Could It Be I'm Falling in Love? (46 page)

‘Is that Woody?’ Cressida trilled from the study. ‘Tell him I’m just finishing my blog!’

Woody raised an eyebrow. ‘She blogs now?’

Euan shrugged. ‘And tweets, trends and BBMs …’

‘Coffee, Woody?’ Cressida called out.

‘I’ll stick the kettle on!’ he replied with a laugh. He knew the drill.

‘She’s bought a Nespresso,’ Euan mumbled.

‘But can she work it?’ Woody asked dryly.

‘Course! But it’s OK – I like to make it.’

Woody choked down another laugh and headed into the
study. Sitting at her desk, Cressida was just hitting
publish
with a flourish.

‘There; that’ll do for now,’ she declared. ‘I’m going to Skype my followers this afternoon. I want to hear what they think about the new baccalaureates.’

‘It’s working, then, this home-gimp business?’ Woody grinned.

‘What? Euan? He’s a poppet. I don’t know what all the worry was about.’

‘I don’t think Si would call him a poppet.’

‘You’ve just got to show teenagers who’s boss. They’re like dogs: give them too much freedom and they’ll worry the sheep, but show a firm hand and they soon walk to heel.’

Woody bit his lip to stop himself laughing. But Cressida didn’t notice. She was too busy beaming at Euan, who’d just appeared with a tray.

‘Thank you, Euan.’ She cleared a space on her desk next to the newspapers. ‘Oh, and biscuits too – jolly good! Tell me, how did you get on with that economics homework I set you?’

‘Finished,’ he replied, a hint of pride briefly flitting across his features.

‘You’re setting him homework?’ Woody asked. He wasn’t sure what to be more shocked by – the homework, or the pride.

‘He’s a bright boy; he can handle it!’ Cressida told him. ‘Besides, if you want to learn, you need to go off-piste. Otherwise all you get is the grade.’

‘Any parrot can get a grade,’ added Euan, witheringly.

‘Quite!’ agreed Cressida. ‘Well, you’d better head off now, Euan, else your mother will start wondering where you are. I’ll text you later if I get stuck with the Skype.’

‘OK. Bye, Cressida.’ And with the smallest hint of a smile, Euan was off.

Woody stared into the space he’d just vacated.

‘He likes you!’ he said in amazement. ‘Teenagers hate everyone, but he actually likes you!’

‘I’m not here to be liked. I didn’t build a career on being liked.’

‘So what happened to “Ms Cunningham”, then?’ Woody teased.

Cressida tutted. ‘I’m not a complete dinosaur. We got beyond all that pomp in the first week. Besides, you can’t be too formal in chat rooms; it’s a whole new language in there. If I sounded like myself, I’d sound ludicrous. Correct parlance is “totes inappropes”.’

Woody laughed. ‘You’re phenomenal, Cressida, d’you know that? The world’s only government-minister-turned-teen-whisperer.’

Cressida pulled a face. ‘Amazeballs.’ She shrugged and sipped her Nespresso.

7.51pm @FoxyRoxy

Fame, work, It bags, Nanoblur, men … all overrated! When chips down & fan shitty, nothing in world beats a girly night in.

7.52pm @FoxyRoxy

The girls are on their way over!

#ROXYSAYS: BOTTOMS UP TO THAT!

Cressida peeled the cucumber slices off her eyes and leant forward to examine the newspaper.

‘LOOK WHAT THE TORNADO BLEW IN!’
read the headline.

Restricted by the cement of her face pack, she made a loud, clucky tut. ‘And on a scale of one to ten, how well has Terence taken his upstaging?’

‘Terence has been a real sweetheart,’ Sue declared earnestly, her eyes shining with the three bottles of fizz the women had so far downed between them. It was shaping up to be a vintage girls’ night in: pink booze, a mountain of cakes and Shirley Bassey’s greatest hits on shuffle. ‘He was just worried about me, the lamb.’

‘Hmmm,’ Cressida murmured at full volume. ‘Somehow I think only
you
could have got away with it.’

‘What do you mean?’ Sue asked, confused.

‘What I mean is –’ Cressida tried to speak without cracking her face – ‘I don’t think he’d have been such a “lamb” about having his big moment overshadowed if it had been one of us lot doing the overshadowing!’

Sue looked blank for a moment.

‘Oh!’ she exclaimed, as the penny dropped. ‘Oh, no; it’s not like that – we’re just friends.’

‘Yeah, right,’ Roxy smirked as she popped the cork on bottle number four (Asti, not champagne – now that she was a civilian she had to economise). ‘That’s not what the papers say.’ She topped up Sue’s glass and read from the paper. ‘Sue Bunce made her return to the spotlight last night at the UK premiere of
Fluffy Love Stuff
. Ms Bunce – who gained nationwide notoriety when her affair with the former cabinet MP, Rupert Hunt, was revealed – almost three decades ago – had been living in obscurity since the scandal. Her unexpected appearance in London’s Leicester Square came on the arm of her …’ Roxy raised an eyebrow at Sue ‘… close friend, former TV weatherman, Terence “Tornado Terry” Leggett …’

‘See?’ Sue protested. ‘They said “friend”.’

‘They said
“close
friend”.’

‘I can’t help it if they added a “close”. Besides, Terence knows it’s not like that.’

‘Of course he does,’ Cressida agreed ambiguously.

Sue frowned. ‘Are you laughing at me? Because I can’t tell with that face pack …’

Cressida replaced the cucumber slices over her eyes and slid back to a recline.

‘All of which is missing the point,’ Roxy interrupted, as she stared at Sue’s picture in the paper. Sue looked radiant as she posed on the red carpet, Terence beaming proudly behind her. There was no mistaking what a beauty she’d been. The poise
of her modelling days had not deserted her. Her hip was forward, her leg extended and she was looking into the lens like she owned it. ‘You know what, Sue?’ Roxy marvelled. ‘You’ve still got it!’

Sue wriggled happily across the sofa to scour the picture once again. ‘I didn’t think I had it in me,’ she beamed.

‘It was just a short walk across Leicester Square.’

‘Not just that – all of it! The dress, the hair, the confidence …’

‘Confidence is a trick. You just need to practise.’

Sue nodded, tipsy and happy. ‘The dress
is
spectacular,’ she conceded.

‘You
are spectacular!’ Roxy cried.

‘I have to agree,’ Cressida declared suddenly, discarding the cucumbers and sitting up. ‘You put a point on the board for the older woman last night. You blew all those underdressed, undernourished teen-women out of the water.’

Sue looked at her, dumbfounded. Suddenly her eyes dampened. ‘Thanks Cressida,’ she croaked drunkenly. ‘That means a lot.’

‘Yes, well …’ Cressida shrugged. ‘Can you please release me from this blasted cast, now, Roxy? I feel like I’m being mummified.’

‘Beautified,’
Roxy corrected.

‘Hmmm.’ Cressida eyed her toes – rammed into separators and painted scarlet – with suspicion.

Roxy sighed happily and drained her glass. ‘It’s a shame Holly and Chelle couldn’t make it,’ she mused as she started
melting Cressida’s face mask with warm water, ‘because I reckon this is the life!’

‘This?’ Sue echoed, surprised. ‘What, here …? With
us?’

‘Yeah, this is
way
better than going through my checklist in some nightclub – spending the whole night blagging my way into VIP, only to discover there’s nothing “I” about the “P”s that are in there – before freezing my tits off for the paps.’

‘Oh, Roxy, what a lovely thing to say!’ Sue gushed, touched in a fourth-bottle-of-Asti kind of way.

‘And, you know what?’ Roxy added thoughtfully. ‘I don’t want to be famous any more.’

‘Roxy!’

‘It’s too much effort … I can’t be arsed.’

‘At last!’ smirked Cressida, under the remains of her face mask.

But Sue was confused. ‘But being famous … Roxy, it’s who you
are
. Are you seriously giving it up?’

Roxy nodded.

Sue frowned. ‘But if you’re not going to be famous, where does that leave the rest of us?’

‘Page seven of today’s newspaper,’ Roxy laughed. ‘Oh, Sue, I’ll let you in on a secret. I haven’t been famous in ages.’

‘But…’ Sue protested, perplexed. ‘But what about all those jobs, and the showbiz parties, and your celebrity clothes, and your famous-person teeth—?’

‘All bollocks.’ Roxy dismissed them with a wave. ‘The jobs were invented, the parties crap and the clothes were too small. And, as for the teeth – I’m going fallow.’

‘Yellow?’

‘Fallow. Like a field!’

Sue furrowed her brow as she thought. ‘Does that mean they’ll go back to being tooth coloured?’

‘Hallelujah,’ Cressida said dryly.

‘I’ll look like Stig of the Dump, but who cares? It’s not like I’ve got anyone to impress.’ Roxy looked glum. ‘No, I’ll leave all the impressing to Chelle.’

‘Hah!’ Cressida cried. ‘Chelle couldn’t impress her way out of a paper bag.’

‘I don’t think Woody agrees.’ Suddenly Roxy had had enough booze not to be angry. Suddenly she was fourth-bottle-of-Asti depressed. She took a deep breath. ‘Woody and Chelle; they’re together.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Cressida snorted.

‘They’re keeping it hidden, but they’re shagging.’

‘Woody’s not interested in Chelle,’ cried Sue. ‘He’s totally in love with Jennifer!’

‘He’s
cheating
on Jennifer,’ Roxy told her.

‘He wouldn’t. Not after what happened with Petra.’

‘What happened with Petra?’ Roxy asked.

‘She cheated on him with Austin, of course!’

Roxy’s mouth fell open. How had she never known that? She was a walking who’s-doing-who on celebs. But now everything was beginning to make sense.
That
was why Woody and Petra split up … why Woody was grumpy with Austin … and why he’d warned her not to fall for his charms! Roxy felt a massive whoosh of sympathy.
Poor Woody
– having to put up
with the man who’d stolen his girlfriend. And then sympathy turned into guilt as she remembered that it was
she
who’d made Woody ask Austin to join the group.

‘No wonder he punched Austin’s lights out,’ Cressida chortled.

But Roxy frowned. Something still didn’t add up.

‘But there’s definitely
something
going on between Chelle and Woody,’ she insisted. All she could see was the memory of Chelle in her undies, marking her territory on Woody’s front doorstep.

‘Chelle’s not interested in Woody,’ scoffed Cressida. ‘She’s got her eye higher up the food chain.’

‘But who could be higher than Woody?’ Sue frowned.

‘Austin,’ Roxy replied in a daze.
Of course – Austin!
How could she have missed something so obvious? Chelle had always been clear about her game plan – and Austin was definitely richer and more famous than Woody.
And
she’d been flirting for Britain in the pub the other night.
And
she’d legged it just after finding out about Carmen.

‘And as for Jennifer …’ Cressida continued smugly, eyes twinkling as she regarded her Asti. There was a very long pause – torturously long. ‘Well… isn’t it obvious?’ she smirked.

To:
Roxy Squires

From:
Have I Got News For You
production office

Dear Ms Squires,

We hear from some of our industry colleagues that you represent Cressida Cunningham, Sue Bunce, Terence ‘The Tornado’ Leggett and Holly Childs. If possible, we’d like to book all of them for our forthcoming series. Whatever your conditions, we agree! We’d even like to offer you a host slot, as thanks.

Yours in anticipation …

Roxy lay in bed, miserably staring at her ceiling. Last night had been confusing through the blur of a fourth bottle of pink, but morning had not made things any clearer.
What
was obvious about Jennifer?

Of course, she hadn’t wanted to come out and admit that what was obvious to Cressida was as clear as a mudbath to her. She’d had enough confession that week. So, instead, she’d dug out her Wham! CD and kicked off the dancing. But as she’d cancanned around her living room, she hadn’t for a moment stopped puzzling.
What
was obvious about Jennifer? And, come to think of it,
who
was bloody Jennifer? And was she
ever
going to bother coming back?