Shopping With the Enemy Read Free

Wednesday.’
    ‘I know.’
    ‘But that’s television. Once filming starts, the cost of having everyone on set is so gigantic that we just keep going and keep going till everyone drops and the rest of my life just has to wait on the sidelines until the end of the season.’
    ‘I know,’ Dinah repeated.
    ‘Without your help and without Ed I would not be able to keep going, you do know that, don’t you, my love?’
    ‘Yes,’ Dinah assured her.
    ‘Girls! How totally fabulous to see you!’
    At the sound of Connor’s deep, melodious and quite famous voice, Annie and Dinah’s heads weren’t the only ones to turn.
    The tall, ludicrously handsome, dark-haired man swept over to their table, kissed them both on the cheeks, then took a place right beside Annie. He pinched her on the bum as he sat down.
    ‘Still chubby then?’
    Only because she had known him since he was fresh out of drama college and auditioning for bit parts, was he allowed to get away with this with just a mild slap on the hand.
    ‘Not all of us have time for two-hour sessions with our personal trainers every morning of every blinking day,’ she replied.
    ‘As if! I am so busy, darlings, I am working my fingers to the bone,’ he pretended to complain, throwing off his jacket, stretching his long legs out under the table and making a not-so-subtle check of the room for smiles of recognition and any other devastatingly handsome, available men.
    ‘Your beautifully manicured fingers, I’m sure,’ Annie teased.
    ‘Musicals are such hard work, my darlings, you have no idea. You have to eat well, sleep well, gargle with salt, go out and give your all, three hours a night, every single night. It’s drudgery.’
    ‘Ha! I think I could cope with a little West End theatre drudgery at what, ten thousand pounds per hour?’ Annie chipped in.
    ‘Is that what you think I earn? You must be having a laugh.’
    ‘Don’t you be coy with me, Connor McCabe, I know you don’t get out of bed for anything less than five figures.’
    ‘Are we having a bad day?’
    ‘Poor Annie, she’s just worked five twelve-hour days in a row,’ Dinah explained.
    ‘All the flicking through fashion collections, all the getting in and out of lovely outfits, all the time spent in hair and make-up being pampered and beautified … you must be
exhausted
,’ Connor teased. ‘What are we drinking, by the way?’ he asked as a waiter appeared at his elbow, face lit up with recognition of the man who’d once been a star on Sunday evening’s most watched TV series.
    ‘Champagne cocktails, life’s too short for any other kind,’ Annie replied.
    ‘Agreed.’
    Connor placed the order, lined up another round, then turned back to the conversation.
    ‘It is hard work,’ he agreed. ‘It is so demanding to give yourself, your heart and soul to an audience one hundred per cent of the time. They want it all, they want to suck you dry. At the end of every performance I feel like a husk.’
    Dinah had to gulp her drink to stop herself from laughing out loud.
    ‘We need to shut up, Connor,’ Annie decided. ‘You’ve spent too long in luvvie-land. Lots of good people work much harder than us for a lot less, but … OK, I’ll have just one more rant. It’s the clothes! The clothes they want me to work with this season are just
impossible
!’
    ‘Ooooh listen to you, Ms Annie Valentine,’ Connor retaliated, ‘you sound like one of those divas on
MasterChef
complaining about slightly soggy shitake mushrooms.’
    ‘Shut up!’ Annie warned. ‘It’s fashion this season. I don’t get it. I can’t understand anything that’s in fashion right now and I can’t work with any of it.’
    ‘Soggy shitakes,’ Connor repeated.
    ‘Shitake youself. Can we be serious for one tiny moment?’
    Dinah saw the concerned look on her sister’s face and put down her glass.
    ‘I really think I might be losing my touch,’ Annie confessed, ‘in fact, I might already have lost it. The last time