Girls’ Night In. Jessica Adams

and the Top 5 bestseller, Welcome to Rosie Hopkins' Sweetshop of Dreams, which won the RNA Romantic Comedy Novel Award 2013. Meet Me at the Cupcake Café was also a Sunday Times Top 10 bestseller, and won the Melissa Nathan Award for Comedy Romance 2012.

Dougie, Spoons and the Aquarium Solarium

       Jenny Colgan

      Doug’s toes popped into life like little exclamation marks hanging over the end of the bed, and he rubbed his sticky eyes and tried not to catch the gunk in his stubble. He let out a groan as last night crept back into his head. How had it ended again? Not well. He spooled it through his mind. OK. He met a pretty girl in a nightclub, they’d danced, grinning foolishly at each other because it was too loud to talk, they’d come back here, they’d drunk whisky, they’d skirted the whole snogging issue by talking drivel about his record collection for hours, then he’d finally managed to snog her. That much he was sure of. More than snogged her? He turned his head, and his face crinkled at an opened condom packet. Huh. He had definitely more than snogged her. So why the sense of utter foreboding?

      She – Chloë, that was her name – was a dental assistant, which sounded revolting to him, but he’d liked her, definitely liked her – absolutely – wasn’t sweetly asleep and facing him on the pillow … Just in case he’d gone blind, he stuck out his hand and patted all around the bed and under the mattress. Nope. She was a thin girl, but not Flat Stanley.

      Tentatively he sat up and stared round his twelve-by-twelve room. The cupboard was a possibility, but an unlikely one. It struck him what was wrong. She was gone, but her clothes were strewn all over the floor. Therefore, unless she was flapping along a mile away in an enormously long shirt and clown shoes, it meant that, well, it had happened again …

      ‘CHLOË?’ he shouted, hoping vainly that he might be able to do this without having to get out of bed and touch the icy floor. This didn’t feel like summer at all, as per bloody Doncaster usual.

      ‘CHLOË?’ There was no response. Sighing, he pulled the duvet round himself and landed heavily on the floor, then performed a speedy duvet-to-dressing-gown manoeuvre which didn’t involve exposing his entire naked body to the elements at any one time. He opened the door, but couldn’t see her on the landing.

      Sighing again, he picked up her bra and used it as a glove puppet.

      ‘CHLOË! ’E ’ees ’olding me ’ostage! Save me! Save me!’

      ‘I’m out here, you twat.’ The voice sounded hostile.

      Doug went out to the landing, but it still seemed empty.

      ‘Ah – good one.’

      ‘Up here.’

      Chloë, entirely nude, was crouched trembling on top of the old wardrobe that stood in the hall to contain shit he hadn’t got round to throwing out yet. Doug stared at her.

      ‘Hello again. Ehm, is this a sexual thing, or are you just a really fanatical duster?’

      ‘Is it gone?’ growled Chloë.

      ‘Would you like some breakfast? I’ll make you break-fast-in-wardrobe if you like.’

      ‘IS IT GONE?’

      ‘Not exactly,’ said Doug, talking Fluffy out of his dressing-gown pocket.

      Chloë screamed her head off.

      ‘You know,’ said Doug patiently, ‘he’s only a very baby python.’

      Chloë continued to scream. Doug considered the situation.

      ‘I don’t suppose there’s any point asking you for your phone number, is there?’

      ‘Eek! Eek! Eek!’

      Doug left the house for work eating a slice of toast and giving bits to Fluffy.

      ‘Why can’t we meet a nice girl, eh, Fluff? I mean, we’re nice guys, aren’t we?’

      He turned into the road.

      ‘Hmm. I hope she doesn’t want to use the bathroom. I forgot to mention we had your dad staying for the weekend.’

      From inside the house came the sound of glass breaking.

      ‘Eek! Eek! Eek!’

      Doug and his fat friend Spoons had set up the Solarium Aquarium with the money Spoons got when his dad was hiding it from his dodgy road-haulage business. The Solarium had been Spoons’ idea: ‘People can come in, get all their reptile needs and a suntan at the same time – and it rhymes! Brilliant, eh?’

      Doug took care of the reptile end, and didn’t quite share Spoons’ vision. He personally wouldn’t mind lying down completely naked and defenceless amidst lots of writhing dangerous things, but lots of people, apparently, did. The solarium wasn’t going too well at all, although it did mean Spoons got to be bright orange at all times. This didn’t help his pulling tactics though, as being fat, snaky and bright orange isn’t actually that much more attractive than, say, just being fat and snaky. Doug, being tallish, and ruggedish, was a bit of a looker for a herpetologist, and supplied much of Spoons’ fantasy requirements.

      ‘Tops?’ asked Spoons avidly.

      ‘Yes,’ said Doug.

      ‘Fingers?’

      ‘Yup.’

      ‘You did it?’

      ‘Yes, yes, yes.’

      ‘And you’re miserable?’

      ‘Spoons, I’m a sensitive guy, OK? Maybe I’m just looking for that little bit more.’

      ‘What, like up the bum?’

      ‘I just don’t understand it. Every time I meet a nice girl she goes screaming in the opposite direction.’

      ‘Yeh, that happens to me too.’

      ‘After she’s met Fluffy. But I’m just … I just need to meet a girl who shares my interests, you know what I mean.’

      ‘If I met a girl who shared my interests,’ reflected Spoons gloomily, ‘we’d just wank all the time. I’d never see her.’

      Suddenly, outside the shop, loud yells were heard and there came the sound of a car crashing. The shop bell tinkled. Spoons and Doug looked at each other and raised their eyebrows.

      Into the shop strode a dramatically beautiful woman, all shiny black hair and slashed red lipstick. She was wearing a long, expensive and unnecessarily fiddly coat which looked designer. However, none of these things screamed attention to themselves quite as much as the eight-foot boa constrictor draped round her neck like a – ahem – boa.

      ‘What a beauty!’ said Doug and Spoons both at once.

      ‘Thank you,’ said the woman, flushing.

      ‘We meant the boa,’ said Spoons.

      ‘I know,’ said the woman.

      Spoons nudged Douglas unnecessarily hard.

      ‘Get off with her!’ he whispered loudly.

      ‘Can I help you, madam?’ said Doug, gulping.

      ‘It’s Jumbo,’ she said. ‘We’re new in town. I’ve come to buy him everything he needs – no expense spared. Also, do you know of anywhere I could get a fake sun-tan around here?’

      Doug and Spoons’ eyes grew as round as a cross-section of the rare Australian ring snake.

      Her name was Maia, and she had been brought