‘You didn’t. You said it wasn’t edgy enough, actually.’ I cocked my head like an irritating budgerigar. ‘You wouldn’t want everyone at home to think something was true if it wasn’t, eh, Charlie?’

Donna was eyeing me like I was mad. ‘So what do you want me to do?’ she asked, one hand on hip.

‘Wheel in the standby.’ I finished my pastry calmly and poured myself another cup of coffee. ‘It’ll all be fine. Renee’s been around so flipping long she could do it standing on her hair extensions. You’re an old pro, eh, Renee? In every sense of the word.’

There was a crash of crockery as Renee stood, Sally desperately suppressing a snigger in the corner, Donna’s head snapping back and forth as if she were watching a tennis rally at Wimbledon.

‘That’s it, Charlie!’ Renee was so scarlet now her face clashed with the stained pink top. ‘I’m not doing the show until this – this hussy apologises.’

‘If hussy means the marvellous fuck I had last night,’ I stirred my coffee, ‘you’re not that far off the mark, Renee. Shame you can’t get one.’

‘Shut the hell up, Maggie,’ Charlie was shouting now, ‘for Christ’s sake.’

‘Yes, shut up!’ Renee flounced to the door. ‘Shut up – and get one of the girls to sit up front. And get that lovely Joe’, Renee always favoured the few male members of staff, ‘to my dressing room. Now. He can help me go through the script.’

My high suddenly felt not quite so soaring. ‘The lovely Joe’s been nicked, actually, Renee.’ My veneer cracked just a little.

Renee and Charlie both turned in horror. ‘What are you talking about now, you stupid girl?’

‘Nicked. As in arrested.’

‘What?’ Donna asked, aghast. ‘Why? What the hell did he do?’

‘You know,’ I said pensively, standing up, ‘there’s nothing like the buzz of live TV, is there, folks?’

I strolled out of the green room, letting the door slam behind me. None of them saw my hands tremble as I lit a cigarette on the fire-escape, as I fumbled in my bag for my dad’s old hill-walking flask. But, shaking or not, there was plenty more vitriol where that had come from.

Charlie was tapping furiously into his BlackBerry as I re-entered the green room, relieved that Renee had vanished into make-up to be pacified by Kay.

‘Are you trying to get the sack?’ Charlie snapped at me.

‘What do you think?’ I replied evenly.

Donna burst in. ‘I’ve got her, Charlie. She’s in a cab now. I didn’t even have to offer her money, she was so keen.’

‘Thank God!’ Charlie said.

‘Who?’

‘Your friend Fay Carter,’ he muttered.

I groaned. ‘Oh for Christ’s sake.’

‘Well, can you do any better?’

‘But who’s she going to dump? She’s already bloody single.’