Stories To Make You Smile, page 1
Thank you for downloading this Simon & Schuster ebook.
Join our mailing list to get updates on new releases, deals, recommended reads, and more from Simon & Schuster.
CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP
Already a subscriber? Provide your email again so we can register this ebook and send you more of what you like to read. You will continue to receive exclusive offers in your inbox.
Contents
Note from the Reading Agency
Note from Specsavers
Behind My Fat Back
by Jenny Éclair
Schooled
by Mark Watson
The First Birthday Party
by Veronica Henry
Purpose
by Eva Verde
Job Opportunity
by Richard Madeley
The Wrong Cake
by Katie Fforde
Blind Dates
by Dorothy Koomson
Blind Justice
by Vaseem Khan
A Slightly Open Marriage
by Helen Lederer
A Relaxing Day of Retail Therapy
by Rachel Hore
Copyrights and Credits
About World Book Night
World Book Night is the annual celebration of books and reading on 23 April that brings people together for one reason – to inspire others to read more!
2021 marks the tenth anniversary of World Book Night. Since 2011, almost 3 million books have been gifted to new readers across the UK.
World Book Night is run by The Reading Agency, a national charity tackling life’s big challenges through the proven power of reading. World Book Night 2021 is in partnership with Specsavers.
readingagency.org.uk
worldbooknight.org.uk
@readingagency
@WorldBookNight
The Reading Agency Ltd. Registered number: 3904882 (England & Wales)
Registered charity number: 1085443 (England & Wales)
Registered Office: Free Word Centre, 60 Farringdon Road, London, EC1R 3GA
The Reading Agency is supported using public funding by Arts Council England.
The World Book Night 2021 Booklist
A Dutiful Boy by Mohsin Zaidi
Ask a Footballer by James Milner
Common People ed. by Kit de Waal
Elevation by Stephen King
Emma by Jane Austen
Faking Friends by Jane Fallon
Good Food for Bad Days by Jack Monroe
I Will Not Be Erased by gal-dem
Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare
Pocket Book of Happiness Reasons to Be Cheerful by Nina Stibbe
Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli
Stories to Make You Smile ed. by Fanny Blake
Sunshine and Sweet Peas in Nightingale Square by Heidi Swain
Taking Up Space by Chelsea Kwakye and Ore Ogunbiyi
The Anxiety Survival Guide by Bridie Gallagher, Sue Knowles
and Phoebe McEwen, illustrated by Emmeline Pidgen
The Flatshare by Beth O’Leary
The Kindness Method by Shahroo Izadi
To Sir With Love by E.R. Braithwaite
Up in the Attic by Pam Ayres
We Are All Made of Molecules by Susin Nielsen
Where Are We Now? by Glenn Patterson
Find out about the books at worldbooknight.org
Continue your reading journey
The Reading Agency is here to help keep you and your family reading:
Challenge yourself to complete six reads by taking part in Reading Ahead at your local library, college or workplace
readingahead.org.uk
Join Reading Groups for Everyone to find a reading group and discover new books
readinggroups.org.uk
Read with your family as part of the Summer
Reading Challenge at your local library and online
summerreadingchallenge.org.uk
Discover Quick Reads, short books by best-selling authors
readingagency.org.uk/quickreads
For more information, please visit our website: readingagency.org.uk
Behind My Fat Back
by Jenny Éclair
This changing room has two mirrors spitefully positioned to simultaneously reflect one’s bulges both front and back. I don’t normally see my rear view and I am slightly bemused by the number of creases in the flesh under my bra strap. Back fat is pointless really, we’re not camels, camels store fat in their humps, so they can cross the desert without stopping off for a cheeseburger… or whatever camels eat?
I am a large white woman, there is something rather tripe-like about my skin tones and judging by my reflection I am probably two stone overweight. This is why I am sitting in the changing room of ‘Angela Young’s Bridal and Special Occasion Fashion Emporium’ (Prom Dresses and Formal Hire also Available), waiting for the assistant to bring me something I might feasibly be able to get both arms into, preferably without any Swarovski beading.
Apparently I’d been optimistic asking for a size sixteen. Inevitably I’d got stuck and then panicked trying to get the thing off. Consequently there is a tiny rip under the arm of a fuchsia lace bolero, which we shan’t mention.
‘I’ll bring the eighteen and the, um…’ – she couldn’t say ‘size twenty’ out loud – ‘…the next size up from that, just to be on the safe side.’ That was ten minutes ago.
While I wait, I perch in the corner of this curtained-off torture chamber on a fragile gilded chair, half expecting the thing to collapse under me. When one is my size, one learns to avoid flimsy furniture. Wicker chairs and ancient deckchairs basically scream public humiliation and a cracked coccyx.
No doubt the seating at the wedding will be similarly insubstantial, light and stackable, the usual arrangement for a marquee-style service. Not that I’m religious. I couldn’t care less where they get married. What I do like, however, is the sturdiness of an old-fashioned wooden church pew.
I’m here under extreme duress and strict instruction. My sister, aka ’the Mother of the Bride’, said this was the place to come. It has chandeliers and thick cream carpets. I nearly took my shoes off at the door. If I had, no doubt they’d have hidden them. This is a strictly heels-only establishment and a pair of size-seven lace-ups with orthotic inserts in an extra-wide fitting would no doubt be seen as a blight.
This is a novel experience for me; I normally buy my clothes from the supermarket. I dress mostly in navy even though it shows up the dog hairs, only it doesn’t at the moment because I am between dogs. Oh God, if I think about Pepsi, I might cry. Mind you, if I think about buying an outfit for this stupid wedding, I might cry.
I genuinely don’t understand why people are still going through this ridiculous charade when heterosexual couples can finally opt for a no-nonsense civil partnership.
But then, as I am constantly reminded, I wouldn’t understand because I have never been married, just as I can’t possibly understand what it’s like to have children because I have never given birth.
Women like me – single, barren and ageing – are considered emotionally neutered. We just wouldn’t ‘understand’.
Apparently my role as aunt and godmother of the bride is to fade gracefully into the background. My hat should be small and quiet and obviously I mustn’t wear white or black or red. I asked my sister Veronica why I couldn’t wear red. I understand the black and white rules, the bride wears white and black belongs to funerals or bondage clubs (oh, the temptation to go for black leather) – but red, why not red? Veronica said, and I quote, ‘Because wearing red is a sign of madness at your age and anyway you have a tendency to a flushed cheek and wearing red just makes you look like you’ve been on the sherry since breakfast.’
Ah, yes, that’s another thing, alcohol. Apparently I should stick to two small glasses of champagne, as any more inflames my sinuses and I start to make snoring noises when I breathe. I can’t help it… it drives Veronica mad. ‘It sounds like you’re bored when you’re talking to people.’ Yes… well.
My sister is micro-managing this wedding despite the fact that Madeline has insisted on hiring a professional wedding planner called Summer who looks like she was born with a migraine and wears beige nail varnish. Seriously, I think some of these girls watch far too much American TV. What’s wrong with a registry office and a pork pie in the pub? After all, there are no money-back guarantees with marriages. You can spend fifty grand on a white silk tent, an iced-swan vodka luge and a chocolate fountain, but if it all goes tits-up in six months’ time, Veronica and Mike won’t get a penny back. It will all have been for nothing.
When I think of all the wedding gifts I’ve bought people for marriages that haven’t survived, I visualize them on a conveyor belt, an entire Generation Game’s worth of goodies: egg coddlers, novelty chess sets, an Indonesian back scratcher, silver-plated cocktail shaker… and for what?
I genuinely think that if a marriage crumbles before the guarantees are up on a wedding gift, then that gift should be returned to sender, preferably with a note of abject apology: ‘Sorry we made you slog out to the arse-end of Buckinghamshire and fork out for train tickets, taxis and a night in a hideous bed and breakfast with melamine wardrobes and nylon curtains, not to mention the cost of a new outfit, hat and pair of pinchy shoes, just so you could stand in a field and watch me and someone you wouldn’t recognize in a line-up of IT consultants with fashionable beards exchange vows that neither of us intended to keep for more than three and a half months. Anyway, here’s your fire pit back, we only used it once.’
I went off-piste for Madeline. She sent out this gift list from Peter Jones. I thought, Sod that, and I bought her a ventriloquist’s dummy from a little place in Brighton.
Veronica was furious when I told her, she kept saying, ‘But she wanted a gravy boat and six Royal Doulton Pacific porcelain pasta bowls.’ Well, if she wants them so much, then she and Jack or Josh or Joe can buy them themselves.
Madeline will make a beautiful, if emaciated, bride. That’s another thing about weddings, why does everyone have to lose half their body weight before the big day? I remember when Veronica got married, she was an utter cow for six months before she squeezed herself into that gown. Poor Mike, I’m surprised he recognized her coming down the aisle, she could have been an entirely different woman, she was a stone thinner and her hair was two shades darker – she looked like the ghost of Morticia Addams. Honestly, she was so weak, I thought my dad would have to give her a fireman’s lift all the way down the aisle. She’d lived on nothing but Silk Cut and celery for six months and consequently her breath was foul. Seriously, when the vicar said, ‘You may now kiss the bride,’ I swear Mike recoiled.
I was only allowed to be her bridesmaid on the proviso that I too lost weight. Of course, this was thirty years ago, when I was in my mid-twenties. Veronica had the dress made for my target size and it was touch and go for weeks before the actual ceremony. Fortunately, I got a nasty case of quinsy a fortnight before the big day and, as luck would have it, a life-threatening peritonsillar abscess achieved the desired effect. My mother and Veronica cheered when the zip went all the way up without having to use pliers.
I cut the dress up a few months later, made a lampshade for the spare bedroom. There was quite a lot of fabric left over. I couldn’t burn it because it was synthetic and I was worried about the fumes, and I couldn’t take it down to the charity shop because it had this big lampshade-shaped hole in it, so I buried it in the garden. It felt like I was getting rid of a body. I have refused to diet ever since.
My only regret about not getting married is that I never got to inflict anything in peach sateen on anyone else. When I eventually admitted to Veronica that I’d got rid of the dress, she said, ‘I wish I hadn’t bothered asking you, I could have had two normal-sized bridesmaids out of the same amount of fabric and still had enough left over for a little flower girl.’
She can be quite cutting, can Veronica. Madeline is twenty-nine, which is apparently peak bride age. Veronica said, ‘She wants to get that ring on her finger before she’s thirty because no one wants to get lumbered with the left-overs.’ Personally I can’t see what’s wrong with left-overs? Let’s face it, there’s nothing more delicious for breakfast than last night’s takeaway curry.
I am getting rather cold now, so I put my cardigan on over my ‘seen better days’ underwear and I reach into my tote bag for a prawn sandwich that I just so happen to have upon my person. Not being a camel, I refuse to set out on an arduous shopping trek without sustenance. A prawn falls out and lands on the crotch of my pants but I scoop it up and eat it anyway. It’s a very good sandwich, lots of tangy Marie Rose sauce. I think the assistant has forgotten me, such is the invisibility of middle age.
Suddenly I am aware of raised voices on the shop floor: a bride sobbing hysterically over some terrible Michael Bublé track. In between sobs, she is wailing that she hates her dress, the bodice makes her look fat, she doesn’t like the neckline and she doesn’t fucking want to get married to ‘that twat’ anyway.
I have to stifle a laugh, because obviously this is no laughing matter.
‘Call me Angie’, the proprietor of Angela Young’s Bridal and Special Occasion Fashion Emporium, can be heard to offer our jittery bride a Buck’s Fizz and some tedious platitudes about pre-wedding nerves, while an older woman who is obviously the bride’s mother tells her to ‘bloody snap out of it’.
It’s Veronica! I recognized her voice as soon as she said ‘bloody’. We are both originally from the North but she’s done her best to disguise it over the years. Mike is very Home Counties, but the Lancashire in Veronica comes out when she’s mad. I freeze on my tiny gilt chair, as my sister launches into a tirade befitting a fishwife. ‘Now, listen here, young lady, you’re getting married whether you like it or not. I’ve got a down payment on that marquee and the cake alone cost £750. Do you want to end up fat and lonely and on the shelf like your Aunty Gina, covered in dog hairs and living in a pebbledash bungalow? Hmm? Is that what you want? Talking to yourself because you’ve got no one else to talk to. Everyone feeling sorry for you.’
‘Ooh, no, you don’t want that,’ says Call Me Angie. ‘Not when you’ve got a lovely Duchess ivory silk frock with three thousand individually stitched seed pearls ready to waft you up that aisle in three days’ time.’
I sit. I sit very calmly and wait for my sister and my niece to leave the shop, then I drop my sandwich wrapper on the floor of the changing room, get dressed and go home to my pebbledash bungalow.
It is ten past five by the time I get indoors; by a quarter to six I have booked an all-inclusive ten-day holiday to Morocco. I leave on Saturday. The seat will be small and uncomfortable but I won’t care. I will be 35,000 feet in the air wearing jogging bottoms and Velcro shoes and I shall drink as much champagne as I like.
Oh, and I’ll tell you another thing. I’m keeping that ventriloquist’s dummy.
Jenny Éclair is the Sunday Times top-ten bestselling author of the critically acclaimed novels Camberwell Beauty, Having a Lovely Time, Life, Death and Vanilla Slices and Inheritance, as well as the Richard & Judy bestseller, Moving, and the short-story collection, Listening In. Her most recent non-fiction book, Older and Wider: A Survivor’s Guide to the Menopause, was published in 2020.
One of the UK’s most popular writer/performers, she was the first woman to win the prestigious Perrier Award and has many TV and radio credits to her name. She lives in south-east London and co-hosts the popular podcast ‘Older and Wider’.
Schooled
by Mark Watson
‘Now, in this company we like to see ourselves as people who do things a little differently. People who can adapt to the unexpected, think on their feet, deal with new situations. As we’ve had to do quite a bit today, what with everything that’s happened! And I do apologize again for all that… for the mix-ups, for the interruptions.’
‘Oh, that’s fine,’ says Lloyd.
He doesn’t have any choice. It’s true that the interview has been a complete shambles, but he can’t afford to vocalize his bewilderment at how badly things have been run. This is the horrible position that it puts you into, job-seeking: somewhere between a polite visitor, an appreciative tourist and a supplicant. Even when you see incompetence around you, even when it is almost embarrassingly clear that you would add value to the set-up – because almost anyone would, because quite honestly a badger in a suit would – you still have to feign admiration and respect. When the person interviewing you makes spelling errors in the introductory email, when the firm gets the time wrong and double-books you: however amateurish the team and their actions, you still have to act as if it would be a privilege to join their ranks. Because you are separated from them by one of the starkest measurements that can divide people. They have a job and you do not.
You are here dipping your little fishing net into a fast-flowing river, trying to grab at something which the person on the other side of the table already possesses. You cannot help feeling that this must be because they have done something right which you did wrong. On some level that has to be true.
So Lloyd has to be polite about the frankly atrocious organization of this day so far: the late start, the leak in the ceiling which was bizarrely never acknowledged, the guy barging in to get a signature for a bloody pizza, for God’s sake. And now he’s going to have to play along with whatever stupid scenario they’re going to finish this ordeal with. He’s heard ‘we like to do things differently’ from these kinds of people before. In fact, he’s struggling to think of a firm that doesn’t believe it’s doing things differently. It’s one of the few things all businesses have in common.
