Saskia tells me the Robert/Samantha thing is causing a bit of a bad atmosphere on set. Which, of course, means that everyone knows about it. I try to brush away the feelings of humiliation.
‘So they’re not even trying to hide it now then?’
‘Oh no, they are,’ she says. We’re sitting in the café on the ground floor of Fortnum and Mason, rain battering the windows outside. She pours herself more tea, toys with the sugar, decides against it. ‘But that just means there’s this weird tension. They’ve been shooting their first kiss scenes this week, did you know that?’
I shake my head.
‘Anyway, one of the make-up girls told me it was awkward. A bit intense. Usually, people joke around when they’re shooting that kind of stuff. Not that she was saying she thought there was anything going on, it was just an observation. I don’t want you to start worrying that everyone knows.’
‘I’m not.’
‘I mean, I don’t know why, because they must have been seeing each other for a while, so it’s not as if they couldn’t control themselves or anything …’
‘How long ago was it you found out?’ I realize I’ve never asked her this.
She thinks for a moment. ‘About six months ago. Obviously, I don’t know when it started but I’d say it can’t have been long before that or they wouldn’t have been taking such a risk.’
So not as long as I thought then. I think back to six months ago. Was there any big change in Robert’s behaviour? Nothing that I can remember. We had well and truly drifted apart by then.
‘Maybe it was just the fact that they had to do it in front of other people. They were probably over-compensating or something,’ she says. ‘I don’t think everyone’s gossiping about them now or anything …’
I wish I still had Josh to talk to. Someone who knew exactly what was going on, who would just give me the real lowdown, knowing he didn’t have to try and spare my feelings.
‘How’s Josh?’ I say, partly to change the subject and partly to scratch the itch. I still get flashes of us kissing in the park – the second time, the time I just decided to go for it so I could lodge the memory in my head – and it makes me all warm and fuzzy for a moment, till reality comes crashing in.
‘He’s good,’ she says. ‘Relieved that he no longer has to force-feed me, I think, haha!’
‘It must be difficult for him. Knowing things that are going on behind the scenes of the show and not always being able to talk to you about them.’ This is my penance, trying to make sure Saskia thinks the best of Josh. Trying to make sure they’re OK.
‘He has to do his job, I understand that.’ She shrugs.
Guilt about what I’ve done to Saskia is still eating me up. I can’t ever tell her. Not so much the Josh thing, which was, after all, just a kiss, even though, for me, it’s loaded with far more – and I think for him it was too. But for making him feel differently about her, even if only for a while.
I want to give her something to cement our friendship. I want to make her feel I value her. And, to be honest, there’s an element of self-interest too. If I can’t share my thoughts with Josh, I can at least share them with her, get her take on things. She knows all the parties concerned. Maybe she can help me come up with ways to put a bomb under Robert and Samantha’s relationship. I do worry a bit that she’ll think I’m vindictive and nasty, that it’ll change her opinion of me, but actually I think she might be impressed. She’s been so confused about why I’m not confronting Robert, throwing him out and making a new life for myself. On balance, I decide it’s worth it.
Obviously, there will be glaring omissions in my confession. I can never tell her that this whole thing started because it was her I thought Robert was seeing.
‘Can I tell you something?’ I say as our lunch arrives (seabass fillets for me, fish cakes for her).
‘Of course,’ she says, intrigued. ‘Anything, you know that.’