The Ballroom Class Read Online Free PDF

Katie thought. I don’t even know if I want to!
    ‘A lot’s changed,’ she managed.
    ‘But a lot’s stayed the same,’ Ross insisted, and they stared at each other for a long moment. ‘And we’ve gained so much. Think about all the things we have now that we only dreamed about when we met, Katie.’
    Re-mortgages. Love handles. The ability to have sex without waking up. A growing sense of ‘is this it?’ .
    Something cold gripped Katie’s stomach, and she heard herself say, ‘When did we stop loving each other?’
    Ross’s face registered painful shock. Then he said, ‘ We’ve stopped?’
    Katie looked at him, stricken.
    ‘I haven’t stopped,’ he said, stubbornly. ‘But thanks for the memo about how you feel.’
    ‘Ross!’ Katie grabbed for his arm, but he was already storming towards the car park.

2
    Lauren Armstrong hadn’t played netball since she left school four years ago, but in her head, she was still, and always would be, Goal Defence.
    ‘Just stand there, Lauren,’ Mrs Hathaway used to yell from the sidelines. ‘Stand there, stick those gangly arms out, and don’t try anything fancy.’
    Lauren didn’t need to do anything fancy, because since the age of fourteen she’d been five foot ten, at least three inches taller than everyone else, nine inches taller than her mother, one inch taller than Mr Huddart, the headmaster. And the reason Mrs Hathaway didn’t want her trying anything fancy was because whenever she did, something usually fell over. The goal post, the other team’s Goal Attack, sometimes Lauren herself. But because Lauren did her best, she blocked more goals than she knocked over other players, and was thus nearly always picked for the team, sealing her rather ambiguous self-image for life.
    Lauren was now twenty-two, and the Reception Manager/Lead IT Administrator at Longhampton Park Surgery. In a belated moment of revelation, just after her sixteenth birthday, she’d realised that her lanky legs were something to be grateful for, especially coupled with long blonde hair, but sadly her clumsiness wasn’t just an adolescent phase. Things kept on getting knocked over. And that was why, now she was months away from being Mrs Christopher Alan Markham, she was determined to be the bride she’d always dreamed about, throughout those freezing-cold matches where she hopped from one long leg to another to keep warm, and everyone giggled about her beanpoles.
    On her wedding day, Lauren ‘Big Bird’ Armstrong promised herself, she was going to be a Disney princess: gorgeous, elegant, graceful and totally, one hundred per cent non-gangly.
    Not that it was working out quite as easily as she’d thought. Lauren was a cheerful organiser at work, and an enthusiastic wedding researcher at home, but she hadn’t reckoned on her co-planner being even more dead-set on fairy-tale romance than she was. Not her mother, Bridget, who was happy to let her do whatever she wanted, as usual, but the other mother in the picture: Irene ‘Call me Mum!’ Markham, her mother-in-law-to-be.
    Or, as she referred to herself in the wedding notes, MIL2B. Lauren was B2B. Bridget was MOB. And so on.
    Lauren was sitting at Irene’s marble-topped breakfast bar right now, with a mountain of magazines in front of her, through which Irene was flicking methodically, searching for the glass-slipper cake topper they’d been discussing.
    She checked her watch discreetly. They were meant to be waiting for her mum, who was coming over after she’d finished at school, but it was almost impossible to stop Irene. It’s almost as if, Lauren thought, she’s picturing herself in those dresses, not me.
    ‘If you go for the Sleeping Beauty theme, then you’ve got your carriage, you’ve got your lovely big gown, plus you’ll get to waltz to “Once Upon a Dream” at the reception.’ Irene gave Lauren a meaningful nod. ‘Whereas, with Snow White, OK, it’s a more distinctive dress, what with the corset and the