Read Online The Only Boy For Me by Gil McNeil - Free Book Online Page A

and take all the peel off for breakfast. Charlie is thrilled because I usually refuse this kind of fiddly task. We all troop into the kitchen and Charlie does a dance while listing all the different kinds of fruit he’s going to eat. He finally decides on pineapples and strawberries, and I beat a hasty retreat to the car before he discovers that we only have apples and a mouldy old orange.
    The motorway is a nightmare: a lethal mixture of lorries, heavy rain and lots of people clearly desperate to get into hospital as quickly as possible by crashing their cars into the central reservation. I find myself stuck behind an old git in a Mini Metro doing fifty miles an hour in the middle lane trying to overtake lorries but failing dismally. Each time I try to get into the outside lane some bastard in a BMW speeds up and refuses to allow me to move out. It feels like I will be stuck like this for ever. Eventually I lose my temper and accelerate so I’m almost inside the exhaust pipe of the old git and then I move sharply into the outside lane without giving the BMW driver time to speed up and block my way. He is furious and starts flashing his lights at me. I retaliate with my new favourite trick, which Barney taught me. I switch on the rear fog lights which light up the back of the car in a major way, suggesting I’m about to make some sort of emergency stop.
    It’s very stupid of me to get drawn into such ridiculous behaviour, but most gratifying to see that it works, and the BMW driver brakes and pulls back. He’s obviously decided I’m mad, and I proceed to confirm his conclusion by movingback into the middle lane once I’m safely past the old git in the Metro. The BMW instantly speeds up to pass me but he can’t resist slowing down when he’s level with my car to give me a threatening look, whereupon I give him a one-finger salute while keeping my eyes firmly on the road. I’ve got purple nail varnish on, which I think adds a touch of style to hand gestures. I know, without looking, that he is distraught. Brilliant.
    I finally make it to Soho and the car park, only to discover that the few remaining spaces are on the roof, up a hideous wobbly metal ramp which shakes as you drive on it. An idiot in a Range Rover gets halfway up and then loses his nerve and reverses back down, causing havoc as two cars are behind him. What is the point of designing cars with four-wheel drive and the ability to climb cliffs if they sell them to idiots who can’t park them? All the car parks in Soho are awful, but the train costs a fortune, takes hours, and there are only two choices home at night: five pm or five fifteen pm. After that you have to go via Aberdeen. So I’m stuck with the car. I manage to drive up the wobbly ramp and park, and make it into the office with just enough time to realise I have left a crucial folder in the car, but no time to go back and get it. Perfect.
    Barney is already sitting in the meeting room looking thunderous. It turns out he came in early and tried to make a cup of coffee with his new machine, and managed to scald his thumb with boiling-hot water by pressing the wrong button at the wrong moment. Stef warns me that he’s behaving as if amputation might be the only way forward, and has told her to bugger off, twice, and take that bloody machine with her. I make a huge fuss of his thumb, which has a tiny red mark on it, and produce one of Charlie’s dinosaur sticking plasters from my handbag and offer tostick it on, to ‘keep the wound clean’. He is almost tempted, but finally recovers himself and tells me to sod off. I find some Savlon in the office first-aid kit, and insist on smearing his thumb with about half the tube. Barney is delighted, and cheers up hugely now he has had ointment and a proper fuss made of him. Just like Charlie, really, but with less screaming and slightly more swearing.
    We’re talking about plans for the shoot in Cornwall next week, when Lawrence bustles in. He hates