Bitter & twisted

PART ONE: BITTER

Chapter One

When people described Annie they skirted around her as though there was a band of yellow police tape that said ‘Do Not Cross This Line’. They struggled with euphemisms, avoiding the one thing that set her apart from most other people. They described her chestnut-brown hair, so glossy and smooth. They waxed lyrical about her translucent, blemish-free skin and her perfect little teeth. Her personality was akin to March sunshine, open windows and newly baked bread. Annie was everyone’s friend.

And she was fat.

Bonny. Heavy. Ample. Stout. Plump. Buxom. Comely.

Anything but Fat.

She had gone through her entire life being labelled in that way. Of course things weren’t quite so courteous when she was younger. School kids could be so heartlessly cruel towards anyone who deviated from the norm. They called her Fatima and they made snorting noises through the toilet partitions whenever she had to use the facilities.

Pig. Cow. Fatty. Hippo. Porker. Lard-Arse.

Did they care that she hid Mars Bars under her mattress so that she could eat them at night without derision? Did any of them stop to wonder if she might be stigmatised by their heartless name-calling and insinuations? She was just an object of ridicule and therefore impervious to their cruel taunts. Thick-skinned and thick-ankled, watching for confrontation on the lacrosse field through her impossibly thick National Health glasses.

Come on, Fatima, move your arse! they shouted with malicious glee.

Girls in pleated gym skirts and white Aertex tops. Girls with blonde bunches and enviable waistlines. Girls who ran around naked in the shower room, perky-breasted and firm buttocked, ample and ready to handpick the best of the boys for the Christmas social.

So, at thirty-seven, Annie was having the last laugh. She stood in front of her full-length mirror in a cream satin wedding gown and she laughed. Laughed at all those spiteful girls who said she would never amount to anything. Laughed at the relatives who ridiculed her at the dinner table for taking second helpings. Laughed at all the women she knew who had settled for compromise and lived to regret it.

Annie was getting married to the most popular boy at school. Athlete. Scholar. Most likely to succeed: Spencer Noble.

She could barely believe it herself. There she stood in a custom-made wedding dress, while her father waited downstairs looking uncomfortable in a tuxedo. The car was due to arrive any minute and her bridesmaids fussed around with her veil, clipping it securely into her enviable chestnut-brown hair. They were probably thinking how beautiful she looked for a fat person. They were probably shocked that she was eating a cupcake while finishing off a McDonald’s strawberry milkshake through a jumbo straw.

Mind your lipstick, Annie, chided Spencer’s younger sister, Jasmine.

Don’t get chocolate on your dress, admonished Annie’s cousin Diane.

Where was Betsy? Where was Annie’s chief bridesmaid?

She’s in the lav, said Diane, probably got her fingers down her throat bringing up her McNuggets.

Trust Diane to be so vitriolic! Sometimes poor Annie despaired of her family and their lack of decorum. Whatever would Mr. and Mrs. Spencer think of them all, as they gathered on opposite sides of the church?

Mr. and Mrs. Spencer with their Victorian conservatory and double garage.

Annie could imagine them now, glancing surreptitiously across the aisle at her mother decked out in periwinkle-blue chiffon: At her grandmother clinging to her zimmer frame in a pre-war astrakhan jacket and support tights: At the motley collection of aunts and uncles, cousins and family friends, all of them gathered in mismatched lines along several pews, wearing unsuitable hats and tight collars.

It didn’t bear thinking about.

Spencer’s father was on the county council. Spencer’s mother was chairperson of the Women’s Guild. They gave cheese and wine parties and hobnobbed with the mayor at social functions. They had a real tree at Christmas and drank dry sherry.

Annie’s father was a fishmonger in the market. Her mother worked on the checkout at Tesco.

The car’s here, Annie, said Betsy Brown, popping her gaunt little face around the bedroom door. Annie took a final gulp of her milkshake, and Diane gave her a quick squirt of Opium.

Oh God, I’m so nervous, admitted Annie, looking to her best friend for reassurance.

It’s going to be brilliant, love. You’ll be the envy of everyone there. You’re such a lucky cow! Spencer Noble, who would have dreamed eh?

Spencer’s sister Jasmine obviously found it difficult to keep quiet on the subject because she screwed up her pretty face as though attempting to dislodge something painful from her throat.

Shift yourself then, Annie. Your dad’s looking constipated down there in his monkey suit!

Annie stepped gingerly down the narrow staircase, with umpteen yards of cream satin trailing behind her. It was the same staircase where she had played as a child, halfway up on the same nylon carpet, dangling her dolls from the banister-rail and pretending it was a ski lift. Her veil brushed the low ceiling and she filled the space like an enormous meringue that had expanded too fast in the oven.

Don’t get wedged in there, Annie, otherwise we’ll need a couple of hefty blokes and a length of rope to get you out!

Cousin Diane had never been one for subtlety. She was thwarted and mean, with a pinched face that looked spiteful even when it was smiling.

Dad waited in the living room. He stood with his back to the empty hearth as though warming his bum at an imaginary fire. In his rented tuxedo he appeared fenced-in and itchy, shifting his neck uneasily in his collar and flexing his hands into fists. Father and daughter overwhelmed the cramped space with incongruous glamour, he in his dicky bow and she in her twenty metres of cream satin.

Crikey, love, you look smashing.

Annie beamed with joy. She felt smashing.

Ta, Dad.

I have to admit your mum and me were beginning to wonder if we’d ever see this day. What with our Frank wed at eighteen and our Erma knocked up before she left school, we thought you were going to be living with us until we popped our clogs. Looks like we were wrong, eh?

It looks like it, Dad, and Annie, kissing her father on the cheek. Even so, with a liberal splash of Brut, she could still smell the wet haddock lurking beneath his aftershave. It was a smell she had grown to associate with her father, and there was something comforting about it.

Come on, Mr. Stamper, urged nimble Betsy, pinning a pink carnation to his lapel. The car has been waiting out there for ages. They’ll be wondering where we’ve got to.

Betsy, love, it’ll be you next, standing right here where our Annie is.

Pigs might fly, Mr. Stamper. The day I land myself a husband, the moon’ll be as blue as your jokes.

You see Betsy was as thin as her best friend was fat. She had been battling anorexia since she was fourteen years old.

Looking the way you do today, I’d reckon there’s a grand chance of you finding Mr Right at the wedding reception!

But Annie’s dad was just being kind. Betsy, in her bottle green Dupion two-piece, looked like a shrivelled spring onion. Someone had misguidedly suggested that she should put her hair up for the wedding, so it sprouted at the top of her narrow little head like the waving roots of a chive, milk-bottle white and wispy as candyfloss.

When Betsy and Annie walked out together of a weekend, they elicited the kind of stares usually reserved for circus freaks.

"Oh, I wish you were my dad," smiled Betsy, raising a skeletal hand to her lips and blowing him a kiss through the breakfast hatch, as she rinsed out her coffee mug and left it to drain with the others.

The neighbours had come out to see the bride. They stood in clutches near the ends of their paths, awe-struck by the spectacle of Annie Stamper emerging from number 11 in what looked like a cream satin barrage balloon. She could barely get through the gate. What on earth did somebody like Spencer Noble see in her? They’d talked of nothing else on Clitheroe Street for weeks. It was rumoured that she must be up the spout, but who would even know? At fourteen stone, Annie wouldn’t even need maternity clothes.

Good luck, love! they shouted over the privet hedges.

Congratulations, Wilf. She looks a picture!

They didn’t say what kind of picture.

It was a bit of a squash in the back of the car. Annie’s dad had to hold down her dress in order for the driver to see through the rear-view mirror. It was warm in the car and Annie could feel beads of sweat along her hairline. She could only hope that her extra-strength deodorant would hold up until after the ceremony.

It was unseasonably warm for September.

The car swept down Clitheroe Street, dominating the narrow road and even causing the Bleesdale twins to stop playing hopscotch for a moment or two, as the limousine glided past and turned into Lebanon Avenue.

It was familiar territory for Annie. They were streets she had known all her life. The chip shop, the pet shop, the newsagent’s, and the cobbler’s. The people out on the street were familiar too; maybe not all by name, but with faces that fit into their surroundings like bricks in a wall.

There was a hearse standing outside the funeral home, heaped incongruously with vibrant flowers and ominously solemn in the early-afternoon sunshine. Annie wondered who had died. Not much happened around there without everybody knowing about it.

That’ll be Charlie Finch, supplied her father, nodding in the direction of the floral tributes, liver cancer, passed away on Wednesday.

Annie had to suppress a shiver. Was it a bad omen to see a funeral on the way to one’s wedding? She wondered if there was any wood to touch, but the inside of the car was all vinyl and upholstered panels, so she just had to keep her fingers crossed beneath her bouquet and hope for the best.

•

Spencer Noble was supposed to be at the church by now but he was still sitting on the arm of his old Habitat sofa willing the telephone to ring. His best man, Timothy, was fretting in the hallway, checking his watch for the thousandth time and wiping his brow with the back of his hand.

Come on, Spence, we’re really late as it is. I promised your mother that I’d have you at the church by half-past, and it’s already a quarter to. She’ll go berserk.

Timothy was Spencer’s oldest friend; they were at school together. Spencer could wrap Timothy around his little finger, so he wasn’t unduly concerned by his friend’s discomfort. Timothy idolised Spencer, as did most of the boys at Frechville Grammar.

There was an unsettling silence in the flat, the silence of departed friends. It hummed along with the motor of the fridge-freezer in the kitchen. It was the flat that belonged to Spencer before he moved up in the world. This was the flat that his family kept on for the sake of wise investment and unwanted houseguests. It was small and unassuming, rather like the life that Spencer left behind when he moved to London.

Just another five minutes, Tim, and then we can go.

Shit, shit, shit! She promised she would call. She promised.

Spencer looked down at the school playing fields at the rear of the building. There was a game of football going on and he almost wished he were out there kicking the ball around instead of sitting up there in a bloody cravat and cummerbund. He was absolutely certain now that he was making the biggest mistake of his life. That was why he needed her to call him; that was why she must call him before he went through with this ridiculous fiasco.

The plane tickets were on the coffee table. The honeymoon suite at the Prescott Hotel was booked for tonight, along with the banquet hall for the sit-down reception, and the ballroom for the informal disco afterwards. The prospect of it all was dismal, and Spencer had never felt so trapped in his entire life. He couldn’t tell that to anyone, because nobody knew. They all thought he’d gone mad, but they didn’t know why exactly. Everyone was too polite to ask him why he had chosen Annie Stamper to be his bride after such an extended bachelorhood. How come, at thirty-seven, Spencer Noble would decide to marry a lump like Annie Stamper, when six months before he was reputed to have three beautiful women on the go down in London?

What must he be thinking?

Right now he was thinking that if the phone didn’t ring he was going to scream. There was a pressure inside his head that threatened to break free at any moment, and if Timothy sighed one more time he was going to chuck the fucking table lamp at him!

Irritable spoiled Spencer. He could call her but he knew that her husband was home and he just couldn’t risk another street brawl like the last time. Spencer wasn’t the fighting type; he preferred to pop his grievances through the postbox on a monogrammed notecard. And there was always the risk of violence to others, and Spencer could not subject anyone to physical danger just because he needed reassurances on his wedding day.

Even under the extreme pressure Spencer appeared cool and collected; transparently grey-blue like the uninviting colour of northern seas. Nobody ever really knew what he was thinking, and that was why he did so well in business. He knew how to bluff his way through the most difficult situations. He knew how to oil the wheels. If he were less attractive, people might have labelled him ruthless, but he charmed everyone he met and so he got away with murder - just like he always did.

You should be a politician. People always said. They thought that just because he looked good in a suit and pretended to like babies that he would be an asset to the local government, but politics did not interest Spencer, too much hard work for too little reward. Forget the wankers who worked alongside his father down at the town hall, Spencer was too embroiled in the machinations of the legal profession to entertain the idea of anything less demanding.

If Spencer were an animal he would be a panther.

He would rather not consider what kind of animal Annie might be. That would be cruel.

Poor Annie. They had been unlikely friends for over twenty years. Nobody ever understood why the most popular boy at school would knock around with such an unfortunate individual. They tolerated Annie whenever she was with Spencer, but the same people who pretended to like her also called her the worst names behind her back. They failed to recognise her intrinsic qualities. Spencer was surprised that she wasn’t already married to some overweight welder with tattoos and a hairy navel, but even the overweight welders had passed her up for slimmer, more vivacious types. Spencer was quite sure that Annie was a virgin. Why was that thought so utterly distasteful to him? A virgin at thirty-seven? He wondered if she ever masturbated. Now that was a mental image he’d rather not dwell on.

Was it Christian to have such thoughts? Spencer didn’t know all the rules of godliness but he was pretty sure that it was a sin to judge someone for the way they looked. Spencer, however, had never had to worry about that. People admired and loved him because he was so utterly adorable.

He could have married many beautiful women. He was a great catch, and there had been a number of flirtations that could have been very lucrative for him in the long run. But they would have demanded too much of him, smothering him with their cloying sexuality and their overwhelming perfume. Women had a nasty habit of taking over; of suffocating him even when he made it totally obvious that he was not interested in anything other than a casual relationship.

He needed a wife who would ask no questions. A wife who would be so over awed by the mere fact that he was her husband that she would overlook just about anything. He needed a wife because he just couldn’t go on like this any longer – something had to change otherwise he would be lost forever. Just the previous night he had been tempted to go down to London for one last bite of the apple but somehow she - the woman he needed so badly - persuaded him that it would not be a good idea. Oh Christ, why didn’t she call him now when he needed her the most? He couldn’t get through this without her.

Okay, Spence, you’ve had your five minutes. It’s time to go, otherwise we’ll lose our slot at the church and you know how much trouble your mother went to in order to arrange the damned place.

Timothy was standing in the doorway, jangling the loose change in his pocket. Bespectacled, fair-haired Timothy, he looked at Spencer imploringly. He was the same age as Spencer but he looked so much older. That’s what a wife, two kids and male pattern baldness could do to a man.

Fair enough then, let’s go.

And right then the phone began to ring. Spencer answered it before the second ring.

It was her.

He placed the palm of his hand over the receiver and asked Timothy to go down to the car – he’d be there in a couple of ticks. Timothy made a face and pointed to his watch, but he nevertheless left Spencer alone so that he could talk in private.

I can’t go through with it, Maggie. It is bound for disaster. I need more time, more time to get my head straight. Can’t I just come down to your place and talk about it some more: I’m just not ready. I’m sure I could make some kind of excuse.

And what kind of excuse do you think Annie is going to swallow if you leave her standing at the altar? Be sensible about this, Spence. You’ve had plenty of time to back out and it seems just a trifle selfish, even for you, darling, to start thinking about this just as the church bells are ringing. I told you repeatedly that this was a bad idea, but you’d got the idea in your head, and once it was there I couldn’t get through to you. Yes, it’s a bloody bad idea and I think you’re mad, but I honestly don’t think you can back out now. I’m thinking about Annie more than anyone.

That was not what Spencer wanted to hear. He was hoping for Maggie to reinforce his belief that this marriage would be good for him.

"I should be marrying you," he said.

Maggie laughed. Oh now that’s a really sensible suggestion! What do you think Frank would say? Sometimes, Spence, you say some pretty stupid things for a bloke who is supposed to be so clever.

You know exactly what I mean.

Look, it really is too late to be having this conversation. You’ve dug your own grave, and if you want to chicken out now, then on your own head be it. You can call me later if you like, I’ll be here – Frank’s in Scotland so you don’t have to worry about him answering. Billy’s playing football and then going on to a friend’s house for tea. I tell you what, why don’t you set up a conference call from the honeymoon suite?

Okay, okay, very droll! I suppose I’m just a bit worried that I’m doing this for the wrong reasons.

"Darling you are doing it for the wrong reasons! You are not going to find happiness in a marriage created from lies and deceit. You don’t love this woman at all, so how are you going to sustain a relationship with her for longer than a few weeks. When I first met Frank, I did at least have some feelings towards him, and before you say it, yes, I caught him on the rebound from you, but that’s not the point. Oh, we’ve gone through this a thousand times before, I’m tired of talking about it."

Okay, I’m doing this for myself. Pure, unadulterated selfishness.

That sounds about right! I love you, Spencer, despite the fact that you’re an egocentric pig. I care about what you do with your life, even though you messed mine up so badly. I can’t believe I’m saying this, to you of all people.

I’m sorry, Maggie. You know I love you, but you and I have always been at the wrong place at the wrong time. I’m just going to take a deep breath, and I’ll see you when I get back to the surface.

As long as you are not found floating face-down, sighed Maggie.

If I am, you’ll just have to give me the kiss of life.

Oh, go and get married before I get really pissed off! yelled Maggie. And before you ask…

Yes?

I didn’t bother with the bridal registry at Heal’s. I wanted to save you the trouble of taking the bread maker back next week.

Fuck you!

Ditto.

And Spencer Noble put down the receiver and prepared to take an enormous leap of faith.

• • •

Chapter Two

I don’t give a flying fuck if the embassy is closed, we need that waiver by Monday morning, so hustle that skinny ass of yours round to Juanita and rattle her cage!

Marla Philips had a headset so she didn’t have to pick up the telephone. She minimised effort in any way that she could and employed a sycophantic entourage of personnel to do all the things that normal people would usually do themselves.

She was in the office on a Saturday. That was not unusual for Marla because she lived for her work. She was an immigration lawyer, and she couldn’t afford to sit on her laurels and let some other hotshot come along and knock her off her self-made pedestal. She was one of the best lawyers in London. Her clients were mainly rich Arabs who could practically buy their way into the country, but she also had a Manhattan office, which meant she was the very best person to see in London if you wanted a Green Card.

She was a mess.

Her hair beneath the headset was daffodil blonde, and as dry and brittle as fibreglass. It was professionally styled a few days before but she had slept on it for three nights without combing it out and now it had the wild, unmanageable texture of kapok.

She wore no makeup and her skin was sallow – the unhealthy colour of cigarette smoke. She smoked sixty a day, and most of her lipstick was stubbed out in an overflowing ashtray atop a mound of legal papers and documents. It was hard to believe that Marla Philips was at a black-tie gala reception on Wednesday evening sitting just three tables away from Camilla Parker-Bowles.

The phone rang constantly.

Sue the redneck son-of-a-bitch!

Hey, Chuck! I hope you’ve got good news for me otherwise I’m hanging up on you right now.

Julie get me a Diet Coke and see if you can get hold of Spencer. Yes! I know he’s getting married today but I need to know where the Al Sabah files are.

Spencer Noble and Marla Philips were partners. Marla brought Spencer in the previous year as an equal partner and it was working famously. Spencer was everything that Marla wasn’t: smart, efficient, methodical and meticulous. Marla was everything that Spencer wasn’t: arrogant, ruthless, unorthodox and infamous. They complimented each other in a way that chalk and cheese never could.

She had a coffee stain on her Chanel suit. Her bony chest and the edge of her black bra created an untidy V between the ash-flecked lapels of her boucle jacket. One of the brass buttons hung by a thread. She looked older than her years; she could be pushing sixty but she was only forty-nine. Too many late nights, cigarettes and trans-atlantic crossings. Too little sleep, food and relaxation.

Marla’s secretary came through on the intercom. Her broad, cockney accent still grated on Marla’s nerves despite the fact that Julie had been with the firm for almost two years.

Miss Philips, that psycho sent another letter. Should I get in touch with the Old Bill or ignore the toerag?

What did he say this time? asked Marla, lighting up a cigarette from the butt of her last one.

Oh, the usual tripe! He reckons he’s going to kill you. He says he’ll be waiting for you when you get home, so you’d better watch out. I think I’d best contact the law just to be on the safe side, don’t you?

Yeah, call the cops and talk to Inspector Blake. He’s the one dealing with this creep.

Marla inhaled deeply. The nicotine no longer had any effect on her; it merely drifted around her lungs, unable to penetrate their tar-clogged membranes. She breathed the smoke out through her nostrils and closed her eyes for a moment. Who was this crazy shit-head?

It started out with pornographic messages on her e-mail from an unknown source. Then she started getting letters and faxes describing the sexually humiliating situations that she might find herself in. Whoever it was, this wacko, he was obviously turned on by the idea of dominance in a big way. The previous week she had received a dead crow and a dog turd in a gift box from Fortnum & Mason.

If it wasn’t for the overt sexual nature of the messages and threats she might have been inclined to believe that somebody had found out about her past, but there was no mention of Jessica or the murder trial. She did her best to escape from the front-page headlines and the wicked, manipulative news reports of her tragedy, but even now there were times when it all came back to her with a prickling at the back of her neck like the fear of an unturned corner in a haunted house. Why else would somebody scare her like that? And what could they possibly gain from dragging up the past unless it was just one of those asshole religious freaks who wanted to see her burned in hell?

She had wondered if it might be her ex-boyfriend Pierre. She had stopped sending him money when he got married, but he denied her accusation vehemently and Marla believed him. He had better things to do with his life than bug her.

She couldn’t think of anyone else, unless it was a disgruntled client who failed to get a visa or a work permit. She certainly knew plenty of people with the power and connections to get her obliterated at a moment’s notice. But why?

Marla wasn’t the kind of woman who scared easily. She went skydiving, bungee jumping and white-water rafting when she needed a break. When she was in the States she carried a pearl-handled revolver in her handbag, and in London, because of the antiquated gun laws, she carried a silver-plated knuckle-duster and a flick knife. Anyone foolish enough to mess with Marla Philips would get more than they bargained for. She went through years of psychotherapy to be the woman she was today. It was hard to believe that just a few years before she was practically comatose with fear and vulnerability.

Damn the Brits and their lack of air-conditioning! It was like an oven in the office, even with the windows wide open. The noise of the street below rose up on an unseasonably humid cloud of afternoon heat. It was very peculiar for late September, and Marla wished she hadn’t worn her damned thick suit. The desk fan was broken and somebody hadn’t bothered to get it fixed – who could that be? Marla expected things to happen on their own, like magic, and usually they did if she left them long enough. She had no hot water in her bathroom for three months before anyone bothered to get it fixed. Her maid, Hetty, complained that she couldn’t read Marla’s mind, but wasn’t that what Marla paid her for?

Julie brought her a Diet Coke.

Inspector Blake weren’t there, Miss Philips, so I left a message with another copper who said he’ll get him to call back on Monday, when he gets in from Southend.

"Ice, Julie! How long have you been working here? I can’t drink this stuff without ice." Marla shook the Coke can at her secretary as though it were a collection box.

It’s not good for you, Miss Philips, all this ice. No wonder you’re always coming down with colds.

Julie, just get the ice and save the layman’s diagnosis for somebody who gives a shit.

Julie smiled. Nobody at he office took offence at Marla’s abrupt turn of phrase. She was American – what more could they expect?

Couldn’t get hold of Spencer. I left a message at his flat and called his parent’s house but I reckon they’ll be at the reception by now.

So call the damned hotel then! I have to have those files before I leave today.

All right, but he’s not going to be a happy camper.

Go! Go! yelled Marla, pointing the way out with an imperious, nicotine-yellow finger.

And Julie went; clomp, clomp, clomp in her ridiculous platform soles.

The phone kept ringing and ringing but Marla’s eyes were diverted to the flashing screen of her computer. You Have Mail! it announced cheerfully. She clicked on the envelope icon and a message appeared in bold red letters:

ARE YOU SCARED YET? 7899. SHE DIDN’T DIE IN VAIN!

Oh Christ! He knew the security code to her apartment, and she only changed it that morning.

•

He was going to The Oscars.

A letter had arrived from the Academy of Performing Arts in Hollywood, and they had invited him, all expenses paid, to attend the award ceremony in LA in March.

Lester Philips was so overwhelmed by the news that he practically brought up his Weetabix and instant coffee.

His wife Tina looked up from her bowl of Alpen and stared at him impassively across the breakfast table. She had those funny rubber-sausage things in her hair that made Lester think of Medusa.

They want me to go to the Oscars. He had to modulate his voice because he was in danger of screaming out the news at the top of his voice. He could barely remain seated and his voice was shaking.

Give over, Less. You’re having me on, responded Tina, eyes still made up from the night before, her nails the colour of bubblegum.

No, darling, it’s true! They want to do some kind of tribute to Oscar winners of the past, get us all up on stage. They want me there for a whole week, to rehearse and everything. You’re invited too, darling. A free trip to LA next March, what do you think about that?

Lester could no longer control himself. He leapt up from his IKEA blond wood chair and grabbed his wife by her arm. They staggered around the tiny kitchen together, bumping into the fridge and the cooker as they pantomimed a waltz across the six-foot square of lino that was patterned to look like Mediterranean tile.

I can’t believe it, Tina. After all these bloody years I’m going to be back there with the big guys! You’ll probably get to meet Jack Nicholson and Tom Cruise; all kinds of celebrities!

Yeah, sure, Less. More likely we’ll get stuck at the back with a load of has-beens like yourself.

Charming! Is that how you see me, Tina? A has-been?

Lester stopped spinning his wife around for a moment and looked into her ashen face.

"You know what I mean. All those big film stars and then us. We’re hardly up there with the likes of Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep. There are people in their twenties who’ve never even heard of Five Farthings. It’s not as though any of the cast are still famous these days. Even the soundtrack is in the bargain bin at HMV."

How can you say that, Tina? Lester felt hurt. I’m not exactly in the dole queue, you know, and what about Shani? She’s doing that thing for the BBC with Maureen Lipman.

"She has about three lines in every episode, and it’s not as though either of you have been in a film since the Seventies. Five Farthings was your one-hit wonder Less, I’m sorry to sound harsh but try to get a grip on reality, going to LA isn’t going to change any