She grabbed her slightly sodden copy of Grazia again and headed out of her heavy black door, pulling it shut by its knocker. She fumbled with her umbrella: ‘Oh bloody hell, it never works, why do I bother?’ She ran and jumped into the taxi.
‘Ready, darlin’?’ said the cabby with a twinkle in his eye – he clearly found Mandy attractive.
********
The lovely Irish doorman, Callum, helped her to the main doors of the restaurant. Mandy swept through the doors of the Wolseley, shook the raindrops off her umbrella, and gasped at the beauty and opulence that filled the room. Everyone looked so beautiful, polished and stylish. This wasn’t just a restaurant, this was like the perfect scene in a film.
And a video from Martine:
So this has thrown up two worrying problems for me. I sometimes buy Grazia (this week was amazing – so much reading and all for a £1) and sometimes I like to drink cocktails in fancy hotel bars (I love the peanuts and the attentive waiters, okay) so now I am worried that I resemble Mandy, the mistress of the title. I fear I am going to have to eschew silly drinks like the cocktails Mandy favours and give up Grazia because I just have to distance myself from this twenty-something London girl that Martine has created. The product placement has backfired big time.
The second troubling development was that when I mentioned the book to my other The Portmanteau half, she casually said, “Oh I think I have her autobiography." Em, excuse me. “Yeah I got it in a charity shop. It’s really funny.” So now when I go to bed each night and settle down to my proper respectable book (Rabbit, Run by John Updike) all I can think of is how Martine’s amazing biography is just begging to be read. It’s taunting me from the cupboard that is reserved especially for the embarrassing books we own. And yes, that includes all the Piers Morgan ones. I’m not going to be able to concentrate on Rabbit’s depressing crisis until I have devoured Martine’s triumph-over-tragedy tale. LE
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