One Day in Cornwall. Zoe Cook

dress, grabbed a copy of the running order, a polystyrene cup of grainy coffee from the machine and headed to the script meeting in the ballroom. It was Lucy’s third awards ceremony as Emma’s PA, and it became more and more difficult to concentrate during the longwinded script read-through. It was a point of pride for Emma that she ran this meeting in such a unique way. She insisted on a full run-through in which she took the role of both the main presenters, all of the individual awards’ presenters and every winner, often delivering Oscar-worthy acceptance speeches, which, it struck Lucy, seemed to roll off her tongue as if practised in advance. By the time the final award was played out, culminating in Emma’s impression of a middle-aged Swedish male winner (not one of her finest), Lucy’s mind had wandered and she was taken by surprise at the sound of her name.

      ‘I asked if there was anything I’d forgotten’, Emma looked at her with the familiar look of disdain and disappointment. ‘What was I meant to remember?’ she asked Lucy.

      ‘I think that was everything,’ Lucy smiled hopefully, trawling through her brain for anything she was supposed to be prompting her boss with. At that moment a commotion of suit carriers and blonde hair tumbled through the door, met with sniggers and a collective chorus of ‘Oh, Warren!’ from the Spectrum team sitting around the large table.

      ‘Oh my GOD, I’m so sorry I’m late!’ Warren did, in fact, look sorry enough that he might actually cry. A flamboyant, yet sensitive, character, Warren had been at Spectrum media for a couple of years before Lucy had joined, and had worked his way up to the coveted role of Entertainment Producer, meaning his job was to book celebrities to appear on the company’s shows. Being outlandishly emotional was apparently a necessary characteristic for anyone working on the Entertainment team, who dedicatedly lived up to their job titles and entertained the office with their many dramas, fallouts, reconciliations and public breakdowns. One of Warren’s particular character traits was to seek Emma’s approval at all times and at almost any cost. Arriving late to the production meeting of the biggest awards show of the year was probably up there with Warren’s worst nightmares, met only, perhaps, by an international Dermalogica shortage, or his cleaner accidentally machine-washing one of his ‘statement’ cashmere jumpers.

      Emma cast her eyes up and down Warren’s body, from the toes of his gleaming patent loafers, to the highest point of his highlighted quiff, and Lucy recognised the flash in her eyes of something noted and worthy of comment.

      ‘Warren,’ she started, ‘I can overlook the late arrival, given the fact it is entirely out of character and, I’m sure, due to circumstances beyond your control.’

      Lucy watched Warren half relax before sensing that the exchange was not over. ‘What I can’t overlook is the fact that you are the colour of an imitation mahogany table. What the HELL have you done to yourself?’

      Now that she looked properly it was true that Warren had been a little heavy handed with the fake tan, but Lucy still cringed internally at the public remonstration, recalling their conversation a few nights ago in the pub, when he’d listed the many beauty treatments he was going to undergo in preparation for today. He had only wanted, Lucy remembered clearly, to look his very best for the occasion. She wanted to say something in his defence, but there really was no denying he looked totally, ludicrously brown the more she looked at him.

      ‘It’s developing,’ Warren explained, ‘I can’t stop it. I don’t know what to do. I’ve showered, I’ve exfoliated, but I’m sure it’s still developing. I wasn’t this brown an hour ago.’ His voice wobbled at the end of this statement, threatening tears. Emma had already lost interest in this conversation, however, and was piling papers and pens into her oversized Prada bag.

      Warren took the seat next to Lucy as Emma left the room, his big eyes searching for comfort.

      ‘It’s okay,’ she lied. ‘Don’t worry about it, it’s not that bad.’

      It was dreadful. Up close, particles of tan were sitting in each pore, line and blemish; his face reminded Lucy of those olde-worlde maps you made at school by staining a piece of paper with instant coffee and burning the edges.

      ‘I have the keys to make-up anyway,’ Lucy offered. ‘We can go and find some foundation.’

      Warren held out his arms and grabbed Lucy in a bear hug. She patted him on the back and tried to wriggle down away from his face slightly to avoid any possible staining.

      Awards ceremonies at the Metropolis were always fun; they had an atmosphere that Lucy never felt anywhere else. It was all about getting through the ceremony itself and then the party really began. Lucy had been allocated a role that only Emma’s most valued staff were trusted with on the night; she was to be, yet again, a spotter. A spotter’s job was perhaps the least dignified role you could be given at a glitzy event, consisting of crawling around on the floor with a camera crew, pointing out the beautiful people to be filmed. Each year when the roles were being handed out Lucy prayed that she might be spared, and each time she was painfully disappointed. In Emma’s eyes it was such an important role that it needed to be carried out by experienced, responsible people like Lucy who had spent years working fourteen- hour days in hope of one day being taken seriously in the TV world. As Lucy changed into her short, black, bodycon lace dress and tried to fix her hair up with Kirby grips and hairspray, she raged momentarily at the absurdity of the ‘cocktail dress’ dress code for all Spectrum staff, and realised that the only thing less dignified than crawling around on the carpet all evening was doing so dressed as if you were expecting to be sitting at a table drinking champagne.

      Lucy was surprised each time at how quickly two hours of spotting passed; it actually became quite addictive trying to make it round to the next table in the twenty-second VTs played on screen between each award. She was quietly delighted to have avoided being yelled at over the headset each spotter was wearing. Emma’s scream of ‘Sophie, that’s NOT Paul Mulryan, that’s a short-haired WOMAN’, was probably a highlight for everyone on talkback except Sophie. In her defense, that woman did look a lot like crime writer Paul Mulryan; Lucy had checked afterwards when crawling past to get to the star of an International Series of the Year contender after the mishap.

      The final award of the evening was the Lifetime Achievement award and the winner was Lucy’s to find and get a camera pointed at in time. She was already at the right table, with her target in view, hanging back until the last minute so as not to give the game away. As the music fired up Lucy moved in with the camera crew following behind waiting for her instruction. As she reached the side of Mrs Dorian Briar, ninety years old, an OBE, writer of over fifty novels and twenty adaptations for the small and big screen, Mrs Briar spotted her and turned away from the table towards Lucy. Lucy tried to make herself invisible, the presenters were about to announce Mrs Briar’s name and she needed to be looking up at the room, not down at Lucy on the floor. But Mrs Briar wouldn’t give up. ‘There’s a girl on the floor!’ she exclaimed remarkably loudly to the rest of her table, pointing at Lucy. ‘Excuse me, young lady, are you okay down there?’

      Lucy felt her face burn with panic. ‘Fine thanks,’ she mouthed, and prayed that this would appease the legendary author about to be honoured with the most prestigious award of the night.

      ‘Would you like some wine, dear?’ Mrs Briar leant across the table, picking up a glass of, surely someone else’s, wine, and stretched down and sideways to try and reach Lucy on the floor.

      ‘THE INIMITABLE DORIAN BRIAR’, boomed one of the presenters, and Lucy felt the room around her, all 400 guests, getting to their feet with applause, as the big screen flashed to a live picture of Dorian Briar stretching away from the table, then falling off her chair clutching a glass of cabernet sauvignon, squealing in horror. The other guests at her table leapt into action, scooping her off the floor, horrified at the sight of this little old lady now drenched in red wine. Dorian was, to her credit, still smiling, but looked a little confused by the whole thing. Lucy moved, quicker than seemed possible on all-fours in a skintight dress, away from the scene, glaring at her camera crew with a look that she hoped conveyed ‘let’s never talk about what happened at that table’.