Page 6

“Oh I know that happened…You saw me with my Smints, you had one, too and then just because you got wasted on voddie, you jumped to conclusions.” She reaches into her bag and pulls out the same pink diamante encrusted tin she had last night, which rattles with tiny white triangles.

She takes one out, pops it into her mouth and then hands one to me. I sniff it, suspiciously.

“Do you really think I would try to drug you? God, they’re mints, Angelica.

” She breathes her spearmint-scented hot breath on me.

I decide to chance it with another ‘pill’, take one and lick it.

It is, indeed, a mint. But last night it was definitely different, I remember it.

It was a little round tablet she gave me then, and even at the time I thought it wasn’t minty enough!

She obviously wanted to look the best today, so decided to give me drugs while she remained sober.

Surely that’s illegal somehow? Tricking someone into taking a pill?

But it’s not like I can go up to Gerald and tell him what happened, we all know who would get the blame, and who would deny it.

I’m so angry but I have to remain calm, as we’re ushered to our seats.

I’m very aware that it’s an all-eyes-on-us scenario so I have to appear smiling and happy to everyone.

The North Stars title music rolls and as I try to imagine what little Angelica would think of me now.

Or Angie, as I called myself back then. My mam always said I was away with the fairies – playing games, fancy dress, the whole singing-into-my-hairbrush shebang.

I used to say I was going to be a pop star – I always nabbed the lead in school plays, one time I even went busking in Piccadilly Gardens.

But all that changed when I met Robbie Thompson.

He was my first love – proper teenage puppy love.

I’d have done anything for him – I even lost my virginity to him in the back of a Fiat 500.

And that takes flexibility, I’m telling you.

Then, the night before my 21st birthday he told me he was leaving – not just me, but the whole country.

He was going to Australia to audition for a TV show called Beach Life .

At first I thought he was inviting me – but then he told me I was holding him back, that I would never be a singer, or anything much, for that matter, that I was mediocre and a dead weight.

I cried so much that night – and I’ve never sung a note in public since.

Unless you count me leading the old dears at the care home in a few choruses of ‘We’ll Meet Again’.

I wonder whether Robbie knows about North Stars .

He’d never have believed I’d have had the courage to even audition, let alone get the gig.

But I suppose there’s some kind of justice in knowing it was partly him ditching me that gave me the idea in the first place.

Even though my heart is in my mouth waiting for the credits to end, I think – no, I know, little Angelica would be proud of me.

Maybe not the times where I’ve spewed in a club toilet, and she’d have definitely pulled a face at the constant snogging, but she’d approve of the dresses and the make-up, the friends and most of all the fun.

I sit back in my chair. Who cares what this audience thinks – this isn’t for them, it’s for her.

They play our first episode and it’s bizarre to revisit my first impressions of the house and who I predicted I’d get it on with.

I thought Reed was absolutely gorgeous and I’m there telling the green screen I think he’s the one I’ll fall in love with!

I mean I do love him a lot, he was proper class on the show and I hope we stay in touch, but just as friends.

No matter how good someone looks, you always need a spark, and the spark was definitely always there with Damon.

I sometimes wish it wasn’t, as Reed treats girls so much nicer, but maybe that’s why there’s no chemistry.

I even said it in my audition, “I’ve got with loads of men, and the bigger the arsehole they are, the more likely I am to fancy them. ”

I don’t think anything prepares you for seeing yourself on a massive screen.

I’m trying so hard to keep watching, to be grateful for being here, and the opportunities this show is going to give me, but I can’t help cross examining myself.

I’m scrutinising my nose from the side now and, God, has that bump always been so noticeable?

And do my hair extensions really look stringy in certain lighting?

These were from an expensive salon up town, not the ones you glue in yourself following a YouTube tutorial.

I’m looking at Layla and Samantha and I just think they look absolutely gorgeous onscreen.

Even on the nights out where I was sure I looked nice, and spent ages getting ready, I’m now wondering ‘why did I choose that dress?’ and ‘how come my lips are so thin?’ It’s this agonising running commentary in my head, like one of those football pundits, only it’s an Angelica pundit and she’s being a right nasty piece of work.

I’d do anything to switch myself off right now, and I sink lower into my seat, my head pounding, wishing it would swallow me.

Then there’s the scenes where Damon is talking to the camera, in the green-screen room.

It was opposite the main house and producers would come and collect us, ask all sorts of questions, for hours on end.

It didn’t matter what you were doing, or wearing, if they came to usher you to green screen you had to go, immediately.

That’s why there’s some shots of us in towels, or our pyjamas.

We’d always come back and wind each other up, claiming we’d said loads of nasty things about the others.

Except it wasn’t true. At least, it definitely wasn’t true when I was saying it, I was just teasing.

But Damon, it turns out, wasn’t. I have to fight the urge to turn round and glare at him as I listen to some of the stuff he comes out with.

When he calls me easy, tears well up in my eyes.

It’s not that I’m ashamed to say I like sex.

And it’s not like Damon was complaining at the time.

It’s the way he phrases it and his smug tone – like he’s entitled.

He even says that he sees me as his safety net, claiming he can rely on me, at any time.

So if he doesn’t get his first choice of bird, he’ll just shag me.

I’m worth so much more , I want to yell…

it’s just, he doesn’t seem to see it, does he?

But I’m not the only one screwed over by the lads in the show.

They do something clever, squishing all of the episodes into a forty-five-minute highlight reel, so the press will have a flavour of what the series has to offer.

Bearing in mind we were in the house for eight whole weeks, which has already been condensed into just one series, so watching it squished even more makes for some wild viewing.

I discover the things Damon was saying to me on the green screen, but at least I already went through a lot of my heartbreak in the house.

Damon was not very good at hiding his shags, and it’s not fun to see them all over again, so I’m watching through my fingers. But it’s no surprise.

Whereas Layla is getting with loads of lads in the first three episodes, having the time of her life when Shane set his eyes on her.

He decided then that he wanted her all for himself.

He was gorgeous – a proper Greek god, so, of course, when he started moving in on Layla she was like putty in his hands.

It’s so obvious while watching the show how much he played with her.

Played with all of us, as I had no idea that he’d hide girls behind the hot tub, then as soon as Layla was asleep, or one of us was holding her hair back in the toilet (something that was often my job) and sneak them into his room.

But Layla didn’t know, neither did we. Only the cameras did.

We all watch on as Shane enjoys a threesome in the hot tub, with the camera cutting first to Layla in the green-screen room gushing about how she has ‘tamed the beast’ to then her snoring in bed, before switching back to the girls thrashing about in the hot tub, necking on in neon string bikinis while Shane looks on smugly.

I try to crane my head around to see Madison, realising now she must have known – no wonder she told Layla she was well rid of him when he got dumped from the house.

But instead I see Layla. I don’t manage to catch her eye, she’s just staring straight ahead, her lip slightly quivering.

Mads is transfixed, too. She’d be the first to admit she’s under Marc’s spell.

He’s a dead ringer for Chad Schmidt (yes, that Chad Schmidt, the Hollywood movie star who’s featured in the World’s Sexiest lists for years now).

Marc is a little rougher round the edges, I’ll admit – even if Madison would slap me for saying so – he’s more like a Chad Schmidt dupe, a Poundland Chad Schmidt.