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‘The ballroom dancer.’

‘I should have guessed.’

‘OhGod! This is so hard.’ Kat’s face crumples.

‘Stop!’ Freddy raises a hand. ‘Don’t do that! Don’t cry again. I can’t take it.’

Kat holds back a lip wobble. ‘I can’t do all this clothes shopping stuff, Freddy. You’ll have to sell me as a badly packaged product.’

‘I don’t sell badly packaged products,’ says Freddy. ‘If the packaging is bad, I change it. Otherwise, there’s no point in doing the placement and promotion. It’s all about the three Ps, Kat. Packaging, placement, promotion. You can’t miss one out. It just won’t work.’

‘Then call this whole thing off.’ Kat puts her head in her hands. ‘I’ll be alone and childless forever while Chris procreates with increasingly younger women. I’ll end up like Gabriela, giving my cats human names and carrying them around in specially-made bubble rucksacks.’

‘No, you won’t. You just need to think more high-end. Classy.’ Freddy notices staff have gathered outside his office, pretending to be busy, messing around with phones and documents. Bloody glass walls.

‘I’m not classy.’ Kat starts mildly hyperventilating. ‘I eat Alpen for breakfast. I buy my underwear at Tesco. And not Tesco Finest underwear. The ‘Everyday Value’ kind.

‘How many awards has Little Voice won now?’

Kat shrugs. ‘Nine?’

‘Sounds pretty classy to me. Okay, listen.’ Freddy goes to the glass wall and wraps it with his knuckle. The staff flit off like fish in a tank. ‘I’m going to help you.’

‘How?’

‘Believe it or not, Kat, I know a thing or two about fashion.’

‘Are you going to make a crass comment about seeing a lot of clothes on your bedroom floor?’

‘No.’ Freddy spins a platinum paperweight on his desk: an extremely heavy gift from a Spanish PR company which once broke a glass-topped table. ‘Well, yes, I have seen a lot of clothes on my bedroom floor. But I know about fashion for other reasons.’

‘Which are?’

‘I used to model.’

Kat laughs. ‘Oh. Wait. You’re serious.’

‘Completely serious. It may have escaped your notice, but I’m a good-looking fellow.’

‘Let me guess. You modelled underwear?’

‘Why would you make that assumption?’

‘Just a hunch.’

‘Oh fine. I modelled underwear. And while doing so, I learnt a lot about fashion designers and style. I also made some great connections. One of which happens to be in this very building. Let’s go.’

‘Where?’

‘To meet a nightmare who makes fashion dreams come true.’

‘That soundsverycryptic. Care to elaborate?’

‘No darling, I don’t. Let’s go.’

CHAPTER16

Back inside the elevator, I see myself reflected again in the closing doors: a lumpy, sad-faced thirty-something in ill-fitting clothes with hair that refuses to behave.