Free The Look of Love by Judy Astley Page B

show there were no hard feelings (or at least to pretend there were none for the sake of her bank balance), she would even run the idea past Charlotte at the Sunday Review first. She and Charlotte had always got on well enough, professionally speaking … till now, anyway. Maybe if there was a teeny sliver of sympathy somewhere in Charlotte’s psyche, she’d at least give the idea some consideration.
    Having thought about it long and hard during a night that had involved much 2 a.m. tea-drinking and back-of-an-envelope sums, Bella got Saul’s number from Zoeand called him to see if his production company would consider her house as a possible location for the shoot. Not only would there be useful cash in this (last year Jules had gone to see her sister in Australia on the proceeds of renting out her front garden, just the path really, gate-to-door, for an advert), but it would buy some time in which Bella could do some thinking about the fast-accumulating uncertainties for her future. For one thing, James could hardly put the house on the market if there was a film crew on the premises. She could just imagine some young, keen estate agent showing potential buyers around. ‘And here’s the kitchen … and … oh, as a special feature here’s a smiley bossy camp chap telling a size-22 woman that she must minx it up in swagged lime satin and eight-inch stilettos.’
    Saul had sounded charmingly delighted by Bella’s offer and was now due within minutes to give the place his professional once-over. Trying to see the place through his eyes, she took a good last look round the house and could – of course – only see faults. The hallway needed painting – there were greyish fingermarks all over the front door, which were now so ingrained that it would take a lot more than a rub with Cif and a J-cloth to shift them. The stair carpet’s colour had been listed as ‘Rich Coffee‘, but when Alex had spilled a cup of the real stuff two years before, the resulting splashy stain had been, still was and forever would be, a goodcouple of shades darker. And would Saul’s inspection be so thorough that he’d discover (and be put off by) the wispy spider nests in the back folds of the cream curtains in the sitting room? Bella never had the heart to move them, imagining (probably wrongly) trails of tragic spider families, desperately seeking new premises. Given her own uncertain position, it could be tempting fate to evict them right now.
    As Saul had said, it was really just the one big family room he would be needing, Bella had concentrated the best of her efforts in the kitchen. She had cleaned and polished every surface, nagged Molly and Alex into moving the various abandoned shoes, CDs, books, electronic toys and sundry plastic bags of God-knows-what to their rooms. She’d crammed every gadget including the Magimix, juicer and toaster into the cupboards, and was now clearing the last of her own paperwork pile from the worktop. Devoid of its usual random clutter, the room looked even bigger. The sunlight streamed in on the treacly walnut floor and the whole place was so meticulously scrubbed that even if James dropped by for a crafty spot check and ran a critical finger over every surface, he’d have trouble finding one mote of muck.
    The leather sofa’s decrepitude was disguised under a velvety purple throw that had been disinterred from the vintage trunk in the hallway, and there was a tall vase ofthe longest possible branches of pinky-mauve hydrangea from the garden on the table. This looked a bit precarious. The oversized flower heads were heavy and so carefully counterbalanced against each other that it would only take one careless flick of a cat’s paw for the whole lot to go crashing down. Not that the cat was allowed on the table – but who could trust an attention-seeking feline when there is a house visitor and thus an opportunity to push its luck?
    Bella had even included her own outfit in the overall look and,