Fire in the Blood

'I wish I could come with you, but I'm too busy. Where will you go?' asked Jamie.

'Somewhere sunny and warm,' she said dreamily. 'The West Indies, the Canaries, Greece... I'll get some brochures tomorrow.'

It took longer to extricate herself from bookings than she had expected; her agent talked her into doing the next month's work but did manage to switch the jobs booked for the month after that to other girls, and meanwhile Nadine read brochures and daydreamed. She settled at last on a fortnight's holiday in the West Indies on a small island where she could not only enjoy lots of sunshine and clear blue seas but also learn to paint with a well-known artist whose wife ran the hotel. Nadine liked to sketch and painted water-colours in her spare time, although she had never had any formal training.

The day after she booked she heard from Greg Erroll. 'You've got the job,' he said cheerfully, and Nadine took a long breath, her face flushing and excitement making her stammer.

'Oh...oh, thank you! Oh, that's wonderful! I didn't really believe I'd get it, you know, thank you for letting me know so promptly and... Well.. .what happens now? I mean, when do I start work?'

He laughed. 'Not quite yet! We won't need you until the end of August; months away. I'll be in touch with your agent and arrange a contract; I'll discuss all the details with him so that he can rearrange your diary and cancel any modelling jobs from September. But you had better be prepared to do publicity when we release the news; you're bound to be wanted for media interviews.'

'When will you release it?'

'Next week, I think, if your agent says you have time free for interviews. We want to get some good pie-publicity, we'll follow that up just before the show starts, but it is always useful to trail a new show months ahead.'

'I've just booked a holiday in the West Indies starting in a month's time—should I cancel?' Nadine reluctantly asked, hoping he would say no.

He did. 'Good heavens, no! The West Indies? Lucky girl, I wish I could get away but I'm too busy. No, go ahead, have your holiday. By then you should have done all the media interviews. They'll come in a rush, and any requests that come later can be put off until you return from holiday.'

He was right: when the announcement was made she did get an immediate rush of demands for interviews, but Nadine was used to talking to the Press and felt she did quite well, although some of the reporters asked what she considered to be outrageously personal questions.

One in particular, a columnist on one of the trashier papers, asked, 'Are you living with Jamie Colbert?'

'No, I am not!' said Nadine, bristling.

'But he is your lover?' the woman pressed, undeterred. Short and blonde, wearing a designer-label pink suit, she was very pretty, and as full of venom as a coiled cobra. Nadine had been warned about her by her agent in advance, and he hadn't been over-estimating her nastiness.

Coldly, Nadine said, 'Jamie Colbert has nothing to do with my new job! And I don't want to talk about my private life.'

Ignoring this declaration, the blonde purred, 'But you and he have been close for years, haven't you? You were still seeing him while you were married to Sean Carmichael. Wasn't he cited in the divorce?'

'No, he was not!' Nadine said through her teeth. 'If you had taken the trouble to check, you'd have discovered that our divorce was on the grounds of irretrievable breakdown of the marriage. Nobody else was involved.' She got up, looking at her watch. 'Now, if you'll excuse me, I have other appointments.'

'I haven't finished my interview yet!'

'You have,' Nadine said, on her way to the door of her flat to open it pointedly.

The columnist gave her a catty little smile. 'Well, if you don't really need the publicity, that's up to you... but I haven't really got anything worth printing here, and I think City TV isn't going to be too happy not to get a mention in my column.'

Nadine just held the door open and waited.

The blonde furiously collected her possessions and walked towards her, and as a parting shot said spitefully, 'Hoping there's a chance you might get back together with Sean now he and Fenella have split up, are you, darling?'

Nadine couldn't quite control her face and the reporter, fast as a snake, saw the way her skin tightened and paled, and smiled at having drawn blood.

'Oh, didn't you know? Yes, she flew back to the States this morning, and gave an interview at Heathrow saying it was all over between her and Sean. And the word is out that Date with Death, this TV mini-series they just made, is the worst disaster since the Titanic, and that's why she has dumped Sean. Not that she would answer any questions about that, and she denied that the series was a flop, but then she would, wouldn't she? She's an ambitious girlie, our Fenella, and if the series bombs out Sean Carmichael stands to lose everything, including his shirt, making him a less than desirable proposition for someone like Fenella.'

'Goodbye,' Nadine said, almost pushing the woman out of the door and slamming it.

For several minutes she stood there, leaning on the door, breathing thickly, her mind whirling. Only a couple of weeks ago Juno Harper had told her that Sean was going to marry Fenella, and now Fenella was on her way back to the States saying it was all over between them, there wasn't going to be any marriage. Was the blonde columnist's verdict the right one? Had Fenella dumped Sean because the mini-series they'd been making was a failure?

Next day she was able to read all about it in the popular Press, which went to town with photos of Fenella and Sean and interviews with Fenella. There was no quote from Sean. The papers all said that he was not giving interviews, and his staff answered telephone calls with one phrase: 'No comment.' That didn't stop the Press from speculating, naturally; the gossip columns were thick with innuendo, hints and half-truths.

Nadine wished she knew how Sean felt. Had he been in love with Fenella? That thought made her wince and hope he was miserable. He deserved it.

She only had a few more interviews to do during the fortnight that followed, and then she started packing to fly to the West Indies. She didn't need to buy any clothes: her wardrobe was full of sundresses, sandals, tops, shorts, beachwear which she had worn for photographic sessions but never on a beach yet.

She was leaving on a noonday plane, and when her doorbell rang sharply at nine o'clock she supposed it was the taxi she had booked, arriving earlier than planned to pick her up. She ran to answer it, intending to ask the driver to wait a few minutes, but the man on the doorstep was Larry Dean, one of Sean's closest colleagues in Carmichael Films.