Never Too Late (39 page)

They walked along a corridor to the dressing rooms,

with Linda explaining how often they’d need Olivia if she

was to be hired. Two mornings a week for a fifteen-minute

slot at ten-thirty, which would involve discussing the menu

with the researchers and coming in at half-eight to get the

preparation done.

As they walked past several open doors, Olivia could see

that the dressing rooms were compact little boxes each

containing a tiny sink, a clothes hanging space, a few chairs

and wall-to-wall mirrors.

Then, they reached Nancy’s dressing room.

Nita, the star’s beleaguered assistant, opened the door

gingerly when Linda knocked and let them into a large airy

room that looked like at least three ordinary dressing

rooms knocked into one. Painted in Nancy’s signature pink,

the room contained a zebra-print armchair, a cherry pink

and gilt chaise-longue and a coffee table groaning under

the weight of fan letters and a glossy magazines opened on

purpose at fawning profiles of the star herself. There was

even a pink-tiled bathroom.

One lightbulb-edged mirror was a shrine to Nancy with

scores of pictures of her stuck haphazardly on to the glass:

Nancy with Frank Sinatra, Neil Diamond, the President

and Barney. A vase of fresh pink roses sat beside the shrine,

with another cellophaned bouquet of baby pink ones on

the floor, waiting to be arranged.

The star herself was arranged on the chaise-longue, feet

up and a glass of champagne in her hand.

In her pink boudoir, on the pink and gilt chaise, Nancy

looked like everybody’s vision of a brothel’s madam. She

was tough enough for the job, too, Olivia reckoned,

imagining Nancy personally throwing punters on to the

.street for not paying up.

‘Olivia, how lovely to meet you,’ Nancy said in her

television voice. Thrilled that Nancy had decided to be

nice to her, Olivia held out a hand. Nancy, however, wasn’t

into hand shaking. ‘So formal,’ she tittered, giving Olivia an

air kiss on both sides of her face. The waft of overpowering

Hypnotic Poison left Olivia reeling. Nancy must have used

half the bottle in one go.

‘Do sit.’ Nancy patted the end of the chaise and Olivia

sat down, waiting to see how the encounter would

progress. It was a bit like entering the lioness’s den and

finding her no longer hungry for fresh meat but in the

mood to toy with you. One false move and you were dead.

‘Where did you find Olivia?’ Nancy asked Linda, still in

sweet mode. Nancy was obviously wary of Linda, Olivia

decided, which was why she was being so nice to the

producer.

‘She’s a friend of Max Stewart’s.’

Nancy’s eyes turned into slits at the word ‘friend’.

‘Really?’ She gave Olivia the once over. ‘You’re his type,

I’ll say that for you.’

‘I’m happily married and Max isn’t my type,’ she replied

tartly.

Nancy giggled girlishly. ‘Poor pet, you’ll have to get used

to our bitchy ways in television,’ she said in a patronising

voice. ‘You won’t last long if you can’t develop skin a little

thicker than that, Olivia. This business is very incestuous,

you know, that’s why I asked. We all live in each other’s

pockets. Everyone sleeps with everyone else eventually.

How do you know Max, anyway?’

‘He’s a friend of my husband’s,’ Olivia lied, innocently

thinking that was one way to scotch rumours of anything

between herself and Max.

‘What does he do?’

‘He’s in banking.’

‘What’s his name?’

‘Stephen MacKenzie.’

‘Never heard of him.’ Nancy continued the interrogation.

‘What did you do before this?’

‘I teach Home Economics.’

‘Ooh.’ Satisfied at last, Nancy sat back against her

plump cushions and drank more champagne. She’d not

offered any to Olivia or Linda. ‘Cookery classes.’

‘It’s more than cookery!’ Olivia said hotly.

‘I’m sure it is. Do you do sewing as well?’ Nancy asked

facetiously. ‘Linda,’ she turned to the producer, who’d been

silently watching the exchange, ‘maybe we should get

Olivia to sew as well? I seem to remember making a lovely

little gingham apron when I was in home economics

classes. Useless, of course, but so pretty. Wouldn’t that be a

nice slot - Olivia teaching people how to make aprons and

clothes for Barbie dolls?’

‘Well, I don’t know, Nancy,’ said Linda in a thoughtful

tone, getting to her feet. ‘That’s not a bad idea. We’ll think

about it. Come on, Olivia, we’ve people to meet.’

Olivia, outraged by Nancy’s comments and just as

outraged by the producer’s obsequious response, felt herself

go white with rage.

‘So nice to meet you,’ Nancy said disarmingly. ‘You were

good on camera.’

Taken aback, Olivia stared at the other woman, her

longing to lacerate Nancy with a smart comment subsiding.

She was never good with smart remarks. Evie would

have thought up something devastating.

‘Er … thank you,’ she stuttered.

Linda held the door open and Olivia was nearly in the

corridor when Nancy hit her with a parting shot.

Of course, it’s easy to be competent with no audience

and the knowledge the show isn’t live,’ Nancy said, her

voice so treacly it was hard to reconcile it with her bitchy

words. ‘Try it for real, sweetie, and you’ll get a big shock.

Live television sorts out the amateurs from the professionals.’

She gave Olivia a withering look that left her in no

doubt as to which category Nancy had placed her in.

Linda slammed the door before Olivia could say anything

in response. ‘She’s quite a character, isn’t she?’ the

producer said weakly.

Character, Olivia thought, wasn’t the word.

Evie laughed delightedly and hugged Olivia.

‘I’m so pleased for you,’ she said. ‘Olivia de Were, TV

star! How wonderful! We’ll have to have a girls’ night out to celebrate.’

Thinking of Stephen’s feelings about girls’ nights out,

Olivia smiled weakly, the buzz she’d felt after leaving

the television centre abating somewhat. Driving through

the traffic to Evie’s house, she’d felt high on adrenaline

and thrilled with herself. Now, sitting at Evie’s kitchen

table with a mug of weak tea in her hand and some

ginger nut biscuits on a plate in front of her, she began

to wonder if she’d hallucinated the whole thing.

She was Olivia MacKenzie, mum-of-one, wife to the

disgruntled Stephen, hardly a TV star. Evie was the lively

one, the animated one.

‘I don’t know, Evie,’ she sighed, ‘am I mad even to think

of doing this? What if I do go to pieces when it’s live …’

But Evie wouldn’t hear a word of it: ‘Don’t listen to

that bitch,’ she said, fierce in her loyalty. ‘I may not

know anything about the world of television, Olivia, but

I know jealousy when I see it. She’s jealous as sin, that’s

all. Jealous because you’re better looking, thinner and naturally blonde.’ Evie didn’t care about verbally mangling a woman she’d hitherto admired for being one of the

few voluptuous-and-proud-of-it women on TV. Nancy

Roberts had been vicious to her beloved Olivia and for

that she deserved to die! Or be slagged off as a talentless

bleached blonde.

‘It’s a compliment really.’ she added. ‘She feels threatened

by you and that’s why she lashed out. If she’d been as

sweet as pie, then you’d have reason to worry because it’d

mean you were terrible.’

Delighted with her logic, Evie carried on. ‘I was worried

about you doing the audition in the first place,’ she

admitted. ‘Not because I thought you wouldn’t be able for

it,’ she added hastily. ‘But because Max Stewart,’ she

almost spat his name out, ‘organised it. I was sure he was

simply bullshitting you.’

‘I don’t know what you’ve got against Max,’ Olivia said

mildly. ‘He’s a lovely man, very kind and friendly.’

Evie snorted.

‘You don’t still think he was trying to set you up when

he chatted with you at the wedding, Evie, do you?’ Olivia

said. ‘He’s not that sort of person.’

You don’t know what sort of person he is, Evie thought

grimly. She hadn’t told Olivia about Max wanting to see

her again, even though he knew she was engaged to

Simon. It was despicable, dreadful. She hadn’t been able

to stop thinking about it and him.

He filled her thoughts and she’d had endless screaming

matches in her head when she’d told him exactly what she

thought of him. The words ‘rogue’, ‘chancer’ and ‘bastard’

came up a lot in those imaginary conversations. Who did

he think he was, asking her out when she’d already said

no? And what sort of woman did he think she was?

‘Is this the latest wedding dress brochure?’ asked Olivia,

to change the subject. She picked up the glossy brochure

that was lying under a newspaper and flicked through the

pages. Brides in elegant shift dresses and medieval princess

gowns vied for attention on every page. ‘These are beautiful.

Which are the three you like best, the ones you were

telling me about?’

Evie glanced at the brochure dispiritedly. She’d lost

interest in wedding dresses for some reason. The medieval

fantasy dress she’d dreamed of for so long no longer gave

her little shivers of delight when she looked at it, imagining

herself at the altar beside Simon in front of awestruck

guests. Until recently, she’d loved daydreaming about the

wedding. When she was tired and couldn’t sleep, imagining

every detail of the day had been her favourite way of

dozing off. But that didn’t work anymore. Thinking about

the long-anticipated day just made her strangely edgy and

unable to sleep.

In fact, the only time she’d dreamed about the wedding

at all, recently had been a veritable nightmare where she’d

found herself at the altar wearing a long diaphanous white

nightie, with flowers in her hair, bare feet and - worst of all - no underwear! Even stranger, when the groom had

turned round to greet her, he wasn’t Simon at all. It was

Max bloody Stewart looking like a pirate in the sort of

buccaneer’s linen shirt men wore in her favourite novels.

Then he grinned at her, baring those wolf’s fangs as if he

was going to sink them into her. After that dream, Evie had

woken up abruptly, sweat beaded to her forehead and her

brushed cotton nightie glued to her body.

‘This is so you, Evie.’ Olivia showed her a picture of a

Regency-inspired dress that had Jane Austen written all

over it. Demure and sexy, it was just the sort of thing Evie

would look beautiful in.

‘Mmmm,’ she said listlessly, ‘I don’t know. I still haven’t

sorted out the menus. I don’t know why the hotel are so

keen on knowing what we’re going to eat now when the

wedding isn’t for six months. I can’t figure out if we want

poached salmon and Wicklow lamb or trout with almonds

and Beef Wellington. It’s so far away to be planning

specifics.’

Olivia looked up from the brochure, jolted by the

depressed tone of her friend’s voice.

I thought you were enjoying organising the wedding?’

she said quietly, scanning Evie’s face carefully.

Aware that she’d almost revealed something she was

barely able to admit to herself, Evie backtracked. ‘Oh, it’s

just wedding jitters,’ she said hurriedly. That was it, she

told herself. Wedding jitters. Every bride got them.

Olivia was still studying her.

Evie rattled on. ‘Poor Simon won’t know what to do

with me when we’re married,’ she said brightly. ‘I’m

getting as moody as hell. We still can’t decide where to buy

a house when we’re married. He wants a larger town

house, something near the city, and I’d prefer to move out,

maybe to Dun Laoghaire.’ She beamed at Olivia, as if

whether to live within a stone’s throw of the city or miles

outside it was the biggest issue in her life at that moment.

She couldn’t say, daren’t even think, that there was any

other issue throbbing in her head like an abscess. An

abscess named Max Stewart.

‘So, what does Stephen think of all this television

stardom?’ she asked cheerily, getting up to make more tea.

It was Olivia’s turn to look guarded. ‘That’s the other big

problem,’ she said slowly. ‘He doesn’t know.’

‘Stephen doesn’t know?’ Evie asked in shock. ‘Do you

think that’s wise?’

Olivia put her head in her hands and groaned. ‘I know, I

know. I should have told him. I knew he’d hate me doing it

and put me off, or at least convince me I’d be so hopelessly

bad that I’d be bound to make a mess of it. Destroying my

self-confidence is what he does best nowadays.’

Evie stopped messing around with the kettle and sat

down quietly at the table. ‘I didn’t know things were so

bad,’ she said finally.

Olivia fiddled with a cuticle, not meeting her best

friend’s eyes. ‘It’s not the sort of thing you talk about, is it?’

‘It is to me,’ Evie said earnestly.

Olivia shrugged. ‘I couldn’t tell you, I couldn’t tell