To Have and to Hold by Jane Green

just wants me to do a dinner party for him. Oh, damn,” Alice moaned. “I wish I hadn’t blushed so much. He probably thinks I’m a complete idiot.”
    “Probably,” Emily concurred.
    “Oh no. Do you really think so?”
    “How the hell do I know? Now you’ll just have to experience what the rest of the single sisterhood goes through every time we give out our number. We sit glued to our phones for days on end, hating mankind, and thinking that if only we were thinner, or fatter, or blonder, or darker, or louder, or more quiet, he’d phone.”
    “Sounds horrific. Is it really that bad?” Alice of course has been so busy with work, she’s managed to rather successfully avoid the trials and tribulations of the dating scene, although, as she has said on numerous occasions, Emily has more than made up for it for the both of them.
    “It’s worse. But thankfully you’ll now be able to discover that for yourself.”
    Two weeks later, two weeks during which time Alice had begun to seriously hate her telephone, and hate Emily even more for being on the end of the line when it did ring, Joe finally called.
    Unfortunately he was ringing her for the exact reason she feared—he wanted her to cater a dinner party for him.
    What she didn’t know was that he was using this as an excuse to see her again, and after the dinner party he asked her out on a proper date.
    And Alice, at least as far as Emily is concerned, has never been the same since.
    Where did shy, mousy, curvy Alice go? What happened to the girl who loved animals, and children, and dreamed of a cottage in the country with roses climbing over the porch?
    Emily blames Joe for Alice’s transformation. The Alice of old would never have been caught dead in heels higher than an inch, let alone—Emily looks down at Alice’s feet—these pointed, four-inch, doubtless horrifyingly expensive shoes. The Alice of old would never have dreamed of dyeing her hair (apart from a disastrous experiment with Jolene bleach and green Crazy Colour when they were sixteen), let alone visiting Jo Hansford every six weeks and—presumably—spending hundreds of pounds on her honey highlights. The Alice of old would have been happy snuggling up on a sofa in her Garfield slippers, tucking into a pizza (albeit one she had made herself with fresh buffalo mozzarella and shredded basil leaves plucked from the terra cotta pot on her patio), watching crap TV for the evening, would have hated the idea of dressing up and going to a snazzy, sophisticated soirée such as this.
    The Alice of old used to laugh at the women for whom she used to cater, the same women who are milling around this art gallery, but now Alice has become one of them.
    Emily remembers that a few months after Alice started dating Joe, she and Alice had met at Prêt à Manger for a quick lunch.
    “I’m on a diet,” Alice had said, picking out a small salad and a Diet Coke as Emily was carrying a huge club sandwich, chocolate fudge slice, and banana smoothie to the cash register.
    “Diet? But you don’t need to
diet.
” Emily had looked at her in horror. This was Alice. Alice who cooked for a living. Alice who adored food.
    “I know”—Alice had said—“but Joe keeps looking at pictures of models in magazines and commenting how amazing their figures are, so I thought I might try and lose a few pounds.”
    Oh, he’s good, Emily thought. Subtle. “That’s ridiculous,” she said. “You have a great figure, and he loves you for you.” At least, she thought, he
should.
    “I just want to lose a few pounds,” Alice shrugged. “Not much.”
    And then a couple of months later a new, skinnier Alice turned up to lunch with straight hair.
    “Where have your curls gone?” Emily had ventured.
    “I just wanted to see what I’d look like with straight hair.”
    “And Joe didn’t just happen to suggest that he loves women with straight hair?”
    “Well . . .” Alice had shifted uncomfortably in her chair.
    “I