Read The Armchair Bride for Free Online

like yesterday. One minute she was sat there at her desk chatting away, the next she was throwing up like nine pins.’
    My own stomach lurches. I’ve never been good with bodily emissions and recalling the day my second in command fell ill doesn’t sit well. She threw up in the bin between our desks, but turned out not to be the most accurate of shots - even now, six months later, whenever the radiators malfunction and turn our office into a sauna, there’s a tang of stale coronation chicken.
    ‘It was coming down her nose. She got it in her hair and all down her front. She was in a right state.’
    Penny seems, as always, blissfully unaware her chosen topic of conversation is inappropriate. You don’t talk about projectile vomiting to someone who has announced they fancy breakfast.
    ‘I might skip it,’ I say.
    ‘Don’t blame you. I’ve gone off food myself now. All that over indulgence at Christmas. We could both do with losing a few pounds anyway eh?’
    She pats her non-existent stomach and I count to ten.
    Very. Slowly. Indeed.
    After we say our farewells at the stage door, Penny bounds up a narrow wooden staircase and leaves me to take a shortcut through the empty auditorium.
    A theatre without an audience is a strange place to be. People talk about ghosts and it’s easy to see why. There’s a strange musty smell, the dead air feels cold and clammy even on a summer’s day. The stalls of the Empire Theatre exude an air of faded elegance, like a badly made-up old lady clad in charity shop clothes.
    I hurry through double doors that lead into fluorescent light and over-heated air and run into Paul, the stage door manager.
    ‘Morning chucky egg,’ he laughs. ‘Where are you going in such a rush?’
    Paul is a real darling and reminds me of Dad with his twinkly eyes and wicked sense of humour.
    ‘How was your Christmas?’ he says.
    ‘Quiet. What about you?’
    ‘Maureen talked me into a week in Tenerife. It was bloody awful. You don’t want to be eating turkey in flip flops .’ He puts down the box he’s been carrying. ‘So what’s all this about the party. Everyone’s talking about it.’
    ‘By it do you mean me?’
    Paul nods and I feel my face glow.
    ‘You let them have their fun,’ he says. ‘They’ll soon forget about it. I’m sure Mr. Hawkins enjoyed it. Not sure about Mrs. Hawkins, though.’
    He’s the second person to mention Audrey Hawkins. What does he know that I don’t?

    When I manage to log onto my computer, crank up email and click on the first inevitable link to party photos, I see what both Paul and Penny mean. There I am, sat on Brian’s knee, skirt hitched up to my thighs, laughing like a fishwife and holding what looks like a pint of vodka. Someone - I assume it was me - has covered Brian in lipstick and I’m wearing his tie. My other hand has found its way into his shirt. Behind him, giving me the look of death stands Audrey.
    I am so fired.
    Audrey doesn’t work at the Empire, but it is widely accepted Brian never promotes hires or fires anyone without her say so. He’s a lovely guy. In his mid forties and still good looking - tall, lean, built like a footballer who shunned the party life to spend match-day evenings doing press-ups. He’s still got a full head of hair, greying slightly at the temples, which makes him look distinguished rather than old.
    Unfortunately, Brian is very much under the thumb. At any after show party, it’s Audrey who polices the door and the open bar. When there are interviews, it’s an open secret that Audrey first scans and rejects CVs. Women under 25 with long legs and blonde hair tend not to get past the first stages.
    My phone rings - Brian’s secretary Nina.
    ‘Brian wonders if you could pop by and discuss the sales figures for the panto. He’s a bit concerned about the mid week matinées from week three onwards. Are you free now?’
    ‘I suppose so,’ I say and glance at the time, barely ten o’clock. He isn’t hanging