nests after the babies. The poor parents were frantic.â
Delia started rinsing plates at the sink, somehow sure that dishwashers didnât really get things properly clean. âThey remind me of mackerel, just the colours of them, all that gleaming bluey-black and the pale underneath. Smoothly turned out, good-looking and dangerous.â She paused for a moment, the water running unnoticed over her wrists, then added with an expression of miles-away thought, âLike men in evening dress.â
Kate had to admit to disappointment. Sheâd got there well ahead of Lisa Gibson, who probably wasnât even awake yet. Lisa, when she wanted to be noticed, would be loud and unmissable, wagging her double-D tits at whoever glanced her way. Kate looked forward to pointing out that being on film was well known to add at least 10 lb to oneâs appearance. Out by the cricket pavilion, the early signs had been good, all those trucks arranged in a circle like a travellerâs illicit convoy, at the edge of the recreation ground, on the rough area where the mothers always parked to collect their children from the pavilion playgroup. The lorries and buses reminded her of a circus. They werenât like ordinary goods trucks, there was that slight otherness about them, just like romantic fairground wagons, that made you wonder where they spent their off-road time. No-one saw vehicles like these actually travelling around, using motorways like any old Pickfords furniture truck or an ordinary Habitat van, they just appeared where they werenât before, like fairy rings on the grass in the early morning. There were converted buses with shabby curtains, luxurious magenta coaches with racks and racks of clothes, a catering wagon with the kind of fold-out flaps and cleverly built-in equipment that would, if it was in miniature, make a small child satisfied that theyâd been given the perfect good-value toy.
A semi-circle of six or so men sat around on upturned boxes with mugs of tea, eyeing a cavernous bus-load of lighting as if putting off the moment when it must be unloaded and dealt with. Kate hovered shyly outside the ring, her eagerness wavering now that she didnât quite know what to do, who to approach, how to ask if she qualified as star material. Couldnât the right person simply take one look at her and
realize
?
âCup of tea love?â one of the men called to her. He looked like one of Margotâs builders, with baggy jeans slung under a beer-belly and a grey T-shirt that looked as if it had been used to clean a fly-smeared windscreen. Kate hesitated, wondering if this was a gathering she should, as she normally would, avoid â they reminded her of the workmen whoâd taken three whistling, leering weeks to mend a small hole in the school fence. Yet one of these smirking, slurping men could be just the one to help her towards fame and fortune. Perhaps film directors were like rock stars: impossible, till you got a full dose of their ego, to tell them apart from their entourage.
âTwo sugars please,â she then said suddenly, catching sight of Simon emerging from his gateway. When he found her, she would already be an old hand, sitting among these early-morning men as if sheâd travelled with them, she thought with happy satisfaction.
Simon was dithering on the pavement, looking up and down the road as if searching for something. Kate, perched on an upturned plastic crate inside the menâs magic circle, watched him covertly. She felt very much as she had as a small child playing at camping in the pony paddock. Once inside her tent, or in winter under the shelter of the huge old viburnum that sprawled against the stable wall, it had been as if she was keeping watch on the rest of the world, from a hidden one which was entirely her own. Beyond the cricket pavilion she could also see Julia Merriman walking her labradors and staring with frank curiosity at the collection