Читать книгу: «Just Between Us», страница 3

Another red-headed angel with gold ribbons emerged from the playroom, where she’d obviously been painting herself with glitter glue. The twins weren’t identical but both had their mother’s wild red hair and her hazel eyes.

‘Go upstairs and use the bathroom; we’re going in a moment,’ Hazel said. ‘Wash your hands properly. I’ll be up in a moment to check.’

The children thundered upstairs for one final look at themselves in the mirror and a half-hearted bit of hand-washing, while Stella followed Hazel into the homely kitchen. Apart from her two sisters, Stella felt closer to Hazel than any of her other friends. Their lives were totally different, and Stella was thirty-eight to Hazel’s forty-five, but they shared the same dry sense of humour. Hazel understood her, Stella felt. Hazel never tried to set Stella up with men, or berated her for not going on dates. She understood, without being told, that Stella was perfectly happy with her life the way it was.

And if Hazel often thought that she’d love her closest friend to have someone special in her life, she kept the thought to herself.

‘Do I have time for a quick cup of tea?’ Stella asked, flicking the switch on the kettle. ‘I’ve been shopping and I’m shattered.’

‘Course, make me one too.’ Hazel rapidly chopped up the carrots and added them to an earthenware dish. ‘Buy anything nice?’

‘A pill box for my mother in Austyn’s. I’ve got everything now,’ Stella added with satisfaction. ‘I saw this couple buying the most incredible diamond ring: it was enormous. God knows what it cost, but Securicor would need to follow you around permanently if you bought it.’

‘Sounds like Hazel’s Christmas present,’ remarked Hazel’s husband, Ivan, as he closed the front door and walked into the kitchen. A tall, wiry man with laughing blue eyes, trendy tortoiseshell glasses and almost no hair at all, Ivan was a building society manager whose first love was his wife and their twins, followed by a lifelong passion for opera. Hazel sometimes grumbled that she was deaf from listening to ‘The Ring Cycle’ played at full volume, but Stella knew she didn’t really mind. She was just as mad about Ivan as he was about her. Affectionate teasing was the glue that held their marriage firmly in place.

‘You didn’t buy me another huge diamond, sweetie?’ inquired Hazel, turning her face up to her husband’s for a kiss. ‘I’ve run out of fingers!’

‘Sorry, yes.’ Ivan did his best to look penitent. ‘I’ll bring the ring back tomorrow and buy you a tasty red nylon negligee set instead. Any tea left in the pot?’

‘I want pink nylon, silly. You know I like my clothes to clash with my hair. Ooh, get the biscuits out, Ivan, while you’re at it,’ Hazel added, as he took a mug from the cupboard. ‘We won’t be back here before nine and you know school parties: if we get one soggy sausage roll between us, we’ll be lucky.’

Stella and Hazel watched as Ivan wolfed down five chocolate biscuits, while they forced themselves to eat only one plain one each.

‘How can you eat like that and not put on weight?’ Stella marvelled.

Ivan patted his concave stomach. ‘Superior genes,’ he mumbled with his mouth full.

Hazel took off her apron and threw it calmly at her husband. ‘Surely remarks like that are grounds for divorce?’ she said to Stella.

‘Don’t ask me: I’m not a family law specialist,’ Stella laughed, used to their banter. ‘I’m the property queen.’ She headed out of the kitchen, calling over her shoulder: ‘Fight amongst yourselves, I’m going to tart up quickly.’

In the small cloakroom under the stairs, Stella took out her brush and began tidying her hair. Although she stared at her reflection in the mirror, she didn’t really see herself. Instead, she thought about Ivan and Hazel, and the couple in the jewellers. Stella could live out the rest of her life quite happily without a knuckle-dusting diamond on her ring finger. You didn’t miss what you’d never had, as her mother often said. But it was possible to miss something you’d grown up with, even if it hadn’t been yours exactly. Stella had grown up with parents who adored each other. And she saw true love every day with Ivan and Hazel, who teased each other, had arguments about eardrum-splitting opera, and yet still each worshipped the ground the other walked on. Stella had spent years claiming that love was the last thing on her list, but occasionally, just occasionally, she wished it wasn’t.

She came back into the room two minutes later with her cloud of hair swinging from the vigorous brushing she’d given it.

Hazel smiled affectionately at her friend. Stella never bothered with too much make-up either. But then, the difference between them, Hazel knew, was that Stella didn’t need it. The huge dark eyes framed by thick lashes dominated her oval face, giving her the serene look of some medieval Madonna, patiently waiting to have her portrait painted. Dark brows winged out in perfect arches above her deep-set eyes. Her straight nose didn’t need any careful shading and her creamy skin was good enough to manage without all but a hint of base, which should have made Hazel madly envious. Her skin was freckled, red-tinged and needed buckets of concealer. Not that it got it.

Stella had the sort of fine-boned elegance that Hazel, a great admirer of beauty, appreciated, with tiny ankles and wrists which she said she’d inherited from her mother. But Hazel loved Stella far too much to feel jealous of her. Instead, she took pride in her friend’s beauty and despaired of Stella ever knowing how lovely she was.

Tonight, Stella had painted her mouth a surprising crimson that matched the rich colour of her satin shirt. She rarely wore such vivid colours and she looked fabulous.

‘Get you, missus,’ Hazel said.

‘Do you think the lipstick’s too much?’ Stella asked. ‘I bought it today but maybe it’s overdoing it a bit…’

‘It’s lovely, really sexy,’ Hazel insisted. ‘I don’t know why you don’t wear red lippie more often.’

‘School parties aren’t the right occasions for “sexy”,’ Stella pointed out. ‘Remember last year?’

At the previous Christmas play, the children’s teacher had worn a flirty little sequinned dress in honour of the occasion, and had been shocked to be on the receiving end of a jealous outburst from one mother whose husband had a roving eye. Both Stella and Hazel had felt very sorry for sweet, enthusiastic Miss Palmer, a newly qualified teacher, who’d thought she was doing the right thing by wearing her best clubbing outfit. Dancing energetically with the children at the party, Miss Palmer had almost bounced out of her dress, making her very popular with the fathers and not so popular with some of the mothers.

‘Simple dress code disaster,’ Hazel agreed. ‘But there’s a difference between a bit of red lipstick and a va-va-voom sequinned dress.’ She eyed Stella’s grey suit. ‘Unless you’re planning to rip that off and sing “Jingle Bells” in your knickers?’

‘How did you guess?’ Stella said deadpan.

‘What was wrong with Miss Palmer’s dress, anyhow?’ demanded Ivan, who was only half-listening to the conversation. ‘I don’t know why that stupid woman had a go at her. The poor girl looked nice. It’s a free country, she can wear what she wants.’

Hazel shot Stella a look that spoke volumes.

Stella tried to explain. ‘It was the right dress on the wrong occasion,’ she said patiently. ‘Imagine if I was going to a party here, for example, and a party at Henry Lawson, the senior partner’s house. I couldn’t wear the same thing.’

‘Why ever not?’ demanded Ivan.

Hazel interrupted. ‘Because if Stella turned up at Henry Lawson’s house wearing a PVC catsuit, Henry would have a coronary and his wife would have one too, from pure rage because she’d be firmly convinced that Stella was a harlot who was after her man.’

‘I blame those magazine articles telling women how high the chances are of their husbands having it off with someone he works with,’ Stella said. ‘They’re convinced the office is one big extramarital dating agency where everyone pants with lust. If you’re not married, all the wives think you must be after their husbands.’

‘Which is hilarious if you look at most of the husbands,’ remarked Hazel, who had met Henry at Stella’s office. Charming and friendly he might be, but he wasn’t hunk material.

Stella grinned. ‘I’d love to know what sort of offices they do that kind of research in because, clearly, I’ve been working in the wrong places all these years. Honestly, if I get a spare moment these days, it’s all I can do to rush out to the loo or grab a cup of tea. Chasing the senior partners round their desks would be very far down the list of must-do tasks.’

‘Surely not?’ Hazel teased. ‘There’s something about the way Henry’s belly swells majestically over his waistband…I find him devastating in a sea lion sort of way.’

‘You can have him, then,’ Stella said kindly.

‘I didn’t know you had a PVC catsuit, Stel,’ Ivan interrupted eagerly. ‘Could Hazel borrow it?’

‘I’ll drop it over tomorrow,’ Stella said drily.

They were still laughing a couple of minutes later when both families piled into Hazel’s space wagon. Sitting in the back with the children, Stella made sure they were all firmly strapped in and was putting her own seatbelt on when she felt a small cold hand sliding into hers. Amelia looked up at her mother, her face scared and pale in the gleam of the street lights. Stella put her arm round her daughter’s shoulders and nuzzled close until she could feel the fake fur of Amelia’s anorak hood tickling her face. ‘You’re going to be wonderful, love,’ she whispered. ‘You’ve practised loads of times and you know it off backwards.’

‘What if I forget?’ said Amelia in a hollow voice.

‘You won’t forget,’ Stella encouraged. ‘You’re far too clever for that. I know that you know all the words and you’re going to be brilliant, and mummies are always right, aren’t they?’

Amelia nodded at the logic of this and snuggled closely to her mother for the rest of the journey.

Benton Junior School was blazing with light when they arrived, and there was a line of cars ahead of them as parents pulled up outside the doors to disgorge angels, shepherds, wise men and a few farmyard animals.

‘That’s not a real sheep, is it?’ asked Ivan as they watched a white woolly animal bounce from a car and proceed to lift its leg on the headmistress’s prized box tree which was covered with festive golden ribbons.

‘That’s Mrs Maloney’s dog,’ said Shona. ‘It was in for the rehearsal yesterday. It weed on the stage.’

The children giggled.

‘I hope you don’t have to kneel in the wet bits,’ Ivan said solemnly.

‘Uuuughh,’ the girls shrieked.

‘But you probably will,’ he continued, ‘and you’ll be wet and smelly, and you won’t be able to get back in the car but you’ll have to run home in your angel clothes in the dark, all smelly and wet and yucky…’

Laughing and giggling over wet knees meant that by the time the space wagon reached the door, all performance nerves had gone and Amelia, Shona and Becky were eager to rush in to where scores of children were charging around, squealing at the tops of their voices. Some had glitter on their faces, while others had big Groucho Marx moustaches drawn on. Wings got stuck to other wings and there were several clusters of children yelling as Mrs Maloney, the worn-out music teacher, tried to unattach them. The noise level was pounding, despite the presence of three teachers and several harassed parents.

‘Whatever they pay teachers, it’s not enough,’ Ivan said heavily as he went off to park the car.

‘Where will you be sitting, Mummy?’ asked Amelia, suddenly anxious again and clutching tightly onto her mother’s hand now that they were in the middle of the excited crowd. ‘I want to be able to see you.’

‘Big hug,’ said Stella, crouching down. She held Amelia tightly, breathing in her fresh smells of shampoo and crayons. ‘I’ll wave to you when you come in so you can see me, I’ll be as near the front as I can, I promise.’

‘Promise?’

‘Cross my heart,’ Stella said gravely.

‘Quiet children!’ boomed a voice and the noise miraculously ceased. Mrs Sanders, the headmistress, had a commanding presence and when she spoke, people hopped to do her bidding. Suddenly, the angels were whisked away into a classroom for a final wing inspection, the shepherds were sent to the cloakrooms for one last pre-show visit, and the parents were told that everything was under control and would they please take their seats.

The hall was almost as noisy as the lobby had been, full of chattering parents and screaming little brothers and sisters who wanted to rush around and fight with other children. Hazel and Stella squeezed into seats halfway down and waited.

‘I wonder does Gwyneth Paltrow’s mother feel as nervous as this before a show?’ Stella said, twisting her handbag strap between shaky fingers.

‘Probably not. Don’t worry, they’re going to be fine,’ Hazel said. ‘They’re all word perfect. My only worry is that Becky will have a row with someone and hit them over the head with her tambourine. She’s so headstrong.’

‘It’s just a phase she’s going through,’ Stella tried to sound comforting.

‘She’s been going through that phase since she was a toddler,’ Hazel sighed. ‘If she’s like this at seven, imagine what she’ll be like when she’s a teenager. You do not know how lucky you are with Amelia; that child is so good. She puts Becky to shame.’

‘Shove up and make room, girls.’ It was Ivan, shivering from the cold.

Stella moved up a seat and tried to take her mind off her nerves by looking around.

She wasn’t the only single parent there, which was a relief, although there seemed to be more couples than normal. There were quite a few lone parents with children in Amelia’s class but, as it was Christmas, huge efforts had been made and people who usually only screamed at each other over the phone now sat side by side in icy silence for the sake of their children. Stella didn’t miss Glenn for her own sake but on occasions like this, she wondered how much Amelia’s heart ached for her dad.

‘OK?’ asked Hazel, giving her arm a squeeze. ‘You’re not getting the divorced Mummy guilts again, I hope?’

Dear Hazel. She was so perceptive, Stella thought fondly. She shook her head. ‘I’m fine, honestly.’

With a fanfare of trumpets from the school’s CD player, the performance began. It started with the babies of the school who trailed on nervously and all started to sing ‘Jingle Bells’ loudly and in different keys. With the school piano banging out tunes, and the various teachers in the wings urging their pupils on, the performers sang, giggled, sobbed and in one case, screamed their little hearts out. There was one dangerous moment when it looked as if the stable might collapse on top of the Baby Jesus, played by Tiny Tears in an elderly christening robe, but Mrs Sanders leapt onstage in time and pulled the stable backwards, averting the crisis. From halfway down the hall, it was hard to see. Parents kept hopping up and down in their seats to take photos and video footage and Stella was afraid she’d miss seeing Amelia. But when the angels crowded onto the stage, she immediately saw her daughter standing nervously between the beaming twins, and stood up and waved wildly at her. Please see me, she prayed silently as she waved.

‘Sit down,’ hissed someone behind her but Stella ignored the voice and kept waving.

Under her angel halo, Amelia’s expression was tense as she stared out at the unfamiliar sea of faces, the lights shining so brightly on the stage that she couldn’t see anything properly…and then suddenly she saw her mother’s frantic waving and everything was all right. Mummy was watching, Mummy was there. A huge smile lit up her little face. She looked at Miss Dennis who was at the front of the stage, ready to encourage her class to sing.

‘Ready children?’ said Miss Dennis.

Class 5 nodded earnestly and waited, eyes wide with anticipation, for their music to begin before launching into ‘Silent Night’ as they’d never sung it before.

All around the hall, parents went ‘aah’ and clutched each other’s hands with pride.

Stella felt the tears clouding her eyes as she watched Amelia singing her little heart out. With her big eyes shining like candles, Amelia was the picture of a Botticelli angel. Stella knew she wasn’t being biased – Amelia was the prettiest child there, for sure. And the most wonderful.

‘Aren’t they fantastic, Hazel,’ she said tearfully to her friend.

‘And the dog hasn’t peed on the stage yet,’ Hazel remarked.

Stella giggled but never took her eyes off Amelia. She was so very lucky. This mother-love, this was real love. The other sort of love, for a man, just couldn’t compete.

CHAPTER THREE

Four days later, Stella’s sister, Tara Miller, deeply in love with her husband of six months and deeply nervous about the awards ceremony she was attending, stood in the ladies’ room of the ultra posh Manon Hotel and hoisted up her dress for about the tenth time that evening. The problem with wearing a strapless evening gown and boob-enhancing plastic falsies – ‘chicken fillets’ to the initiated – meant that only industrial adhesive could keep everything in place. Toupee tape didn’t have a hope. The ladies’ cloakroom at the National Television & Radio Awards was full of famous TV stars, and was not the ideal place for major body repairs; however, Tara had no option but to reach down the front of her silver dress and manhandle each fillet up. ‘Built-in bra, my backside,’ she muttered at her reflection as she wriggled, hoping everything would fall into place in a vaguely booblike shape.

‘Ooh, Tara,’ cooed Sherry DaVinci, floating into view from one of the cubicles, ‘that dress is lovely.’

‘Thanks,’ said Tara faintly, as Sherry squeezed in beside her and unpacked half the Mac range from her Louis Vuitton evening purse. Tara could see why the casting director had been so keen to get Sherry DaVinci to play a sexpot hospital receptionist in the hit television soap opera, National Hospital. And it was nothing to do with Sherry’s acting ability.

Shoehorned into a clinging, gold, sequinned mini dress, Sherry was a porn-fan’s dream, her ample breasts sitting perkily under her chin like two tanned melon halves that threatened to escape at any moment. She didn’t need chicken fillets, Tara thought ruefully, comparing Sherry’s buxomness with her own flat chest.

‘Hi, Sherry,’ said a fellow soap beauty, smiling at Sherry in passing and ignoring Tara.

Feeling invisible, Tara wondered why the beautiful people weren’t given their own loos at glitzy events, so that ordinary, non-beautiful people didn’t have to face the perfection of the ‘talent’ when they were fixing their tights, rearranging falsies and painting gloss on thin lips. Not, Tara reflected, that Sherry was what you’d call talented. But she pulled in the viewers and she was a sweet girl. Her limitations only became obvious when you were a script writer trying to write lines she wouldn’t screw up. As a storyline editor and one of the team of contributing writers on National Hospital, Tara spent a lot of time writing lines which Sherry then delivered with all the élan of the postman delivering a credit card bill. Which all went to prove that looks weren’t everything, as Isadora, Tara’s colleague, muttered bitchily every time Sherry fluffed her lines.

Feeling as if she’d better make an effort, Tara investigated the contents of her handbag (black satin, borrowed, no visible logo). Underneath her mobile phone and a notebook and pen in case she had any brilliant ideas for the love triangle storyline she was working on, was a red lipstick, a very elderly concealer and her glasses case.

There had been a pair of tights in there for emergencies but she’d had to break them out after the smoked salmon starter when her watch had twanged a thread on her existing pair.

‘Do you want a lend of anything?’ asked Sherry, concentrating on applying eyeliner with a professional’s touch. She was expertly using a tiny angled brush, Tara saw.

‘Er, no thanks,’ Tara said. She slicked on a speedy coat of lipstick, and looked critically at herself to inspect the effect. Standing beside Sherry was a mistake. Tara was straight as an ironing board while Sherry was all glowing curves with sparkling gold dust on her silken skin.

Sometimes Tara wondered, in an idle sort of way, what it would be like to be beautiful rather than clever. Her mother, Rose, was beautiful, still beautiful, even in her late fifties. The family teased her about how the Kinvarra postman was besotted with her and how he nearly crashed the post van whenever she appeared. And Stella, her elder sister, was stunning too, with melting dark eyes and a serene, smiling face that made people gravitate towards her. And Holly, who had more hang-ups about her looks than a catwalk full of teenage models, was incredibly pretty in an arrestingly luminous way. But the beauty gene had clearly skipped out when it had come to Tara.

Not that she minded, really. Tara knew she’d been given a gift that made up for not being a head-turner – a brain as sharp as a stiletto and a talent for putting words together. A gift that had brought her here tonight.

She grinned as she thought of her Aunt Adele’s mantra at Miller family get-togethers: ‘Thank the Lord that Tara’s so clever.’ Tara knew that this was shorthand for ‘It’s lucky that Tara doesn’t have to rely on her looks.’ Her mother used to glare at Aunt Adele whenever Adele said this but it had no effect. Her aunt was one of those people who thought honesty and tactlessness were pretty close to Godliness in the hierarchy of virtue, and felt that speaking her mind was not just important, but compulsory.

But Tara, after a few pointless years of secretly longing to be a beauty, was perfectly content with the way she looked. She’d never be pretty but instead was a combination of quirky and unusual looking, with a sharp little chin, a mischievous full mouth, and a long nose which might have dominated her face were it not for deep-set hazel eyes that glittered with amusement and brilliance. Even beside a raft of golden-haired lovelies, people always noticed Tara’s clever, vibrant face. And once they got talking to her, they loved her because she was witty and funny into the bargain.

By the time she’d got to college, Tara had worked out a clever and eccentric look which involved very trendy clothes, short, almost masculine hair and fire-engine red lipstick. It helped that she was tall, so masculine clothes and hair worked on her. Now, at the grand old age of thirty-two and thanks to the confidence that came from having a career she loved, Tara was utterly at home with her looks. Her dark hair was expertly cut and its exquisitely tweaked style owed much to the salon wax she scrunched through the ends each morning. Trendy, dark-rimmed glasses gave definition to her eyes and drew attention away from her nose. She’d toyed with the idea of rhinoplasty for years but Finn had told her she didn’t need it.

‘I love your nose the way it is,’ he’d say, running his finger down it lovingly.

Tara’s face softened as she thought of her husband of six months. Darling Finn. Theirs had been the ultimate whirlwind courtship. They’d met a year ago at a party, fell madly in love and got married within six months, confidently telling astonished friends that once you met your soul mate, you knew instantly. Finn was everything Tara wanted in a man: funny, sexy, kind, clever – and drop-dead gorgeous. A rangy man with sleepy, fun-filled eyes, tousled dirty blonde hair and an air of languid sexuality, Finn was genuinely movie-star stunning. People told her he could have been Brad Pitt’s stand-in, but a proud Tara retorted that Finn was infinitely better looking.

Even his voice was sexy, automatically reminding her of making slow languorous love even when he was just asking her how much milk she wanted in her coffee.

It would have been lovely to stroll into the ballroom with him on her arm. He looked good in a dinner jacket; but then he’d look good in a sack.

At their wedding, Aunt Adele hadn’t failed the Miller family and had pointedly said, at least five times, that she couldn’t get over how Tara had netted such a good-looking boy. As if Tara had gone out with a huge fishing rod and reeled in the first gorgeous specimen she saw.

‘Your aunt keeps looking at me and shaking her head,’ said Finn at the reception. ‘Is she shocked that a creative genius like you has married a stupid computer salesman?’

Tara laughed. ‘On the contrary, she thinks I’ve won the lottery. Aunt Adele has been preparing me for spinsterhood for years by reminding me I’m not a great beauty, so she’s astonished I nabbed a hunk like yourself and actually got you to marry me within six months of meeting you. And you’re anything but stupid.’

Finn pulled her close for another kiss. He couldn’t seem to get enough of her. ‘Well,’ he conceded, his lips brushing her cheek tenderly, ‘maybe not that stupid. After all, I’ve just married a brilliant wife. And a beautiful one, too.’

If only he were here, Tara thought now with a fresh pang of longing. Finn knew how tense she was about things like awards ceremonies, and knew just how important this one was to her. The exact opposite of her; he was laid-back about everything and would have calmed her nerves better than a pint of Rescue Remedy. But tickets to the National Television & Radio Awards were like gold dust and not even all the show’s writers had been able to get one. There was no way Tara could have brought Finn with her. She’d phone him quickly, just to say hi, that she missed him. Switching her phone on, Tara dialled rapidly. The phone in the apartment rang out without being answered. She smiled at the thought of Finn rushing across the road to the twenty-four-hour garage to buy something, forgetting to turn the answering machine on. She loved the little things he forgot. They were so endearing. She tried his mobile but it was off too. Idiot. But she was smiling.

‘Perfume?’ asked Sherry, spraying the contents of a tiny bottle of Gucci Envy down her cleavage.

‘Yes please,’ said Tara, sorry that she hadn’t thought to bring the Coco Mademoiselle that Finn had given her for her birthday. The ballroom was murderously hot and the combination of a spicy main course and too much red wine meant that everyone had red, flushed faces. None of which would look good on television. Tara had a sudden horrified vision of her shiny, lobster-pink face being all that people remembered when the nominations for the soap awards came up.

She took the proffered vial of perfume, sprayed it liberally down her front and gave a final blast to her wrists. ‘Sherry, I’ve changed my mind. Can I borrow some make-up? I think I need it.’

Five minutes later, Tara was expertly revamped. In those few moments in the ladies’ she felt as if she’d learned more about Sherry than she had over several months of work. Sherry chatted away about how her mother had helped her shop for the dress she was nearly wearing, and how her whole family were going to meet up the next night when the awards were broadcast in case they spotted Sherry. They never missed an episode of the show, either. They were so proud of her.

‘I used to be a beautician, you see,’ Sherry said as she dextrously brushed eye shadow onto Tara’s lids. ‘Mum was worried when I gave it up for drama school.’

‘You’re brilliant at make up,’ Tara said enthusiastically as she admired her newly-sultry eyes, dark and intense thanks to smoky shadows.

‘Thanks,’ Sherry said happily as she zipped up her bag of tricks.

Tara felt bad that she couldn’t say how Sherry was a marvellous actress too, but she hated hypocrisy.

Together, they braved the ballroom. A vast, high-ceilinged room decorated with giant swathes of purple velvet to go with the gilt and purple chairs, it was crammed with every sort of television and radio worker. Actors and presenters rubbed shoulders with writers and producers, all pretending to have a roaring good time because the show was being filmed, and all trotting out the standard remark: ‘It’s such an honour just to be here: being nominated/winning doesn’t matter.’ Which was rubbish because it was all about winning.

The ceremony itself was going to make up ninety-five per cent of the TV show, but nobody wanted to risk glaring sourly at a rival and ending up with that broadcast to the world. Or even worse, being included in the inevitable out-takes video which would change hands as soon as the show was over. So the whole place was awash with smiles.

Tara lost Sherry within seconds, as the actress spotted a camera crew and wove her way through the crowds, her shapely hips undulating sexily as she shimmied along. Marilyn Monroe was said to have deliberately had a quarter of an inch taken off the heel of one shoe to give her that sexy lilting walk. Sherry had clearly upped the ante and had taken off an entire inch on one side, leaving her with a hip movement that Tara reckoned a passing bishop would surely declare an occasion of sin.

Weaving her own way through the tables, Tara said hello here and there but didn’t stop. She’d worked in television one way or another for nine years and knew loads of the people here: if she stopped, she’d never make it up to her table in its much envied place at the front.

As she passed the Forsyth and Daughters table, she nodded at an old work-experience pal of hers who now wrote for the series.

‘Good luck,’ said Robbie encouragingly. ‘I hope you win.’

‘You too,’ said Tara. Which was true because she hoped he would win. It was unlikely though.