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‘Um, Century 21 and Filene’s,’ I admitted. ‘When you’re not there to stop me, Gap.’

‘Exactly. And I killed my credit card at The Beverly Center yesterday, so no, we really can’t afford anything.’ Jenny fished around in her handbag for some lip gloss, slicked a completely unnecessary layer on top of her already shiny lips and then added a desperately needed pop of colour to mine. ‘But no one needs to know that, right? There’s nothing like trying on thousands of dollars’ worth of couture to take your mind off your problems.’

If my only issue with LA was still that it wasn’t nearly as glossy and glamorous as I’d been expecting, then Rodeo Drive would have solved all my problems. From the dramatic white marble store fronts, the palm trees sprouting up out of the glossy pavement, right through to the serious-looking doormen that stood sentry outside each designer destination, this was everything I’d been expecting.

Yes, the Ugg boot girls were still everywhere, but they had been watered down by a new breed of LA woman. I couldn’t help but stare. They were tiny, just like the platinum blondes, but they seemed so much glossier, so much more expensive, and I could not tell you how old a single one of them was. You couldn’t actually see any discernible designer labels on anything they wore, unless you checked out the shop assistant carrying the stiff paper bags out behind them, but they reeked of money. One of them stepped right out in front of us without looking, making me jump back. She paused, looking at me and Jenny in the same way I sometimes looked at the puppies in the window of the pet store near Bloomingdale’s, as if we were cute but she really didn’t want to get too close in case we slobbered on her. Or worse.

‘So what do you want to try first?’ Jenny asked, completely oblivious. ‘Dior? D&G?’

‘Oh, there.’ I pointed across the road to a gorgeous window display, full of beautiful ballerina-style dresses in pretty petal colours. ‘Miu Miu me up.’

After my second glass of champagne, I was more than ready to accept that Hollywood had its charms after all. Jenny was head to toe in couture, a gorgeous bronze dirndl skirt cinching in her tiny waist and five-inch platforms forcing her onto her tippy-toes.

‘How do they feel?’ The inordinately attractive salesman cupped my foot in his hand and slipped the ankle strap of a beautiful, sequin-covered sandal through the little tiny silver buckle.

‘They feel lovely.’ I was almost too afraid to stand on the delicate little heels. When would I feel more like Kylie and less like Lily Savage when I tried on a girlie outfit?

‘You know, I think we just got one of the matching purses in today. It’s in the back,’ he whispered. ‘I have to see how it looks with the shoes.’

‘Me too,’ I agreed, staring at my feet. Why would anyone ever put their foot inside an Ugg in LA? In New York, it snowed, it was cold, you needed their sheepskin-lined goodness; but here, you could feasibly walk around in nothing but fairy-spun Miu Miu creations all year round. In fact, you didn’t even have to walk; this was the perfect place for Limo Shoes. Maybe that was why everyone drove everywhere.

I flicked around my BlackBerry, while my New Best Friend, the shoe salesman, was bag hunting. The BlackBerry was still a bit of a mystery to me. I’d got into enough trouble with just a mobile, without being able to respond to work emails whilst out and about. Out and about meaning drunk. Before I could cast it back into the bottom of my (very jealous to be surrounded by all these younger Miu Mius) handbag, it started to buzz in my hand.

‘Hello?’ I answered automatically.

‘Angela, it’s James.’

Oh, James. Bugger. I’d been so distracted by the prettiness, for fifteen minutes I’d managed to forget all about everything.

‘Angela, are you there?’

‘I am.’ I waved manically at Jenny. I couldn’t do this alone. Even in eight-hundred-dollar sandals. Especially in eight-hundred-dollar sandals.

‘I wanted to say I’m so sorry about the photos. Blake is trying to get them taken down right now.’ He sounded genuinely worried. But then he was an actor. ‘Are you OK? And we’ve spoken to the magazine. It’ll all be fine.’

‘Well, it was a bit of a shock—’ But before I could finish, Jenny snatched the phone out of my hand and sprinted down the shop.

‘James? Jenny,’ I heard her begin before she vanished out of hearing range. I fumbled with the teeny tiny buckles on my sandals but apparently they had been crafted by elves and my lumbering sausage fingers (swollen from the LA heat, surely?) couldn’t unfasten them quickly enough.

‘I don’t know, she’s kind of messed up,’ she said, slinking back up the store. ‘But I’m trying to take care of her. We’re shopping.’

‘Jenny,’ I hissed, ‘give me the bloody phone.’

‘We’re in Miu Miu,’ she winked, holding me at arm’s length. ‘Yes, I think she’d love that. OK, I’ll put you on to someone.’

By the time I’d found my way out of the shoes, my BlackBerry was in the hands of my lovely sales assistant who had returned holding something long and disarmingly sparkly. ‘But of course Mr Jacobs,’ he gushed, hanging up and giving me the phone. And the pretty sparkly thing. I felt like a kitten with a ping-pong ball. BlackBerry or shiny bag. BlackBerry or shiny bag.

‘What was that all about?’ I asked Jenny, unable to take my eyes off the bag. It was long and slender and round, like a pencil case I’d had in Year Eight. But, unlike the pencil case I’d had in Year Eight, it had a tiny five-hundred-dollar price tag, hidden discreetly inside the beautiful lining, and was covered in glittering, golden iridescent sparkles. Oh, and a little leather strap to slip around my wrist so that I would never, ever, ever lose it. Even in my sleep. ‘Jenny?’

‘We’ll take the bag and the shoes, thanks,’ she said, snatching the bag out of my hands and passing it back to the assistant. His eyes were shining almost as much as the sequins. ‘And ring up these bad boys.’ She pointed at the yellow and black Mary Janes on her feet and dropped onto the padded bench beside me.

‘You should get your photo taken with some more famous people.’ She slung her arm around my shoulders. ‘James wants to pay for your shoes. Actually, our shoes. But if he asks, both pairs are yours. He said to charge them to his account and he’ll see you tomorrow.’

‘Are you kidding me?’ I asked, watching the bag and the shoes being whisked away behind the counter while the staff whispered intensely amongst themselves. ‘He can’t do that. We can’t let him do that.’

I pouted, wondering just for a second what Mary would have to say about me accepting handbags and shoes from James. And right up until the assistant replaced my empty champagne glass with two huge, ribbon-tied cardboard carrier bags, I really thought about refusing to accept them. Sort of.

‘Oh Angie, Angie, Angie.’ Jenny ruffled my hair and gave me a huge grin. ‘He can and we can. And I could not be happier. Where next?’

Jenny’s talent for shopping was matched only by her talent for eating, so after Miu Miu, after Dolce & Gabbana, Cavalli and Gucci, she finally gave in. I couldn’t enjoy even La Perla on an empty stomach.

‘Tiffany’s shouldn’t be part of a shopping centre,’ I said, spearing the omnipresent lettuce leaf on my plate. ‘I don’t care how posh a shopping centre. It’s just not right.’

‘Yeah, whatever …’ Jenny leaned back, smiling up at the sunshine with her eyes closed. ‘Eat your crab cakes and stop bagging on LA.’

‘I’ll leave LA alone if you’ll tell me about the last time you were here,’ I gambled. ‘I want to here all about your dancing. And how on earth the Pussycat Dolls managed to let you slip through their fingers.’

‘Shut up,’ Jenny carried on staring upwards. ‘Is that a humming bird?’

‘It is and even though that might be the coolest thing I’ve ever seen,’ I replied, watching the tiny bird as it darted by our table and hovered by a floral display beside us, ‘you’re not going to distract me. Did you really dance?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did you strip?’

‘It wasn’t stripping, it was burlesque.’

‘So you did strip?’

She sighed and looked back at me. ‘There was no nudity in my routine.’

‘So how come you came back to New York so quickly,’ I stirred my Diet Coke with my straw, ‘if you and Daphne were so amazing? Couldn’t the dancing have led to other stuff?’

‘Probably,’ she laughed quietly. ‘It led to Daphne doing other stuff. Other stuff for guys who came to see us dance. Other stuff for money.’

‘Daphne did it for money?’ I asked. According to the people at the next table who dropped their cutlery, altogether too loudly. ‘Daphne was a prostitute?’ I added quietly.

‘I don’t think she would say that,’ Jenny said diplomatically. ‘Maybe a private call girl. She seemed to think it was pretty glamorous at the time.’

‘But you didn’t?’ I asked. ‘Think it was glamorous, I mean? I know you would never do that. Would you?’

‘Trust me, there was nothing glamorous about those guys,’ she said.

‘So you didn’t, right?’ A dozen humming birds doing a synchronized dance routine couldn’t have got my attention at that moment.

‘Of course I didn’t,’ Jenny said, ‘but it was tempting. Suddenly Daphne had all this money, she stopped doing auditions, started missing gigs. Eventually, she stopped dancing altogether and I felt weird doing it alone. Especially since Daphne had kind of gotten us a reputation. I guess it would have been easier to just do it, but I couldn’t.’

‘So you came home?’ I wasn’t used to watching Jenny squirm. It wasn’t nearly as much fun as I’d thought it might be.

‘I went back to New York, yeah.’ She looked up and gave me her brightest smile. ‘And thank God I did, or you would have been screwed.’

‘She’s not still doing it, is she?’ I couldn’t help myself, even if Jenny was clearly trying to change the subject. ‘Not still, you know …’

‘Angie, it scares me that you can’t even say the words at your age. And no, she isn’t. She quit, like, right after I left. She started seeing some rich old guy and I guess she didn’t need the cash any more. And she’s making good money as a stylist now so …’ She trailed off.

‘Do you miss living here?’ I asked, even though I didn’t want to. She was my Jenny, my ‘I’m walkin’ here’ New Yorker Jenny, not Daphne’s LA private dancer.

‘It’s different now; it was so long ago. I’m not twenty-two any more; everything is so different.’ She gave me a little smile. ‘It is nice to be out in the sunshine again, though. I don’t know, I don’t want the same things I wanted the last time I was here. I don’t know what I want.’

‘You’ll work it out,’ I said, watching her pretend not to be bothered. ‘You always do.’

‘Yeah.’ Jenny pulled out her bright yellow Miu Miu shoe. It was all sorts of beautiful. ‘I always do, don’t I?’

‘I can’t believe you had this big crazy life.’ I was always amazed by Jenny. I’d never ever known anyone like her in my life. It didn’t matter how long we spent together or how long we talked, one way or another, she surprised me every single day. Some days it was with a packet of peanut butter M&Ms, others it was with the fact that she used to be a burlesque dancer while her friend was a high-class hooker. ‘How do you stand behind that concierge desk every day without going mad?’

‘I don’t know.’ She pulled a couple of curls out from her ponytail and held them out to inspect for split ends. ‘I guess I had Jeff to keep my mind busy for a while but sometimes, yeah. I don’t know.’

We ate in silence for a few minutes, Jenny concentrating on her salad, me painfully aware that the waiter was still judging me for asking if the crab cakes came with fries. They didn’t.

‘What are you going to do about James?’ Jenny asked eventually.

‘What do you mean?’ I stalled, not actually knowing the answer.

‘Seems to me that if your boyfriend already thinks you’re sleeping with a super-hot guy who is so clearly into you, you may as well,’ she reasoned.

‘He’s not clearly into me,’ I replied sternly, but I couldn’t help a tiny internal smile at the thought that he might be. ‘Just because he got a couple of shops to give us some free stuff. It’s nothing to him, Jenny; it’s like you letting your friend crash in an empty room at the hotel or something. A perk of the job.’

‘I could totally get used to these kinds of perks,’ she held up the shoe again. ‘But honey, I’m telling you, just from what I saw last night. He likes you.’

‘No, he doesn’t and, even if he did, which he doesn’t …’ I fished around in my handbag for my wallet. Expenses be damned, this was going on the work credit card. ‘… I wouldn’t be interested.’

‘Yeah you would. If you didn’t have a boyfriend,’ Jenny said, stealing a bite of crab cake from my plate.

I considered my answer carefully, knowing she would jump on whatever I said. ‘If I didn’t have a boyfriend and I wasn’t working and he wasn’t this ridiculous actor. Maybe.’

‘Oh my God, you’re totally hot for him.’ Jenny clapped her hands together. ‘I knew it! I could so tell last night. Angie, how often do you get a chance like this? How often does anyone get a chance like this?’

‘That doesn’t matter.’ I blushed from my cheeks down to my toes. ‘And it doesn’t matter how hot he is or if he likes me. It’s just work. Even if it doesn’t feel like it right now, it’s work.’

‘You forgot the “I already have a boyfriend” bit.’ Jenny raised an eyebrow. ‘I’d have thought Alex was quite enough of a reason. That’s interesting.’

‘No it isn’t interesting,’ I corrected. ‘That just goes without saying.’

‘So things are OK? He hasn’t freaked out about the pictures?’

There was no point hiding this stuff from Jenny. It would only come back to bite me on the arse when I needed her help later, which I always did. ‘He wasn’t best pleased about them,’ I admitted. ‘But it’ll be fine.’

‘I figured as much,’ Jenny nodded. ‘He’s totally the jealous type.’

‘No, he so isn’t. Is he?’ I asked. ‘What makes you say that?’

‘Come on, Angie.’ She wiped her hands on a napkin and then redid her ponytail. ‘Alex is all deep and meaningful muso boy. You don’t get the love songs, the random three a.m. booty calls because “he just had to see you” without a touch of possessiveness. I just can’t see him being OK with you running around Hollywood with a some hot, slutty guy with all the world watching. Can you?’

‘I said he wasn’t best pleased about it,’ I mumbled, giving the waiter my credit card without even looking at the bill. ‘But it’ll be OK, won’t it?’

‘He’s your boyfriend, I don’t know,’ she said, passing me her lip gloss. She really was a stickler for detail. ‘What do you think?’

‘I think we should stop talking about boys, go and get the car, then go for a swim.’ I took my card and the receipt back from the waiter. ‘And if there’s a spa or something, we should get massages. This is still your vacation, after all, and I don’t have to be anywhere until eleven a.m. tomorrow.’

‘Got to say, Angie,’ Jenny stood up and started grabbing our many bags, ‘I have always loved the way you think.’

CHAPTER EIGHT

Right up until the moment James’s limo pulled up outside The Hollywood at four minutes passed eleven the next morning, I’d been waiting for the phone call from Blake to say that they weren’t coming and the interview was off. But there they were and there I was, Jenny’s giant sunglasses on, Starbucks in hand, and (beautiful but looking more battered by the day) Marc Jacobs bag over my shoulder. Taking a deep breath, I sucked it up and opened the car door. If I thought Alex had been upset and Mary was angry yesterday, then I needed a new word for Blake.

‘This is why these fucking “day in the life” interviews never, ever work,’ he ranted as the limo pulled away from the hotel, staring me down. ‘You don’t speak until we’re back in the hotel. This is why we should have met for one hour in a hotel suite with a publicist and a security guard and this would never ever have happened.’

I couldn’t argue with his logic.

‘Would there have been bottled water?’ James asked.

‘Of course.’ Blake seethed in my general direction.

‘And those tiny pastries?’

‘No because you’re carb-free this month.’ He folded his arms and gave me an intensely filthy look.

‘Blake, calm down, it’s not Angela’s fault.’ James placed a careful hand on his assistant’s shoulder. I slid off my sunglasses and tried my hardest to look innocent.

‘No, the pictures were your fucking fault, I already told you that,’ Blake replied, not taking his eyes off me. ‘And it’s your fault that she’s still here. But I’m telling you both, this is it. I’m not leaving your side from now on.’

‘I get it, Blake,’ James smiled easily. ‘We’re absolutely going to play by your rules. But if we’re going to be doing a full hour’s talking, I’m going to need a coffee. Coffee Bean is just round the corner, can we get something? You know I hate the coffee at the hotel.’

‘Fine,’ Blake said, eyes still locked on me. I thought about putting my sunglasses back on. ‘She can go get your coffee.’

‘You want Angela to get out of a limo and order my favourite coffee at my regular coffee shop?’ James reached across the seat and took my hand. I resisted the urge to giggle. Nerves, just nerves. ‘Really, Blake, you’d just be fuelling the fire. This place is always crawling with paps.’

‘Crawling,’ I croaked.

‘I said not a word out of you until we get to the hotel,’ Blake shot back, climbing out of the limo.

I held my breath until the door slammed shut. ‘I’m so sorry,’ I choked. ‘I know it’s not funny.’

‘Angela, just a sec. Hey, Jack,’ James squeezed my hand then pressed the mic button to speak to the driver. ‘I think I saw some photographers as we pulled in. Can we make a move? Uh, Pinkberry on Beverly Drive?’

A shadowy nod through the tinted glass and we were off.

‘Well, that’s a relief, isn’t it?’ James sighed, stretching his arms out along the back of the seat. ‘Honestly, Blake’s been going crazy since those pictures were posted.’

‘And he’s not going to go even more crazy now?’ I panicked. ‘We have to go back for him! He’s going to call the magazine, honestly, James, I’m so close to getting fired right now. If he calls them—’

‘He’s not going to call them.’ James picked some nonexistent fluff from his dark blue shirt. ‘How many times do you need telling? Blake can’t cancel anything. And the magazine can’t fire you. I emailed them as soon as the pictures were posted yesterday. I’m only doing this interview with you and they know that.’

‘You just don’t make any sense.’ I rubbed my temples and tried not to think about how his shirt was exactly the same colour as his eyes. ‘All I’ve done is cause you trouble. You could have a real interviewer; you could just do that one-hour hotel room thing Blake was talking about and save yourself all this hassle. And the photos, aren’t you upset? Or at least annoyed?’

‘Did you do no research before you met me?’ James shook his head. ‘There have been much worse pictures of me leaked online. Pictures, videos. God, things I could never show my mother. And why would I want to sit in a room giving the same old spiel about my next movie, what I like about living in LA, what I miss about the UK, blah, blah, blah, when I could be eating burgers and talking about actual real things with you?’

‘Fair point,’ I conceded. ‘But you’re not even a little bit bothered by the photos?’

‘I’m only bothered that they bother you,’ he shrugged. ‘I’m used to them. The women that are in them with me are usually used to them.’

He didn’t even blush. So I blushed for the both of us.

‘And I’m sorry, I should have said something at the time. Once you’ve spotted the photographers, it’s usually too late,’ he said, peering out the window. I looked past him, onto the Beverley Hills sign set against a spotlessly manicured lawn. Not quite the Hollywood sign but still, terribly glam. ‘How was your friend when you got back?’

‘Jenny? Not amused with me in the slightest,’ I admitted, ‘but she was more or less calmed down by the shopping. Thank you, by the way. That was, well, madness. You really didn’t have to do that.’

‘Don’t even mention it,’ James waved away my thanks. ‘And what about your other friend, Joe?’

‘I haven’t seen him. I’m so sorry, he was totally out of order.’ I still couldn’t quite believe how pathetic Joe’s behaviour had been. ‘And, like I said the other night, he’s really not my friend.’

‘Yeah, he was a bit …’ James paused. ‘Well, never mind. There’s nothing in life that can’t be solved by frozen yoghurt.’

‘Oh my God, you’re such a woman,’ I said. ‘I’d like to hear you say that in Sheffield.’

‘‘Shut up and get your wallet out,’ he said, as we pulled up at the side of the road. ‘You’re buying.’

‘Frozen yoghurt?’ I climbed out of the limo after him. ‘That sounds like a fair exchange for everything we bought yesterday.’

‘Yeah, but I won’t have to pay for that stuff; this is pricey frozen yoghurt.’

‘You have forgotten where you’ve come from, Jim Jacobs,’ I tutted.

It turned out that Pinkberry frozen yoghurt was ever so slightly magical. As James loaded his with pineapple and strawberries, I packed mine with Coco Pebbles cereal and chocolate chips. And I got change out of ten dollars. Just.

‘This is amazing,’ I raved through a mouthful of yoghurty goodness. ‘Shouldn’t this be all tasteless and healthy?’

‘It is healthy, or it was until you shovelled all that crap on to it,’ James teased. The street outside was packed with tanned, good-looking men in workout gear and more of the ever-present Ugg girls.

‘So I thought we’d crack on with your tour of my favourite bits of LA,’ James carried on, striding down the road, past all the girls that stared and all the men that pretended not to. The only difference today was they were staring at me as much as him. ‘So how about The Grove, do some more shopping? What do you think? That should cheer you up.’

‘Sorry, James,’ I hugged myself tightly. Why was everywhere in LA so open? What I wouldn’t give for a shadowy side street or a subway station. ‘I know you don’t want to do the usual sit-down thing, but could we maybe go somewhere slightly less, I don’t know, somewhere less open?’

‘Maybe The Beverly Center?’ James finished up his yogurt and dropped it in the rubbish bin. ‘Or Melrose? There will probably be paps on Melrose though.’

‘Are there going to be photographers everywhere you go?’ I asked, actively ignoring two girls clutching tiny dogs and huge coffees, staring at us from across the road.

‘Maybe,’ James shrugged. ‘Seriously, I told you, it’s not a problem.’

‘It is a problem,’ I said, spotting a group of pre-teens, head to toe in Juicy Couture, blatantly comparing the real-life James Jacobs and ‘mystery girl’ to the images on their Sidekicks. ‘I’m sorry, but it’s going to be a problem for me.’

‘Not at all.’ James threw his arm around my shoulders. I could practically hear everyone in the street breathe in. ‘If it’s a problem for you then it’s a problem for me. If you could go anywhere in the world right now, where would you go?’

‘New York?’

James smiled. ‘Well, I can’t get you across the country in half and hour but I can do the next best thing.’

Back in the limo, we drove out of Beverly Hills, through Hollywood, and kept going until James tapped on the glass partition to stop Jack, his driver. As soon as we stepped outside, I felt as though I was home. Gone were the tans, the big boots and the teeny-tiny shorts and in their place were beards, battered Converses and vintage plaid shirts. Starbucks were replaced by corner cafes run by slacker hipsters, Urban Outfitters taken over by vintage stores and the huge cineplexes swapped for a tiny art-house cinema. And while I couldn’t see the ocean, the beautiful blue sky was framed by the hills and mountains that surrounded us.

‘You like?’ James asked, leaning against the ridiculously conspicuous limo. I couldn’t believe we were only ten minutes out of Hollywood.

‘I like,’ I nodded, slipping my (beloved) bag over my head and across my body. ‘Where are we?’

‘Los Feliz,’ he said. ‘It’s as close as I can get you to home without using the jet.’

‘I bet the pizza isn’t as good as in Brooklyn,’ I said, looking around. Not one single person was looking at us. ‘So let’s get down to business. Where are we doing the interview?’

‘In here,’ he pointed to a small dark doorway behind me. ‘After you.’

James opened the door from the sunny street into a small, dark bar. I passed through a beaded curtain, blinking. Like Teddy’s the night before, it was lined with red booths, but they were cracked vinyl instead of velvet. The high-gloss sheen of bought-in Old Hollywood glamour, accessorized by Jessica Simpson, was completely blown out of the water by actual, genuine old-school class, accessorized by the slightly stale smell of a couple of decades of debauched nights. The tiny stage in the centre of the room was set up with a drum kit, several guitars and an upright piano.

‘Hey, James,’ came a voice from behind the bar that lined the back wall, lit by vintage-looking lampshades. Except I had a feeling they weren’t vintage-looking so much as so genuinely old that they might fall apart if I touched them. The girl talking to James had gorgeous flame-red hair and winged black eyeliner. ‘Just get whatever you need, I’ll be out back.’

‘Thanks, Marina,’ James sat down behind the piano. ‘Welcome to The Dresden. It’s my favourite club in all of LA. No paps.’

‘You play?’ I asked, sitting down beside him.

‘I do.’ James lifted the lid and played a few soft chords. In the darkened room, watching James play the piano, I felt a million miles away from all of it. From the pictures on the website, from Alex, from Mary. I placed my fingers on the cool piano keys and stared at the keyboard.

‘You play?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I can’t even play the recorder.’

‘You sing?’ he asked.

I looked up into his dark blue eyes and laughed out loud. ‘No, I can’t sing,’ I spluttered. ‘Oh my God, stop it. Didn’t we come here to do an interview?’

‘Yes.’ He closed the piano lid. ‘I just feel a bit of a fraud doing the whole “ac-tor” interview thing with you. It’s the journos that create the persona, you know. It’s their questions that bring on the whole “I love the smell of the ocean at midnight” bollocks.’

‘Can I quote you on that?’ I asked. ‘Because I don’t have any questions about the smell of the ocean at any time and that sounded pretty good to me.’

‘OK, let’s do it this way,’ James said. ‘You ask me a question and then I’ll ask you a question. That should take the pressure off?’

‘And give me some ideas for more questions,’ I agreed, rummaging in the bottom of my (full of rubbish but never a pen when you needed it) bag. ‘Since you threw my Dictaphone in the Pacific Ocean, I have been reduced to shorthand, so go slow.’

‘I’ll go however fast or slow you want me to go.’

I refused to blush. Refused.

‘So, old Jim Jacobs,’ I cleared my throat and put on my most professional face. ‘Desert Island Discs time. Your three favourite albums?’

‘Easy and, I’m sorry to say it, not that original.’ James gave me a mock yawn. ‘The Smiths, The Smiths, Nirvana, Nevermind and Pulp, Different Class. Because I know you’re going to make a big deal of me being from Sheffield.’

‘You could have gone for Def Leppard,’ I replied, scribbling down his answers and wondering whether or not they would actually be on his ‘most played’ list if I checked out his iPod. Like they would be on mine.

‘My turn,’ James stretched his arms out above his head, stretching out his moment. ‘Angela Clark, why are you so bothered about what other people think?’

‘You could just ask me my three favourite films,’ I stalled.

‘Answer, please.’

‘Easy and, I’m sorry to say, not that original,’ I mirrored his stretch and pulled my hair back into a ponytail before letting it fall back down. ‘I’m not bothered. My turn.’

‘I don’t think so.’ James shook his head. ‘Do you think I didn’t notice you freaking out when those girls were looking at us outside the yoghurt place? And even though I’ve told you about a million times that your job is safe, you’re still worrying about the interview, about the magazine. So don’t tell me you’re not bothered.’

‘You didn’t tell me I had to be honest.’ I pulled a stray strand of hair out of my lip gloss. I would never be a lady. ‘You just said I had to answer your question and I answered.’

‘OK then. Your turn.’

‘Right,’ I said, surprised. I hadn’t really expected to get off that lightly but I wasn’t about to push my luck. ‘Three things you can’t be without when you’re travelling.’

‘A small donkey, Michael Caine and toenail clippers.’ James stared back at me, completely serious. ‘My turn.’

‘You’re not funny.’

‘The fifty million people that saw my last movie would disagree with you.’

‘I’m writing that down if you don’t give me a serious answer.’

‘You give me one then.’

I sighed. ‘Fine. I am a little bit bothered.’

‘Thank you. Now tell me why?’

‘Why? It would be easier for you to tell me why you aren’t more bothered. How does the whole thing not faze you? Even if this happens to you every single day, twice a day even, I don’t understand how you can just laugh it all off and expect everyone else to do the same.’

James leaned over, brushing my hair behind my ear.

‘Because it’s not real,’ he said quietly. ‘I know those photos aren’t real, the people I love know they’re not real; it’s all just another character. Even this interview, as much fun as it is and as much as I’m loving hanging out with you, what goes in the magazine will end up being an interview with a character we create. The questions you ask me aren’t supposed to find out about the real me, not the cold, hard facts. They’re supposed to find out things your readers want to know, about the James Jacobs they’ve seen in all those stupid rom-coms I’ve done.’