“Yes, yes. I’m really sorry about last night. What with all the drama and the press it just slipped my mind.”
“No need to apologise. I got my big break, didn’t I? Went well, as it happens. But…look…there is just too much to discuss!”
“I know. Listen, if you and Dearbhla are free, and can promise not to neck down all Sinclair’s booze again, do you want to pop round? I’m at Sinclair’s.”
A silence. “Is he there?”
“No, he’s out, fixing stuff with the VC and the BBC and the sucker MC on the MIC. Come round. He won’t mind, honestly.” Hm, well…not much anyway.
“Are you sure? I’ll give Dearbhla a knock. Be with you in half an hour, yeah?”
“Sweet. Bye.”
I smile to myself as I watch them flit past the photographers, who shout questions at them. I wonder if they’ll be in the papers tomorrow. Sinclair’s trio of teen totty. I inhale sharply and clap my hand over my mouth when I see Emily turn round and shout cheerfully, “Sinclair’s a horndog!” Naughty, naughty girl. She might live to regret that.
“Emily!” I admonish, opening the door and finding myself manhandled against the ample bosom of Dearbhla. “They’ll print that, you silly mare.”
“I’d love for everyone to think I was shagging Sinclair,” she says sweetly.
“Even your mother?” asks Dearbhla, at which Emily’s face falls. We move on into the sitting room and collapse together on the sofa.
“So then, just what on God’s green earth have you got yourself into this time, Newland?” asks Dearbhla in a weary, rather matronly, tone. “One minute you’re just like every other hopeless slacker; the next you’re in all the papers for being shacked up with a celebrity sadist.”
“Ha ha,” I chuckle. “Celebrity Sadists. Good idea for a TV quiz game.”
“Seriously, Beth.” She raises an eyebrow at me; she could train to be the female Sinclair, I sometimes think. “That sex tape is all over the internet. I watched it last night. Are you sure this is what you want?”
Championship level blushing. I shift on the sofa, still aware of a very tender spot at the junction of buttock and thigh after last night’s strap performance.
“Yes,” I say defiantly. “And he’s nothing like as hardcore with me as he is in that video, just FYI. Not that it’s any of your business.”
“Spare me the details,” she says, to which Emily protests, “No – don’t! Tell us!”
“It’s nothing to worry about,” I assure them. “I understand now why Sinclair was so…remote before. We’ve talked about his past and we want to make a future together. That’s not so scandalous, is it?”
“But what kind of a future?” asks Dearbhla in a concerned mother hennish voice. “Not one where he cracks the whip all the time, surely?”
“Maybe now and again wouldn’t be so bad…,” says Emily yearningly.
“At first he wanted to control me much more than I would be comfortable with,” I admit to them. “But he’s dealt with his reasons for wanting that now. It’s going to work out. I know it.”
I can’t help noticing that Emily’s attention has wandered and she is staring out through the hallway.
“Is that…THE office?” she asks me with a nudge. I sigh.
“Yes.”
“Can I have a look inside?”
“No way! Anyway, it’s locked. I can’t go in there unless…” I stop myself short. Too much info.
“Unless what?” Emily squeals and claps her hands. “He…summons you?”
“Shut up!” I moan, squirming with embarrassment.
“Does he have a gown and mortarboard?”
“No, really, SHUT UP!!” I turn to her and push her back into the sofa cushions so a mock fight ensues, Dearbhla clucking at us indulgently as we struggle. Eventually the girls get the message that I am not doing a kiss and tell, so we busy ourselves watching rubbish TV and talking about boys for the rest of the afternoon, until I am galvanised by shouting from the driveway, indicating that Sinclair is back.