‘Take a step to your right, please, Ruthie,’ called Lou.
Ruthie, who had the same arsey and slightly superior attitude as every other presenter I’d ever worked with, rolled her eyes and reluctantly did what had been asked of her. The problem was, she wanted to be working onGood Morning BritainorLoose Womenor another high-profile show where you became a household name instead of being our (admittedly lead) presenter on Holiday Shop, a cable channel with barely any budget but bizarrely high viewing figures.
‘So we want to pan across the Loch, nice and slow, and then pause on Ruthie so she can deliver her line,’ said Tim, our producer/director/wanker of a boss.
‘It would be great to get that pretty pier in shot,’ I suggested. ‘If you start a little bit wider, Lou, we might just see it.’
Tim looked at me.
‘We’ll stick with my original instruction, thank you, Maddie,’ he said, dismissing my suggestion as always. ‘And … action!’
My arm began to ache as I held the boom as still as I could over Ruthie’s head, straining to look in the monitor to make sure it wasn’t in shot. This wasn’t strictly my job, but seeing as the company were too tight to send a sound engineer with us, the assistant producer – me, in this instance – had to step in and do whatever was needed. So far, I’d written scripts, fetched coffees and lunch (a task I thought I’d left behind when I’d been promoted from runner) and touched up Ruthie’s make-up (with her barking orders at me non-stop:No, not like that, here, on the apples of my cheeks! Don’t you know how to apply blusher?).I didn’t mind. It got me away from my desk and out of the studio and it was stunning here in Loch Lomond. Really beautiful.
The mid-morning sun, which somehow felt bigger and closer than it ever did in London, was climbing into the sky behind the mountains, enveloping us in a sort of hazy, otherworldly light. I’d like to work here every day, with the gentle waves lapping melodically on to the pebbly beach, and the seagulls swooping over our heads and the calm, subdued chatter of tourists as they took off their socks and shoes and paddled gingerly in the ice-cold water.
‘Maddie! I said can you please pin Ruthie’s dress at the back? It’s too billowy in the wind,’ shouted Tim.
‘Oh, sure. Sorry,’ I said, placing the boom on the ground and getting my wardrobe kit out of my bag – another job that seemed to have fallen to me this time around. Luckily, I’d seen the wardrobe girls working on set enough times to have some grasp of what was needed.
I found a crocodile clip and approached Ruthie, trying to give the impression that I knew what I was doing.
‘This is a lovely dress,’ I said, pinching the flimsy fabric between my finger and thumb and securing it tentatively between Ruthie’s shoulder blades. I walked around to the frontto check that it had had the desired effect and wasn’t causing any gaping around the bust area, which Ruthie would never have forgiven me for. Rumour was she’d had a boob job a couple of years earlier. I couldn’t possibly speculate (OK, it was pretty obvious she had, but each to their own and all that).
‘It’s silk, so you’d better not ruin it,’ she warned.
Seriously, it wouldn’t hurt her to be nice once in a while. I wondered if she realised that nobody at Holiday Shop could stand her. Personally, I couldn’t deal with knowing everyone was slagging me off behind my back, although, saying that, I sometimes thought they might be anyway. Lou’s mantra was that not everyone you meet in life is going to like you, but I couldn’t see why not. If I made an effort to be nice to everyone all the time and tried my best to make their lives easier, then what would there be not to like? The only thing was, it was kind of exhausting and also sometimes I got it wrong and instead of pleasing someone, I actually massively pissed them off. Occasionally (very occasionally), I was tempted to do exactly whatIwanted to do and to hell with the consequences.
‘Ready to go again?’ yelled Tim, pretending to scribble very important notes on the script that he should have written but which he actually got me to do on the train journey up. ‘It’ll be good practice,’ he’d insisted.
‘For what?’ I’d asked, annoyed because I’d wanted to spend the journey reading and staring out of the window like everyone else.
‘For when you’re a producer,’ he’d said, knowing that I’d have no choice but to comply after that.
It was hardly a secret that I was keen to move up to a producer role – within the next twelve months, hopefully.
‘Yeah, about that …’ I’d said, thinking this was as gooda time as any to broach the subject of a promotion. After all, we were stuck on a train for the next four hours, he was basically a captive audience.
‘Just keep doing what you’re doing,’ he’d replied, winking at me smugly. ‘It’ll happen when the time is right.’
There were rumours that one of the producers was leaving to go to the biggest name in home shopping, QVC, which meant that, there might be a chance for me to take the next step up in my television career. I was good enough, I knew I was, and although I only had a year’s experience as an assistant producer under my belt, I knew the job inside out already. But still … as I had quickly worked out, it sometimes wasn’t what you knew, it was who you schmoozed with. Most of the workforce of Holiday Shop seemed to have done a media degree at East Sussex and there was a sort of cliquey alumni network, a collection of people who vaguely knew each other from getting off their faces on Brighton Beach. I’d noticed this lot seemed to get promoted at any given opportunity.
‘Right, Ruthie, let’s go again, please. That’s much better with the dress. And … action!’ yelled Tim.
I stretched out my arm, holding the boom, doing my bit, but then my eyes wandered to a small group further along the beach who looked like they were getting ready to go diving. One guy was struggling to get his wetsuit on and was balancing precariously on one leg while he tried to drag skin-tight neoprene over the other calf. He suddenly lunged dramatically to one side, only just saving himself by hopping wildly about in all directions while he tried to regain his balance. It was actually quite impressive. When he finally put two feet on the ground and wriggled into his wetsuit so that it was over his legs and flopping around his waist, he glanced over in my direction, catching my eye. I grinned at him, which was probably very childish of me, butthere was no denying that it had been comical to watch. Luckily, he appeared to see the funny side and laughed too, throwing his hands out in awhat can I say?gesture. He had sparkly eyes, I noticed them even from this distance, and three-day old stubble and dark brown hair styled like an actor playing a soldier on TV. Perhaps he was actually in the military – he looked fit enough, and he was clearly into extreme sports. Although technically I wasn’t sure you’d call diving in a Scottish lake extreme, but it felt like it was to me, considering I was more of a once-a-month Zumba class type of person.
‘Cut!’ shouted Tim, bringing me sharply back to reality.
I glanced around, hoping nobody had noticed that I’d drifted off for a second there. This wasn’t like me at all, I was usually so involved in doing my best work and trying to impress people that nothing else mattered. But something kept drawing me back to the guy in the wetsuit. He had his arms in it now and when he turned to talk to the instructor, I could see it gaping at the back, revealing a smooth flash of skin with the kind of light tan I thought meant he probably spent a lot of time outside in the elements. I imagined walking over to him, putting one hand on the very base of his spine and zipping his wetsuit up for him.
I shook myself out of my reverie; God, what was wrong with me? I was here on a job, not to ogle very hot men I knew nothing about and who were simply minding their own business on a beach.
‘Looking fabulous, Ruthie!’ shrieked Tim.
A group of Japanese tourists, who were quietly and sedately taking photographs of the lake, looked over, startled, no doubt, by Tim’s booming voice. Why did he have to be so loud? We were drawing enough attention to ourselves as it was, what with the camera and Ruthie caked in make-upand dressed up to the nines in her Diane von Furstenberg wrap dress. She had a whole selection of them, each in a different chic but verging on gaudy pattern. They looked great on her because she was tall and did spinning classes five times a week and pushed salads around her plate, but I suspected they would have looked terrible on me. I was all about the skinny jeans and jumper combo. My half-sisters said I was obsessed with oversized knitwear, and I held my hands up: I was.
‘Maddie, can you come and retouch my make-up?’ whined Ruthie.
‘Be right there,’ I said, scrabbling in my bag for my make-up kit.