Daisy was twirling round and round in Bella’s kitchen, arms out like a child playing windmills. The sleeves of her yellow kimono top (over a purple satin tulip skirt, over orange lace leggings, scarlet killer heels, a combination which shouldn’t have worked but just did) billowed and flapped. ‘Oh now this is a gorgeous space! I’ve seen smaller village halls!’ She abruptly stopped twirling, adding very quickly, ‘As a child, I mean. Ballet class and Brownies, that sort of thing. Haven’t been near a village hall in years. Obviously.’ She shivered slightly, as if the very idea of being more than five miles beyond Notting Hill was too hideous to contemplate.
Bella tried to imagine Daisy at a ballet class: she’d have been sure to have perfectly colour-co-ordinated ribbons rather than the usual random what’s-available ones sewn on the hem of her character skirt, and to have been the one girl in the class whose wrapover cardigan was cashmere.
‘So – this room will be just the thing, with a bit more gussying up!’ Daisy continued. ‘And how clever of you, Bella, to resist having an island unit in here! Most people would have, wouldn’t they? And you’d have lost some of that wonderful open feeling!’ Bella didn’t tell her that the lack of an island crammed with artfully hidden kitchen gadgets was down to her and James running out of renovation money at the time it was all built. But Daisy was right – it would have spoiled the space.
Daisy strutted around, touching surfaces, peering into cupboards, pulling back even further the already open folding doors to the garden. Bella didn’t mind at all – the kitchen no longer felt entirely hers; with Daisy, Dominic, Saul and Fliss here, this had become a workplace, their set. The more comfortable and at home they all felt in it, the more relaxed they would be and the easier this palaver would be for everyone. And it did look good. Saul had taken Bella’s huge naive Caribbean painting of a market in Grenada from its usual place in the hallway and hung it on the coral wall. With the turquoise sea in the painting’s background reflecting the glass on the opposite wall, it somehow pulled the room’s new look together. She knew it would never return to its original position.
‘There’s usually a sofa in here too, and dangerously overfilled bookshelves and a couple of tables for magazines and stuff over there …’ She pointed to the wall opposite the long row of units. ‘They’ve all been taken away. Saul thought we should keep the dining table, though.’ Saul was now in the garden, talking to Fliss about bringing in more plants to obscure the fence and the neighbours’ washing line.
‘Yes … possibly move it to the wall, though, when we actually start … it’s very big. And so many chairs,’ Dominic drawled. Bella felt immediately defensive about her chairs, as if she were a woman herding her very large family on to a crowded bus and sensing a vibe that she should have been more careful not to conceive so frequently. But these were only chairs. Twelve simple upholstered Ikea dining chairs, each covered in either cream or turquoise fabric. She told herself firmly that if she were to start being sentimental about those, she might as well give up on this makeover malarkey right now. She was going to need a very thick skin.
‘Well I don’t provide seating for twelve on an everyday basis, Dominic, but there’ll be a lot of us here this morning; your other victims – or should I call them “clients” – are all coming,’ Bella told him, feeling she was explaining herself to a hyper-critical ten-year-old. ‘I pulled out both extension leaves on the table and brought extra chairs from the cellar so we can use this like a boardroom table. Is this OK? Or did you want something less formal? Maybe use the garden more? What’s the plan?’
She’d already been through some of this the day before, when the director and the lighting crew had arrived to do some measurements and some mysterious technical murmurings about light values. Her role then had been easy – point them at the kettle, put out the blueberry muffins she’d made, show them where the tea and coffee were and keep out of the way.
‘It’s fine.’ Saul came back in and reassured her. ‘Today is about the programme content, not the scenery. Fliss will measure everyone, Daisy will talk generally about the overall programme structure and then to each of you one at a time about personal style preferences and how what you wear has to fit into your lives and then … Bella, if Daisy and Fliss do you first, I was wondering – would you like to come with me to the prop house to pick out a whopping great sofa? I thought that seeing as it’s your house you should at least get a say in what we have in here. Owner’s privilege? And you already heard most of what Daisy and Dominic have lined up format-wise when you met them before. I’m thinking something like a horseshoe shape, something as off the wall as possible.’
‘Puce,’ Fliss said. ‘I like puce. You should get that.’ She was looking very organized today, very tidy in a black pencil skirt and her hair up in a topknot, as if she was taking her PA look direct from a 1940s film. Bella watched her carefully unpacking a stylish scarlet satchel and lining up pens, a tape measure and a heap of notebooks in different colours on the table.
‘She has a thing for stationery,’ Saul murmured to Bella. Bella was instantly reminded of her own schooldays, that first day of term with a new pencil case, sharp pencils, a scuff-free eraser. Even now, on her desk in her little upstairs office, she had most of the contents of Paperchase, bought on many a whim and the certainty that she might need them some time. All the same, not many grown women have a need for a box full of coloured pencils.
‘So what do you think about coming to the prop house? Have you got time?’ Saul asked her quietly. ‘I could do with your input, frankly.’
‘You’re talking about me, aren’t you?’ Fliss suddenly said, glaring at Saul. ‘It’s about the sofa thing, isn’t it?’
‘I’m talking about a sofa, yes. But not about you.’
‘You’re going to tell her, aren’t you? Go on, I know you’re dying to. Humiliate me if you want, I don’t care.’
‘Fliss, Fliss, I wouldn’t do that.’
‘It’s OK – I know I’m only the work experience. What do I know?’ She stalked out of the room and Bella heard the door of the downstairs loo being slammed hard.
‘Ah … well it was quite funny really – though it seems not so to Fliss.’ Saul led Bella out to the garden and they sat together on the bench. ‘Fliss had a run-in with me over props. I should have known better; she’s already made it clear that clothes are her only real interest. I told her she could go on her own to look at sofas and she came back all excited and said she’d hired two. She then showed me the photos on her phone … they were lime green and inflatable. I tried to be positive and pointed out these would be a brilliant choice if no one was actually going to sit on them. But plastic squeaks with every move – it would be like putting everyone on whoopee cushions. Her second choice was cane, which would have been OK if we were doing the show in the garden, so I had to turn that down too, though I told her I might just hire them anyway, put them out on the terrace, depending on how much room the guy from Green Piece leaves us after he’s brought the plants to tart up the garden. She said I didn’t have to, there was no need to patronize her.’
Bella said, ‘But you weren’t, were you? You liked the cane ones!’
‘Ah yes, but it was all too late. I’d made the mistake of laughing when I saw the blow-up sofas she’d chosen and she went right off on one, immediately.’
Bella laughed. ‘Oh, I can see she would. Molly would be exactly the same. You hurt her feelings and her pride!’
Saul scratched his head. ‘Well, I don’t have much experience of girls like her. Mostly the twenty-something pointy-shoed girlies in this business are all hyper-efficient and terrifyingly grown-up. But with Fliss, one minute she’s wanting to be taken really seriously because she’s an adult and the next she’s sulking like a fourteen-year-old.’
Privately, Bella considered this might be something to do with the stepfather/stepdaughter situation. She was longing to ask about his home life, but this wasn’t the moment. Faintly in the background, she could hear the doorbell. The rest of the troops had arrived.
‘And it’s yes,’ she said to him quickly before they both got caught up with the others. ‘Yes, I’d love to come and look at sofas with you.’
‘I don’t suppose you’ve had a chance to tell your family about us yet?’ Dennis asked Shirley as they left Tate Modern and walked hand in hand along the riverbank towards the Globe theatre.
‘Not yet. I keep hoping to get Bella on her own in a quiet moment, but there hasn’t been one. Her house is in chaos just now with this TV thing going on. There are people in and out of the place all the time. How about you? Have you said anything to yours?’
Dennis laughed. ‘I tried to! I was dying to – and trying to – over Sunday lunch at Harriet’s, but every time I thought there was a chance to talk properly to her, one of the children would play up and she’d be distracted. Her gormless lump of a husband doesn’t seem to have any input with the domestic routine so there she was, organizing the entire meal and dealing with the twins at the same time. I think his only contribution was to point out rather sardonically that five seemed to be a “difficult age”. I told him to wait till they were fifteen, but Harriet gave me a look. I don’t think she wants her husband to see nothing but years of trouble ahead in case he does a runner. No great loss that would be, if you ask me. He only cares about golf and Formula One and his God-awful estate agency. Exclusive and superior properties. Ye gods – you can really only say it in a Hyacinth Bucket accent.’
Shirley could hear a distant busker, playing ‘Like A Rolling Stone’. In her opinion not an easy number to do if you weren’t actually Bob Dylan himself.
‘Do you remember,’ she said, momentarily diverted from their conversation, ‘way back when Dylan was known as Bobby Dylan, rather than Bob? Of course that didn’t last. I remember when he was such a new phenomenon; down at Les Cousins we used to argue over our pints of Guinness about whether he was a genuine poet or an upstart pretender.’
‘He was so very young, wasn’t he?’ Dennis said. ‘That was about when I worked out I’d never change the world with my own written words, when someone ten years younger could write with so little seeming effort. Harriet’s keen on him, surprisingly. But then I suppose he’s one of the few who’ve accumulated fans through the generations. Leonard Cohen’s another one.’
‘Maybe that’s how we tell our families,’ Shirley laughed. ‘We wait for one of those two to come over here again, get a load of tickets and let Bella, Harriet and your Toby bond in the O2.’
‘Or we just tell them. Next time we see them. Just come out with “by the way, I’m seeing someone.”’ He squeezed her hand tighter and smiled at her. ‘Someone very, very special.’
‘It should be so easy, shouldn’t it? After all, we’re single adults who don’t have to answer to anyone. And you’re right, Dennis, this is so special. I feel like a young girl again – and it’s showing. I might not have had the chance to tell Bella, but Molly knows. She could tell just by looking that there was something going on in my life. She even asked if I was sleeping with you!’
Dennis stopped mid-pavement and looked at her, astonished. ‘Good heavens! Did you tell her you were?’
‘Of course I did. Why lie? I’m not embarrassed about it!’
‘No, but I bet she was. Wasn’t she horrified at the very idea? She must think people our age shut up shop years ago, if they’d allow that we ever discovered sex at all, that is. As we said before, how little they know, bless them.’
‘She didn’t seem to be surprised or shocked or anything. If she was, she had the good manners not to show it, but at seventeen if their reaction is “yuck” they usually come straight out with it!’
They’d reached the Globe theatre. Outside were posters advertising the forthcoming season of plays.
‘We could go to something here, if you like,’ Dennis said, as they scanned through the list. ‘Is there anything you fancy?’
‘I’d quite like to see Doctor Faustus,’ Shirley told him, ‘but … it’s not on till late November. Won’t it be cold in there, having no roof? I’m imagining a frosty night – or a chill damp fog; fingers and toes going numb even with furry boots and the warmth of the audience.’
‘We could go well prepared, with picnic blankets and a flask of hot tea?’
Shirley thought for a moment, then said, ‘Hmm. I’m not sure. I think … I much prefer doing that kind of outdoor thing in warmer weather. I wouldn’t be able to concentrate on the stage if I’m thinking about my freezing toes. Do you mind?’
Dennis put his arm round her. ‘Of course I don’t. We’ll come here and see something in midsummer instead. For now, though … do you fancy retiring to the hotel for a nice little afternoon nap?’
‘With eclairs?’ Shirley giggled.
‘Eclairs and a glass or two of bubbles, definitely.’
‘Oh then I do, I do …’
‘Colour, shape, accessories and make-up. And of course the make-up aspect includes hair,’ Daisy said, fixing her gaze on the hectic shambles that was Dina’s crowning glory. ‘Colour comes first because without knowing how to make the best choices there, nothing else can fall into place. You can wear the most gorgeous little Prada number, absolutely right for your body, showing you off to perfection but if it’s the wrong colour for you, you will look merely ill. So to start with, you will all be colour-analysed. Filming will of course be going on throughout the process and I promise,’ she showed her gleaming teeth but Bella wouldn’t have quite defined it as a smile, ‘it won’t be at all traumatic. We are not here to make you look idiots.’
‘Well that’s a relief,’ Jules said, helping herself to another chocolate brownie. Dominic leaned across the table and, without a word, slid it out of her hand and returned it to the plate. Jules gave him a defiant look, picked up the brownie again and took a deliberately oversize bite. Bella tried not to giggle. Oh, this was going to be such a hoot to write about.
‘Next we move on to shape. Possibly the most important aspect of this whole venture. Now the shape for next season is egg,’ Daisy stated with profound solemnity, as if she were the Chancellor of the Exchequer making a life-changing budget announcement. Bella watched as Fliss wrote down ‘EGG!’ on her pink notepad and then embellished the word with three different-coloured felt-tips.
Phyl spluttered into her coffee. ‘Egg? What in the name of buggery do you mean by egg?’
Dominic turned in his seat and stared at her. Phyl shifted slightly, waiting for him to speak, but he merely continued his gaze.
Daisy frowned, not at all pleased to be laughed at. She took a deep breath. ‘I realize egg isn’t the easiest shape to work with but, believe me, I’ve dressed some tricky figures in my time and honestly, hand on heart, I can say that any season’s must-have shape can, with a bit of give and take, be made to work for anyone.’
‘I don’t doubt it,’ Phyl said, ‘but why do we have to “work” with a “season’s shape” at all? What’s wrong with just clothes, for heaven’s sake?’
‘Phyllis, darling,’ Daisy cut in, ‘first let me say, I love your chick-biker look but without being tricksy, I don’t think you’ve quite grasped what we’re here to achieve …’
Phyl pushed back her chair and stood up. ‘It’s Phyllida, actually. And I’m dressed as a “chick biker” because I ride a great big bike – practical clothes for practical reasons, you see? And no, I think you might be right. I don’t think I’ve quite grasped it at all. You said you weren’t going to make us look like idiots and then calmly announce that we’re going to be dressed as Humpty Dumpty? Right. I’ll go outside now, if you don’t mind, and have a smoke. And while I’m out there I promise I’ll do my best to come to terms with this grasping the concept of egg. Lovely brownies, Bella my darling, you must give me the recipe.’ She gave Dominic a final glare as she left the room.
‘And then there were four …’ Daisy sighed, because Phyl had gone out via the front door and soon after there was the unmistakable sound of her Harley-Davidson revving up and pulling out of the driveway. ‘I have a feeling we won’t be seeing the return of Phyllida any time soon. Anyone else want to quit while we’re about it? We can just afford to lose one more but if anyone else bunks off, then that’s it. Show over unless we go out on the street and round up a few more. But the whole point of this is not random strangers, but people who know and support each other.’ Dominic, beside her, patted her gently on her feather-clad shoulder.
‘Um …’ Zoe ventured, half putting up her hand like a nervous child in school. ‘Actually the nanny walked out this morning. And I’m a little bit pregnant and feeling awful. And Calypso is coming up for her SATs and needs all my help. Time-wise, I thought I’d manage, but now I’m here and I’ve heard what this will involve, I’m wondering about it.’
‘Just a tip, sweetie.’ Daisy smiled at her. ‘When making excuses, only use one. Anything more is gilding an already dazzling lily.’
‘So I can go?’ Zoe sounded as if she were asking to be allowed off games.
‘Of course, darling! You’re not under house arrest! And good luck with the nanny and the SATs thing. I promise, I do so totally understand! Our children come first, always.’
Bella felt confused – this sweet, understanding side of Daisy was quite unexpected. Why did people do this? Or was their very unpredictability what made the human race so fascinating? All the same, on balance she thought she preferred to know where she stood with people. Anything else (and that cheating lust-rat Rick came to mind) was too wearying.
After Zoe had gone, Daisy’s smile looked genuine for the first time. ‘Now that one I really didn’t need!’ she said. ‘I’d already got Bella down as the token borderline reasonable-looking one. Zoe was frankly superfluous to requirements. Very cute in that wholesome Fulham sort of way, if a tad Stepford Wife meets Pollyanna. That one will never dress in anything but virtuous Boden and Brora and yet still manage to make everyone think she’s stylish.’ She shook her head and her ponytail swung against her ears. ‘Quite an achievement, that. So very few can pull it off. I had very little idea quite what to do with her. OK, on to accessories now. Dominic? Over to you, or shall I?’
‘Armour,’ he stated, the unaccustomed sound of his voice rather surprising everyone. ‘It is important to think of accessories as armour …’
‘Oh it’s good to escape!’ Bella said, settling into the passenger seat of Saul’s little Mercedes. ‘I was close to quitting along with Zoe and Phyl!’
‘No! Please, Bella, you can’t back out now – I’m counting on you as an ally.’
‘Against Daisy? But I’m terrified of her.’
‘Oh that’s normal, everyone is,’ he laughed. ‘I think probably the kindest way to sum her up is “mercurial”.’
‘Hmm. Sometimes she’s just plain rude, if you don’t mind me saying. I mean, I assume she’s a friend of yours so this is me being tactful, but to be honest I prefer people who are easier to know. I just don’t have a clue where I am with her. One minute she’s being quite vile and I think, that’s it – I don’t need to put up with this, and then the next minute she’s all sweet and rather lovely.’
‘Part of her never-ending charm. She throws you to the sharks then chucks a lifebelt out after.’
‘If you’re trying to say she’s got a soft centre, then I’d say it was very deeply buried. And what’s with Dominic? How can he put up with her?’ Bella asked.
‘By being silent, I think, and letting her do the talking for both of them. As a team, that seems to be how it works. And by him being completely devoted to her. She inspires a massive amount of loyalty, does Daisy, once she’s let people get through that shell,’ Saul said quietly, turning off the road and in through huge metal gates covered in warning signs about alarm systems. Bella wondered if she was being slightly told off. Well, she wasn’t going to apologize, because Daisy had come across, so far, as about eighty per cent vixen. How was Bella supposed to presume there was a Nice Side if Daisy wasn’t going to show it?
‘OK, we’re here,’ Saul said. ‘It’s not exactly West London’s most attractive building but, as Daisy definitely wouldn’t say, it’s what’s on the inside that counts.’
Saul was right – the vast blue corrugated shed, placed unromantically among industrial ugliness between railway lines on the edge of Willesden, wasn’t where anyone would normally expect to find the most extensive selection of contemporary furnishings, including those of the most prestigious designers. Once on the inside, Bella and Saul were faced with acres and acres of all kinds of furniture. The first section they passed through looked like a series of office-reception areas, each being a grouping of sofas and tables and desks from differing periods. A few people were actually working at some of them, admin staff making practical use of the kit till someone needed to hire it.
‘So what do they do if someone suddenly wants to rent it?’ Bella asked, watching a girl munching a sandwich while working on an Apple Mac at an incongruously manky desk that wouldn’t have looked out of place in the prison governor’s office in Porridge.
‘Move all their stuff to the next unit, I expect,’ Saul told her, waving to one of the staff further up the warehouse. ‘It must be quite fun, wondering where to set your work up each day, but a pain if it disappears suddenly when you’d just got comfortable. But here, up these stairs – come and look at this lot.’
He pushed open a swing door and led Bella up two flights of stairs. The stairwell walls were densely covered in framed pictures: sundry seaside scenes, landscapes, a collection of child portraits, Hogarthesque etchings, abstracts. Then they went through another door. ‘This isn’t where we need to be, but I thought you might like to see some of the oddities of this place,’ Saul said. ‘It’s a complete museum of ephemera in here.’
It was, Bella thought, laid out like a supermarket full of madness. Instead of food on the near-endless rows of shelves, the place was crammed with things – everything anyone could possibly need to dress a drama from early twentieth century onwards.
‘This place doesn’t do the antique stuff. All the prop houses have their specialities,’ Saul explained as Bella walked around, exploring. On one shelf was a row of bubble-gum vending machines, maybe fifty different sorts. Old radios, kitchen blenders, Barbie dolls, shop tills, kettles, lamps (standard and table), were lined up. There was an island with at least a hundred vacuum cleaners of varying vintage and, behind a selection of early sixties Formica-topped tables, a corner floor area bizarrely populated with stuffed animals.
‘Ugh, genuine!’ Bella squeaked, stroking the back of a growling cheetah.
‘All genuine,’ Saul told her. ‘Amazing, isn’t it? Imagine working here and it being just an everyday thing to be asked for a dozen stuffed penguins. But anyway – on to what we’re here for. We need to go back down these stairs …’
The floor below was stocked almost entirely with chairs and sofas, rows and rows of them. High on a shelf were stacks of every shape and shade of Philippe Starck’s transparent Ghost chairs. Along a wall were leather Barcelona chairs in every available colour and Bella recognized iconic designs of Arad, Eames, van de Rohe and so many others.
‘Wow … this is …’
‘This is not your average permanent-sale furniture warehouse!’ Saul laughed, finishing her sentence for her.
‘Understatement! It’s more like being in a fantastic museum of contemporary design. And hey, look!’ A bit overexcited, she got hold of Saul’s hand and pulled him across to a scarlet sofa shaped like a pout. ‘Here’s that famous lips sofa – Kiss, is it called?’
They sat on it side by side and she suddenly felt rather silly and shy and horribly conscious not only of the name of the sofa, but that she’d grabbed his hand and practically forced him on to it with her, a bit like dragging a reluctant victim under the mistletoe at an office party. She so hoped he hadn’t assumed she wanted to test the sofa out as a literal kissing venue, because she didn’t. Absolutely not. Admittedly Saul was attractive, but post-Rick the very idea of becoming romantically entangled with someone again was miles from her mind. It must be like getting a cold, she thought suddenly – for quite a while after, you have absolute immunity from reinfection. Long might it last – being content to be single was very restful.
‘Er, sorry – just got a bit carried away there,’ she said, getting up again. ‘I just so love it that this place has such unexpectedly amazing stuff in it. I mean, DFS it isn’t.’
‘They’ve got a lot of ordinary household items as well, but with the really rock-bottom-end furnishings it’s often as cheap just to buy it as to rent. There’s always someone on the crew who’ll take it off your hands. Seen anything you fancy?’
Was he teasing her? Possibly. His blue eyes were quite glinty. Staying resolutely businesslike, Bella looked along the length of the warehouse. ‘I quite like that pink one, but I think I’ve seen it somewhere before.’ She pointed out a rather elegant low velvet button-back sofa, simple and sleek.
‘Jonathan Ross’s show, two seasons ago,’ Saul told her. ‘This place is a retirement home for chat-show sofas.’
‘Ah, of course it must be. And look, there are the Designers Guild chairs from the interview area at Live 8 a few years back! I remember because I liked them so much at the time – love the madly vivid fabrics.’
‘Sadly we need to keep it plain so as not to distract from the clothes, otherwise I’d go for something from Squint, all crazy bright patchwork on fairly traditional framing. A couple of mad overpatterned chesterfields would look great in your place.’
‘They would, wouldn’t they?’ she agreed. ‘But shouldn’t we look for something puce? To cheer up Fliss?’
Saul shook his head. ‘Bless her, but not puce. Sorry Fliss!’
A deep lavender shade turned out to be a good compromise, though – the two of them agreed on a sofa that resembled a long curved row of tyres, if such a thing were possible in light-purple velvet. Saul made Bella sit on it for a while to check it was low enough so that Jules (the smallest of them) would not be left with her feet dangling in mid-air, and that it wasn’t so deep that they couldn’t actually lean back on it without falling awkwardly against the cushions. It worked – Saul made arrangements with the Apple Mac girl, and the business side of the outing was over.
‘I hope Fliss approves,’ Bella teased Saul as they got back into the car.
‘Oh she probably won’t. And Daisy will have a moan about it as well, no doubt.’ He switched on the engine and pulled away from the building, turning to smile at her. ‘Everyone thinks they can have a pop at the art choices,’ he said. ‘It’s such a broad target. The clients never have a go at the heavy-duty technical stuff, they don’t know enough to say, “Are you sure about tungsten lighting? We’d prefer HMI’s” or “Do you think a 9/8 lens is really appropriate for this shot?” or “Why don’t you use a Western dolly?” because they wouldn’t have a clue. But when it comes to choosing from paint charts, or whether to have blinds or curtains, they’ve all got an opinion! Next time you look at a contemporary TV show or even just an ad, see how much beige there is, because when everyone’s taken a shot at the art director, that’s what you’re left with. Bland, murky, boring. Hey,’ he suddenly perked up, ‘it’s gone one, shall we go to a pub for a bit of lunch? You must be starving by now.’
‘Hmm, I am rather,’ she admitted. ‘I didn’t dare eat one of the chocolate brownies in case Dominic slapped my wrist.’
‘Oh he wouldn’t tell you off,’ Saul told her. ‘He likes you.’
‘Really? He should let his friendly side out a bit more often. Mind you, as we said, it must be tough, working with Daisy.’
‘Oh, tough hardly begins to cover it, believe me.’
There was an unexpectedly free parking space outside the London Apprentice by the river. The day was so warm and bright that most of the outside tables were still occupied, even though it was almost 2 p.m. Saul sent Bella to bag a table that was just being vacated by a group of suited young men and went inside to get drinks and see what was available, food-wise.
Bella gazed out over the sluggish Thames. The tide was low – if you weren’t afraid of mud, at the lowest tide you could probably just about walk to the little midstream island.
‘Spritzer for you and I hope you don’t mind, but I ordered us a couple of prawn-salad sandwiches in case they’re about to shut down the food service. I can change that to something else if you want me to?’
‘No – it’s fine! Sounds perfect. Cheers!’
‘Here’s to the programme.’ Saul chinked his glass against hers. ‘May you not hate the whole lot of us by the time it’s over.’ Bella laughed, but Saul didn’t.
‘No really,’ he said, looking serious, ‘it can get very tense, all this media rubbish. At its worst, everyone gets so wound up you’d think there was no other world outside the fizzing fishbowl of the shoot. I’d so hate it if you and I didn’t end up as still friends.’
Bella felt her heart rate notching up. He shouldn’t look at her like that. She was immune, or supposed to be, and besides – she would never again get caught in a married-man situation. She took herself back to the picture she’d had once before of his so-perfect home life, the gorgeous wife (mother of cute Fliss), the stylish house, none of which she knew about in reality. All the same, it was a useful device to keep her grounded. As would be what she was about to ask him; surely it came next in the being-chatty, being-friendly thing. And once it was out of the way she could get on to why Fliss claimed she didn’t know her stepfather.
‘So – your wife … is she in the business too?’
‘Er … actually, no …’ Saul was quiet, staring out towards the island. He hesitated for a moment. Bella heard a duck squawking on the river, a sound like crazy old-lady laughter. Then Saul said, ‘No, she isn’t in the business. She died.’