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this isn’t going to fly, not now that I’m dealing with a minor Moldovan crime lord. I need to go back to Mum’s and get some cash from her, or I’ll be easily forty quid out of pocket before I know it.

      As I turn away from FitLondon’s entrance doors, back towards the flat, my phone suddenly bleeps with a text.

      It’s Olly:

       Any decision on pie yet? The pie world is your oyster. Suggest, however, not oyster.

      I smile, and start to text back:

       Am willing to be guided by you on all matters pertaining to pies. Always enjoy that banof—

      Before I can finish typing fee, I bump into a woman hurrying towards the doors. Literally bump into her, I mean: our arms tangle and we’d probably have bumped noses if it weren’t for the fact that she’s about a foot taller than me.

      ‘Sorry!’ I say.

      ‘For fuck’s sake, stop texting and watch where you’re bloody going!’ she barks.

      This is slightly unfair – not to mention rude – because her head was down and she’s wearing a baseball cap pulled right over her eyes, which themselves are shaded in huge crystal-encrusted sunglasses, so I’d be surprised if she could see where she was going either. But I don’t expect much else from an A-list model, which I’m assuming she is. A-list because of the baseball cap and shades; model because she’s practically six foot tall in her gym shoes, with perfect melons of breasts jutting out of her skimpy cropped top. Familiar-looking breasts, if it doesn’t sound too weird to say that … I’ve seen them somewhere before – and recently, at that. She pushes past me to the FitLondon entrance, jabs a few times at the entry pad, and then strides through the sliding doors as they open.

      It’s her rear view that clinches my suspicions. Her bum is pert, perfect, clad in tiny hot-pink yoga shorts and belongs, I’m pretty certain, to the girl I recently saw in the pages of Grazia, coming out of a nightclub with Dillon O’Hara: Rhea Haverstock-Harley, Victoria’s Secret model and assaulter of hairdressers.

      And a moment later I’m absolutely certain, because about ten leather-jacketed paparazzi seem to appear out of nowhere, flashing their cameras in the direction of the doors and yelling, ‘Rhea! Rhea!’ after her as she vanishes inside and the doors close behind her.

      Which is pretty definitive, let’s face it.

      ‘Stuck-up bitch,’ one of them mutters, charmingly, as they give up taking dozens of photos of a blank set of sliding glass doors and mooch back, en masse, to wherever it was they came from. One of the coffee bars in the piazza, I expect, because there’s no entry pad there, and nobody can stop them going in.

      My phone pings, again, from inside my jeans pocket.

      This time it’s not Olly – to whom I must send the pie reply, now I think of it – but Mum.

      Tell spa to put nail polish on my account. Also u need entry code for FitLondon entrance. Is Cass’s birthday.

      Of course it is. Mum’s code for pretty much everything is Cass’s birthday.

      And it’s nothing to do with the fact that Cass’s birthday is the first of January, and so therefore a memorable date. My birthday is 14 February, as it happens, which is a pretty memorable date, too; but, as far as I know, Mum has never used that for anything.

      Well, 0101 it is, then.

      I turn back to the FitLondon entrance and key this in on the entry pad that Rhea Haverstock-Harley has just used. The doors slide open and I step through.

      ‘Sorry, sorry … coming through!’

      This is from a short, rather podgy man, hurrying through the doors behind me. Extremely podgy, actually, given that he’s wearing a tracksuit and trainers and carrying a squash racket: isn’t squash meant to burn about a zillion calories each time you play? And are you even allowed to be this podgy (borderline obese, in fact) if you’re a member of a celeb gym, frequented by Victoria’s Secret models in bright pink hot pants? I feel scruffy enough as it is – and unwelcome, too, given the hatchet-faced receptionist bearing down on me as I take a few steps further into FitLondon’s hallowed halls.

      ‘What the hell are you doing?’ she yells – actually yells – at me.

      ‘I’m just here to get some nail polish,’ I say, completely astonished and – I have to say – already composing the complaint email to the FitLondon customer services team in my mind. ‘My mum’s a member here, so …’

      ‘Where did he go?’

      ‘Who?’

      ‘The man who came in with you!’ She glances, frantically, in all directions, before practically sprinting back along the hallway, an impressive feat in four-inch heels. Reaching a glass reception desk at the far end, she grabs a phone, dials a number, and then says into the receiver: ‘This is Pippa, on reception. Can you send one of the personal trainers out here, please? Some idiot member of the public let a paparazzo in!’

      It takes me a moment to realize that the paparazzo must have been the plump man with the squash racket.

      And that the idiot member of the public must be me.

      ‘Send Willi, if he’s around,’ Pippa the receptionist is going on. ‘I need one of the bigger guys like him, in case things get … well, where is Willi?’ There’s a short silence, while she listens to the reply on the other end and continues to glower at me. ‘Teaching a private yoga class? But I don’t see anyone booked in for private yoga on the system …’

      Suddenly, a flicker of understanding passes across her face, and she turns rather pale beneath her perfectly sprayed-on tan.

      ‘Oh,’ she says. ‘That sort of private class.’

      Then she bangs the phone down and heads for a door, right next to where I’m still standing, marked YOGA STUDIO 1.

      ‘Willi?’ she calls, knocking hard on the door. ‘Just to warn you and your – er – client … we’ve had a security breach, so just be …’

      Before she can add careful, the door is flung wide open and the squash-racket-holding paparazzo is literally carried out, WWF-style, by a very tall, very wide blond man who looks as if he’s been hewn out of marble and who’s wearing nothing – and I mean nothing – except a tubular bandage on one knee.

      Behind them, her crop top askew, and hoiking her pink hot pants back up from mid-thigh, is a purple-faced and livid-looking Rhea Haverstock-Harley.

      ‘The camera, Willi!’ she’s yelling at the large naked blond man. (Willi, evidently. Which, as it happens, is exactly where I’m trying not to look.) ‘Don’t throw him out until you’ve got his camera!’

      ‘You can’t take that!’ the paparazzo wheezes, as Willi grabs the Nikon strap around his neck – that was why he looked clinically obese; the huge camera hidden under his hoodie – and pulls it off. ‘That’s my property!’

      ‘And this is private property,’ Pippa the receptionist barks, scurrying to the sliding doors to press the Exit button. ‘You’re trespassing!’

      ‘She let me in!’ the paparazzo says, jabbing a finger in my direction. ‘If a member invites you in, it’s not trespassing!’

      ‘She’s not a member,’ Rhea Haverstock-Harley says. (Actually, more like asks. In an incredulous tone of voice. As in, ‘She’s not a member?’)

      ‘No, she’s not,’ Pippa confirms, crisply, as Willi finally wrests the Nikon from the paparazzo’s grasp, bends down and dumps him on the paving slabs outside the door.

      I have time to feel a brief stab of sympathy for the prone paparazzo – not because of his unceremonious exit, but because nobody deserves that view of Willi (so to

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