Celebrity Bride Read Online Free PDF Page B

doll-face,' he'd greet each and every one of them as they clambered out, in such an ungainly fashion that you feared for their ability to dance behind the bar later that night. As we got to know Jimmy, we realised the full strength and scope of his delusions of grandeur. He really fancied himself as a big-time criminal, but there was no way he was. He claimed to have been mates with the Krays, and to have modelled himself on them, but he looked more like Del Boy, with his little, tubby body, short legs, astonishingly hairy chest and large gold medallion. He was simply too nice, too kind and too thoughtful to be truly bad. He'd speak of a childhood shaped by the gutter, and by parents who didn't care. Sadly, he was let down by the full force of reality when his parents popped in to visit him one night – two sweet, kind and loving parents eager to check their son was OK. I'm sure he'd have looked less embarrassed if his mum had offered to take her clothes off and dance naked behind the bar for the evening.
    One day, the doors to the strippers' Mercedes wouldn't open, and all the girls had to climb out through the open-top roof. I thought that me, Mandy and Sophie might actually die laughing. None of the strippers had knickers on, and two of them had no pubic hair. Now, just in the interests of absolute clarity, this is not the sort of information that I wish to have in my head. I bet the Hollywood starlets don't know about the downstairs hair arrangements of poorly paid lap dancers from Twickenham. I bet their focus is on things on an altogether superior intellectual level. That's what I mean about me and these Hollywood types – we're so different it's like we're different species altogether.
     
    'Come on, let's get ready,' said Sophie. It was 6 pm.
    'Get ready?' said Mandy, astonished. Mand doesn't really like getting dressed up, so the concept of spending three hours working out which eyeliner goes with which top, or whether boots or high heels would be best for a night in a topless bar is rather lost on her. She just hates the whole process of dressing up, and always has. She wears the same simple clothes every time we go out, and always with flat shoes. She insists that she's 'too hefty for heels', so slips little ballet shoes on while Soph and I go tripping down the street in the highest shoes we can find. Mandy never wears anything tight either, because she's paranoid about her huge chest and what she describes as her 'ample thighs'. One of her rules about dating men is that they should always have bigger thighs than she has. That's one of the reasons why she always goes out with such humongously large men. Mandy's always to be found in long, flowing, loose and feminine dresses, which cover up every inch of her. Nothing we say or do will change her views on dressing. She's such a sweetie though, is Mandy, that there's nothing about her any sane person would want to change anyway. She's just this gorgeous, sweet old-fashioned girl who always stops and tells tramps that she won't give them money in case they spend it on alcohol, but she will buy them a cup of tea if they want (they never do). She picks up litter, smiles and stops to talk to old people. Christ, she doesn't even have a mobile phone – that's how old-fashioned she is!
    'Shouldn't we help Kelly to pack first, before we get dressed?' says Mandy.
    'Shit. I'd forgotten about that,' said Sophie. 'I guess we should, but let's get a move on – we want to make the most of our last night together.'
    Clutching our glasses, we wander into my bedroom, which is stuffed with things that I rarely use. Rufus's place is immaculate and desperately stylish and all those things I yearn for mine to be, but can't quite manage because I like shopping and hate throwing things away. He has seven bedrooms in the main house and a west wing containing his office, sitting room and dressing room. I've never even asked what's in the east wing. I have just the one room and it's packed