Love Rules Read Online Free PDF

Pilot kept track of his worldwide friendships. He was a terrific host when peoplecame to London. He'd stock the fridge for them, tailor a list of sights to see, and provide his membership cards for a variety of museums. He'd meet them after work, having secured great seats at theatres or enviable tables in top restaurants. Mark was also a wonderful guest – as comfortable sleeping on the bottom bunk of his godson's bed in Didsbury as he was staying in palatial grandeur in a suite at the Peninsula, Hong Kong. He loved hiking hard in Skye with his old friends the McLeods and he enjoyed putting the world to rights in French with his new friend at the Paris office, Pierre. He went on safari by himself in Kenya and made Jeep-loads of new friends there. He was a Friend of the Royal Academy of Arts and soon made friends at the Royal Academy. He had friends who'd invite him to Glyndebourne and others he'd accompany to Glastonbury. Mark Sinclair was open-minded, kind-hearted and plain good company. He hated confrontations and far preferred to bite his tongue than fall out with anyone he cared for. An even keel was what he aimed for. Which is why he had so many friends but not actually one best one.
    Alice looked at Mark expectantly. She smoothed her white shirt, flicked her hair back, cocked her head and regarded him again.
    ‘Are you ready?’ he asked, while patting his pockets to double-check on keys, wallet, mobile phone. ‘Shall we go?’
    ‘But how do I look ?’ Alice said, standing her ground a little petulantly. ‘Will they approve? Do you think I should wear a skirt instead?’
    ‘You look gorgeous,’ Mark assured her, congratulating himself on the earrings he'd bought her. ‘You look – brown?’
    ‘Thea did my fake tan,’ Alice said, with no embarrassment. ‘I felt a bit pale and peaky from my cold last week – I don't want your mum to think you're not looking after me. Do you think your parents will approve? Do you think they'lllike me? I hope your mum is a good cook – I'm starving .’
    ‘Of course they will,’ said Mark, ‘who wouldn't. Come on. Mum's Sunday Roast is legendary – but don't touch the white wine. They only do Liebfraumilch.’
    Gail Sinclair busied off to the kitchen to prepare the dessert, turning down Alice's keen offer to help. Gail was delighted. Better still, she was charmed.
    ‘Charmed, absolutely charmed,’ she practised quietly to herself in the kitchen whilst decanting Marks & Spencer custard into a jug and carefully transferring their cherry Bakewell onto her best cake dish. Charmed , she continued in a whisper, Alice is delightful, Hazel. Absolutely winning to look at. A magazine person. She brought us copies – a real variety, Mary. She dotes on Mark, Carole – absolutely dotes on him. Chris and I couldn't be more happy.
    ‘She's a cracker,’ Chris Sinclair, who'd never mastered the art of the whisper, told his son; while Alice sat to his right and tried to look as though she wasn't eavesdropping. Gail heard, even though she was at a clatter changing their everyday crockery for the best china. Chris thinks she's a cracker, Joyce, and I know you'll agree once you've met her.
    Alice reckoned Chris to be in his mid-sixties, dapper despite the patterned sweater and corduroy slippers. Thinning silvery hair cut neatly, bright eyes, elegant hands and a healthy complexion due to his love of golf and gardening. She reckoned Gail to be five years younger, her hair cut into a short, neat style appropriate for her age, any grey expensively masked by an overall coppery sheen. While Mark talked to his father about PELS and Gail poured Marks & Spencer's coulis into another jug, Alice thought how best to describe Mark's parents and his childhood home to Thea. ‘Refreshingly nice,’ she would probably say, ‘just normal, nice people.’ She stifled giggles into her serviette, predictinghow she and Thea would then analyse the mothers of boyfriends past. Callum's mother who wore the