Free Could It Be I'm Falling in Love? by Eleanor Prescott Page A

when the paparazzi arrived. She wished she’d planted one of those really tall hedges that people complained about. She frowned. ‘But I thought he’d given up acting. My magazine said he was turning his back on it all, that he hated show business and was retiring to count his money and grow a beard.’
    ‘Austin Jones?’
Roxy snorted loudly. ‘What? Austin Jones lives
here?’
    Sue cowered in case the photographers heard and looked over.
    ‘Sometimes,’ she whispered. ‘You never see him, though. It’s such a big place he’s got.’
    ‘I can’t believe it!’ Roxy marvelled loudly, staring openly at the photographers as they assembled their kits and staked their claim on the pavement.
‘Austin Jones lives in Lavender Heath
. Christ; I need to put more slap on.’ She looked back at Sue sharply. ‘For work. Publicity shots – new show I’m in.’
    ‘You’re working? I just thought … what with Woody bringing you to the—’
    ‘I’m busy, busy, busy, me – phone never stops ringing!’ Roxy turned, and then, just as she was hurrying away, she stopped. ‘Hey, Sue; you ever thought about getting a fringe?’
    Sue’s mouth fell open.
    ‘Just a soft one, sweeping to the side? And wearing your hair up at the back? … You’ve got great cheekbones. A fringe would show them off, give your face some drama.’
    And then she was gone.
    Sue slowly closed the door. In a daze, she carried the DVD into the lounge and placed it next to the television. She drifted to the mirror above the fireplace and looked numbly at her reflection. A doughy woman stared back – dull skinned and heavy haired. Roxy couldn’t be right. Surely a fringe couldn’t change
that
much …
    … Could it?
    With stiff hands, she tried to scoop her hair up and imagine.

 
    To: Roxy Squires
    From: BBC Three, New Programming Department
    Dear Ms Squires,
    Thank you for your recent email outlining some new programme ideas for BBC3.
    Whilst we enjoyed your ideas, we’re afraid they’re not in keeping with our remit for freshness and innovation. Perhaps you might consider pitching them to a channel with an older demographic … Watch, perhaps? Vintage TV? Or even Yesterday …?

ROXY

    ‘Bollocks!’
    It had been a tough day and Roxy was trackie-bottomed up. Sprawled on her sofa with the TV remote, her inner thighs ached.
    The day had started well enough. OK, so she hadn’t woken wrapped in the muscly arms and satin sheets of the former hottest pop star on the planet, but the night hadn’t been a complete disaster. Victory was a matter of time. Woody might have been trying to hide it in front of the others, but she was as Sure as ladies’ deodorant he was desperate to jump her bones.
    But then Sue had dropped the clanger.
    Roxy wasn’t the kind of girl who stole another woman’s man. She’d long since decided that if she was going to have sleepless nights it would be because she was clubbing, not racked with guilt over nabbing someone else’s boyfriend. She didn’t believe in God, but she did believe in karma and it was a well-known fact that, if you did bad stuff, karma got its own back and bit you on the arse. If you nicked another girl’s bloke,karma got a different girl –
an even hotter girl
– to nick him back off you. It was just simpler all round to stick to the blokes who were free.
    But with Woody …
    Arghh!
With Woody it was going to be a hard rule to follow.
    Roxy hadn’t fancied anyone for ages, but now she had the chance to get it on with the biggest crush of her life, fate had got a cob on and shoved him out of reach. It wasn’t fair – she was sure Woody wanted her. Attraction was usually mutual, and her nips had been so busy perking they were pretty close to knackered. She and Woody would make a perfect couple. They were from the same world, a million miles from Lavender Heath. Theirs was a world of backstage passes, front-page exclusives and open-sesame red velvet ropes. Whatever the saintly Jennifer did