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Contents ( 28)
  1. SHOPAHOLIC TO THE STARS
  2. Sophie Kinsella
  3. ONE
  4. TWO
  5. THREE
  6. FOUR
  7. FIVE
  8. SIX
  9. SEVEN
  10. The Missouri Echo
  11. EIGHT
  12. NINE
  13. TEN
  14. ELEVEN
  15. TWELVE
  16. THIRTEEN
  17. FOURTEEN
  18. FIFTEEN
  19. SIXTEEN
  20. SEVENTEEN
  21. EIGHTEEN
  22. NINETEEN
  23. TWENTY
  24. TWENTY-ONE
  25. TWENTY-TWO
  26. TWENTY-THREE
  27. THE SHOPAHOLIC SERIES
  28. OTHER BOOKS

‘Well.’ I pause for effect. ‘I’m on Sage Seymour’s team.’

‘Wow.’ Her jaw drops, and I feel a spurt of glee. It’s true! I, Becky Brandon (née Bloomwood), am running in the team of a top movie star! We’ll do calf stretches together! We’ll wear matching baseball caps! We’ll be in US Weekly!

‘You’re British, right?’ Mindy interrupts my thoughts.

‘Yes, but I’m moving to LA soon. I’m out here to look at houses with my husband, Luke. He has a PR company and he works with Sage Seymour,’ I can’t help adding proudly.

Mindy looks more and more impressed.

‘So are you and Sage Seymour, like, friends?’

I fiddle with my purse, delaying my reply. The truth is, despite all my hopes, Sage Seymour and I aren’t exactly friends. In fact, the real truth is, I still haven’t met her. Which is so unfair. Luke’s been working with her for ages, and I’ve already been out to LA once for a job interview, and now I’m out here again, finding a house and a pre-school for our daughter, Minnie … but have I even glimpsed Sage?

When Luke said he was going to work with Sage Seymour and we were going to move to Hollywood, I thought we’d be seeing her every day. I thought we’d be hanging out by her pink pool in matching sunglasses and going for mani-pedis together. But even Luke hardly ever seems to see her, he just has meetings with managers and agents and producers all day long. He says he’s learning the movie business and it’s a steep learning curve. Which is fair enough, because previously, he’s only advised financial companies and big conglomerates. But does he have to be so resolutely non-starry-eyed? When I got a tiny bit frustrated the other day, he said, ‘For God’s sake, Becky, we’re not making this huge move just to meet celebrities.’ He said celebrities like he was saying earwigs. He understands nothing.

The great thing about Luke and me is that we think alike on nearly everything in life and that’s why we’re so happily married. But we have just a few, teeny points of disagreement. Such as:

  1. Catalogues. (They are not ‘clutter’. They’re useful. You never know when you might need a personalized kitchen blackboard with a dinky little bucket for the chalk. Plus I like reading them at bedtime.)
  2. Shoes. (Keeping all my shoes in their original boxes for ever is not ridiculous, it’s thrifty. They’ll come back into fashion one day and then Minnie can wear them. And meanwhile he should look where he’s stepping.)
  3. Elinor, his mother. (Long, long story.)
  4. Celebrities.

I mean, here we are in LA. The home of celebrities. They’re the local natural phenomenon. Everyone knows you come to LA to see the celebrities, like you go to Sri Lanka to see the elephants.

But Luke didn’t gasp when we saw Tom Hanks in the lobby of the Beverly Wilshire. He didn’t blink when Halle Berry was sitting three tables away at The Ivy (I think it was Halle Berry). He didn’t even get excited when we saw Reese Witherspoon across the road. (I’m sure it was Reese Witherspoon. She had exactly the same hair.)