Faith glides back over and returns with a medium-sized courgette, a spindly-looking carrot and an uncooked, pork chipolata sausage. She lays them beside the aubergine – all we need here is a bendy banana. ‘What tickles your fancy?’ Faith looks like she’s about to eat me. All for show. Such a pro. Meanwhile, I’m standing here like the stupefied new recruit.

Poppy clamps her hand over her open mouth.

I smile through gritted teeth. ‘Faith, please remove these vegetables from my bench at once.’

As requested, she scoops up every last vegetable from the bench top, leaving the tiny sausage in front of me.

‘Men, you may sleep easy,’ she purrs sexily.

Pugsy pans in with his camera from me to the sausage and then back on me, up close. I blink. Frozen. The cream bubbles in the pan. Pugsy zooms in on the bubbling and back on me.

Behind the monitor, Robin looks as awkward as I feel. Joanna can barely stay seated. She motions for me to get on with things. Robin also gestures, but nobody says stop. Joanna almost flips in her seat!

It’s Harry who thaws me. Leaning forward in his foldaway chair, his warm eyes encourage me – Come on Gracie, you got this.

Trying to appear, I don’t know, sexily coy, but inwardly cringing, I announce, ‘Faith, you do realise the metabolic advantage of meat over vegetables? You may be surprised,’ I look scornfully at her oversized purple aubergine, ‘but sustenance isn’t all about size. It’s about density.’

I pierce the chipolata with my fork and brandish it in front of Pugsy’s camera lens.

‘Gracie on fire!’ Faith yelps.

‘Sizzlingy. Like a good pork banger.’ I drop the baby sausage into the hot pan. ‘Pass me the pasta. This sauce is getting sticky. Let’s keep cooking!’^p

Joanna’s grin stretches from ear to ear.

Faith slips in a few more racy innuendos. We finish plating the meal and Poppy leads Toby through to the kitchen, where the four of us banter over morsels of what turns out to be a strange but delicious concoction of pumpkin gnocchi with a creamy garlic and chipolata sausage sauce.

Harry winks.

Finally, I hear it.

‘Cut!’

11

Joanna throws a party for cast and crew at Soho House after we wrap. It’s my first visit to the iconic celebrity haunt. Harry, sitting next to me, is chuckling at my star-studded excitement.