I wondered what Stanley would think if he knew who I really had the hots for.
I sat in the green room at the TV studios in Wandsworth and surveyed the delicious-looking little pastries piled up next to the platter of fresh fruit. I’d already had a mini pain au chocolat, a lovely little apricot tartlet and a few grapes and was trying hard to avert my gaze from the shortbread.
Cal was leaning in the doorway, loose white shirt over jeans, talking into his mobile. ‘Won’t be long,’ he mouthed at me.
‘No problem,’ I mouthed back, looking at his slender hands and long, artistic fingers that gestured as he talked. Mmm.
I looked up at the monitor on the wall where I could see the first Cook Around the Clock of the day being filmed in front of a studio audience. They were recording three programmes, I’d been told by Tracy, the nice young girl assigned to look after me, and I was on the last one. I could have brought a guest but had ended up coming alone, which at least left lots of uninterrupted time for beautiful-young-man-gazing.
Charlotte couldn’t get the day off as her boss was away sick and she had to stand in. I’d briefly thought of bringing Stanley and for a moment he’d even looked enthusiastic too, but then his face had dropped again. ‘I’d better not,’ he said.
‘Why not?’ I asked. I’ll write a note and explain’
But Stanley had shaken his head. ‘I’ll miss stuff,’ he said, not looking at me. ‘It’s difficult if you have a day off.’
‘Everything’s OK at school now, isn’t it? Nobody’s being horrible?’
Stanley had shrugged. ‘Not really.’
I sometimes thought my mother was right when she periodically reminded me I should have had two children. Stanley wasn’t used to the bickering and everyday abuse you got from having a brother or sister. And while St Katherine’s, his primary school, had been small and delightfully huggy and happy-clappy, it maybe hadn’t equipped him for the rigours of a secondary school with 600 boys and all the jostling and name-calling that was bound to entail.
But he still hadn’t revealed any more and Andrew Lazlett had said he seemed fine. What else could I do? I could hardly storm up to the school on the vague possibility that someone was being beastly about my son’s name. I had phoned Michelle and now Connor was coming round at the weekend to stay over. Maybe I could find out a bit more about what went on then …
‘Laura?’ A girl in her twenties with a brown pony tail and a big smile was in the room. Cal had moved outside into the corridor, still on the phone. ‘Hi, I’m Debby – want to come through to make-up?’
I followed her through to a mirrored room like a hair salon. The surfaces were covered with tubes and palettes, sprays and hair straighteners.
‘So, what are you cooking?’ Debby asked cheerily, as she put a gown around my shoulders and surveyed a huge box of eye shadows. There was a monitor in here too – I could see the chefs – who disappointingly did not include Marco or Gordon or anyone I’d ever heard of – chopping away, helped by two identical grinning blokes who were obviously twins.
‘I’m doing Beat the Chef ,’ I said. ‘A pudding with meringues and raspberries and a Snickers bar. It’s my son’s favourite,’ I added, not wishing her to think I was an unsophisticated glutton myself.
‘Bless him,’ said Debby. She put a hand under my chin and tipped my face toward her. ‘Do you usually wear a lot of make-up? What sort of colours do you go for on your eyes?’
She chatted away gaily while she blended and brushed and patted. I was turned away from the mirror so couldn’t see what she was doing but it felt fairly industrial. I just hoped I wasn’t going to come out all orange like Randolph Kendall. She seemed to be putting layers and layers of foundation and blusher on and my eyes took ages too. ‘Look down. Look up. Lovely!’ she said as she piled on several coats of mascara and drew round my rims. ‘Open your mouth a little?’
I imagined I must now look like one of those crones on the make-up counters in old-fashioned department stores, whose every wrinkle was filled to capacity with powder and whose lips were drawn in where their own had long disappeared.
‘I’m trying to keep you quite natural,’ said Debby, as she got out the eyelash curlers.
Another older woman with a deep tan and dark hair tied back in a red scarf came in and gave me the once over. ‘Looking good,’ she said to Debby.
She smiled at me. ‘I’m Marie – I’m wardrobe. We’ll have a chat after you’re done here.’
Behind her, Cal put his head round the door. ‘You OK, Laura? Wow,’ he added, coming right up to me. ‘You look great.’
Obviously he was being kind. A man like him would have a gorgeous girlfriend of 25 – or younger – or a whole string of them. He would not be really thinking a 42-year-old with three inches of slap all over her crow’s feet was anything worth shouting about.
‘Thanks,’ I mumbled, embarrassed.
Debbie swung my chair back to face the mirror. I stared. For all the masses of gunk she’d put on me, I did look surprisingly natural, but in a whole new, glowing, smoky-eyed way. I had cheekbones I’d never seen before and full, glossy, pouting lips. My skin looked flawless. The bags under my eyes had mysteriously disappeared.
‘Gosh,’ I said to Debby. ‘Can you come and live with me?’
From behind me Cal laughed. ‘Can I?’ He laughed again to show he was joking. My heart gave a little jolt. Get real, I told myself. You’re old enough to be his mother. Well, almost. I didn’t actually know how old he was at all but I was guessing at mid-20s. Much too young for me, anyway.
‘What do you usually do with this?’ asked Debby, indicating my hair.
‘Er well, that’s it really.’ I’d washed it and dragged a comb through it and tried to fluff it up a bit but there wasn’t a lot you could do with it. ‘I’ve never been very creative with the blow dryer.’
Debby was plugging in some heated rollers. ‘We’ll give it a bit more body,’ she said kindly. ‘Would you mind if I just tidied up your eyebrows?’ As she plucked out a few rogue hairs and I tried not to wince too much, I wondered what Marie would have to say about my choice of clothes.
I’d been emailed an even longer list of sartorial dos and don’ts than there’d been last time and instructed to bring at least two outfits while travelling in something else. Currently I was still wearing the latter – one of my floppier pairs of jeans and a T-shirt. The gear I’d brought – the few dispiriting garments I could find that fitted the criteria – had been whisked away from me on arrival.
When Debby had finished and my hair was in pleasing waves, I followed Marie along the corridor to a room with an ironing board and clothes rails. My clothes were hanging up on hooks on one of the walls.
There were the usual black trousers and the grey flouncy skirt as well as a red dress which I’d found lurking in the cupboard in the spare room and which I now hoped they wouldn’t like because I wasn’t at all sure it would still do up.
Marie looked at them all critically. ‘This is OK,’ she said, fingering a long-sleeved, stretchy blue top I’d borrowed from Charlotte, ‘but I’m just wondering …’ She rummaged along one of the rails and held up an emerald green embroidered smock top. ‘This would really bring out your eyes – try it with the trousers.’
She stood watching me as I took off my T-shirt, glad I was in one of my better bras. I looked in the mirror. The smock was nice – it made me look sort of artistic and bohemian – and Marie was right; somehow my eyes did look greener than usual too.
‘Now the bottoms,’ she instructed. Lucky I wasn’t shy, I thought, as I shuffled out of my jeans and Marie openly inspected my thighs. ‘Do you do body brushing?’ she asked approvingly. I shook my head. ‘Well, you’re lucky then – you’ve very little cellulite for a woman of your age. You’re really in pretty good shape.’
‘Am I?’ I paused and looked at my legs myself. They didn’t look that clever to me.
‘You can always tell the actresses who body brush,’ said Marie. ‘You should try it – makes a huge difference.’
She pointed in the general direction of my bottom. ‘Would just firm up those bits for you. Know that Angel McMullen?’
I nodded, even though I didn’t.
‘Looks wonderful with her clothes on but you should see her in her knickers – wobbles like a jelly. And she’s only young …’
She surveyed me again once I was dressed. ‘Hmm, I like it. Now, what shoes have you got?’ She rummaged in the bottom of one of the big sliding cupboards. ‘I think there are some green pumps somewhere …’
They were a bit big but they were comfortable and at least I wouldn’t have to worry about tottering around in heels. The only time I’d worn the strappy sandals I’d brought along in case they made me try the dress, I’d almost broken both legs. Marie smiled at me as I stood sideways in front of the mirror – the flowing top was really quite slimming. ‘I guess you’ll do,’ she said.
‘You look fantastic,’ said Cal, when he came back into the green room where I was nervously picking at the grapes. Tracy had been in to tell me they were halfway through the second programme and to introduce me to Bob and Carol, a husband and wife team who were the contestants just before me.
He was jovial and kept guffawing and saying, ‘This is the life, eh?’ as he worked his way through the biscuits; she was as white as a sheet and looked as though she might throw up. They’d been taken off to make-up now and I’d been left on my own again, staring at the monitor in increasing trepidation and trying not to chew my lipstick off.
By the look of the clapping from the studio audience, and general shifting about, the second programme had come to an end.
‘Claire, our floor manager, is going to come and see you in a moment,’ Cal said, ‘and then Lucy, our home economist, will run through the recipe. OK? Smile,’ he added, shining a huge one of his own on me. ‘You’re here to enjoy yourself.’
It felt more like waiting for the dentist. My stomach churned as I followed Claire, a vivacious black girl with braided hair and a brilliant red boiler suit that I wished I had the body to wear, down another corridor and through some doors onto the set.
There were tiers of theatre seats, all occupied, and a bright white area down at the front with kitchen units, cameras and lights, and people wandering about with clipboards and saucepans. The chefs were in a little huddle over by the fire escape. I felt the eyes of the studio audience on me as I was shown where I was going to stand.
‘OK, so when you get the signal, you come straight down these steps – don’t look around you – keep your eyes to the front, come directly to here and you’ll meet Bruno, the chef,’ instructed Claire. ‘He’ll shake your hand. But then at the end he’ll kiss you on the cheek. OK?’ She laughed. ‘Try not to crash noses! Austin, the presenter, will ask you a few questions and then we’ll start, OK? Now it’s recorded as though it’s live so we don’t stop the camera for anything, all right? Don’t look at the camera, just concentrate on what you’re doing –’
My head began to whirl – I was never going to remember all this. I glanced sideways at the monitor nearest me. I didn’t look bad – not any fatter than usual, and my hair looked better than it had for years. Claire was still talking but I’d missed the last thing she’d said.
‘Hey, Austin,’ she called now. ‘Do you want to come and meet Laura?’ Austin was a tall, attractive guy in his 30s with dark curls and amazing teeth.
‘Hi Laura!’ I noticed he’d changed his shirt again. It had been pink when they were recording the first programme, blue for the second. Now it was red. Together we looked like a Christmas tablecloth. ‘Don’t sweat, we’re gonna have a ball,’ he said, fixing me with a brilliant smile. He touched my shoulder. ‘I’ll see you later.’
He loped off across the studio. ‘He’s awesome,’ said Claire appreciatively. ‘Ah – here comes Luce.’
Lucy was a neat, brown-haired 30-year old, wearing a white coat like a lab technician. ‘Let’s go,’ she said briskly. ‘We’ve got all your ingredients ready – now talk me through your recipe …’
Recipe was going a bit far. Basically you took a packet of shop-bought meringues, a Snickers bar, some tinned or frozen raspberries and a tub of ice-cream. (I imagined Emily Twig’s face as she calculated how many calories that little lot came to.) You chopped up the chocolate bar and heated it in a saucepan until it was all melted with the nuts floating, then you crushed up the meringue and added that, and then you put a great wedge of ice-cream in there too and pulverised the lot.
The result was a great melting, crunchy, chocolaty mass which you piled into a bowel, decorated with raspberries so at least there was the odd vitamin in evidence, and devoured as quickly as you could before the ice-cream had totally liquefied.
Stanley loved it – it was standard fare for birthdays and celebrations. Lucy nodded. ‘We need to give it a name,’ she said dubiously.
‘At home we call it Snickers Car Crash. Or Mum’s Mess.’ I laughed. ‘A bit like Eton Mess, but …
‘We’ll go for Laura’s Raspberry Crush,’ said Lucy firmly.
I was introduced to various other people who were doing various other things with cameras and lights, and was miked up with another of those black boxes attached to my waistband. ‘Don’t worry, it’ll be turned off till you come on set – you can go to the loo without fear,’ said the grinning boy who fitted it. And then I was taken back to wait in the green room.
There were plates of sandwiches and cheese and biscuits laid out now, but I was too twitchy to eat. I went to the loo down the corridor and then went again. Bob and Carol were on the monitor. The sound was turned down but I could see Bob was still guffawing and waving a wooden spoon around while Carol was gazing at her chef in terror and gripping the edge of the work surface for dear life.
Tracy, my minder, sat down opposite me. ‘Would you like another cup of tea?’ she asked.
I shook my head, sipping some water and realising my hand was shaking. ‘I’m quite nervous now,’ I said.
Tina smiled sympathetically. ‘You’ll be fine once you’re on – everyone says it goes really quickly.’ The radio thingy on her belt crackled and she pulled it out and listened. ‘Got it.’ She nodded at me. ‘Five minutes,’ she said brightly.
After that it was a bit of a blur. I recalled following her to the doors into the studio and coming down the steps to applause, keeping my eyes fixed manically on the spot where I had to end up and my hands trembling so much that I thought I was going to chop one of my fingers off. But afterwards I could hardly remember anything else except the crunch of gristle on bone as Bruno went to kiss me and our noses collided.
‘Brilliant!’ Back in the green room, Cal kissed me on both cheeks. ‘Time for a drink now!’ He turned as Bob and Carol came through the door and collected their coats. Cal shook hands with them both warmly. ‘Enjoy it?’
‘Capital,’ said Bob, while Carol, who looked as though she might be suffering from post-traumatic stress, smiled weakly.
‘Has Tracy told you your car’s waiting?’ Cal disappeared out of the room with them. ‘Thank you so much for coming,’ I could hear him saying as they went off down the corridor. ‘We’ll send you an email to let you know when it’s been scheduled …’
A skinny bloke came in and got a bottle of mineral water out of the glass-fronted mini-bar. I remembered someone introducing us earlier – Lenny, was it? He was lighting or sound or something. He had long, brown hair pushed back into a pony tail and a tight black T shirt and combat pants. ‘Hi again,’ he drawled, flopping down opposite me. ‘Have a good time?’
‘Yes, it was great.’
He nodded. ‘You looked good on screen – came across really well.’
‘Thank you,’ I said, self-consciously. ‘That make-up girl – Debby, I mean – was marvellous.’
Lenny gave a strange laugh. ‘It’s not the make-up you have to thank, darlin’.’
I looked at him quizzically.
Lenny sat up straighter. ‘It’s all in the lighting. Whatever they put on your face, it’s yours truly who decides whether you look good or not.’
‘Really?’
‘You bet. Why do you think the really old pros carry their own uplighters?’
I shook my head. ‘I’ve no idea. I don’t even know what an uplighter is.’
‘The secret of all lighting is the source. Think of someone photographed in the harsh sun. It hits the angles and makes deep shadows that accentuate all the wrinkles. Same if you use a small, pop-up flash – makes all the lines on the face sharp and unflattering. That’s because the light is hard.’ Lenny was leaning forward, quite animated now. ‘It’s coming from a small source, see?’
He looked at me intently. ‘Now,’ he said, as if imparting something of great importance, ‘compare that with when you bounce the flash off the ceiling– it’s all diffused and soft, isn’t it?’
I nodded, trying to look intelligent, although I had little idea what he was talking about. ‘That sort of light, from a wide source, softens the angles, so lines on your face are smoothed out,’
‘Very handy!’ I put in encouragingly. ‘Could save a fortune on face cream.’
‘In a studio photographic shoot,’ continued Lenny, undeterred, ‘the photographer will shoot the flash into an umbrella, which is basically a reflector. It’s the same principle in the studios here. We need the right amount of light to bring your face alive – but not to show every flaw.’ He paused and appeared to scrutinise my chins.
‘And of course, as you age, the lighting becomes ever more important. That’s why the older actresses will always come across and be dead nice to me.’ He nodded with satisfaction. ‘They know I’m the one who can make or break how they look. The war paint helps, of course, but it’s much more about that –’
He pointed at the monitor where the camera in the now-empty studio was trained on a sofa – with various lights grouped around it. ‘I was on a shoot the other day. Young girl in her teens – not a line on her face – but the way they wanted to light the guy she was with, it put decades on her.’
‘Why did they want the lighting like that, then?’ I asked with interest.
‘Trying to make him look dodgy,’ said Lenny easily. ‘You see, you get your angles of light too. Shoot a hard light straight up from the bottom of the face, you’ll end up looking like something out of a Hitchcock film; that’s how to make things look spooky. Yet with a nice soft light coming from 45 degrees, the modelling effect on your face will be lovely.’
He grinned wolfishly. ‘Sometimes they change the light from one to the other. If, for example, you’ve got a pretty young thing with some randy old goat, you might light her to make her look 15, while you show up every crack and crevice on his face till he looks like her granddad, never mind her father. Seen it done the other way too,’ he added with relish.
‘There was an actress who’d married a bloke 30 years younger. In fact, she looked great for her age but by the time they’d finished with her on breakfast TV, he only needed a pair of short trousers and she looked ready for her bath chair.’
‘That’s awful,’ I said indignantly. ‘If she didn’t look like that really.’
Lenny winked. ‘It’s the way it is. Always remember to be good to your lighting guy. If some old cow’s rude to me she’ll soon know about it when she sees herself later …’
‘I’ll remember that.’ My fingers went instinctively to my scraggy neck.
‘Don’t listen to him, Laura,’ said Cal from the doorway. ‘On this show, we do our best to make everyone look lovely and you looked fabulous.’ Cal was carrying a bottle of champagne. Behind him, an unsmiling Tanya had a couple of flutes in each hand.
Cal poured champagne into one of them and handed it to me. ‘Want one, Len?’
‘Yeah, go on …’
I watched him fill three more glasses, a little warm glow inside me. I could get used to this, I thought, drinking champagne while people told me how fab I was. I looked at Cal’s dark lashes as he bent over the bottle. He was gorgeous and nice with it, with a glamorous job in television. He must have girls falling all over him.
He glanced up and caught me gazing at him. ‘You’re not in a hurry, are you, Laura?’ He gave me a smile and I felt my face colour. I looked at my watch.
‘Well – I was wanting to catch the 18.03. I need to be home before eight …’ I had managed to organise Daniel to meet Stanley after school and take him bowling and out to eat by pretending I had an important meeting about work, but I couldn’t stay out too late as he’d be wanting to get back to The Twig.
Cal looked at his watch too. ‘If we get the car round in half an hour? I just really want to tell you about this project of mine – and Tanya’s,’ he added, looking toward her. She was sitting close to Lenny, glass in hand, a bored expression on her face.
Cal’s brown eyes looked seriously into mine. ‘As I explained before, it’s about women in their 40s and how these days that’s a really great place to be. But we’ll be looking at the different ways in which different women approach this time in their lives – emotionally, spiritually, sexually … A holistic approach if you like …’
Beside him, Lenny put down his empty glass. ‘I’ve gotta split.’ Lenny got up and nodded at me. ‘See ya.’
Tanya sighed and got up with him. I wondered if they were an item. ‘I’ve got loads to do too. You don’t need me, do you, Cal?’ It was a statement, not a question. Cal shook his head. ‘I’ll be off then,’ she said flatly, not looking at either of us. ‘Come on, Len.’
Cal poured more champagne. ‘We’re going to be looking at beauty treatments, alternative therapies, fitness regimes, that sort of thing. It’s not entirely decided yet – they’re still working on the script – but we’re probably going to be using three or four women, who have all approached going into their 40s in a different way.’ He sat back and sipped at his drink.
‘One might have lots of kids and has let herself go a bit. Perhaps she thinks she’s too old for any of this beauty and fashion stuff any more –the sort of person perhaps your mum used to be when she was 40.’
‘My mum was like that when she was 20, believe me!’
He laughed. ‘Perhaps she’d like to be in it too, then. We’ll have bits of footage showing women a few decades ago in headscarfs and slippers etc.’
He put the glass down and leant forward, his face animated. ‘Then we’ll be having another subject who’s really fighting the ageing process all the way but with desperation. ‘Plastic surgery, short skirts, chasing after younger men …’ He gave me a conspiratorial smile. Had I imagined it or had he moved a little closer to me? The distance between our knees seemed to have shortened. ‘And then there’d be you, illustrating the balanced approach – showing how you can be fit and attractive at 40 –’
‘Actually I’m 42.’
‘Perfect! That was exactly the sort of age we were hoping for. Into your 40s but still plenty of them left to go.’
I took another gulp of champagne even though it was some hours now since I’d eaten and it was rather going to my head. He was definitely sitting very near to me. I was aware of his breathing.
‘So what exactly would I have to do, then?’
‘We’d want you to be filmed having some beauty treatments and exercising. Though obviously you’re in really good shape already. Would you be prepared to be filmed in a bikini?’
‘No, definitely not,’ I said, recoiling and nearly choking on my bubbles. ‘I couldn’t possibly. I mean, I may look OK to you in these clothes but I assure you I’m not up to that close an inspection …’
Cal laughed. ‘I bet you are – Marie was most impressed.’
‘No, really, I’d be mortified.’ I looked at him, embarrassed. Had they all had a summit meeting on the state of my cellulite?
He stopped laughing and put a hand on my arm. ‘Please don’t worry – it was just a thought. You wouldn’t have to do anything you were uncomfortable with. I was just trying to get a feel for how you viewed yourself.’
He gave my forearm a little squeeze. ‘Personally I hate the whole business of women being judged by their bodies and looks – it’s what’s inside that counts for me. The idea is to make that point.’ He looked at me earnestly. ‘We’re going to show the lengths some women are prepared to go to, with you there to illustrate how you just don’t need all that stuff. You’ll be showing how you will always be beautiful, vibrant and sexy, however old you are.’
‘Well I don’t know about that, ‘I said, pleased but self-conscious now under his intense gaze. I was also aware of my heart beating. Don’t be ridiculous.
He leant forward again, our knees almost touching now. ‘I do. I really think you’d be good at what I’ve got in mind …’
‘The thing is,’ I said a bit later, trying to sound business-like although I was now feeling quite tipsy. ‘It sounds as if it would take up quite a lot of time. And there’s my son to think of. And I have to work, of course …’
‘We can fit in around you – we can film in the evenings and weekends – and we can try and do as much as possible at the same time so there’s minimum disruption to your routine. You can get a lot done in two or three longish days – if that suits you best. There’d be gaps in filming but from start to finish I should think we could wrap the whole thing up in three to four weeks.’
I hesitated, feeling awkward again. ‘Would I be paid?’
‘Well, not as such, because it’s a matter of ethics again. This is a documentary looking at real women’s lives – but you’d get all your expenses and a few extra perks too – some clothes and beauty products maybe. And certainly there’d be treatments and hair appointments; gym membership, maybe a day at a spa. That sort of thing.’ He looked at me seriously. ‘If it’s important, I’ll see what I can do – I might be able to work you a small fee …’
He shone the full force of that brilliant, knee-weakening smile on me once more. ‘Perhaps you’d like some more time to think about it.’
I thought. Free facials, new clothes and my hair done. Three weeks of being whizzed about by car and followed round by a film crew as if I were a star. All of it in Cal’s undeniably gorgeous company. What was it Sarah had said about looking after oneself after the trauma of a marriage break up? Give yourself a few treats?
I smiled back at him. ‘Not really,’ I said.