The Ballroom Class Read Online Free PDF Page B

overskirt, like you say, but everyone’ll be wondering, where are the dwarfs?’
    ‘It is my wedding,’ said Lauren, in what she hoped sounded like a joking tone. You had to start where you meant to go on with mothers-in-law. And Irene went on and on and on. It took all of Lauren’s extensive nice reserves to keep nodding and smiling. ‘Mum’s Year One class can be my dwarfs!’
    ‘Yes, but do you really want your mother to dress up as the Wicked Stepmother?’
    Lauren blinked. So that was it. ‘I wasn’t planning on making the guests dress up too. But if you think it would be a good idea  . . .’
    ‘Ooh!’ Irene scrambled for her ‘lookbook’, already heavily Post-itted and clogged full of pages ripped out of bridal magazines. ‘Apples! I suppose if you go for Snow White you can have apple-themed desserts  . . .’
    ‘And if I go for Cinderella, I can have one of those wedding cakes that turns pink, then blue, then pink again like in the film,’ said Lauren brightly. ‘Irene, can I make myself another cup of coffee, please? I think Mum must be running late.’
    ‘Let me!’ Irene leaped to her feet before Lauren could push back her chair. She remembered too late that the last time she’d tried to make coffee at Irene’s, she accidentally pulled the handle off some designer storage jar. ‘Latte or cappuccino?’
    ‘Whatever’s easiest,’ said Lauren, blushing at the memory. ‘Instant’s fine.’
    ‘Proper coffee’s perfectly easy when you’ve got the right machine.’ Irene ran her fingers over her latest bit of kitchenware, tapping her shell-pink nails proudly on the chrome. ‘Weren’t you going to start cutting back on the lattes, though? What about that detox plan we were talking about the other day?’
    ‘We aren’t getting married till June,’ Lauren pointed out. ‘It’s only just September.’
    ‘It’s never too early!’ said Irene as the machine hissed and gurgled. ‘You’ll be looking at those photographs for the rest of your married life, and you don’t want to be wishing then that you’d given up wheat and dairy for a few months.’
    ‘Well  . . .’ Lauren’s stomach freaked out at the thought of no hangover McDonalds till she was a married woman, but she steeled herself. It’s not for ever, she thought. Cinderella would not have wheat bloat. ‘Did you say you’d got a diet sheet from one of the magazines?’
    ‘I’ll dig it out for you.’ Irene finished fiddling with the coffee, and set a clear glass cup down in front of Lauren, the cappuccino capped with thick white foam. It smelled delicious.
    I’ll give up from next week, she thought. ‘Ooh, that’s lovely. Are you having one?’
    ‘I’m sticking to peppermint infusions,’ said Irene and gave her a reproachful smile.
    The thing was, Lauren thought, Irene wasn’t a Wicked Mother-in-law. She meant well, and was quite stylish for someone in her fifties, and nothing was too much trouble when it came to her and Chris’s wedding. She just had far too much time on her hands. Since Chris’s dad died and the life insurance paid off the house, she hadn’t had to work, unless you counted her three mornings a week at the charity shop on the High Street, which Lauren didn’t.
    ‘So, have you spoken to Christopher about him learning to ride a horse?’ demanded Irene, picking up her pen again. ‘Because he’ll need to get started with that if you want him riding into the ceremony to wake you up.’
    ‘Um  . . .’ Lauren hadn’t worked out how best to broach that with Chris. Chris still thought – hoped – they were having a simple church wedding and sit-down hotel meal. His idea of a big night out was the pub with his mates, followed by an all-you-can-eat at the Peking Tiger, followed by half an hour at Diamondz, the club at the far end of the High Street. But then it was all right for Chris: all his life he’d been the rugby-playing, in-crowd-leading, first-one-to-have-a-car, school-fit-lad type. It