✍️ Sarnia de la Mare FRSA Teller of Tales 🍿

 📘 She needed a fake boyfriend for 48 hours. What she got was robes, rooftop kisses, and something suspiciously close to feelings. Plus-One Problems by Mills and Swoon Lydia March didn’t believe in weddings, commitment, or eating gluten before noon. But she did believe in being a very good friend, which is how she found herself at a country spa hotel in the Cotswolds surrounded by 12 women named things like Ashleigh and Gabs, clutching a Prosecco flute, and pretending not to panic. “You didn’t bring a plus one?” Gabs asked, faux-concerned, eyelash extensions fluttering like a threatened peacock. “I did,” Lydia said smoothly, even though she absolutely hadn’t. “He’s just—parking.” “Oh. He drove you?” Gabs’ tone suggested this was code for something deeply erotic. “Mmm,” Lydia replied, sipping her drink. “Manual.” The problem was, this was a lie. A big, juicy one. And now she had roughly twenty minutes to produce a man from thin air, or spend the weekend as that girl—the one ...

Great Aunt Katherine had been seemingly on her last legs for about thirty years. Since I could remember she had been shrinking and creaking and swaying in the wind. Finally, she was gone and was currently residing in a casket for public viewing before burial later in the day. We had never gotten along. She was caustic and bitter and complained about everything. She irked me to the core. None of us liked her and we seldom got in touch. Mum had fallen out with her years back and the connections rusted and corroded like old batteries. Damage had been done with emotional weaponry and unrepentant intent. But in death people rally together to do their duty and triumphantly, one hopes, they ignore the fallout from the battleground. The undertaker had worked a treat. Great Aunt’s hair was spruced and pompadoured like a grand poodle and someone had done a great job on her makeup. In repose, I thought I saw in her some beauty. I had never seen it before in her. How, I wondered, had I not seen i...