Crazy Little Thing Called Love. Charlotte Butterfield

here she was, an event planner, party host, mentor and head girl of a sorority that was growing larger every day.

      ***

      As she’d been spending so much time on her website, Leila was woefully behind in her work, so when the weekend rolled around instead of pottering around markets with her friends or having lazy lunches she was hibernating at home trying to meet her deadlines. Her phone was ringing for the fourth time in as many minutes and Leila couldn’t ignore it again. She hated being interrupted when creative brilliance was in full flow. Her company had pitched recently for a lucrative but immensely soul-destroying project doing the car parks and outside cafe areas of a chain of well-known supermarkets. It was the first time she had been chosen to lead a project in seven years of working there, and she needed to pull this off. Her dining table was piled high with blueprints and open books and markers, and huge unfolded plans had slipped off the table onto the floor, and somewhere under all this was her incessantly ringing phone.

      ‘Leila. Marcus.’

      She couldn’t help but smile; her brother had such a knack for sounding so pompous. ‘Marcus, what do I owe this pleasure to?’ She was thankful it was him and not Judy who had phoned because she knew it wouldn’t be a long call. Marcus was known for his brevity, unlike her mother.

      ‘We had dinner with Tasha and Alex last night.’

      ‘Thanks for the invite.’

      Marcus either didn’t hear her sarcastic retort, or more likely, just chose to ignore her, ‘And Tasha was talking about your blog and Facebook page. I had no idea it was doing so well.’

      ‘Too well at the moment! Work is so busy and then this is massively taking off, and I can’t justify spending all the time I do on something that doesn’t pay the bills.’

      ‘That’s why I’m phoning.’ He then reeled off a list of five or six clients of his legal firm, big companies that Leila had heard of, that were offering services that targeted professional single women. A bank that had special mortgage rates for single borrowers, a financial services firm that offered women better premiums on car and life insurance, a brand of wine whose latest advertising campaign focused on friendship and sharing, a sportswear brand that wanted to align itself with empowering women, and so on. ‘Don’t you see Leila,’ he continued, ‘your blog would be the perfect place for these brands to reach out to your women, and these people have cash to spend. Now I can’t be seen to be involved in this in any way, obviously, but if you were to send them a short presentation about you and your site, I promise you they’d be interested.’

      ‘Really?’

      ‘Really. They’d pay for ad banners on the site, sponsorship of any more events you have, they may well offer your followers discounts, freebies, incentives, you could run competitions for singles holidays, God Leila, you could do amazing things with it. Why don’t you talk to Dad about it? He does all the marketing for the hotel, and his strategy is sound. He’s set up barters with different companies and now they have advertising logos on their brochures. Or, and here’s an idea,’ his voice had changed from purely business to something verging on excitement, ‘You could run weekend retreats at Mum and Dad’s hotel during the off-peak season – it would help them out in the quieter months, and you could pitch it as a … what do you call it … “finding yourself” short break or something like that. Get the sponsors to pay to have their branding there, every woman pays two or three hundred quid as well, give half to the folks and you’re raking it in.’

      ‘And then there’s your cut too of course,’ Leila couldn’t help saying. It was so unlike Marcus to phone completely out of the blue just to offer some brotherly advice. Particularly now Lucy was firmly entrenched on the scene.

      ‘This first session is free. But I will charge to look over any contracts you sign.’

      And there was the brother she knew and loved.

       Chapter 6

      Leila stabbed the last phallic-shaped straw into a lurid cocktail in Lucy’s kitchen, hearing the high-pitched shrieks of hilarity through the paper-thin walls. She paused to plaster her smile back on her face before re-entering the dining room.

      ‘What’s your favourite part of Marcus’s body?’ one of Lucy’s friends from her book club read out to a chorus of girlish giggles.

      ‘His forearms,’ Lucy replied. ‘He has amazingly strong forearms.’

      Leila tried not to blink, and just focused on dividing out the drinks between the eight women, who were in various stages of inebriation, including, much to her complete embarrassment, her own mother, who was swaying glassy-eyed at the end of the table.

      Lucy hiccupped after taking a small sip, ‘What’s in this one? It’s lethal!’

      ‘Um, lots of clear stuff and some blue stuff,’ Leila took a gulp of her own concoction without wincing. She’d passed the point that alcohol had any effect whatsoever. They’d spent the day gluing sequins onto stilettos as one of their hen party activities. Lucy had put Leila in charge of the day and evening, and then proceeded to forward Leila pins or links to exactly what it was she wanted them to be doing. So, early afternoon was glitzing up footwear, and then they had a mixologist come to the house and throw bottles about. Which Leila had to admit was pretty fun – hence her newfound talent for cocktail-making. Lucy had firmly rebuffed the butler in the buff idea, which was just as well as Leila had no intention of seeing a naked man for at least another two-hundred and forty-eight days anyway.

      Looking around the table, it was the oddest mix of women she’d ever seen. Apart from her, Tasha and Judy, there were two women from Lucy’s book club, an ex-colleague of Lucy’s who was heavily pregnant so not drinking, another former colleague who was so drunk her eyes were crossed, and a tall, long blonde-haired, very athletic-looking woman who hadn’t spoken to anyone apart from Lucy all afternoon. She also hadn’t joined in any of the activities, instead she’d sat for most of the afternoon and evening with Lucy’s wedding binder on her lap writing down numbers of florists, reception venues and photographers into her diary.

      ‘Are you getting married soon too?’ Leila turned to her, trying to kick-start conversation.

      The woman looked up from the folder, ‘Yes, I’m marrying Lucy’s brother, Nick.’

      ‘Oh, that’s great. Congratulations.’

      ‘Thank you.’

      The woman put her head down and was scribbling again.

      ‘I was with Lucy when we went wedding dress shopping and Stephanie was sending you pictures of some, wasn’t she? See any that you liked?’

      ‘I actually already have my dress, I was engaged before you see, but it didn’t work out. But I love the dress, so have kept it ready for the next one.’

      ‘Oh.’ Leila thought frantically of what she was meant to say to that. ‘That’s, um, handy.’

      ‘Same with the bridesmaid dresses. Although one of my cousins has put on loads of weight recently, so she won’t be able to be a bridesmaid any more. Which is a shame because we were close.’

      ‘Righto. Um, excuse me.’ Leila reached across the table to an upturned sunhat and fished a rolled up piece of paper out. ‘Shall I read the next one?’ She paused before saying, ‘What is Marcus’s favourite position?’ Oh God, why did she have to pick that one out?

      ‘You have to be diplomatic here don’t you!’ The pregnant ex-colleague laughed.

      ‘Not on our account, you don’t, pretend your fiancé’s sisters and mother aren’t even here,’ Tasha said with a lot more good humour than she was feeling. ‘There’s nothing we’d like more than to hear about our brother’s exploits in bed.’

      ‘We can cover our ears if it makes it easier for