Best Supporting Role

BEST SUPPORTING ROLE

“Delightfully funny, deliciously naughty, and compulsively readable. I’ll never wear the wrong size bra again!”

—Susie Essman, actress,
Curb Your Enthusiasm
, and author of
What Would Susie Say?

A CATERED AFFAIR

“Wickedly funny. . . . I laughed until I hurt while reading
A Catered Affair
. It’s a delightful romp with a theme lots of women can empathize with, but it’s got a lovely message, too.”

—Popcorn Reads

“A guilty pleasure . . . bawdy and fun.”

—The Romance Reader

“British chick lit at its finest. Sharp-witted humor with warm, breathing characters . . . [a] unique love story.”

—
RT Book Reviews

“A romping-good English chick lit tale that will keep the reader in stitches.”

—
Booklist

PERFECT BLEND

“A fun story full of an eccentric cast of characters. . . . Amy is an endearing heroine.”

—
News and Sentinel
(Parkersburg, WV)

“Laugh-out-loud funny, passionate, sexy, mysterious, and truly unexpected. Sue Margolis has created the ‘perfect blend’ of characters, romance, and mystery. Read it!”

—Romance Junkies

“A fun, sassy read. . . . The romance blooms and the sex sizzles. This is a hilarious and engaging tale. Sue Margolis has whipped up a winner.”

—Romance Reviews Today

FORGET ME KNOT

“A perfect beach read, with a warm heroine.”

—
News and Sentinel
(Parkersburg, WV)

“Amusing . . . the story line is fun and breezy.”

—Genre Go Round Reviews

“A wonderful glimpse into British life with humor and a unique sense of style. . . . If you’re looking for a lighthearted romance with original characters and lots of fun, look no further. . . . This is one British author that I’m glad made it across the pond, and I will definitely be looking for more of her books.”

—Night Owl Romance

“[A] sexy British romp. . . . Margolis’s characters have a candor and self-deprecation that lead to furiously funny moments . . . a riotous, ribald escapade sure to leave readers chuckling to the very end of this saucy adventure.”

—
USA Today

“[Margolis’s] language . . . is fresh and original. . . . [This] is a fast, fun read.”

—
Chicago Sun-Times

“Another laugh-out-loud funny, occasionally clever, and perfectly polished charmer.”

—
Contra Costa Times

“Has something for everyone—humor, good dialogue, hot love scenes, and lots of dilemmas.”

—
Rendezvous

“A perfect lunchtime book or, better yet, a book for those days at the beach.”

—Romance Reviews Today

“Margolis has produced yet another jazzy cousin to Bridget Jones.”

—
Publishers Weekly

“A comic, breezy winner from popular and sexy Margolis.”

—
Booklist

“An engaging tale.”

—
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

“Quick in pace and often very funny.”

—
Kirkus Reviews

“[An] irreverent, sharp-witted look at love and dating.”

—
Houston Chronicle

“A funny, sexy British romp. . . . Margolis is able to keep the witty one-liners spraying like bullets.”

—
Library Journal

“[A] cheeky comic novel—a kind of
Bridget Jones’s Diary
for the matrimonial set . . . wickedly funny.”

—
People
(Beach Book of the Week)

“[A] splashy romp . . . giggles guaranteed.”

—
New York Daily News

“A good book to take to the beach . . . fast-paced and, at times, hilarious.”

—
Boston’s Weekly Digest Magazine

“Scenes that literally will make your chin drop with shock before you erupt with laughter . . . a fast and furiously funny read.”

—
The Cleveland Plain Dealer

Neurotica

Spin Cycle

Apocalipstick

Breakfast at Stephanie’s

Original Cyn

Gucci Gucci Coo

Forget Me Knot

Perfect Blend

A Catered Affair

Coming Clean

New American Library

Published by the Penguin Group

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First published by New American Library,

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Copyright © Sue Margolis, 2014

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LIBRARY OF C
ONGRESS CATALOGING-I
N-PUBLICATION DATA:

Margolis, Sue.

Best supporting role/Sue Margolis.

pages cm

ISBN 978-1-101-61760-1

1. Widows—Fiction. 2. Businesswomen—Fiction 3. Man-woman relationships—Fiction. I. Title.

PR6063.A635B48 2014

823'.914—dc23 2014000826

PUBLISHER’S NOTE

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

For Dalia . . .
one of the chapter books that Grandma wrote in the olden
days

B
arbara, the addiction counselor, took off her spectacles, brought one of the tortoiseshell arms to her lips and looked carefully at my husband. “Well, Mike, after what you’ve told me, I think there’s a good chance that I can help you with your gambling problem.”

Mike grinned. “So what are you saying? That there’s an even chance? Less than even? Don’t suppose you’d care to make it interesting . . .”

Barbara winced. I sat shaking my head. “I can’t believe you just said that. Jesus Christ, Mike, we’re about to lose the house because of your gambling. Do you mind telling me when you’re going to stop making pathetic jokes and start facing up to what you’ve done—to the misery you’ve caused?”

Eight years I’d been married to Mike. He’d been gambling for six of them. Only now that I was threatening to leave him and take the kids with me had he agreed to get help.

He looked down at his hands.

“I am facing up to it. I make jokes because that’s what I do. I don’t know how else to cope.”

Mike had always been a comedian. It was what attracted me to
him. That and the fact that he was six-three and built like a tank—only more cuddly. He said he fell for me because I looked like a Jewish princess. He was quick to point out that he meant this in the sister of Moses, biblical sense and not in the JAP, plastic nose and boobs sense.

We met at the Red Cow in Shoreditch. I was with my flatmates Zoe and Belinda and the rest of our gang. We were celebrating Zoe’s thirtieth and watching Real Madrid massacre Manchester United in the European Cup. At halftime I went to fetch a round of drinks. Mike was propping up the bar with a mate, telling him how the night before he’d had this really horny dream about Kate Winslet.

“So of course you shagged her,” the mate said.

“Nah, she turned me down.”

“She turned you down—in your own erotic dream? How could you let that happen?”

“Dunno. I guess I didn’t hit her with my best stuff.”

The laughter burst out of me. Then I stopped. I mean, what if Mr. Gorgeous wasn’t joking and he really was some pathetic loser?

“See, that woman over there thinks it’s funny,” the mate said, nodding in my direction. “I told you it worked.”

I must have looked confused.

“We’re TV joke writers,” Mike said.

“Oh. Right.”

“
Aspiring
TV joke writers,” the mate corrected him. “As yet, we haven’t actually sold a single joke.”

Mike looked at me. “He’s such a miserable git. He thinks if success doesn’t happen instantly, it’ll never happen.”

“What d’you mean
instantly
? It’s been eighteen sodding months.”

“Well, that gag really worked,” I said, eyes fixed on Mike. “I think you could be about to have your first success.” He had dark stubble and messy, slept-on hair. The slogan on his T-shirt read:
The problem with real life is there’s no danger music
.

“I’m Sarah, by the way.”

“Mike . . . and this is Rob, a lapsed mathematician who lives with a transsexual cat. . . . So, can I buy you a drink?”

•   •   •

W
e started dating. Meanwhile, Mike and Rob sold the Kate Winslet joke to a radio sketch show, along with a couple of others. As the months went by, they even managed to sell a couple of entire sketches. The money was lousy, though. They earned nothing like enough to live on. Since neither of them could afford to sit it out until they hit the big time—and as Eeyore Rob kept reminding him, there was no guarantee that was ever going to happen—they quit. Mike swapped his T-shirts for sharp suits and went into advertising. Rob went back to researching patterns in probabilistic number theory.

Mike found the transition from joke writing to copy writing easy. Punch lines, taglines—the way he saw it, there wasn’t much in it. But becoming an adman didn’t sit well with him. He felt he should be contributing something to the world, not boosting the profits of the burger giants and soft-drink companies. The problem was, he was good at it. He eased his social conscience by working for agencies that took on pro bono work for charities.

Mike’s talent didn’t go unnoticed. It wasn’t long before the big
guns started coming after him. Once he was earning a decent salary, we got married. After a couple of years Dan arrived, followed by Ella.

The children were toddlers when Mike was headhunted by Althorp Baggot Tate. He quit his job and joined them as a senior copywriter. ABT was the highest-paying agency in London—and they did work for several children’s charities. He chose to ignore the fact that they also had the highest staff turnover of any agency in London. This was down to its chairman, advertising wunderkind Louis Liebowitz, operating a zero-tolerance policy towards imperfection. (There was no Althorp, Baggot or Tate. According to ABT legend, Liebowitz invented the names so that the company would sound less like a purveyor of kosher brisket.)

Liebowitz’s talent was undeniable. His career took off in the late eighties with his
Stub it out before it stubs you out
antismoking campaign, which was famously illustrated by a cigarette butt melting a man’s face, and it earned him a heap of plaudits and prizes. Thirty years later, Louis Liebowitz was still hailed as a creative colossus, but as a boss he was a tyrant.

A copywriter or creative director whose work didn’t cut it with LL was out. In the end, most people couldn’t handle living in constant fear and didn’t wait around to be sacked. Those who chose to hang on self-medicated with booze and class A drugs. Mike wasn’t really into drinking. He enjoyed going to the pub and having a few beers, but, like most Jews, he preferred food. He’d tried weed once, but it gave him palpitations.

He dealt with the stress by gambling—occasionally on the horses—mainly at the Golden Nugget in Leicester Square, never online. He said he enjoyed the company you got at the casino. I’d been
to the Golden Nugget once on a hen night. The place looked like it had been “interiored” by Liberace and Tutankhamen. It was full of tourists and groups of bombed businessmen, some of whom had gotten lucky and were draped over women in sparkly boob tubes. A few blokes sat at the roulette table, focused and alone, nursing drinks. The addicts, I assumed. Mike loved the so-tacky-it’s-cool atmosphere and called me a snob for sneering at it.

He never referred to his Golden Nugget activities as gambling. For him it was nothing more than a bit of lighthearted fun. Plus he was only going a couple of times a month and always with guys from the office. It was a harmless lads’ night out.

Back then he could afford to fund his “lads’ nights.” He was one of ABT’s rising stars. He’d even won a couple of awards. Ever wondered who was responsible for the Nike “Da Do Run Run” ads? His reward was a salary that ran well into six figures.

This meant that we’d had no trouble taking out a huge mortgage on a three-story Victorian fixer-upper overlooking one of the prettiest commons in London. The moment I set eyes on the house, I knew it was the one. It had marble fireplaces, original shutters at all the windows, coving and cornices galore. I couldn’t wait to get started on the renovations.

Because Mike was so busy, he was forced to take a step back from day-to-day decisions about the building work, but I was in my element. Giving up control wasn’t easy for him. On top of that, he wasn’t sure he trusted me. I’d majored in fashion rather than interior design at art school, but once I’d convinced him that I knew my fenestrations from my finials, he was happy to let me get on with it.

For months there was a cement mixer in the living room and we
were reduced to living in two bedrooms and washing the dishes in the bath.

Most mornings, having debriefed the builders and dropped the children at kindergarten, I would abandon the chaos for a couple of hours and meet up with some of the other mums for a latte, a gossip and a moan.

Project managing house renovations and small children wore me out, but I remember feeling happy and hopeful and excited about the future. With so much to occupy me, I barely gave a thought to Mike’s gambling.

•   •   •

T
hen he started going to the Golden Nugget more often—twice a week maybe. On his own. Now I was worried. I Googled “gambling addiction—signs.” Top of the list of things to look out for were emotional withdrawal, secrecy and lying. None of these applied to Mike. He was as loving as ever and always perfectly open about where he was going. Whenever I confronted him, his response was the same: “Sarah, lighten up. You’re overreacting. I’m totally in control. The Golden Nugget helps me unwind, that’s all. And so what if I lose a couple of hundred quid here and there? It’s not like we can’t afford it.”

Then he would take me in his arms. “You know, there are two things I adore about you. Sometimes I still can’t believe these are all for me.” By now his face would be buried in my breasts, aka Wilma and Betty.

“Behave, Mike. This is serious. You worry me.”

Then it occurred to me that maybe he was right. Maybe I was
being too hard on him. I knew that working for Liebowitz was like working for Hitler with low blood sugar. The casino was Mike’s outlet of choice. And there were so many good things about our life. A day never went by when my husband didn’t tell me he loved me. He still sent me sexy texts from work telling me what he wanted to do with me when he got home. On top of that, he was a loving, hands-on father. He adored Dan and Ella and they adored him back. Their giant bear of a dad would walk in each night, scoop them up, make mouth farts on their tummies and tell them how much he’d missed them. Daddy made everything OK. He made their world safe.

It was easy to feel safe in Mike’s arms. His bulk, his physical strength, made him seem invincible.

Much as I tried to back off, I couldn’t. I asked him again if he was gambling online as well, but he still denied it. He said that even when he went alone, he had a laugh at the Golden Nugget. By now he knew most of the people who worked there. He insisted that sneaking off with his laptop to the garden shed didn’t have quite the same appeal. He also made the point that he wasn’t coming home drunk or seeing other women. End of discussion.

Despite his assurances that he wasn’t cheating, I couldn’t help wondering if he was picking up the occasional boob-tube woman at the casino. I went through a stage of checking his texts and e-mails and going through his pockets, but his missives were either to me, his guy friends or work colleagues. His pockets were stuffed with gambling chips, betting slips and antacid tablets.

As Dan and Ella got older, they started missing him on the nights he wasn’t there to read them a bedtime story. I was quick to point this out to him. I felt bad, using the kids to guilt-trip him, but it
clearly hit a nerve. He did an instant about-turn. Suddenly he was getting back each night for bath time. The downside was, he brought work home with him. I would go to bed and leave him sitting at the kitchen table, staring into his laptop. Then one night, in the early hours, I came downstairs for a glass of water. Mike was in the loo. His laptop was lying open on the kitchen counter. He’d been playing online poker.

“So, how long has this been going on?” I said, arms folded under my bosom, like some old battle-axe.

“This is the first time.”

“Yeah, right.”

“I am not lying. I promise you, this is the first time.” Then he did what he always did and tried to schmooze me. “Come on,” he said, wrapping his arms around me. “This Procter and Gamble campaign is really stressing me out. Liebowitz is constantly on my case. If I can’t go to the casino ’cos you want me home each night, then this is all I’ve got.”

“So you’re saying this is my fault?”

He closed the lid on his laptop. “No, it’s not your fault, but the fact is I need an outlet.”

“Mike, has it ever occurred to you to get another job?”

“Where would I go? ABT is one of the top ad agencies in the world. They employ the most talented people. And over the years, I’ve become one of them. Yes, it’s stressful and yes, I have moral issues around advertising, but I need to keep stretching and challenging myself. I enjoy being at the top. It’s who I am.” He started nibbling my earlobe. “Tell you what—why don’t we go away for a few days? Just the two of us. What about Venice? I’ll see if I can get us into the Gritti Palace.”

“But that’s, like, a seven-star hotel.”

“So what? We can afford it.”

We did the usual touristy things, drank the best hot chocolate on the planet at Caffè Florian, people watched at Harry’s Bar, smooched in the back of a gondola. We ate and made love with equal passion. We also laughed. This was down to Mike’s repeated observation that in the whole of Venice, there didn’t appear to be a single venetian blind. One night, after a boozy dinner, he insisted we go on a venetian blind hunt.

We got back to London and for a while I stopped nagging him about the Golden Nugget.

But eventually, the worry and fear built up again. A pattern emerged. Every few months I would confront him and accuse him of being an addict and he would convince me that I was worrying about nothing. Then he would start kissing me. In between he’d say something daft like, “Do you think Satan had a last name?” Or “I tell you what’s a dangerous insect—that hepatitis bee.” I could never resist him for long. His ridiculous one-liners, the way he swallowed me up in his arms, convinced me that he would never let anything bad happen.

But he did. It started with my debit card being declined in stores. Then it was the ATM. More often than not, it spat back my card and laughed: “Two hundred quid? Yeah, right, lady. In your dreams.” On the few occasions the damn thing relented, I swear I could hear violins playing and bluebirds singing. I decided that the sweetest words in the English language were, “Your cash is being counted.”

Mike always had an excuse: a load of direct debits had left our account at the same time; his salary had been paid late that month.

Then I found a stack of unpaid bills. I’d been rooting around Mike’s desk looking for a stapler. There were a dozen or more—all unopened. Heart hammering, I gathered them up. It took me a full ten minutes to pluck up the courage to start opening the envelopes. Finally I ripped into them. The utilities companies were threatening to cut us off. The credit card companies were about to take us to court. The letter from a firm of bailiffs was particularly menacing. If we didn’t pay what we owed in thirty days, they would distrain on our goods and property.