‘And that,’ Rose said, smiling into the camera, ‘is how you make an environmentally friendly barbecue pit.’

‘And cut,’ the assistant director said with a smile. ‘Looking good, Rose.’

‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘Are we doing the interior filming next?’

‘Yep, it’s all set up,’ the AD said. ‘They’ve really made a mess of things inside.’

‘They stuffed up this barbecue pit pretty badly too,’ Rose said, walking towards the house. ‘Lining it with newspaper was not a good idea.’

It was six months now since the ‘Rose’s Rescue’ episode (as it had become known) of Mansions in the Sky had gone to air. It had sent ratings through the roof – until viewers realised Rose wasn’t coming back. Neither were Dave and Michelle, though for very different reasons. Dave had cited stress and a breakdown in trust between him and the producers in a Facebook post that he put up the night of his rescue. Michelle simply wasn’t asked back after her outburst.

Getting rid of Leary proved to be slightly more difficult, as he repeatedly stuck to his ‘hey, we’re consenting adults’ line whenever it was suggested that sleeping with a contestant wasn’t a good look. It also turned out that due to a complicated corporate structure at Endeavour Productions, he reported to a board of which he was also a member, making him his own boss.

Fortunately for everyone but Leary, all the media attention Mansions attracted after Rose’s dramatic live rescue meant that Lil Perp’s representatives found out about the show’s unlicensed use of his song as its theme and took legal action. It turned out that while Leary’s fellow board members were fine with him sleeping with contestants, they were slightly more concerned that he was costing them money; now Cody would be the executive producer of next season’s reboot of Mansions in the Sky.

Rose and Dave had laid low – as it were – for a week after the rescue. They’d holed up in Moss the Boss’s house while he was away on tour; Nicola was their only contact with the outside world. Not that she was much help after the first day or so, when her Japanese Harry Potter fan came back and turned out to be extremely impressed by her owl-handling skills. She’d also been getting romance tips from the love robot, going by the increasingly explicit descriptions she was texting Rose of their bedroom adventures. She was meant to be returning to the country soon; she’d promised Renton she’d bring back a hard drive with his girlfriend on it.

When Rose and Dave finally surfaced, it was to a raft of media offers and interview requests. Ironically, it was Rose’s parents who persuaded her to take the media offers seriously. They still didn’t think much of reality television, but seeing Rose rescue Dave had opened their eyes to the artistic potential of the genre.

‘It was performance art,’ Alan had said. ‘Sheer brilliance.’

‘And Plato’s Grave want us on as their new reality television experts,’ Sarah said. ‘So we can hardly afford to be so dismissive.’

Most of the offers had been short-term things Rose had no interest in doing, but she was still considering an offer from the Mansions team to come back next year as Moss the Boss’s replacement. It turned out his musical act was actually pretty popular – whether you believed that Moss was really a spirit medium channelling the souls of dead rappers, or simply very good at impersonating their signature flows. His tour had sold out, there was talk of moving it to larger venues, and he was seriously considering touring full time.

Rose’s bad feelings towards Mansions had been largely swept away when Gino and George finally found the body of their dead friend Spider, and Len used it as an excuse to stage a full-scale communist uprising in protest against the shabby working conditions. The season had been called off – all the houses had to be demolished due to a combination of unsafe workmanship and being part of an active crime scene.

The media had covered the scandal for days – one subeditor had dubbed the street ‘Coroner’s Court’ and later received a journalism award for Best Headline. It wasn’t a complete loss, though; Len had really captured the mood of the people on Struggle Street when he seized the offices of production, waving a massive Soviet-era flag and singing ‘The Internationale’. His new series Smash the State, Mate was already a hit.

The one show Rose had agreed to was Life Savings, where she would visit people’s homes and advise them on how to restore and recover after failed renovations. But there was a twist: she insisted on having Dave be her on-air partner.

They proved to be a winning combination. Dave was the bungling everyman who was there to give a sympathetic ear as the guests explained how their good intentions had led them astray. Then Rose would come in with the useful information on how to set things right. And Dave was getting better with his advice, too; he’d started a carpentry apprenticeship, and Rose could see he was learning fast.

‘How’s it going in here?’ Rose said, sliding open the back door of the latest house they were trying to save.

Dave was in the kitchen, deep in conversation with a field producer, but he looked up and smiled. ‘It’s not too bad, really,’ he said. ‘Though they did somehow manage to arrange the heating flue so it directs hot exhaust directly into the upstairs bedroom.’

‘They said it was energy efficient,’ the field producer said. ‘It heated the whole house … with toxic fumes.’

‘Lucky we got here in time,’ Rose said.

‘You’ve always been good at last-minute rescues,’ Dave said, kissing her lightly on the lips. ‘I know,’ he added, ‘don’t mess up the make-up.’

‘Fuck the make-up,’ Rose said, pulling him close. ‘Remember what I taught you – if you’re going to do something, do it right.’

Their kiss was sloppy, messy, and went on for a very long time.

‘How was that?’ Dave said when she finally pulled back.

Rose smiled. ‘Nailed it.’