I'm Still Standing

By Richard Smith

Loved by wildlife, threatened by developers.

A heart-warming story of a reluctant and unlikely friendship between a pair of misfits,

whose futures become linked to the survival of an urban ‘greenspace’.

Two young people are struggling to find themselves and a role in life. For one, the world is changing too quickly. For the other, change can’t come soon enough. Linking them are overgrown railway sidings - home to wildlife but about to be destroyed.

Jill Standing is mocked because of her name, ignored because of the way she looks and thought wacky because of her views on the environment. Harry Pratt is mired in traditions foisted on him by his father. His interests are vintage jukeboxes, creating Christmas cracker jokes and his boss, Sarah. He has no interest whatsoever in the environment. They’re indifferent to one another, yet both want to preserve the sidings, but for different reasons. Campaigning against a big business, a shared love of Blondie and a reclusive, retired school-teacher transforms their lives.

Set in 1989, and with a backdrop of music, environmental concerns and nostalgia, it follows frustrating wrong turns to a surprising, heart-warming conclusion.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Troubador Publishing Ltd
• Release date: Jun 28, 2024
• ISBN: 9781805148234

Richard Smith

Richard Smith is an award-winning video writer, director, and producer, who stepped away from the camera to write his first novel, the acclaimed Homeward Bound, in 2021. He owns a jukebox and a record collection, some of which might be welcomed at Sotheby’s, most of which would be rejected by Oxfam. Richard resides in London.

Book preview

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Chapter 1

The kiosk at the end of Harry Pratt’s road was no more than a wooden shed.

‘Morning, Harry. You’re late.’

Barely large enough inside to swing a cat, it stood dwarfed by a twenty-foot brick wall, ivy overhanging from an abandoned railway yard behind.

‘Morning, Paul.’

Paul owned the kiosk, as had his father and his father’s father. Successful, popular, and outgoing, he was everyone’s friend. And a daily reminder to Harry of how his own life was drifting away.

‘Overslept?’ Paul straightened wonky piles of Toffos and Bitz bars, dislodged by the vibrations from a passing lorry.

‘Hardly slept at all, as it happens.’

‘Why’s that? Something up?’

Harry took a deep breath, preparing to reveal what he’d been agonising over. ‘Spent all night thinking.’

‘Best not to.’

A middle-aged man bustled in front of Harry.

‘Morning, Greg.’ Paul knew everyone by name and what they wanted.

‘Man U lucky on Saturday, don’t you think?’

‘Too right.’

The customer identified as Greg peered at the papers perched on the kiosk’s open window ledge, stabbing a finger at a photograph of a bikini-clad model on the front of the Daily Star. ‘Unlucky Lucy’s Heartbreak,’ he read out loud before looking up. ‘Who’s Lucy?’

‘Page 3 girl. If it’s not Samantha Fox or Linda Lusardi, it’s her,’ Paul answered, handing Greg twenty Woodbines wrapped inside a Daily Express and Today. ‘Been dumped by her boyfriend. Third time in as many months.’

Greg shook his head. ‘Makes you wonder. If a gorgeous babe like her can’t keep a boyfriend, what hope for the rest of us?’

Harry might have joined in, about his dread of having passed thirty a serial loner, or asking what made a man irresistible to women. But one of the unwritten rules of the kiosk was customers spoke to Paul, customers did not speak to each other.

‘Morning, Jacqui.’

A twenty-something woman had moved into pole position. ‘Regular please, Paul.’ Paul handed her a packet of Opal Fruits. She giggled. ‘I can’t resist these at the moment.’

Harry watched intently before turning to Paul. ‘You know, I’ve read that Opal Fruits are full of fat and calories. They ought to have health warnings – like they do with tobacco.’ He nodded to shelves of cigarettes lining the back of the kiosk.

‘Take no notice of him, Jacqui, nobody else does.’

Jacqui was awkwardly poking the sweets into her bag. ‘Can I pay tomorrow?’

‘No problem, luv. Have a good day.’

Harry stepped back and watched as a cluster of customers crowded around the kiosk. It was part community centre, part rotting garden shed. Magazines were ranged in piles across the pavement, pegged on string like a gnome’s washing line. At one end, The Spectator sported the headline Thatcher Issues Global Warming Warning, at the other, glossy monthlies, their covers turned up, pages crinkled from the damp and colour bleached by the sun.

‘Morning, Harry.’ A willowy forty-something woman appeared, brandishing a steaming mug, brown liquid smelling of coffee spilling over the sides.

‘Hi, Jo.’

Jo was Paul’s wife. Sympathetic, hypnotic, chestnut-brown eyes, she was high on the list of other things about Paul that Harry admired.

‘You’re late, aren’t you?’ She perched the mug on a shelf at the back of the kiosk.

‘Couldn’t sleep. Then didn’t wake up.’

‘I’ve almost forgotten what sleep is. You wait ’til you have kids.’

Harry produced a five-pound note from his wallet. ‘Is my Record Mirror in?’

‘Sorry, mate. It’s late this week.’ Paul picked up the coffee and turned to Jo. ‘You’ll never guess what. Harry’s only just as good as called Jacqui fat.’

‘I didn’t,’ Harry protested.

‘Why on earth did you do that, Harry?’

‘I didn’t mean to.’ He concentrated on stuffing the fiver into a trouser pocket rather than catch Jo’s expression. ‘It was just a comment about Opal Fruits, that’s all.’

‘She’s pregnant, you know. Five months.’ Paul was grimacing. ‘You obviously skipped class at charm school.’

Harry couldn’t tell if they were angry or amused. ‘I didn’t realise…’

‘I don’t know what we’re going to do with you.’ Jo was shaking her head.

It was a question that troubled Harry on the Tube to work. Running through his brain were memories of all the times when what he said, or did, was misunderstood. The absence of social skills he blamed on an outbreak of blackheads as a teenager. Or on his name. He’d been christened Aaron, homage to his father’s hero, Elvis Aaron Presley, subjecting him to a lifetime of being A Pratt, a joke that was repeated endlessly at school. To escape ridicule, he’d shrunk away, preferring anonymity, though, with his height, he was hard to miss. It was why he’d renamed himself Harry at college. A much safer name and chosen after an infatuation with the lead singer of Blondie, Debbie Harry. But the change made him no more confident or outgoing. And it didn’t explain why, if he did speak, he blurted out the wrong things at the wrong time.

He was still recriminating himself about Jacqui as he left the Tube when a guy with a walking stick stumbled towards him.

‘Sorry to trouble you. You couldn’t let me have £1, could you? I have to get to the hospital in Whitechapel and I’ve lost my wallet. I think it’s been nicked.’

Harry eyed him up and down. ‘Have you told the police?’

‘I will but my wife’s having a baby and I’m desperate to get there. Can you help, please? I wouldn’t ask but I don’t know what else to do.’

Harry felt in his pocket for change but instead pulled out his handkerchief and out fell the five-pound note meant for his Record Mirror. There was no escaping.

‘Here, have this.’ He handed it over without engaging the guy’s eyes.

‘God bless you.’

Despite his act of generosity being inadvertent, its effect was unexpectedly therapeutic. Harry strode on to the office, a spring in his step, even singing to himself I Can See Clearly Now as he bounced along. The reward for his good deed was a coffee from the company vending machine that seemed to have developed a fault and was dispensing free drinks. He reached his floor with renewed positivity, although with vocals reduced to a hum under his breath, as any sign of cheerfulness in the building was frowned upon.

‘Morning, Harry. Nice of you to take time to visit us.’

Colin Barnes, 24th-floor Health and Safety Rep, looked meaningfully at his watch, while thumbing a bleeping pager, without breaking his stride. ‘Can’t stop. Some of us have meetings to go to.’ He stepped into a lift. ‘And you should have a lid on that cup.’ The doors closed on him.

The cloud that had accompanied Harry on the Tube re-formed and engulfed him once more. What was he doing here? The kind of place he’d sworn he’d never be seen dead in, the 24th floor, identical to all the others, open plan, featureless and stretching anonymously into infinity. He walked past the widest desks positioned by windows, saved for the most valued staff, and headed to his workstation, a small table on an inside corridor. Another tedious day of staring at a word processing screen loomed, the monotony broken only by giving directions to visitors who were lost and unintentionally circumnavigating the building. This morning, though, it was eerily still, deserted except for Doreen Tilbury, sitting at her desk, head over her keyboard.

‘Morning, Harry.’ She glanced up at the polystyrene cup he was carrying, then turned back to typing. ‘I’ll make you a proper coffee when I’ve done this.’

‘Something important?’

‘Just a document I’m having to correct. Why do they insist on giving word processors to you all when you can’t type? It drives me mad. I end up by having to re-do it anyway.’ She kept tapping.

Harry pulled up his chair and surveyed the files, loose documents, shards of paper and textbooks covering a beech veneer, despite the company’s clear desk policy. He nudged a mobile of rubber bands and paper clips hanging from a drawing pin in the ceiling tiles above and watched them spin hypnotically. He would have denied ownership of it all were it not for a torn, black and white Xerox photocopy of a Polaroid picture. Blu Tacked to an angle-poise lamp, it featured him, in a hired suit and grinning, alongside one half of a Wurlitzer 2410 hundred-selection jukebox. The other half was torn off so as not to reveal who he had his arm around. That was his secret. Feeling inside his jacket to check the original was zipped up in a pocket for safekeeping, he swivelled his chair back to Doreen. ‘Anything happen while I was on flexi?’

‘What do you think?’ Doreen was still concentrating on her screen. How she remained so devoted was a mystery to Harry. Willing, ever-present, loyal to the company, she’d probably been at work since the office opened in the morning and would likely still be here long after it was dark. Perhaps it was the picture of her husband and two teenage children that inspired her, its bamboo frame perched between her pristine in-tray and out-tray. He couldn’t help but admire her contentment, even be jealous of it.

‘Good morning, Mrs Tilbury, good morning, Mr Pratt.’ The voice was Jill, office messenger. She was weaving her trolley of post, files, envelopes and memos towards them, shrouded in standard company-issue overall, creating a draught of fresh air in the office’s sterile, air-conditioned stillness. ‘Did you see that bloke with a stick, begging outside the Tube station this morning?’

‘Shush, Mrs Tilbury’s concentrating.’

Doreen looked up. ‘He’s been there for the last few days.’

‘What did he tell you he wanted money for?’

‘To get a room in a hostel.’

‘He said to me he needed money for a taxi to visit his sick mother. What about you, Mr Pratt?’

Harry’s cloud of depression darkened further. ‘Said his wife was having a baby.’ He felt nauseous.

‘Do you think people fall for it?’ Jill prodded the trolley forward. ‘I suppose they must, or he wouldn’t keep doing it.’ As she spoke, a wheel hooked on a chair where Doreen had left her handbag. The seat spun, the bag tipping over, disgorging its contents across the floor.

Harry was grateful for the distraction from knowing he’d been suckered for his fiver. Jill was distraught.

‘Oooh, I’m so sorry!’ She knelt down and fumbled the contents together.

‘Never mind,’ Doreen reassured her. ‘I shouldn’t have left it there in the first place.’

‘I should be more careful.’ Jill was breathless, scrabbling even faster.

‘Please, Jill, don’t. I’ll do it.’

‘I’ve done it now.’ She placed tissues, keys and what looked like paracetamols and buttons on Doreen’s desk but held on to a can of aerosol like a trophy. ‘Mrs Tilbury!’ Jill may have arrived in the office every two hours like clockwork, but she only ever used surnames, something Harry always found endearing.

‘Put it here, will you?’ Doreen pointed at a space on her desk between an ink pad with a wooden handled rubber stamp and a Round Tuit they’d all clubbed together to buy for her fiftieth. Harry watched, still agonising over his fiver and how he could have been so bloody gullible.

‘Do you mind if I say something, Mrs Tilbury?’ Jill reversed her trolley.

Doreen had returned to her work and didn’t look up, a sure sign that she did mind. ‘I’m sorry but this is important.’

‘And so is this.’ Jill flicked back her long, brown hair, face flushed, and gestured at the aerosol. ‘Would you please stop using this?’

Doreen’s shoulders slumped. ‘Stop using what?’ She sighed heavily and sat back.

‘The aerosol.’

‘Why? Is there something wrong?’ She ran her hands across her hair.

‘It’s not that. It’s aerosols, Mrs Tilbury. People need to stop using them.’

‘What do you want me to use on my hair? Beef dripping?’ Doreen turned her concentration back to her screen. ‘Now, excuse me, I must get this finished.’

Jill seemed undeterred. ‘I’ve no idea what beef dripping is. But I do know aerosols are really bad for the environment.’

Doreen sat back again, admitting defeat. ‘And how is that, pray?’

‘It’s what’s in them.’

‘Go on then. Enlighten me.’

‘CFCs.’

‘CFCs?’ Doreen cocked her head and frowned. ‘What are they when the cows come home?’

‘Chlorofluorocarbons.’

‘Thank you for your advice, young lady.’

Harry was saying nothing. It was safer that way. Instead, he leaned forward to a magazine that had also spilled across the floor from Doreen’s bag, and flung it like a frisbee onto Doreen’s desk, narrowly missing the Round Tuit but sending the rubber stamp clattering in the opposite direction.

Doreen bent down to retrieve the stamp without comment.

Jill hadn’t moved. ‘I’m sorry I mentioned your aerosol, Mrs Tilbury. I know it’s not my place.’ She took a deep breath, as if summoning up courage. ‘But, honestly, they’re a real menace.’

Doreen swivelled her head back to Jill. ‘You’re right. It’s not your place.’

‘But they’re destroying the ozone layer.’

‘My hairspray? All by itself?’

‘Not just hairsprays. Fridges, freezers…’

Harry jiggled in his seat, having thought up something to contribute. A joke. He was good at these. ‘If Doreen promises to just use her spray in here,’ he gestured round the office, ‘and we keep all the doors and windows closed, then the Chloroflobbydoodoos will be trapped and won’t get near the ozone layer.’ He reached to flick his mobile and set it swaying again, satisfied that his joke would end all argument.

‘It’s not funny, Mr Pratt. It’s really important. There’s a hole in the ozone layer caused by things like CFCs. It’s making the planet heat up. We have to stop using them. And protect our green spaces. Where do you live, Mr Pratt?’

‘North London.’

‘Where I live in south London, we have a patch of wasteland that’s been reclaimed for returning to nature, and now developers are trying to build on it. I’m part of a group fighting to stop them.’

‘That’s enough.’ Doreen was arching her eyebrows. ‘Thank you for the lecture.’

Jill grimaced and sighed. ‘Sorry, but it’s something I really believe in.’

‘If you can come up with some other way to hold my hair in place, maybe I’ll think about it. In the meantime, there are people on other floors expecting their post.’

Harry slumped back into his chair that gasped and sank six inches. ‘Tell you what I really believe. I really believe I should get this chair fixed.’ He grinned at Jill.

Jill offered a watery smile back. ‘I suppose there’s not time for a word before I go?’ She was now looming over him.

Doreen rolled her eyes and leafed through one of the files Jill had delivered.

‘Go on then.’ Harry pressed a lever and pumped the chair back up.

‘Volume One.’

‘Page?’

‘1005.’

Sweeping aside a pile of files, he extracted Volume One of his Shorter Oxford English Dictionary. Resting it on his knees, he flipped through to page 1005.

‘Word number?’

‘Fifteen.’

It was the same routine every morning. Jill had been fascinated by two enormous books dominating Harry’s desk. ‘It says, Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, but there’s two of them and they’re huge,’ she’d gasped when he first brought them in. He’d treated himself to the volumes to inspire him to increase his own vocabulary. ‘If that’s the shorter version,’ Jill had asked, ‘what’s the longer one look like?’ That was when he’d invented his game.

Harry’s index finger ran down the columns to the fifteenth word.

‘Forgo.’ He looked up to see if she knew its meaning. She never appeared to. ‘To abstain, go without, deny oneself,’ he read from page 1005.

‘Forgo.’ Jill produced a Post-it and stub of a pencil from her overalls. ‘F, O, R, G, O,’ she said as she wrote.

‘Correct.’

She stuffed Post-it and pencil back in her pocket.

‘OK. See you next round.’ She took two paces with the trolley before stopping abruptly. ‘Oh, sorry. With all the aerosol stuff, I nearly forgot.’ She produced a document from behind some envelopes and waved it. ‘Office notice. Do you want the latest news on Project 1990,’ adding triumphantly, ‘or will you forgo the pleasure?’

‘What’s that?’ Doreen was frowning. ‘Give me.’

‘Only a general memo to say that there’ll be a Project 1990 announcement in a few days.’ Jill handed it to her.

‘More like procrastination.’ Doreen glanced at it. ‘What a waste of time.’

‘It’s something to keep the Big Cheeses busy,’ Harry suggested.

Doreen took a second look at the memo.

‘Project 1990. The route to a bright new future. I ask you!’ Shaking her head in despair, she folded it and tucked it inside her desk drawer. ‘It must be coming to an end soon. It’ll be 1990 at this rate.’ She looked to Jill. ‘Hadn’t you better be getting on with your round?’

‘Yes. Sorry. See you in two hours.’ The trolley jangled as Jill wheeled it away, Doreen watching her disappear down the office and out of earshot.

‘She’s a nice girl, that Jill. And normally so respectful. But honestly! She made me quite cross, criticising my hairspray. I didn’t know she was one of those Greens. I knew her mum, you know. I wonder if she knows her daughter’s becoming a fanatic.’

‘I wouldn’t exactly call her a fanatic.’

‘I just wish she’d wear some make-up. She’d be quite pretty.’

Harry shrugged to suggest indifference.

‘Don’t tell me you’re into all this green stuff.’

‘God, no. I’m concrete and clay. Unit Four Plus Two. 1965.’

Doreen gave him a sideways glance of incomprehension.

‘Anyway, sorry if I sounded grumpy,’ Doreen continued. ‘I think this place is getting to me. All the uncertainty.’

It certainly seemed out of character to Harry. ‘So, there’s no news?’ Doreen always knew everything. Or used to. ‘And where is everyone?’ He looked around the deserted office. ‘It’s like the Mary Celeste in here.’

‘They’re all out at Project 1990 meetings. Apart from our leader who’s not back until the end of the week.’ Doreen looked at her screen. ‘Anyway, as I’ve lost where I was, coffee?’ She reached across to Harry’s desk and grasped a mug. Emblazoned with the statement, Groovy Guy, it was chipped and stained by fourteen years of Maxwell House and neglect. ‘I washed it up when you were on your flexi. But it’s about time you got a new one. This one’s a health risk.’’

Harry shrugged. ‘My mum gave it to me for my eighteenth. When I left for college.’

‘All the more reason.’ She slid open a drawer in her own desk and retrieved a tin that Harry knew contained Hobnobs, his favourite. ‘Help yourself.’

‘Thanks.’ Harry took a biscuit and ate it in one.

Doreen tutted but waved the tin for him to take another.

Harry nodded, a gesture that was meant to say thanks, his mouth too full to speak, and helped himself again. Doreen slid the tin back into her drawer, giving him time to gulp back most of the Hobnob.

‘And you’ve no idea what Project 1990 is going to say?’ A crumb seemed to escape as he spoke, its trajectory falling just short of Doreen’s desk. If she saw, she didn’t react. ‘Hasn’t Colin told you anything about it?’

‘He never stops telling me how important it is.’

Harry nodded. ‘Me, too.’ He screwed his face up to mimic Colin. ‘You’ll have to kill me if I tell you. Every time.’

Doreen had stopped listening. ‘Oh, no!’ She thumped her hands either side of her screen and growled. ‘How I hate this thing.’

‘What’s up?’

‘I’ve lost everything. See? It’s gone blank.’ She looked pleadingly towards Harry. ‘I never had this trouble with my old Golf Ball typewriter. There was nothing wrong with it. Don’t know why they had to get rid of it.’

‘Let me see.’ He leaned over and within seconds had restored Doreen’s document.

‘You see? If I can’t do this, why will they keep me here? That’s why I’m so worried.’

‘You needn’t be. It’s just a Think Tank.’

‘Think Tank!’ She spluttered at the name. ‘If they did more and thought less, the company wouldn’t be in the mess it’s in.’

‘It’ll be all right.’ He fingered an oat that had wedged between a tooth and gum. ‘They’ll put out a report and then forget about it.’

‘I shouldn’t say it, but I wish it’d been you on blooming Project 1990, not Colin. Why aren’t you? You had the chance.’

‘I know.’ He’d been nominated as its representative at a team bonding weekend. He should have been flattered. ‘But I’m not good on committees and hate meetings.’

‘Well, I just don’t trust him. I’d much rather it’d been you.’

Harry shrugged. ‘You saw how much he wanted to be on it. And life’s too short for arguments.’

‘Who told you that?’

‘My mum.’

‘What did your dad say?’

Harry winced. He wasn’t about to let on how there was a fierce row, how his father had accused his mum of mollycoddling him, that toughening up was what was needed. ‘So why didn’t you do it? You’ve been here forever.’

Doreen harrumphed. ‘Me? I’d have told them what they didn’t want to hear.’ She spun away, Groovy Guy in hand.

‘You’ve given your life to this company.’

‘They don’t want to hear from a woman.’

‘We’ve got a woman Prime Minister.’

‘And a fat lot of good it’s doing us.’ She gathered up what Harry recognised was her special mug, Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer resplendent inside a heart, topped by a Royal crest, before gesturing at the open drawer. ‘Take another Hobnob if you want one.’

‘Thanks.’ Harry watched as she headed to the tea point and waited until she was out of sight, then stood up, snaffled two more Hobnobs and leant over Doreen’s magazine. Claudia Schiffer was staring at him from the cover, open-mouthed, giving him the come-on, one breast concealed by a sachet containing Skin Care Cream, tested in outer space, the other obscured by the list of features inside – Why Your Pavlova Falls Flat, Best Ways To Clean Windows, Piles – Getting to the Bottom Of It, and Ecology Begins At Home. Was Doreen seriously interested in all this? Wonders never cease, his mother would have said. But it was a final headline that caught his eye. Homme Fatale – the men you can’t resist. Was this article offering tips on what makes a man irresistible to a woman? He threw a longing glance over his shoulder to a row of glass-walled cubicles, the only respite from open plan. With Doreen out of sight, he paced across to them, momentarily lingering outside the one labelled Team Leader: Sarah Blythe before gently easing open its door.

Above the lingering smell of telephone sanitiser and desk polish was an unforgettable fragrance. Lifting his head, he achingly breathed it in. He marvelled at how her space was immaculately tidy, no personal mementoes, no dirty cups on cabinets, clear desk policy rigorously applied. A whiteboard was fixed to the one solid wall, blank, meticulously clean. He tugged at her filing cabinet. Locked. If she’d hidden away the other half of the black and white photocopy he’d sent her, perhaps this was where she kept it. Either way, he knew one thing. He needed to lay his hands on a copy of Doreen’s magazine for himself, so he could learn how to unlock the secrets of making himself irresistible to Sarah, of being coveted, of becoming an Homme Fatale.

Chapter 2

‘Hurry up, we’re going to be late.’ The voice came from the top of the Town Hall steps.

‘Sorry, Dani.’ Jill bustled up towards her friend, sweeping the hair from her forehead as she reached the top. ‘I left as early as I could.’

‘At least you’re here.’

The two friends hugged.

‘I didn’t think I was going to make it.’ Jill fumbled inside the plastic bag she’d been carrying and pulled out a magazine. ‘Give me a moment.’ She ripped open a sachet from its cover and dabbed cream on her face.

Danielle stretched out her arm and Jill squeezed out a blob into an open palm before dropping the sachet and magazine back into her bag. ‘Right, here goes.’ With a deep intake of breath, she pushed at oak doors sporting the council’s coat of arms, stepping into the entrance hall, Danielle following. Their footsteps echoed in the cavernous space beyond.

‘Yes?’ A security guard looked up from the newspaper spread across his desk.

‘We’re here to see a Mr Harrison.’ Jill proffered a nervous smile.

Security grunted. ‘Mr Who? There’s not one of those here.’

‘Harrison.’

‘Nope. No one here of that name.’

‘He’s a journalist. We’re meant to be meeting him now.’

Security groaned under his breath. ‘It’s not as if I work here or anything.’ He extracted a clipboard from under his newspaper. ‘And you are?’

‘I’m Jill Standing. And this is Danielle Myers.’ Jill gestured at her friend, though she hardly needed to. Security had his eyes fixed on her. It was always the same. Danielle’s blonde hair, model face and figure to match attracted everyone’s attention. Her own appearance never had the same