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СКАЧАТЬ used to do it all the time when you were a little girl.’ Mum is on a roll now. ‘That time you accidentally-on-purpose stubbed your toe the day before the Cinderella audition, do you remember? I put it down to jealousy of your sister, because she was up for the part of Cinders and you were only trying out for the chorus, but now I’m wondering if it was nothing to do with Cass, and simply because you couldn’t handle the pressure …’

      ‘It was an am-dram panto! In Hounslow! There wasn’t any pressure!’

      ‘Well, of course there wasn’t, because you couldn’t audition and you never got the part! And what about your Year Five carol concert, when you had a solo line in Twelve Days of Christmas? You came down with a so-called sore throat half an hour before curtain-up.’

      The way I recall this event, I still managed to croak my way, half a dozen times, through the ‘Six Geese A-Laying’ verse before collapsing straight after the concert with a fever of 103 degrees and then being in bed with tonsillitis for a week.

      ‘And what about that day when the Royal Ballet scouts were coming to Miss Pauline’s, and you slipped getting out of the shower and knocked yourself out on the towel rail …’

      ‘Mum, for the last time, it was an accident!’ All attempts at Audrey-esque poise have vanished. ‘And I didn’t come all the way over here this morning for a psychiatric evaluation!’

      ‘Yeah, Mum, there’s loads of stuff we need Libby to do!’ Cass calls from the bathroom, where Stella has started to blast her with fake-tan spray. ‘I need my dress picking up from the dry-cleaner’s and I need some Spanx picking up from the Selfridges lingerie department and I need my ruby pendant altering – so it highlights my boobs better, Lib, remember?’

      ‘I remember.’

      ‘… and I need my I’m Not Really a Waitress for my pedicure – that’s an OPI nail polish, Libby, by the way – and I need …’

      ‘I know it’s an OPI nail polish, Cass, thank you.’

      ‘Well, they’ll have it in the spa at FitLondon. And can you go there first, please, or my toenails will never be dry in time?’

      I’ll be dispatched on any menial errand, to be honest, if it gets me away from Mum’s amateur-psychology codswallop.

      ‘Fine. I’ll go there first.’

      ‘This discussion is not over, Libby!’ Mum calls after me as I start to head down the stairs. ‘As soon as Cass’s big night is over …’

      But I’m closing the front door behind me.

      The worst is over, at least.

      Because that’s the thing: as soon as Cass’s Big Night is over … what? Mum will just move onto the next project she’s earmarked for Cass – Emily Brontë, a Made Man magazine cover, Strictly Come Dancing; neither she nor Cass will care that much as long as it keeps her in the public eye – and my embarrassing sacking will be forgotten.

      And when Mum does find three minutes to think about it again, and book me in for another extras job on whatever TV drama is particularly desperate right now, I’m just going to decline. Summon back a soupçon more of that Audrey poise and tell Mum politely, but categorically, No.

      Of course, I do need to crack on with finding another job in the meantime. The rent on my new flat – even if I can persuade Bogdan Senior to halve it, which I doubt – isn’t going to grow on trees.

      Rent money that, it only occurs to me as I approach the entrance to FitLondon, I’m just about to blow on OPI nail polishes and Spanx pants for Cass, because she didn’t give me any money to pay for it all and she’s notoriously bad at paying me back.

      Obviously this isn’t going to fly, not now that I’m dealing with a minor Moldovan crime lord. I need to go back to Mum’s and get some cash from her, or I’ll be easily forty quid out of pocket before I know it.

      As I turn away from FitLondon’s entrance doors, back towards the flat, my phone suddenly bleeps with a text.

      It’s Olly:

       Any decision on pie yet? The pie world is your oyster. Suggest, however, not oyster.

      I smile, and start to text back:

       Am willing to be guided by you on all matters pertaining to pies. Always enjoy that banof—

      Before I can finish typing fee, I bump into a woman hurrying towards the doors. Literally bump into her, I mean: our arms tangle and we’d probably have bumped noses if it weren’t for the fact that she’s about a foot taller than me.

      ‘Sorry!’ I say.

      ‘For fuck’s sake, stop texting and watch where you’re bloody going!’ she barks.

      This is slightly unfair – not to mention rude – because her head was down and she’s wearing a baseball cap pulled right over her eyes, which themselves are shaded in huge crystal-encrusted sunglasses, so I’d be surprised if she could see where she was going either. But I don’t expect much else from an A-list model, which I’m assuming she is. A-list because of the baseball cap and shades; model because she’s practically six foot tall in her gym shoes, with perfect melons of breasts jutting out of her skimpy cropped top. Familiar-looking breasts, if it doesn’t sound too weird to say that … I’ve seen them somewhere before – and recently, at that. She pushes past me to the FitLondon entrance, jabs a few times at the entry pad, and then strides through the sliding doors as they open.

      It’s her rear view that clinches my suspicions. Her bum is pert, perfect, clad in tiny hot-pink yoga shorts and belongs, I’m pretty certain, to the girl I recently saw in the pages of Grazia, coming out of a nightclub with Dillon O’Hara: Rhea Haverstock-Harley, Victoria’s Secret model and assaulter of hairdressers.

      And a moment later I’m absolutely certain, because about ten leather-jacketed paparazzi seem to appear out of nowhere, flashing their cameras in the direction of the doors and yelling, ‘Rhea! Rhea!’ after her as she vanishes inside and the doors close behind her.

      Which is pretty definitive, let’s face it.

      ‘Stuck-up bitch,’ one of them mutters, charmingly, as they give up taking dozens of photos of a blank set of sliding glass doors and mooch back, en masse, to wherever it was they came from. One of the coffee bars in the piazza, I expect, because there’s no entry pad there, and nobody can stop them going in.

      My phone pings, again, from inside my jeans pocket.

      This time it’s not Olly – to whom I must send the pie reply, now I think of it – but Mum.

      Tell spa to put nail polish on my account. Also u need entry code for FitLondon entrance. Is Cass’s birthday.

      Of course it is. Mum’s code for pretty much everything is Cass’s birthday.

      And it’s nothing to do with the fact that Cass’s birthday is the first of January, and so therefore a memorable date. My birthday is 14 February, as it happens, which is a pretty memorable date, too; but, as far as I know, Mum has never used that for anything.

      Well, СКАЧАТЬ