‘I’m sure it’s not as bad as you think,’ I said, attempting to be reassuring while secretly wondering whether it was the fact he’d been drinking at lunchtime that had made him feel nauseous.
‘You’re going to have to take the helm, Maddie,’ he insisted, backing off. ‘I’ll, er, shout instructions from the shore, or something.’
I sighed internally, distracted by Ruthie, who was having trouble lowering herself down into the kayak on account of her skin-tight Whistles pencil skirt. Once she was seated, I kicked off my trainers, waded in and used a lint brush to remove any fluff from her navy jacket, powdered her face for the hundredth time and gave her hair a generous swirl of hair spray for good measure.
‘It won’t move with the wind now,’ I said reassuringly.
Ruthie, who was gripping the sides of the kayak like her life depended on it, looked less than impressed. ‘How do I get this thing to move?’ she asked through gritted teeth.
‘I’ll show you!’ said a booming Finlay, who was kitted out in a full wetsuit, which made me slightly anxious.
We weren’t intending to actually get wet, were we? He wasn’t going to get us doing one of those Eskimo rolls,where you go upside down in the water? Ruthie would have a fit and so would I – I had no intention of getting my hair soaked, it would be a nightmare to try to straighten it before dinner. And with Aidan in the same hotel, I suddenly felt the need to not look a total mess. Which I wish I’d worked out this morning when I’d thought it would be a great idea to put on this horror of an outfit.
‘Take this!’ instructed Finlay.
He handed Ruthie an oar. She looked at it, blinking, as though she had no idea what it was for.
‘Hold it in the middle. Here. Like this,’ Finlay demonstrated.
Ruthie tutted as he scooted her hands along the oar, putting them in the right position.
‘You’ll soon get the hang of it,’ said Finlay.
Personally, I wasn’t convinced.
I checked the others: Tim was hanging around looking all efficient but being anything but; Lou had already got into her kayak and was raring to go.
‘Pass me my handheld camera, Maddie, will you?’ asked Lou.
I did as I was told, taking my time and holding on to it for dear life – if I dropped it in the water, Tim would probably fire me on the spot.
‘Do you want me to take the script with me?’ I asked Tim. ‘Has Ruthie got a copy?’
‘You tell me,’ he said, pretending to read something on his clipboard.
‘You weren’t … Were you expecting me to write it?’ I asked him, not quite believing what I was hearing.
Tim looked up, squinting at me as though he was trying to work out which rock I’d crawled out from under. ‘It was your idea, was it not? I just assumed you’d like the chance tomake the segment your own. You’re always banging on about wanting to produce your own show. Now’s your chance.’
I couldn’t argue with that, not exactly. I did want to produce my own shows. But usually, whenever I suggested I take a script off Tim’s hands, he’d get all territorial and give me some menial task instead. If he’d wanted me to write the script for this, which was most unusual, he should have told me!
‘I haven’t actually prepared anything,’ I said, zipping up my anorak as a particularly icy gust of wind hit me right in the face.
He sighed dramatically. ‘Well, I suggest you cobble something together. Honestly, Maddie, you’re going to have to learn to work on the hop. We don’t always have hours to toil over creating the perfect combination of words, you know.’
I glanced at Aidan, who was getting into his kayak. I hoped he hadn’t heard all of that, because what would he think? It annoyed me that I felt so powerless to speak up, and that I didn’t have the guts to do anything about it. It wasn’t fair that I was having to run the whole shoot, be Tim’s minion, do Ruthie’s make-up and all while Tim got paid three times as much as me for doing what, exactly? Scowling at me from the sidelines?
I pulled my notebook out of my bag and scrawled a few lines on to it. I’d get Ruth talking about all the water sports you could do on the lake. Do a couple of intros and outros. Luckily she was a consummate professional and if I fed her a line, she’d remember it word for word. We didn’t have the luxury of autocue when we were on location. She might be irritating, but at least she could be relied upon to do the job at hand.
I put my notebook away, slung my rucksack over my shoulder and got into my own kayak. Embarrassingly, I wasthe last one to get in, so everyone was bobbing about on the water staring at me as I fumbled around with the oar and tried not to flip the kayak before I’d even started.
‘Need any help?’ asked Aidan, who had manoeuvred his boat so that it was next to mine.
‘Um,’ I said, trying to compose myself. ‘Well, I’ve got to write a script off the top of my head, so if you’ve got any interesting information about the lake or kayaking, feel free to lob it in my direction.’
‘Follow, me, everyone!’ shouted Finlay enthusiastically. ‘You want to keep the movement of the kayak as smooth as possible. Dip your oars in so they’re just below the surface of the water and then ease them out like this, and back in the other side. If you want to stop, paddle backwards, like this.’
His boat came to a sudden stop and Ruthie crashed straight into the back of him. Fuck. That was bound to set her off.