Copyright © 2013 Penny Vincenzi

The right of Penny Vincenzi to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publishers or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.

First published as an Ebook by Headline Publishing Group in 2013

All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library

E-pub conversion by Avon DataSet Ltd, Bidford-on-Avon, Warwickshire

eISBN: 978 0 7553 9957 4

HEADLINE PUBLISHING GROUP
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Penny Vincenzi is one of the UK’s best-loved and most popular authors. Since her first novel, Old Sins, was published in 1989, she has written fifteen bestselling novels, most recently The Decision and the number one bestsellers The Best of Times and An Absolute Scandal.

Her first ‘proper’ job was at the Harrods Library, aged sixteen, after which she went to secretarial college. She joined the Mirror and later became a journalist, writing for The Times, the Daily Mail and Cosmopolitan amongst many others, before turning to fiction. Several years later, over seven million copies of Penny’s books ahve been sold worldwide and she is universally held to be the ‘doyenne of the modern blockbuster’ (Glamour).

Penny Vencenzi has four daughters, and divides her time between London and Gower, South Wales.

Praise for Penny Vincenzi:

‘Teeming with memorable characters, this is pure pleasure, Vincenzi-style’ Woman & Home

‘Glamorous, weepy, indulgent and at times heartbreaking. Oh, and it has some racy bits, too. Hooray!’ Heat

‘Romps glamorously along, is very well-written and there’s plenty of ceiling-hitting sex and good characters. What more could anyone want? . . . I enjoyed it hugely’ Daily Mail

‘This spectacular novel is utterly captivating’ Closer

‘There are a few things better in life than the knowledge that sitting on your bedside table is the latest novel by Penny Vincenzi’ Daily Express

‘There’s one name that continues to reign supreme, Penny Vincenzi’ Glamour

‘A very involving read, perfect for a lazy rainy afternoon’ Woman

‘A big, fat autumn read, packed with glamour and high drama’ Choice

Also by Penny Vincenzi and available from Headline Review:

Old Sins

Wicked Pleasures

An Outrageous Affair

Another Woman

Forbidden Places

The Dilemma

The Glimpses (short stories)

Windfall

Almost a Crime

No Angel

Something Dangerous

Into Temptation

Sheer Abandon

An Absolute Scandal

The Best of Times

The Decision

Love in the Afternoon and Other Delights (short stories)

About the Book

Absorbing, compelling and fizzing with a delicious cast of characters, Love in the Afternoon and Other Delights is a stunning collection of Penny Vincenzi’s short stories, brought together in a single edition for the first time alongside snippets from her other writing and journalism.

Connecting the stories is the theme of love, and all the heady emotions which follow in its wake – hope, heartbreak and desire. A separated husband and wife rediscover their delight in one another – despite the fact that each is now partnered with somebody else. A young couple’s fiery marriage comes perilously close to disaster, and a feud over a missing brooch separates two sisters for over a decade. With each story Penny Vincenzi explores the passions, jealousies, flirtations, truths and lies that bring lovers and families together, and can tear them apart.

For Daughters One, Two, Three and Four. With much love.

It’s really rather nice to be publishing my short stories all in one piece; I’ve written them pretty sporadically over the years, when I’m asked by sundry magazines and newspapers. I read them when they come out, file them away (which means putting them in an enormous cardboard box in my study labelled ‘Short Stories’) and forget about them. So not a particularly tidy process.

And here they are, neatly got together, bringing back (in some cases quite vividly) the occasion or time that inspired them: a particular Mother’s Day, perhaps, or a Christmas party, or a visit to New York.

‘The Glimpses’ was the first fiction I ever wrote, and it was a bit like discovering you can ride a bicycle: a few bumps and scrapes, a lot of falls and thinking you’ll never manage it, and then suddenly, oh my goodness, you’re flying along and you can’t quite believe it. So that is my special favourite.

‘The Brooch’ was inspired by a real brooch, exactly as described in the story, which sat on my grandmother’s rather ample bosom while she read to me. I loved and wanted that brooch so much, but of course was never allowed even to hold it. It was part of my childhood, and it seemed to me something that deserved a story of its own.

‘Baby Knows Best’ was sparked off by my own experiences as a mother and grandmother, discovering over and over again that babies have a mind of their own and there is very little you can do about it.

‘The Best Table’ started out as a true story, with a trip to New York and the Hamptons, and a chance meeting with a very charming chap on the Hampton Jitney, the bus that goes out from Manhattan on Saturday mornings, bearing lots of rich, well-dressed weekenders. I suddenly felt I was living out a romantic comedy which deserved a better twist than the real-life one, which wasn’t a twist at all, just a nice weekend.

And so on.

The thing about writing short stories is that they do need a twist, and a neat one at that. You can’t just ramble on; there has to be a beginning, and a middle, and then quite a swift end, which must surprise and intrigue. So just because they’re short doesn’t mean they’re easy to write; rather the reverse. But I do love doing them – occasionally – as they require a rather different approach. Normally I don’t have the faintest idea what’s going to happen at the end of my books, or even halfway through; I simply follow my characters and see what they get up to. That’s a bit of an understatement, and makes it sound quite a lot easier than it is, but it is nonetheless true.

With a short story, I really do know what’s going to happen, no room for surprises. It’s not how I like to write all the time – I’d find it quite boring – but occasionally – well, it’s a bit like having a difficult workout at the gym: I feel challenged and rather pleased with myself when I’ve managed it.

As for the articles, well, I’m still really a journalist at heart. If somebody woke me up at two in the morning and asked me before I was properly awake what I did for a living, I’d probably say journalist, rather than novelist. Newspaper ink runs in my veins, as they say. When I reread my piece about Marjorie Proops, the famous agony aunt, once my boss at the Daily Mirror, I find myself right back there, sitting in that noisy newsroom, thick with cigarette smoke as it was then, and the incredible clatter of typewriters.

Journalism still seems to me the best job in the world, and amazingly privileged: you can meet people you’d never meet in the normal course of events, anyone you put your mind to really; go to places you’d never go, see things you’d never see.

It’s also very nice the way I do it now, sitting peacefully at home, thinking on the page, rather than having to write a thousand words in half an hour, with a subeditor standing over me, his hand literally held out for the paper as it emerges from the typewriter. It’s extremely self-indulgent this way, penning opinions, as in the piece about being a mother, dragging humour out of situations, as in my experiences of ‘Getting Older’, or simply answering questions about my favourite books. Not really proper journalism at all, I suppose, but always nice to be asked to do it, and to have it done and dusted in half a day rather than the two years each book takes.

It’s all writing, of course, but it’s all very different. Being able to write fiction doesn’t mean you can write articles about people, for instance. But it’s a bit like playing the piano and the violin: doing one doesn’t mean you can go straight into the other if you’ve never done it before, but you’re off to a head start. You can read music, and you know what a note should sound like; the rest is practice.

I do hope you’re going to enjoy the results here of an awful lot of practice!