Free The Only Boy For Me by Gil McNeil

useful but exhausting networking. I’m reminded yet again that my ability to remember people’s names is less developed than it should be. Leila remembers everyone, including the names of their children and pets. I can barely recall the name of a really nice woman I worked with last year – and we spent all night bonding in the hotel bar listing all the things we hated about directors, men in general, our thighs, and hairdressers who cut your hair too short.
    Finally we move to our table, and a very complicated ordering process begins. Leila is on some new diet, and can only eat very odd combinations of foods, but also has to make sure that the things I order are the things she really wants, so she can eat mine and it won’t count because she didn’t order it. It’s all going well until we get to the chips, when I suggest it might be best if we order two portions, and she gets cross and says I’m not playing the game properly at all. In the end we settle for a large bowl, and thankfully when the food arrives the bowl turns out to be enormous and barely fits on the table, so all is well. I tell Leila that Mum has booked a villa in Spain for a week, for the half-termholidays after Easter, and has invited me and Charlie. It’ll be a brilliant way to escape the usual spring weather of gales and torrential rain. Mum says she fancies a little holiday and Dad has invented a golf tournament so he doesn’t have to come. He’s not keen on holidays with the under-tens. Leila thinks a holiday is an excellent idea, and is planning something similar. Her idea of something similar turns out to be a week in Venice, and I offer to swap but she is having none of it and says Charlie would be bored in the Cipriani, and would be honour-bound to fall into the Grand Canal. Sadly I have to agree, and promise to bring her back a straw donkey.
    We move on to general gossip, and Leila makes me laugh so much I nearly choke at one point, and have to be banged on the back by the waiter. To be honest, I don’t think he needed to slap quite that hard, but composure is regained and Leila points out it could be worse: he could have tried the Heimlich manoeuvre. I almost wish he had, as trying to lift me up would have wiped the smile off his face. The puddings are glorious – Leila’s new diet positively encourages crème brûlée, apparently – and the coffee and the bill arrive without the usual half-hour wait. Perhaps the waiter thinks I may start choking again. Leila insists on paying and makes me promise to put my share towards a present for Charlie, but only if it’s something noisy and plastic. She is now off to meet a new man and go dancing. I cannot imagine where she gets her energy from, as I can barely stagger back to the car.
    The lift is not working and by the time I make it up to the top floor I’m in need of oxygen and a lie-down. It’s pouring with rain and the ramp has gone all slippery. Nearly fall over twice. I finally make it back to the car, and collapse exhausted. I could do with a nice little sleep, but make dowith taking my bra off to get more comfortable, without taking my jumper off, which involves various contortionist-type movements. Just as I’m pulling my bra out of my sleeve, I realise the car opposite is no longer unoccupied. The man in the driving seat stares blankly at me, and I don’t think he’s actually seen anything as he’s trying to work out how to drive back down the ramp without aquaplaning into the wall at the bottom. But the woman in the passenger seat is most amused.
    The drive home is much more relaxed than the journey in. A Merc flashes past at well over a hundred, and about five minutes later I spot it on the hard shoulder, accompanied by a police car. Hurrah. Finally the motorway police have done something useful. The police car is lit up like a Christmas tree so I can’t imagine how the Merc driver didn’t spot it, but presume driving at over a hundred in the outside lane used up his