loved on our first wedding anniversary, the antique bookcase for a birthday present. He had good taste, Brendan. Except when it came to mistresses, that was.

  Once, this room had been our refuge from the rest of the world, a safe place where we lounged together on the sofa discussing details of our days, drinking wine and watching telly. We’d even had sex on this sofa, quite a few times now that I thought about it – me bent over the velvety arm rest, or lying back on the cushions, or …

  I shifted uncomfortably on those very cushions, not wanting to think about having sex with Brendan any more. The caramel cookie walls seemed to be closing in on me, reminding me how my life was shrinking, shrinking, shrinking. The room had seemed so light and stylish when we’d first painted it, but now it felt drab and dark. I needed to redecorate that man out of my life – but I didn’t have any energy. Plus, on the practical front, I was more skint than I’d ever been before.

  I sighed and automatically reached for the sheaf of takeaway menus I kept handy on the coffee table, but then, at the last moment, stopped my hand in mid-air. I’d eaten so many takeaways since Brendan and I had split that all the delivery guys knew me. In fact, the Indian takeaway number was my most used number, more so than my parents’ line or any of my friends’. Realizing that had been quite embarrassing, but still not embarrassing enough to actually motivate me to go into the kitchen to cook something for myself. Why bother, I couldn’t help thinking, when The Taj Mahal and the The Golden Dragon were only a speed-dial number away?

  I hesitated, imagining Alison’s stern eyes upon me, and then, fired up by an unusual surge of virtuousness, I chucked the wodge of takeaway leaflets into the recycling pile. There. Gone. Will power, Lauren, I told myself. I was stubborn enough with the rest of the human race, after all. Surely I could be stubborn with myself for a change?

  I drank a glass of water instead (‘It’ll fill you up and it’s great for your skin!’ Alison reminded me chirpily) and flicked on the television, surfing through the channels until I found a travel programme about Madrid. Misery pierced me as I recognized the Royal Palace, then the famous bullring Brendan and I had visited while we’d been on our honeymoon in the city. ‘Almost as good as the Bullring back home in Brum,’ he’d joked at the time. That had been when we were still able to joke together, of course. It felt like a lifetime ago.

  Later on I lay tossing and turning in bed, unable to get comfortable or fall asleep. I’d steeled myself against romance f
or evermore, but every now and then I’d suffer a sleepless night, wondering if I’d be single for the rest of my life, and worrying that nobody would ever hold me in their arms again. Memories of that brilliant week in Madrid – the Prado, the tapas, the sangria, the pasión – made me feel more alone than ever. Might settling for second best actually turn out preferable to being lonely?

  Maybe it was time to be proactive again. Maybe it was time to take control and … Oh yes, all right. Maybe it was time to wangle myself a date, rather than constantly arranging them for my saddo punters. Make sure the old sofa cushions saw a bit of action for a change rather than just Eddie’s and my capacious backsides.

  Well, why not? Boss’s perks and all that. So … what would be the best way to go about it?

  I got down to business the very next morning, arriving in the office early so that I could have some privacy. If Patrick got so much as a sniff of my love-life improvement strategy, he’d have his beak in there, wanting to know all the goss. Some things a girl needed to keep to herself.

  I drank a glass of water while I waited for the PC to crank up, and then another. According to Alison we were meant to drink two litres of the stuff a day. Yeah, and be on the toilet for the rest of the time, I thought. But hey. Who was I to question the wisdom of our Fatbustin’ guru?

  Ah, at last. I clicked to open the LoveMatch database and began entering my details.

  Age: 32

  Star sign: Scorpio

  Qualities you rate in a partner (please score from 0–5, 5 being the most important):

  Honesty: 5

  Intelligence: 5

  Sense of humour: 5

  Sexy, smouldering, testosterone-packed fanciableness: 5 …

  Okay, so I made that bit up, but you get the gist.

  It took me ages, even though I’d filled in hundreds of client profiles in the past and knew my way around the form. Some of the questions really got me thinking. What was I looking for in my ideal partner?

  Friendship

  Romance

  Marriage

  Days out together

  Nights out together

  Nights in together!

  In the end, I ticked them all except ‘marriage’. I wasn’t that deluded.

  Then came the bit about interests. I ticked Art, Architecture, Travel, Good Food, Wine, Design, Animal-Lover, Photography, and then, so as not to look like a completely indoors person, Dance, although my kind was more the going-wild-to-the-Scissor-Sisters kind of dancing than anything more cultured.

  There. Too nerdy for Joe? I hoped not. I clicked to submit my details. Two red hearts appeared on the screen and began spinning next to each other, edging gradually closer together. Your Love Hearts LoveMatch is being generated, came the message. Yeah, yeah. As long as it generated Joe, I didn’t mind.

  After about fifteen seconds, the two red hearts collided and there was a fountain of golden sparkles on screen. Your Love Hearts LoveMatch is … came the text – and then a face appeared on screen. A face I didn’t recognize. David Holway? Who the hell was David Holway?

  I clicked on his slightly smirky photograph. He was someone Patrick had interviewed – an accountant in West Bromwich. This was my ideal match? No. No, it wasn’t.

  I tried something else – the Compatibility Crunch program. I used this to analyse the suitability of prospective daters, as it took the two profiles and gave them a score on the Love-o-Meter. (I know – I didn’t name the damn thing.) A score of 75% to 100% indicated a great match, and I would send the pair off together feeling confident that they would like each other at the very least, even if sparks of passion didn’t fly. A score of 50% to 75% I was less sure of – they were the B-list dates, if you like, ones that could go either way. Anything under 50% I tended to write off as a no-go.

  I loaded up Joe’s and my profiles, keeping a careful eye on the time – 9.45. Patrick would be in soon and I’d have to skip out of the program the minute I heard him approaching. Obviously, I knew Joe and I would be a perfect match, but I still thought I’d see how the computer rated us. If it came back with a score of 100, I’d be perfectly entitled to call him up and chuckle, Hey, guess what? According to our database, your perfect woman is actually me! So I was thinking …

  The profiles had loaded and the level on the Love-o-Meter was rising … 20% … 30% … Then it stopped. 42%? No way!

  Computer says no, I heard David Walliams intone in my head, and I glared at the screen. Stupid bloody program. What did it know about anything?

  I went back to my profile. Maybe if I just amended it slightly, I could somehow shoehorn it into being the perfect match with Joe’s. He was a Sagittarius, wasn’t he, so perhaps if I put in that I was a fire sign too, then we’d get a better result …

  But Patrick came whistling into the office at that moment and I had to abort the whole thing before I could do any tweaking. Damn. The LoveMatch and Compatibility Crunch might not have worked in my favour, but I was sure I could think of another way to wangle a date with Sexy Joe. I wasn’t a plot-hatching Scorpio for nothing, now, was I?

  ‘Right,’ I said an hour later, running a finger down my calendar. ‘A week on Friday it is. Agency speed-dating event, Patrick.’

  He looked up from his copy of Chat magazine. ‘What? Where? Bit short notice to hire a bar, isn’t it?’

  ‘We’ll have it here,’ I announced. I was feeling very decisive. I should have arranged a hotline to the Prime Minister; I could have sorted out the country’s problems within about ten minutes, the mood I was in. ‘The function room isn’t booked for then, I’ve checked. Let’s put together a select guest list – twenty men and twenty women, plus a few reserves. Twenty quid a head, including drinks and nibbles – I think that’s the going rate. Then we’ll turn the lights low, put on a Barry White CD and get them all hot under the collar.’

  ‘Bitchin’,’ Patrick said, eyeing me with amusement.

  Once I had the bit between my teeth, there was no stopping me. For the rest of the week, I was a woman possessed, honing my guest list to perfection, sending out the invites, ordering in wine and soft drinks and checking out party food. Obviously, I sent Sexy Joe a very special personalized invitation – it took me a while to get the perfect tone (fun and slightly flirtatious), but finally, after about ten tries, I’d nailed it. Then I just sat back and held my breath, trying not to jump out of my skin every time a new email pinged into my account …

  ‘What are you thinking about?’ Patrick asked me, arching an eyebrow, when my thoughts drifted Joe-wards (as they did, far too often). ‘You’ve gone very flushed, my darling, and there’s a distinctly dirty look in your eye. You haven’t been looking at those X-rated websites again, have you?’

  ‘Just thinking about my diet,’ I said, managing to fob him off. That was a lie. I wasn’t thinking about my diet at all. In fact, for once, I wasn’t thinking about food, full-stop. All my waking hours were consumed with the speed-dating event: what I was going to wear, which amusing anecdotes I would recount, flirtation techniques. Oh yes. I was going to be hot, hot, steaming hot.

  It was only on Thursday that I remembered my fatbusting buddies. The radio was on, as usual, and all of a sudden my ear tuned in to a familiar name: ‘… And of course our assistant, Maddie, will be talking about how she’s been fighting the flab with the help of her FatBusters class. But first, let me tell you how I’ve got on with my beauty treatments! Well …’

  ‘She’s such a bimbo,’ Patrick said, noticing that I was listening. ‘That Collette, I mean. Who does she think she is?’

  ‘I know,’ I replied, pushing my hair off my face. It was another warm day and I wished, for the thousandth time, that we had better aircon in the office. ‘Patrick, I don’t suppose you’d be a total babe and get us an ice lolly each, would you? My treat.’

  I didn’t usually ask Patrick to go out on my behalf – I wasn’t that kind of boss – but I wanted to hear Maddie’s piece without Patrick yapping over the top of it. He raised his eyeb
rows but didn’t comment on my request, only took the fiver I was holding out and did a pretend bow. ‘I shall make it so,’ he said, and vanished from the room.

  As the door closed behind him, I turned the radio up and put the phone to voicemail, so I could listen in peace.

  ‘Thanks, Becky – and I must say, guys, Becky’s hair is looking fabulous for its pampering. Do check out our webcam if you want to see it for yourselves. Finally, let’s hear from Maddie, who’s on a slimming mission. She’s been to try a local FatBusters class, details of which are on our website. So tell us, Maddie – how have you got on, battling the bulge?’

  Battling the bulge indeed. I knew the woman was insensitive, but really – there was no need to humiliate poor Maddie like that on air. There was an agonizing pause – in reality only a few seconds, but enough to make me hold my breath. Go on, Maddie, I found myself willing her. You can do it! Fight back!

  ‘I was a bit nervous about going to the FatBusters class,’ I heard her say then. She sounded terrified now, let alone ‘a bit nervous’. ‘I felt … embarrassed, like everyone would be looking at me. But do you know what? I enjoyed it. Everyone was really friendly and supportive, and so far I’ve lost two pounds.’

  ‘Go, girl!’ Collette interrupted with a whoop. ‘So that’s two down – how many to go, Maddie?’

  The evil old witch. That was plain rude. You didn’t ask a woman a personal question like that on the radio. You just didn’t.

  When the reply came, I could almost hear Maddie’s gritted teeth. ‘Let’s just say “a few to go”, Collette,’ she managed to get out, pretty coolly, I thought, given the circumstances. ‘But I’ve joined a gym, too, and after rather a shaky start I’m enjoying working out there. Yes, I’m overweight,’ she said, sounding as if she were rallying herself now. ‘Yes, I’ve let myself go over the years – I’m a busy mum, trying to juggle work, children, housework, everything else. Looking after myself hasn’t exactly been my number one priority, it’s true. But I feel ready to change that. I’m really going to make a go of it this time.’