Page 10

Chapter Six

Once the shoot is over, we decamp to a nearby pub, and nab the best spot right by the window.

Verity spritzed a special setting spray across my face and practically choked me with hairspray, so my ‘look’ will stay put for the night.

We tried to beg her to come on a night out with us, I’d been telling Madison and Layla all about her wisdom, but she said all she wanted was a bath and huge glass of wine.

Which is a pity as I really could do with her fairy godmother ways, when, one bottle down, Madison has a suggestion.

She tries to say it all casual, like it hadn’t been in her mind all along, and she was just waiting for the wine to loosen up me and Layla enough that we’d agree to it.

We exchange a look as she says it, Layla with one eyebrow raised at me.

“So, I was on socials earlier, and guess who has a PA tonight?”

“If you’re going to say Marc, you have to do a shot,” Layla says, as back when we were in the studio we made an agreement: no talking about the lads. And anyone who so much as mentioned them had to do a shot. Which, considering we all love getting a drink in, isn’t that big a punishment.

“You’re the one who said his name!” Madison says, but even she knows her defence is weak.

“Alright, so it isn’t Marc, then?” Layla retorts. “By some miracle you’ve forgotten all about him and instead it’s the Born In Buckinghamshire boys who are doing a PA nearby?”

It just so happens that, at the same time our show launched, two similar reality TV shows hit screens (I say similar, as ours is clearly the best one).

There’s Born In Buckinghamshire , which features all these posh types who are all related in some way or another, either by actual blood, or because they’re shagging…

or in some cases, both (not, you know brother and sister stuff as that would be minging but like aristocratic-third-cousin type things).

It always feels like the mega rich don’t have family trees, they have a shrubbery of shame.

“UGH, no, as if,” Madison squeals. “He’s so pasty he probably uses factor fifty in a tanning salon.”

“Yeah they’re so pasty, they look like the inside of a Gregg’s sausage roll.”

They’re right. The Born In Buckinghamshire lads are so not our type.

You’d think with all that money they could afford to get a tan, or at least some decent clothes.

They’re all dressed in white, skinny jeans, shirts in weird colours that are better suited to an Easter egg than clothing.

And the shoes! These slippy, poo-brown things that are called ‘boat shoes’ but I’ve never seen anyone on that show go near an actual boat.

They’re mostly just in fancy bars and having lunch and getting hammered, only they don’t call it that, they call it getting ‘sloshed’ or, as one girl put it, ‘absolutely waaaaahhssssted’ really elongating the word, for absolutely no reason at all.

That’s the thing about Born In Buckinghamshire , they act like their show is better than ours, but theirs is exactly the same, it’s just fighting, shagging and getting drunk, only they get drunk on champagne and we get drunk on Smirnoff Ice.

“OK, so not them lot,” Layla says, playing along. “Though I wouldn’t mind tearing the polo shirt off of that Sebastian lad. He looks ripped under those sweater vests.”

The other show is Carry On Chelmsford , which is a little like Born In Buckinghamshire as it follows an actual group of friends around, but, like us, they’re a lot less posh.

They also love to get proper glammed up for nights out, but a few of them have managed to get some amazing deals lately.

One of the girls got her own clothing line.

I’d love to do something like that, as I know this whole ‘new kids on the TV scene’ thing can’t last forever.

I mean the PAs might pay the boys some wedge right now but it’s not like when the lads are in their forties women will be queuing up to ogle them in nightclubs.

Or maybe they will. I once queued up for four hours to meet Harold from Neighbours, but not because I fancied him (I’d have to have serious daddy issues for that, and I don’t!

My dad’s been my hero and around all of my life).

I just queued because it was funny, and I got this brilliant picture of me licking his head, something I am sure there was a reason for at the time though I can’t, for the life of me, remember what it was.

We gossip for a little while about the other shows and who we’ve heard is shagging who, until Layla points out we’ve gone off topic and directs her attention back to Madison.

“Fine it’s fucking Marc, OK? But it’s not just him who’ll be there.

Reed will, and…Damon.” She gives me a pointed look.

I try to rearrange my features in a way that doesn’t expose my excitement but also doesn’t show that Damon, in all of the back-and-forth messaging we’ve been doing, didn’t mention he was doing a PA in London.

We could have met up last night. Or this morning and had a shag in a fancy hotel room.

My room has this massive shower, one of those ones that makes you feel like you’re standing under rain.

Not freezing Mancunian rain that frizzes up your hair and makes you feel minging, but luxury, tropical rainfall.

The type of rain you see in the movies, during the very last scene, when the main hero of a character (so, me) is chased in the rain by the love of her life who’s messed up (so, Damon) and she looks exquisite in it and he tells her how she’s the only one for him, and then they kiss and…

She then appeals to Layla’s weakness. “Come on, it’s all of the lads, we can get together, be a family again.”

That’s always what Layla loved most about the house, bringing all of us together as a group, lads and lasses for huge nights out.

They were always the most fun, well, until they descended into snogging, gossip, chaos and, usually, at least one of us puking or worse.

I’m feeling classy today though, in my shoot make-up, so I’m not going to reflect on that for long…

“Except it won’t be all the family, will it? Samantha won’t be there.”

I try not to roll my eyes at Layla, who seems to be the only person not annoyed by how quickly Samantha has tried to distance herself from us since the show aired.

Voice and host of North Stars , her new Instagram bio reads, and her following has climbed massively.

She’s barely replied to any messages from us.

I don’t consider her one of my ‘family’ because that word means something to me: loyalty and loving someone unconditionally.

Samantha’s not shown me either, and she’s definitely not shown Madison that.

Some pictures appeared in the papers of her proper snogging Marc, even though she knew how much he meant to Madison.

And she was also there for the fall-out after the screening, after Madison saw, on screen, the games Marc had been playing with her.

I try to deflect from the fact that I do, actually, really want to go to the PA, as I don’t want the girls to figure out that I shagged Damon again.

I mean, knowing them, they’ve probably sussed it out already, there’s something psychic about the pair of them when it comes to shagging.

They can just tell. “Why do you want to see Marc anyway, Madison? Like, seriously, he was fucking awful to you.”

“Why did you shag Damon again?” Madison replies, in an eerily accurate impression of me.

“Yep, of course we know,” chimes Layla. Watch out Mystic Meg, the Psychic Shaggers are about.

“I’m not…” I try to say but they both just look at me and I sigh. “How did you know?”

“One, your hair the next day”

“Two, that smug look on your face, like the cat that got the—”

“Come on,” I interrupt and shove them as they keep fake humping and laughing. They both break down in giggles and I can’t help but join in.

“Fine, let’s all do a shot for Madison talking about Marc.”

“Then another round for Angelica talking about Damon,” Madison chimes in.

“Then we’ll go to the PA. Family reunion!” sings out Layla.

As soon as we arrive at the PA, I get this dread in my tummy that tells me it was a big mistake coming here.

I can’t walk quite as straight as I would like to, and as we approach the nightclub, this petite blonde in frayed dark denim shorts approaches me with a flyer.

She’s very pretty. She has a little button nose, big Bambi eyes and, worse still, is actually incredibly friendly and funny and sweet.

My problem since getting to know Damon in the house as both his friend, and part-time…

whatever we are, is that I also got to know who is type is.

I know he likes frayed shorts, as I was wearing them when we first laid eyes on each other, and unfortunately, I know he likes petite blondes who can get away with wearing hardly any make-up, as he told me multiple times, saying that I wear too much (but then OTT gasping when he does see me without it).

I’m also trying to block out the times I watched him pull girls exactly like this chatty wee thing in front of me, pretending I’m the cool girl, that I’m chill about who he pulls, totally unphased, even when I’m clenching my jaw so hard I’m seeing stars.

I look at this doe-eyed girl again. I hope they haven’t met.

Except, that’s what she’s telling me has just happened.

“Oh my god, and they’re like so fit and so nice,” she’s saying, while I’m suddenly clocking just how long the queue of women snaking out the door is. The lads were not exaggerating.