Perfect Strangers

‘Glad to be back,’ she smiled.

‘I’m so sorry about your dad.’

She nodded. Mike was a nice guy, but she still didn’t feel comfortable discussing it.

‘Thanks,’ she said, then lowered her voice. ‘Listen, Mike, do you think Sharif might give me any more hours here?’ She enjoyed her time at the gym more than anywhere else, and if she needed to get a job, where better?

Mike looked doubtful. ‘He’s been cutting hours the last couple of months. I mean, I’m on my own here this morning. Still – seeing as it’s you, he might sort you out with something.’

‘Well shout me when he’s in,’ she grinned. ‘I can only ask, right?’

Fastening her hair into a ponytail, she limbered up by doing a few stretches on the mats, then headed over to the treadmill. Sophie always felt better, more focused and in control, when she was working out. The gym was the one place in the world where she felt truly good about herself. No one cared about your bank balance here, where you lived or who you were married to. It was all down to how much work you put in. You could have arrived in a Ferrari, but if you were flabby, unfit and bursting out of your cycling shorts, you’d still wish you had the hard pecs and toned arms of the woman with the pushbike next to you.

She tried to empty her mind, enjoy the run as usual, but that nagging problem kept popping back into her head. She needed to make money. But how? Her CV was embarrassingly scant, and six years had gone by since she had dropped out of her English course at Oxford Brookes. After the modelling, and the obligatory stint travelling around Australia and South East Asia, Sophie had pulled another favour and landed a job running the door at one of the Chelsea nightclubs the young royals liked frequenting. Truthfully, it hadn’t gone well. There were some girls who revelled in being a clipboard Nazi, but Sophie wasn’t one of them, feeling too mean to turn anyone away – and had eventually been fired for letting in the ‘wrong sort’. Her next bright idea, working as a gallerist, had also been a professional dead end. The art history course in Florence had been a lovely six months but hadn’t actually led to a job, as the London galleries were all full of beautiful rich girls with MAs from the Courtauld Institute. So once again Sophie had fallen back on Daddy, and she had to admit that hadn’t been a roaring success either. The irony was that she had really enjoyed organising events for his firm – the Christmas dance at Il Bottaccio, a trip for wealthy clients to Cowes Week – but a mishap involving a missing consignment of canapés at the summer garden party on the lawns of Bingley Manor had led to Peter Ellis’s office manager calling her a dippy cow in front of everyone. Sophie had quietly resigned, half thinking the woman had a point. Maybe she wasn’t much good at anything; maybe her mother was right: the only way Sophie would ever get on in life was to find herself a decent husband.

She punched angrily at the treadmill’s buttons, forcing herself into a sprint. No, that kind of negative thinking wasn’t helping, and it certainly wouldn’t pay the rent. And then there was food, gas and electricity, council tax, and there was no way she was giving up her skinny lattes in the morning.

Frustrated, Sophie moved on to the cross-trainer and the weights, pushing herself harder and harder.

She had always been slim and athletic, a member of the netball, tennis and hockey teams at school, but lately she had been spending more time than ever working out. She might be feeling emotionally fragile, but at least her body was strong and healthy. Over the past few months she had seen her shape change too. She was at least a dress size bigger than she had been when she was going out with Will and had starved herself into size eight designer dresses, but now she was leaner and more toned than she had ever been.

Finally Sophie let herself rest, towelling her face and taking a long drink of water. She puffed out her cheeks, and as the endorphins coursed around her body, she could feel her mood lift.

‘Excuse me. You don’t know how to work this, do you?’

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Sophie glanced up to see a glamorous brunette. She was about ten or fifteen years older than Sophie; her hair was immaculate, freshly blow-dried and bouncy, her face unlined but with that suspicious hint of Botox waxiness. She was the stereotypical Chelsea housewife, except there was something exotic about her, an accent that Sophie couldn’t quite place.

‘It’s a bit embarrassing,’ said the woman. ‘I’ve never been on this one before.’

‘Don’t worry, it’s new,’ smiled Sophie.

She knew the equipment backwards. Not just because she worked out here so often – it had been a condition of starting at Red Heart that she take a basic gym instructor’s certificate for occasions just like this.

‘It’s a rowing simulator – not like those old-fashioned straight-pull rowing machines; it works the exact muscles you use sculling or rowing. Here, hop on,’ she said, showing the woman how to operate the machine. ‘Can you feel that stretch along your quads?’ she asked as the woman pulled back on the virtual oars.

‘It’s good,’ she said. ‘I take it you work here?’

‘Yes. Sort of. Part time anyway.’

‘Well that’s perfect, because I’m actually looking for a personal trainer. I don’t suppose you’d be able to squeeze me in?’

‘No, I didn’t mean—’

‘I know, I’m too old to get a body as good as yours, but we can try, huh? How much do you charge?’

Sophie stared at her. She was kidding, right?

‘Two hundred pounds an hour,’ she said. It was meant to come out as a joke, but the woman didn’t even blink.

‘Could you do Thursday?’

‘Thursday?’ Sophie looked at her, expecting her to start laughing, but the woman’s expression was serious.

‘I know it’s short notice, but I’m heading to the South of France and I need to get in shape for my bikini. Are you available?’

The woman’s startling green eyes challenged her to say no. This was clearly someone not used to being turned down. Sophie hesitated. After all, she wasn’t strictly speaking a personal trainer, but it was the one thing she did know an awful lot about. And two hundred pounds an hour! A few sessions at that rate and she’d definitely be able to stay in the little Battersea flat, maybe even think about upgrading back to Chelsea.