‘Ready?’ said Antonia rolling up her sleeves.

‘Cake!’ said Simi before crumpling in embarrassment. ‘I mean, cool!’

Simi braced herself. Yes and, is what they taught you in drama school, Simi remembered, quivering on the spot. Gabe started the camera rolling, the smirk spreading across his face like a contagion.

‘What were you doing in her ladyship’s latrine, Cake?’ said Antonia regarding her with suspicion.

Simi’s face contorted as the machinery in her brain shut down. Antonia may as well have been speaking Portuguese backwards.

‘Cake,’ Simi said eventually.

‘I said, what were you doing in there, Cake? You’re supposed to be making our lady’s pudding.’

Simi could almost hear her brain call the emergency engineer only to be told they wouldn’t arrive until Tuesday due to the bank holiday.

‘Cake!’

‘Okay, pause a second,’ Antonia said to Gabe. ‘So remember, you don’t have to just say, “Cake”.’

Gabe, who could barely contain his arch grin, hit record again.

‘And action!’

‘What are you doing in her ladyship’s—’

‘I’M A SPY!’

Simi dragged her swivel chair towards her desk, the insistent ringing phone a welcome distraction from thoughts of her Cake audition that morning. It had replayed in her head on a cringe-creating loop for the past hour.

‘Good afternoon. Ahuja, Cohen and Cooper Surveyors, how may I direct your call?’

Simi punched numbers into her switchboard. She replaced her handset and went back to staring out of the window. Some actors called jobs like this survival jobs but for Simi, it was a lifeline, especially after that audition. Furthermore, she liked working at ACC. She had lovely bosses, they were generous with bonuses and the office was close to the shops. And this was all good because, given how her audition had gone, she would most likely be working here for the rest of her life. It wasn’t so bad. In a decade or ten, she might get promoted to junior assistant office manager and earn enough to buy a boxy studio flat in zone sixty.

She thought back to a few hours earlier. After the ‘spy’ interlude, luckily she’d calmed down enough to offer up a passable improvisation. Then again anything was reasonable after trying to turn the character into a medieval, cake-loving 007. As Simi had backed out of the room with thank-yous that were really apologies, one thing had become abundantly clear; she didn’t have what it took. Acting was too tough. She’d been to every type of class, pretending to be a giraffe, a man, a house mat and a baby, all in search of her inner self. She’d shelled out for accent classes, elocution lessons and Alexander Technique training, which just seemed to make her cry. And to cover all this, she’d borrowed hundreds, possibly thousands of pounds from Jemima. She had hoped one day to land a job with a big, fat cheque to pay it back. But there’d been no cheque. Just rejection heaped on rejection. And finally when she’d got into the room for a huge show, she’d blown it. Big style. So yes, this reception desk was as good a place to be, given acting wasn’t where she was going to end up. As self-pity threatened to consume her, the main front door opened and Simi pulled herself up into a vaguely professional posture, pasting on her amiable receptionist smile.