Chapter Four
Connor looked at the message again.
A few of the old gang are meeting up next Saturday at The Fish and Dish in Chiswick. Are you in the country? Great to catch up. R.
At least Ryan hadn’t forgotten about him then.
Most of his friends from the production company had dropped him like a hot brick after Bonnie had kicked him out; probably because they figured she had lots of plans for future programmes and could keep them all in jobs, whereas he had turned overnight into something of a social pariah.
Obviously, with hindsight, he wished he’d never gone to the party in the first place, but it had all seemed relatively harmless at the time, and even slightly amusing.
He’d thought they were just larking about and everyone knew Bonnie’s PA Stefania often got a bit tipsy.
He recalled wondering at the time what she was going to remember in the morning.
In the event, Stefania hadn’t needed to rely on memory – the paparazzi did too good a job.
He had to admit the photos did make it look more like he was trying to undress her, rather than peel away her drunken advances, but no one seemed interested in his side of the story, and the more he’d protested the worse the debacle had become, and of course the papers added their own embellishments to the story.
In the days that followed, he could easily imagine his former colleagues all meeting up at some fashionable nightclub, laughing and drinking till the early hours, and quietly pretending none of them knew anything about what had happened.
Although he’d wangled Ryan a job with Bonnie’s production company, he’d first met Ryan on The Challenge, the television programme that had launched him into a different life and provided opportunities that a poor boy from a working-class background could never have imagined.
Connor made himself a coffee and then, as he sat in the armchair by the window looking out over the gardens, he allowed himself to detach from his miserable present and wallow for a while in happier memories.
He’d only applied to go on the programme in the first place because someone had dared him to, but it had been great fun.
The premise was simple: a mixed group of people were put up in a country house and given daily challenges.
Individuals could team up to improve their chances of winning.
Viewers then voted for who they thought had made the best effort and the person with the fewest votes went home.
At first, Connor was totally in awe of the place.
The imposing Georgian house sat in ten acres of grounds and had fabulously opulent bedrooms, a huge open-plan kitchen area that boasted an extensive wine fridge, and had full-length windows overlooking the grounds.
The recreation room had formerly been a music room but the hotel chain now owning the property had replaced the grand piano with a full-size snooker table, along with table football and various other activities.
Every morning over breakfast, a letter arrived spelling out the day’s challenge, and then it was a scramble to get ready.
They were all geared to activities in and around the house, which meant the local town didn’t suffer the indignity of having individuals racing around trying to find something or buy something.
Connor had simply been relieved not to have been voted out on day one, but had quickly realised that the people who went out on a limb or pushed themselves harder got noticed more.
On day four, they were each given a roll of wire; the challenge was to create an animal sculpture using only the wire and anything from the garden, the more unusual the better.
Connor wasn’t in the least bit artistic but had been happy to team up with Ryan.
Having spent all morning making their frame for a deer, they went scavenging for materials.
He couldn’t remember now who thought of the idea of getting the mistletoe, but Connor had volunteered to climb up the tree and retrieve it.
What he could still remember vividly was losing his foothold on the descent and falling the last ten feet, all captured by the cameras.
Despite Connor’s sprained ankle, the two of them completed the challenge and got voted Star Challenger.
Neither of them won the competition but back in the real world, Connor suddenly discovered that a lot of people knew who he was.
He picked up his phone to reply to Ryan.
Still in the UK. See you Saturday. What time?
He stared at the phone for a while after pressing send in case a reply came back. It wasn’t like the good old days when his phone pinged constantly with updates or messages, but this was a temporary setback. He wouldn’t be stuck in this dingy flat in dreary Haxford forever.
As he gazed out of the window, he realised the outside space would have originally been one garden for one house.
He presumed that after the original house had been replaced with flats, the garden must have been neatly divided into four segments.
Even though he couldn’t see all of it, due to the wooden trellis acting as a bit of a screen, there was no doubting which was his.
There was absolutely nothing artistic to look at in his garden.
Still, at least he had found someone to look after it.
He knew Rosie had been the other day – she had posted her rent through the letterbox – but she hadn’t attempted to contact him.
She clearly hadn’t even recognised him, or if she did, she was playing it cool.
While he was forced to admit that pricked his ego, it was probably just as well; he didn’t need anyone else’s pity or derision right now.
She was rather attractive; shame about her opinions though, which were honest to the point of being blunt, and she obviously just blurted out whatever came into her head.
Even so, he wished he hadn’t been so standoffish with her, but maybe it was for the best. This was no more than a temporary residential arrangement, and with any luck, he’d soon be back in with the old crowd and a million miles away from Haxford.