Read an Excerpt

miranda's big mistake

Sourcebooks, Inc.

It was the first day of April. Seeing the reception desk temporarily unmanned, Miranda snatched up the ringing phone.

'Fenn Lomax salon, how can I help you?'

'Hello.' It was a male voice. 'I need a complete restyle.'

'We do have a long waiting list,' Miranda warned, uncapping a pen with her teeth. 'Could I have your name, please?'

'Bruce Willis.'

Over the phone, she heard gales of background laughter.

'Oh ha ha, well done, very good,' Miranda recited dutifully. 'If only Eddie Izzard was as witty as you.' She rolled her eyes at Bev, the salon's glamorous receptionist, now racing back from the loo.

'Who was that?' said Bev as Miranda hung up.

'An imbecile. April Fools' Day, don't you just love it?'

Grabbing her coat and rummaging in the pockets, Miranda dragged out one green woollen glove and one pink leather one. Well, imitation leather.

Bev's manicured blonde eyebrows went up.

'Lunch break already? It's only half past eleven.'

'Indentured servitude.' Making sure she wasn't being watched, Miranda pulled a face. 'Cigarettes for Alice Tavistock. And a box of herbal tea bags. And half a dozen first-class stamps. That woman, honestly, I don't know why she doesn't write out her whole week's shopping list, pack me off to Sainsbury's and be done with it.'

'And when you've finished that,' Bev suggested helpfully, 'you could valet her car.'

'Pop her washing round to the launderette.'

'Mow her lawn.'

'Fill out her tax return.'

'Clean her loos,' Bev blinked innocently, 'with her own toothbrush.'

'Miranda, are you still here?' Fenn Lomax, emerging from the VIP room, shot her a look of disbelief.

'Sorry, Fenn, no, Fenn, I'm gone.' Miranda jammed her gloves on, getting three fingers stuck in one thumb-hole. She grinned at Bev and made a dash for the door. 'Back in ten minutes, okay?'

Fenn called after her, 'Make that five.'

Since Fenn Lomax had landed himself a regular slot on the hugely popular TV show It's Morning! his client list had blossomed beyond recognition.

As the show's producer had pointed out, he was a seriously attractive heterosexual hairdresser. How could he fail?

The female producer had been right.

With his streaky-blond shoulder-length hair, thickly fringed hazel eyes and come-to-bed smile, Fenn had a way with women and scissors that had done his business no harm at all. No longer buried in the back streets of Bermondsey (special rates for pensioners on Mondays and Wednesdays), he had been catapulted upmarket to the altogether glossier pavements of Knightsbridge's Brompton Road (special rates never). Celebrities queued up, for months sometimes, for the privilege of shelling out two hundred and fifty pounds and being able to boast to friends, journalists ... well, anyone who'd listen, basically, that theirs was a Fenn Lomax cut.

Nowadays you could spot his clients a mile off, thought Miranda, teetering on the edge of the curb as a chauffeur-driven limo pulled up inches from her toes. The snow had all but melted now, leaving only squelchy dregs, but the woman emerging from the back of the limousine was kitted out in enough fur to see her through a hike across the Antarctic. Gingerly, in her fur-lined boots, she picked her way through the slush.

Well, it was an awfully wide pavement. All of six feet from the car to the apricot-tinted-glass and brass doors of the salon.

And if you were going to pay a chauffeur to run you around town, it made sense to economize in other areas, Miranda acknowledged, recognizing the famous romance novelist as she removed her dark glasses. That must be why the stingy, face-lifted old hag had only tipped her thirty pence last week.

The stamps and cigarettes weren't a problem, but the Grapefruit Zing herbal tea bags with extra ginseng took longer to track down. By the time she'd bought everything, Miranda was already fifteen minutes late.

He was there, sitting in his usual spot outside the shoe shop. Experiencing a horrid qualm of guilt, Miranda wondered if she could cross the road so he wouldn't catch sight of her, or simply rush past pretending she hadn't seen him.

Then again, perhaps she should just explain that she was in a tearing hurry and didn't have her purse on her right now, but if he hung around for another hour or so, she'd see him later.

Hung around for another hour or so, Miranda thought with a shudder. Crikey, patronizing or what?

Poor chap, as if he had anywhere else to go.

Oh, but he looked so cold, so utterly miserable and chilled to the bone.

Too late to try and avoid him now anyway, she realized. He'd spotted her.

'Hi,' said Miranda, feeling rotten already. His blanket was damp, soaked through with slush. 'Look, this isn't my lunch break, I'm just picking up a few things for a client, but I'll definitely be back before two.' Inwardly, she cringed. Oh, help, why did a perfectly good reason have to come out sounding like a feeble excuse? He didn't want one of her sandwiches in two hours' time, he needed something to warm him up now.

'Okay.' The man, who was probably in his early thirties, nodded and managed a faint smile. 'Thanks.'

He never begged, never asked for anything. Just sat there, with his greasy black hair falling over his face and his dark eyelashes half shielding his eyes, as he watched the rest of the world march on by.

Miranda had never given him money in case he was a drug addict. The thought of her spare cash being injected into the nearest collapsed vein made her shudder. At least he couldn't fit a prawn sandwich into a syringe.

But today the circumstances were different. And there was a Burger King just across the road, selling hot drinks. What's more, Miranda remembered, Alice Tavistock had given her a ten-pound note to go shopping with ...

'Here.' Hurriedly she fumbled in her coat pocket for change and thrust seventy pence into his hand. 'Buy yourself a cup of tea. Thaw out a bit.'

'That's very kind.'

Heroin cost more than seventy pence, didn't it?

Worried, needing to check, Miranda said, 'You don't do drugs?' Another fleeting smile, accompanied this time by a shake of the head.

'No, I don't do drugs.'

Except ... well, he would say that, wouldn't he?

Miranda gave up; she had to get back. Ugh, this weather, her feet were going numb.

'Okay, see you later.' She flexed her icy toes. 'Ham and tomato or prawn with mayonnaise?'

The man on the pavement shrugged.

'I don't mind. You choose.'

* * *

'Sorry I'm late.' Panting, Miranda burst into the VIP room. 'Harrods was packed and the woman in front of me at the counter had a conniption. Never mind, back now. Here we are, Mrs Tavistock.'

Fenn was putting the finishing touches to Alice Tavistock's French pleat. Not believing the funny turn story for a minute, he watched Miranda empty her pockets of stamps, cigarettes and change.

'Take the towels out of the tumble dryer,' he said, 'and give Corinne a hand with Lady Trent's highlights.'

Miranda wondered if Alice Tavistock might say thank you, but getting a cigarette out of its packet and into her heavily lip-sticked mouth was evidently more important. She watched the expensive silver lighter go click and the tendons of Alice Tavistock's skinny neck stick out like trapeze wires as she sucked in the first lungful of—

'Miranda. Towels.'

Five minutes later, Miranda was dutifully passing rectangles of silver foil to Corinne when Fenn and Alice Tavistock emerged from the VIP room into the main area of the salon.

As Fenn beckoned her over, Miranda clearly saw coins glinting in Alice Tavistock's hand.

Hooray, tip time!

Then again, maybe not. The expression on her freshly powdered face wasn't exactly brimming over with gratitude.

'I gave you a ten-pound note,' Alice Tavistock announced without preamble, thrusting her outstretched palm under Miranda's nose. 'And this is how much you handed back. Do you think I'm incapable of adding up?' she demanded stroppily. 'You've shortchanged me.'

'God, sorry, I forgot!' Miranda clapped her hand to her forehead. 'I meant to give it back, make up the difference, then Fenn told me to sort out the towels and I—'

'And you thought you could get away with it.' Alice Tavistock always spoke with a plum in her mouth. Now she sounded as if she were spitting out the stones. 'Swindler. Thief.'

'I am not a thief!'

Fenn closed his eyes.

'Miranda, what did you do with Mrs Tavistock's money?'

'Gave it to someone.'

Frowning, Fenn said, 'What? Stop mumbling, talk properly.'

Miranda lifted her head. Oh Lord, he wasn't looking happy.

'I gave it to a homeless person so he could buy himself a cup of tea.'

'My money!' squawked Alice Tavistock. 'You're telling me you gave my sixty pence to a filthy scrounging beggar? For crying out loud, girl, are you mad?'

So much for boasting about her ability to add up, Miranda thought mutinously.

'He isn't a beggar.' She couldn't let it pass, somebody had to defend him. 'He never begs! And it wasn't sixty pence either,' she concluded, 'it was seventy.'

Miranda loved hairdressing, despite the abysmal rates of pay for trainees. She was happy working in Fenn's salon, she adored cutting hair—on the rare occasions when she got the chance—and she really enjoyed the contact with clients.

Well, most clients.

The big drawback was having to carry on being nice to them when they were being horrible to you.

'I'm not a thief,' she told Fenn when he had reimbursed his outraged client from the till, apologized profusely and shown her out of the salon.

'I know that. But you aren't exactly Mensa material either,' Fenn pointed out, 'are you?'

'She's a hag! That woman spends her life boasting about all the charity committees she's on. How can she be so mean?'

'Hardly the point. Alice Tavistock is our client.'

'She's a stingy old battleaxe,' Miranda muttered.

'Stop it. Now listen to me.' Fenn consulted his watch. 'Bev has to see her dentist at one o'clock. I'll need you to take over at the desk for a couple of hours.'

'You mean ... work through my lunch break?'

Horrors! Miranda's dark eyes widened in dismay. She was already ravenous.

What's more, she remembered guiltily, I'm not the only one.

But it was no good. Fenn was giving her one of his serious, I'm-the-boss looks.

'I think that's fair, under the circumstances. Don't you?'

Chloe watched the checkout girl pick up each item in turn, pass it over the scanner and send it on its way along the conveyor belt. Like the prizes on The Generation Game, minus the cuddly toy.

Packet of chicken breasts.

One lemon.

Pint of milk, semi-skimmed.

Shrink-wrapped bouquet of broccoli.

Small carton of hugely expensive new potatoes.

Pregnancy testing kit.

The Generation Game. Very apt.

Chloe held her breath, wondering if the girl would glance at her in a secret, knowing way, but when she looked up all she said in a bored voice was, 'That'll be fifteen pounds seventy. Got your Clubcard?'

It clearly took more, these days, than a few chicken breasts and a pregnancy testing kit to arouse a checkout operator's interest.

Back at Special Occasions—perfect gifts for every occasion—Chloe hung the Tesco carrier on her coat hook and locked herself in the tiny downstairs loo.

Her fingers shook as she tore the cellophane wrapping off the testing kit. The words on the accompanying leaflet danced in front of her eyes.

Oh, help, this is it, this is serious.

Right, can't afford any mistakes, thought Chloe, feeling sick already. Treat it like an exam, read the instructions slowly and carefully. Concentrate, concentrate, and for goodness' sake stop this stupid shaking.

The sudden hammering on the door almost catapulted her off the loo seat.

'Chloe? That you in there?'

Well, who else was it likely to be? thought Chloe resignedly.

'Um ... yes.'

At least she hadn't been in the middle of some tricky form of gymnastics involving a plastic cup and mid-stream flow.

'Okay.' Bruce, her boss, sounded impatient. He had never understood why any woman needed to spend longer than thirty seconds in the loo. 'Keep an eye on the shop, would you? I need to make a phone call.'

'Two minutes,' Chloe called out in desperation.

'What?'

She couldn't not find out now, the suspense was killing her almost as much as the need to pee.

'Just give me two minutes, okay?'

Outside the door, Bruce shook his head in bewilderment. Women and their inner workings, it was all a mystery to him.

'Okay.'

Out in the shop, the bell above the door went ding, heralding the arrival of a customer. Relieved, Chloe heard the sound of her boss's retreating footsteps. She couldn't possibly pee onto a stick with Bruce lurking just inches away on the other side of the toilet door.

The crucial stream of urine was duly passed. Chloe closed her eyes and began to count.

When she opened her eyes again, the end of the stick was blue.

'Oh, good grief,' Chloe whispered, the words almost drowned out by the thundering of her heart. Pulling open the neck of her angora sweater and peering down at her stomach, she said in an unsteady voice, 'Hello.'

Out in the shop, Bruce was wrapping up his customer's purchase, a wildly expensive yellow and white Italian vase. When Chloe eventually reappeared, looking pale, he said, 'Chloe, before I forget. Bit of a do on at the golf club this evening. Verity and I were hoping to get along for an hour or two, but the blasted babysitter's let us down. Any chance of you riding to the rescue?'

Having ridden to the rescue before, Chloe wasn't fooled for an instant by his jovial tone. Like dog years, Bruce's idea of an hour or two generally meant seven or eight.

'Bruce, I'm sorry. I can't.'

Taken aback wasn't the word for it.

'But you said you didn't have anything on tonight.' His tone was accusing.

Be brave, stand your ground, don't let him bully you into it.

'That was this morning.' Chloe spoke as firmly as she dared. 'I do now.'

Florence Curtis had led an action-packed life; she had always lived for the day and crammed as much as was humanly possible into each and every one of them. Married at twenty, a mother at twenty-five, divorced by twenty-seven, married again, widowed, married for the third time at thirty-three ... good Lord, it made her dizzy nowadays just to remember those hectic years when, juggling homes, staff, and the needs of her much-loved but incredibly demanding son, she had followed her various husbands all over the world.

Then her beloved Ray, number three, had died of a heart attack on the steps of the casino at Monte Carlo, and Florence had decided to call it a day on the husband front. Twice widowed was enough; the pain was almost too much to bear. From now on she would stick to lovers. Apart from anything else, she glibly informed her friends—because sympathy was anathema to Florence—she was tired of endlessly changing her surname on checkbooks.

The next twenty years had been spent in the relentless pursuit of fun, with Florence adoring every last minute. Her motto had always been 'You're a long time dead', and until the first signs of stiffness had begun to seep into her joints, it had never occurred to her that perhaps it should have been 'You're a long time crippled with arthritis'.

It was hard, adapting to life in a wheelchair when your brain sometimes fooled you into thinking you were still as active as you'd always been. Every now and again Florence dreamt that she had been dancing all night at the Café Royal. When she woke up, exhilarated and in the mood to carry on, she would think, That's what I'll do today, go somewhere a bit posh and dance ...

Until she tried to turn over in bed, only to groan aloud with the pain. These days she was lucky if she could make it as far as the kitchen before collapsing in a heap.

Last year Florence's well-meaning GP had suggested wheelchair ballroom dancing. Every Thursday night, apparently, busloads of disabled pensioners descended on nearby St Augustine's church hall and had a high old time of it, spinning and twirling their partners around the floor.

'What, in their wheelchairs?' Florence had roared with laughter. 'Sorry, darling, not my scene. Sounds like two teenagers with clonking great braces on their teeth trying to have a snog.'

---

Excerpted from miranda's big mistake by Jill Mansell. Copyright © 2009 Jill Mansell. Excerpted by permission of Sourcebooks, Inc..
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

---