Somebody to Love: Sigh With Contentment, Scream With Frustration. At Time You Will Weep. by Sheryl Browne Page A

probably best done and discussed in your own time, Donna, don’t you think?’ She shot Donna a meaningful glance, which translated read: You’re on thin ice. Watch your step.
    ‘Bitch,’ Simon mouthed to Donna, followed by, ‘Sorry, Dons.’
    Donna smiled wanly. Oh, dear, looked as if her card was well and truly marked. She could type until she’d worn her fingernails up to her elbows, but Jean, she suspected, wasn’t about to write her a glowing reference to back up her application for training.
    ****
    Donna was walking back from the train station with Alicia when she saw him. Alicia had decided retail therapy was called for after Donna’s traumatic events with her car. So they’d met up along with Matt in Worcester and shopped until they were ready to drop. Matt had got his new ice-cool trainers, and then headed back home to bathe in aftershave and make himself into a babe magnet for the nightclub.
    Alicia had purchased the entire Next new season collection, and Donna had splurged the birthday money their mum had given her on a new, slightly risqué bra and panty set, and was now blanching at the thought of Mark possibly seeing her in it.
    What had she been thinking, allowing Alicia to talk her into showing off her assets? She hadn’t got any assets. Alicia had been first in that filial queue. And whilst the lacy lingerie might adequately cover her ‘bits’, they wouldn’t be covering her more embarrassing bits. The only hope she had of that would be to wear pyjamas buttoned up to her skull.
    ‘Donna, did you know there’s a policeman outside your house?’ Alicia interrupted her ponderings, nodding over her two-year-old son Jack’s pushchair as she clacked alongside Donna in peep-toe ankle boots.
    ‘Um, yes, actually,’ Donna said casually, though her heart did a little Highland fling in her chest. He’d come, after all. She was so pleased, she forgot to be peeved that Matt might still have been in and seen him. ‘Well, sort of,’ she added with a nonchalant shrug, as if good-looking coppers beating a path to her door was an everyday occurrence.
    Alicia stopped in her tracks, one eyebrow arched curiously. ‘Donna O’Connor, you dark horse, you. That’s him, isn’t it, your sex-toy-in-blue?’
    ‘Alicia! Shush!’
    ‘Oh, he can’t hear me from here. So, tell me,’ Alicia went on, pushing her chocolate-coated toddler purposefully onwards. ‘How many marks out of ten?’
    ‘Alicia!’
    ‘Nine and a half, I bet. Oh, honey, I can see what the attraction is, apart from the uniform, of course.’ She waggled her eyebrows and clacked on. ‘ He is hot .’
    So was Donna. Her cheeks must look like a set of blooming brake lights. ‘Alicia, shut up,’ she hissed, glancing down at her passé trainers. ‘He will hear in a minute, and then he’ll know we’ve been talking about him.’
    ‘What’s not to talk about?’ Alicia looked Mark appreciatively over. ‘If I were you, I couldn’t not talk about him. I certainly wouldn’t be keeping him under wraps.’
    Alicia stopped again, flicking back her naturally sun-flecked golden tresses as Mark stepped back from Donna’s front door to glance in their direction.
    ‘Definitely hot,’ Alicia said out of the side of her mouth, then flashed him an ultra-white smile.
    ‘Yes,’ Donna said, trying to fix her own smile in place, but feeling like an ugly duckling next to a swan in Alicia’s presence. Pluck and preen as much as she might, Donna could never hope to compete for a man’s attention side-by-side with her sister. She sighed and tried not to mind that Mark would be bound to look at Alicia and like what he saw.
    ‘Hi,’ Donna greeted him as he walked towards them. He was quite hot, now she came to think about it. Not that she had, more than once… or thrice.
    ‘Hi,’ he said, stopping a step away, his mouth curving into his lovely smile and a breath-taking twinkle in his eyes… which were fixed firmly on Donna.
    She waited for them to