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

days, and then I stumbled across this. So happy birthday, babe. Good, isn’t it?’
    ‘I can’t believe it,’ is all I can say, delicately fingering the book like it’s a first-edition copy of the Bible, signed by all four apostles, who wrote it when they were on a book tour of, I dunno, Galilee or somewhere.
    ‘“The law of attraction,”’ says Laura, filching it from me and reading from a page at random in her best news-anchor voice, ‘“clearly states that like attracts like, so by the very act of summoning a thought, you are attracting like thoughts to you.” Oh I see, so now it seems I
attracted
an ex-husband with a girlfriend who makes him look like human Botox, i.e. twenty years younger.’
    ‘No, no, this is amazing stuff,’ Barbara and I chorus.
    ‘I’ve actually been bursting to tell you about this ever since we got here,’ I say, gulping down another big glug of champers. ‘Right, Laura, just hear me out. Now, OK, I admit, I may not have consciously attracted ovaries with a sell-by date that, honest to God, at this stage might as well be carved in stone and written in Roman numerals, but maybe, just maybe, I’ve been so focused on what I
don’t
want, that that’s what the law of attraction is delivering, each and every time. If you’re with me.’
    ‘Just like me with work,’ explains Barbara. ‘I’ve spent years resigning myself to the fact that I’ll never get offered anything other than Fakespeare and third-prostitute-from-the-left-type roles in crappy old cop operas; ergo, that’s all I
do
get. It’s almost like I’m attracting by default.’
    ‘I’m sorry,’ says Laura crisply, ‘but the pair of you are sounding dangerously close to butterfly net territory.’
    ‘Look, there’s a bit here about quantum physics,’ I say, shoving the book under her nose and hoping that this will appeal to her brainy nature.
    ‘“Imagine yourself like a human transmission tower,”’ Laura reads aloud in her best
Nine O’Clock News
voice, ‘“transmitting a frequency with your thoughts. If you wish to change anything in your life, first you must change the frequency of your thoughts.” OK, my biggest fear in life is that I’ll end up pole-dancing to pay for my kids’ braces. So this book is effectively telling me that I should just flick a mental switch,
think
that I’ve won the lottery and that should do the trick?
Please
. This conversation demeans all of us. If life was that easy, then why isn’t everyone doing it?’
    ‘It says here,’ I say defensively, reading from another yellowy page that flipped open, ‘“that for over two thousand years, five per cent of the world’s population have controlled ninety-five per cent of the world’s wealth. Now that is
not
a coincidence . . .”’
    ‘And at fifteen ninety-nine for a copy, I’m not a bit surprised,’ Laura says as her eagle eye spots the price tag still stuck to the back of the book.
    ‘Well, girlies, it’s like this,’ I say, undeterred. ‘We’ve tried just about everything else, so why not try using this to our advantage for a change? If you ask me, this law of attraction lark couldn’t be more of a doddle, really. I mean, for God’s sake, all we have to do is ask the universe very nicely for whatever we want, no matter how ridiculous it seems, believe that somehow it’ll miraculously come to us, then sit back and wait for our dream lives to start. Come on, who wouldn’t welcome that into their life?’
    ‘To hear you talk about the universe,’ says Laura drily, ‘you’d think it was a giant mail-order catalogue in the sky – only free.’
    ‘Which, when you think about it, is the perfect excuse to go out and buy that fab new Marni dress I’ve had my eye on for ages. Ooh, whaddya know, this law of attraction lark is fun.’
    ‘Just listen to you,’ says Laura, topping up our glasses. ‘You sound like Pollyanna, except with a Magic Eight ball, a job, a mortgage, a healthcare plan and a
lot
of