Cloudy with a Chance of Love: The unmissable laugh-out-loud read. Fiona Collins

a spoon in a pot of something. ‘Surely you have to forego the diet when you’ve got a stonking hangover?’

      ‘I’ve told you, it’s not a diet. It’s a healthy eating plan. For life. And it’s zero percent fat Greek yoghurt with a drizzle of Manuka honey and a sprinkle of sunflower seeds…’

      ‘Sounds delicious,’ I said sarcastically.

      ‘It is!’

      ‘I’m more in the line for a big old bacon butty with lots of ketchup.’

      ‘Ha, good luck. I think they’re all gone.’ Max usually brought them in for everyone but I looked over to the table where they were usually piled up in paper bags, and yes, they’d all gone. ‘Can I tempt you with some of this?’

      ‘No thanks, I’d rather eat my own foot.’

      ‘Oh, yuck!’

      Sam needs to know exactly what she’s eating. She’s a forty-something trim, toned-body freak who’s permanently on her phone entering data into the My Fitness Pal app. She adds up and enters in the calories of every single thing she’s eaten, even if it’s only a Polo mint or a banana (apparently bananas have a whole 110 calories. Who knew?) and makes sure she doesn’t exceed her daily allowance. It’s quite a science. Thankfully for Sam, who does actually love food, there is exercise, which can be offset against anything she eats. She goes to the gym before work every morning (one hour’s cardio burns 405 calories. That happily cancels out beans on toast, or two portions of porridge, apparently) and does loads of exercise DVDs at home. She’s completely bonkers and obsessed and ridiculously focused, but she does look amazing.

      ‘Surely you didn’t go to the gym this morning?’ I asked.

      ‘I did,’ she replied. ‘Just an hour’s gentle cardio. It sweated out all the booze nicely.’ Factoring wine into Sam’s daily calorie allowance was quite a feat, although she always managed it.

      ‘Oh, you’re so good.’

      ‘Halo polished,’ she said, rubbing the top of her head.

      I admire my meticulous friend. I have the willpower of a slug. The only way I lose weight (if I wanted to, which I don’t) is by taking off a bit of (sometimes quite heavy) diamante. I’m quite partial to a bit of bling. I like a brooch, a necklace, a hair clip, earrings. There’s nothing in life a bit of sparkle can’t cure. I’ve discovered that. Today, I was livening up my hangover with a blingy, slightly glittery hair band which also covered up some of my horrible hair.

      ‘Uh oh,’ said Sam, polishing off her last mouthful. ‘Bob’s been stocking up.’

      Bob Sullivan, the station’s editor, was walking into the office clutching a Boots bag.

      ‘All right, ladies?’ he enquired, like he always did, thumping the bag down on his desk. Bob never expects an answer to his ‘All right, ladies?’ It’s rhetorical. He’s an antiquated old fart, the only dark cloud in an office full of sunny dispositions. He is thirty-seven going on seventy and the proud possessor of old school, sexist charm. Smarmed back hair. A pseudo posh accent (he hails from Staines.) And a nightmare tendency to get frequent colds.

      He proceeded to unpack the contents of his Boots bag onto his desk. A chicken sandwich, a packet of cheese and onion crisps, a Diet Coke, a huge bottle of Night Nurse, a box of Strepsils and a box of blackcurrant Lemsip. He has a stinker of a cold at least every couple of months. He never tires of them, he’s an absolute martyr to them and – along with the copious sniffing, the noisy nose-blowing and the indulgent hand-to-forehead plaintive despairing – Bob likes to employ a highly theatrical cough. When enjoying a cold, he coughs all the time. He coughs if you ask, ‘How’s the cough?’ An enquiry to how he is, is answered with a cough. And if you even say the word ‘cough’ he coughs. He announces his presence in the morning with a cough and his departure in the evening with a cough. It’s his unique, germ-ridden calling card.

      ‘All right, Bob?’ called out Sam. She’s the cheeky one, in our office.

      Bob coughed. ‘Yes, thank you, Samantha. I’ve just got a light cold, darling. How’s the interview with the mayor coming along?’

      ‘Swimmingly,’ said Sam. ‘She’s squeezing us in between appointments on Thursday. Coming into the studio to do it live. Are you still happy with the expenses angle?’

      ‘Yes, just make sure we cover it subtly; we don’t want a diplomatic row – no duck houses or anything. Rob will do a great job with it, I’m sure.’

      ‘Okay, Bob. No prob.’

      She winked at me. Bob arranged his new purchases amongst his old: cough linctus, a bottle of eucalyptus, a jiffy bag of echinacea capsules and a man-sized box of tissues. His hands tend to flicker between all these miracle medicines like he’s the pinball wizard. But there is no twist. Bob with cold is just unbearable.

      I settled at my desk and attempted to tidy it. I was in a rush when I left on Friday night and had left it in a bit of a state. It was less cluttered than it used to be, though; I used to have photos of me and Jeff everywhere, even a photo of me and Jeff and that cow, which had obviously been ceremoniously burnt (not really, but I had chucked it in the big black bin round the back of the studio). Now there were just three gorgeous photos of Freya, from babyhood to today, the most recent of her on her first day at Smith College London. My girl. I was so bloody proud of her. I logged onto my computer and tried to get my head round checking the rolling information for today’s forecast. It was going to be a long day.

      My first bulletin was at twenty past nine. It’s always a bit of a rush to get that one written but it went well. It wasn’t a particularly complex weather story today. Grey skies all day – but no rain. A light north-westerly breeze and temperatures averaging ten degrees. Cold for the early autumn but not unheard of. My task for the day, really, after gathering all the information from the satellite and radar pictures, was to think of seven different ways to say the same thing. Easy: I just enjoyed talking about the weather. Rob Wright was very cheery this morning and we had a little bit of banter after my bulletin about pet reptiles, one of his featured topics this morning. I made him laugh by drily saying ‘I’m more of a cat person,’ and he cut to the beginning of a record, grinning.

      ‘Lovely job, Daryl. See you for the next.’

      ‘Thanks, Rob.’

      When I arrived back at my desk from the studio, Sam was waiting there, waggling two sachets of green tea.

      ‘Ugh, I don’t want that,’ I said. ‘I want cake and hot chocolate and cheesy mashed potato, preferably all at once.’

      ‘Aw, please come and make a hot drink with me? There’s something I want to talk to you about.’

      ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘As it’s you.’

      I trotted after her to the radio station’s kitchen. It has hideous saloon type doors which ricochet off each other about twenty times after someone has pushed through them. They were still going after the kettle had boiled.

      ‘Only twenty-five calories per cup,’ she said to me, as she poured boiling water into mugs.

      ‘Yummy.’

      ‘Hey, remember that forecast thing we did yesterday?’

      ‘Oh, yeah! I’d forgotten all about that.’ I had actually. I hadn’t forgotten chucking my wedding ring in the fountain though. I kept going to twist it round my finger, like I always used to, and it was still odd it wasn’t there any more. It was good, though. It was all good.

      ‘What was my forecast again? A ninety percent chance of falling on my face, sorry, falling in love by Friday.’

      ‘Ninety-nine percent.’

      ‘Oh, yes, pardon me. What a load of hooey,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘And I certainly won’t fall in love this Friday. It’ll be the last thing on my mind. I’ve got Freya’s graduation