Do You Want to Know a Secret? Read Online Free PDF

can’t take his eyes off her, I can’t help noticing. When we were all in college together, some wag nicknamed Barbara ‘The Loin Tamer’, and you can kind of see where they were coming from.
    ‘Cheers,’ she says, oblivious as usual to any fella eyeing her up, as she takes a big gulp and smacks her lips. ‘Aaah, lovely. I’ve noticed I only ever have bad luck whenever I’m
not
drinking. Anyway, birthday gal, I bring you a gift. Now I don’t want to over-exaggerate, but this could possibly be the most amazing pressie you’ll ever get in your whole life. Prepare to be blown away, baby.’
    She roots around in her bag on the floor and starts flinging the contents up on to the table, beginning with a copy of
Celebrity Heat
magazine, with a questionnaire half-filled-in.
    ‘What’s this?’ says Laura, idly picking up the magazine at the page it has opened on. ‘“Am I an Adult-escent?”’
    ‘Oh yeah,’ says Barbara. ‘It’s a quiz I started doing while I was waiting to do the audition. New cultural sub-group they’ve just discovered, which I think might include you and me, Vick. It’s for, ahem, the thirty-somethings who still think they’re teenagers. You know, who watch
The Office
and actually get it, and know all the characters on
The Simpsons
, and still shop in Top Shop and H & M and think they’re cool.’
    ‘God, I wish I was a teenager again,’ I muse, swirling the champagne around the glass. ‘I’m telling you, girlies, if I could go back, if I had my time over, I’d do things differently, and that’s for sure. You know, reprioritize.’
    ‘Explain,’ says Laura, looking at me in that really focused, intent way that she has.
    ‘Well, it’s like this. Take, for instance, the two young girls I have working for me in the office. I’m not joking, their number-one priority in life is to get a nice, wealthy, eligible husband. Honestly, they’re like this whole breed of neo-Victorians, and I wouldn’t mind, but they’re barely out of college. They’re looking at my generation and thinking: “OK, so maybe you have a great career and money and a home of your own . . . but you’re alone and that doesn’t make you any role model for me.” Ten years ago I’d have laughed at them, but now . . . today, it doesn’t seem quite so funny.’
    ‘Oh, come on,’ Laura says, sounding a bit exasperated. ‘I could be sitting here, blissfully happy, about to celebrate yet another wedding anniversary, but I’m not. This conversation is pointless. I mean, for God’s sake, Hitler could have channelled all his energies into opening a nice chain of vegetarian restaurants, but guess what? That didn’t happen, either. There is absolutely nothing to be gained either from beating yourself up over the choices you
didn’t
make, or congratulating yourself on the ones that you
did
. Pretty much every decision you’ve ever made was half chance, same as the rest of us.’
    ‘Or perhaps
not
,’ says Barbara in a vaudevillian-baddie voice, producing a crumpled paper bag and spilling the contents out on to the table.
    It’s a hardback book, so dusty and old that you almost feel you should be wearing latex gloves just to touch it, like they do in those TV documentaries about museums, where they’re handling bits of papyrus from Tutankhamen’s tomb and the like. But that’s not what’s making me look at Barbara, gobsmacked. It’s the book’s title, almost faded but still legible.
    Oh my God, I do not believe this.
    The Law of Attraction
.
    ‘Barbara, you angel,’ I say, a bit stunned. ‘This is it; this is exactly what that amazing American woman was talking about only yesterday . . . where in God’s name did you come across this?’
    ‘Second-hand bookshop right beside where the audition was. I wanted to buy you something quirky slash unusual slash cheap for your birthday, and we all know how much you love self-help books, or anything with a title that promises you can change your life in seven