Mini Shopaholic

‘OK, I stitched him up. Love you too.’ Danny plants a kiss on her cheek and heads past me into the house. ‘Do you have any coffee? Janice!’ He greets her flamboyantly. ‘My style icon! My muse! What is that fetching shade of lipstick?’

‘He’s … impossible!’

Suze looks so infuriated, I’m about to offer her a squirt of Rescue Remedy. But a noise from outside attracts my attention. A big lorry is pulling into Janice’s drive. Its reversers are bleeping and a guy in jeans is beckoning it in. That must be the marquee!

OK. This party really is starting.

By four o’clock, the marquee is up in Janice’s garden. It isn’t decorated yet, but it still looks fab, all big and billowy. (My little gazebo is up, too, at the side. Elinor’s marquee guys haven’t stopped teasing me about it.) I’ll have to make sure Luke doesn’t catch a glimpse – but by the time he gets back tonight it’ll be dark, anyway. Janice wanted me to sew all the curtains together, but I think that would just be weird.

Gary managed to spin out his nervous-breakdown act for three hours, and now Luke’s with Davina, doing his medical in some basement suite at her hospital. She’s just phoned to give me an update.

‘I’ve got him on the treadmill for an hour to assess his heart. He’s really not enjoying this,’ she adds cheerily. ‘So where will he go after me?’

‘I … don’t quite know,’ I admit. ‘I’ll call you back.’

I haven’t yet formulated the next part of the Luke-containment plan, and it’s starting to worry me – especially as now there are thirteen ‘Happy Birthday Luke Brandon’ videos on YouTube. All day, Martin’s been going online to look, and shouting out ‘There’s a new one!’ And now someone’s created a web-page called happybirthdaylukebrandon.com, which has links to them all and invites people to post their funny/fond/rude stories about ‘The City’s King of Spin’, which is what they’re calling Luke.

The whole thing makes my mind boggle. Who’s done that? Danny’s theory is, no one in the City is doing any work at the moment and they’re all dead bored, so they’ve seized on this as a diversion.

‘Number fourteen’s just gone up,’ calls out Martin from his laptop as I put the phone down. ‘Some girls from Prestwick PR, singing ‘Happy Birthday’ like Marilyn Monroe. In the nude,’ he adds.

‘Nude?’ I hurry over to see, followed swiftly by Suze.

OK, so they’re not totally nude. Their crucial bits are hidden by office plants and files and corners of photocopiers. But honestly. Don’t they know Luke’s married? Especially that one with the dark curly hair and the swivelly hips. I hope she’s not coming to the party.

‘What are you going to do with Luke next?’ says Suze, who overheard me talking to Davina. ‘I mean, he can’t do a medical all day, can he? He must be spitting by now.’

‘I know.’ I bite my lip. ‘I thought I’d get Bonnie to send him loads of emails. Like, pages of really dense paperwork, saying it’s urgent and he’s got to read it all at once.’

‘And tomorrow?’ persists Suze.

‘Dunno. More paperwork, I suppose.’

Suze is shaking her head. ‘You need something bigger. What is the one thing that you can guarantee will grab his attention? Like with Tarkie I know exactly what I’d say. I’d say the Historical Society have phoned with evidence that Great-Great-Great-Uncle Albert didn’t fire the cannon, after all. He’d drop everything instantly.’

‘Wow.’ I stare at Suze in admiration. ‘That’s really specific. Who was Great-Great-Great-Uncle Albert?’

Suze makes a face. ‘It’s quite boring. Do you really want to know?’

Hmm. Maybe not.

‘The point is, I know what presses Tarkie’s buttons,’ Suze is saying. ‘And you know Luke. So what will get him going?’

‘A work crisis,’ I say after a moment’s thought. ‘That’s all I can think of. He always jumps when some big client is in trouble.’

‘Can you invent a work crisis?’

‘Maybe.’ On impulse, I reach for my phone and call Bonnie.

‘Hey, Bonnie. Have you seen the latest YouTube?’

‘Oh Becky,’ begins Bonnie miserably. ‘I feel so wretched. If only I hadn’t sent that email—’

‘Don’t worry about that now,’ I say quickly. ‘But maybe we can use the fact that everyone knows. Could you email his clients and say we’re trying to distract him till tomorrow night and ask them to invent a crisis that will keep him busy?’