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Lots.
    Q2. Do I appreciate how hard you work?
    Answer: Yes, I do.
    See you tonight. I’ll be the fat guy in the kitchen with all the kids.
    C xx
    From: Charlie Baum
To: Ella O’Hanlon
Subject: You and flight
    Dear Ellamentary,
    How was the flight? How is London? How is Lucas? Thinking of you.
    Charlemagne
    xx
    From: Charlie Baum
To: Lucas Fox
Subject: Ella
    Thanks for the update. Yes, it’s definitely worth a try. Good luck.
    C
    From: Charlie Baum
To: Aidan O’Hanlon
Subject: Next week
    Aidan, I’ll take the eleven a.m. train, arriving Washington five thirty p.m. See you at the hotel bar at six? My cell is +1 9173236740.
    Charlie

THREE
    D ear Diary,
    Hi, it’s Jess!
    What an incredible day it’s been! I’m sure that in years to come I’ll look back at my life and be able to pinpoint today as the day it all really began. It had been a reasonably normal day (if you can call any day of my crazy life normal!!). I’d gone to the studio with Mum and Dad. Mum was taping the last of her new series of
MerryMakers
. (It really is such a clever name for a fun cooking show, isn’t it?? Merry, as in short for Meredith, her name, and she makes things to eat!!) And it was so exciting. They’d given me another cameo appearance, just at the end as usual, but it was a really funny one. Mum and I had written it together last week. We taped it—in one take, as usual. That’s one of the reasons the director loves me so much, he told me. He said he’s worked with other girls my age (twenty-two, but I’m nearly twenty-three) and they were nightmares but I was a DREAM! So anyway, I was sitting in the green room watching clips from musicals on my iPhone when Mum came out and said, “Sorry, Jess, we need to tape that segment again.”
    “But I did it perfectly,” I said.
    “I know, darling, but there was a technical hitch—the sound dropped out. Can you come and do it again?”
    So I went back onto the set. It was a skit at the end of the cooking segment, as usual. Mum had joked and cooked her way through a few recipes and then I had to turn up, make a few jokes myself and have a taste. So we went through it all again, taking the cake out of the oven, etc. etc.—luckily Mum’s assistant had made several versions of the cake in question, as I really had eaten a slice of the cake in my first take! We ran through all the lines again too.
    “Hi, Mum!”
    “Hi, darling!”
    “Wow, that smells good. What is it?”
    “My perfume!” Hahaha from the canned laughter. Then me in close-up making a show of biting into the cake and really enjoying the taste of it. We’d had a letter the previous week complaining that I was being made to be too sexy. “Oh,
der
,” as I said to Mum. That was the whole idea of me being on the program. Mum wore her tight tops and said saucy things (food joke!!—saucy as in cooking sauces and she’s a TV chef!) to lure in the older guy viewers. I was there to bring in the younger guys. It wasn’t exploitation. It was good business. And also, the recipes work and they are nutritionally sound.
    Anyway, I was there, doing the take again, licking the cream off the cake, and I took a bite and nearly choked. There was something inside the cake. A small envelope. What the
heck
, I said. (I would have said “what the
you-know-what
” but we still aim for family ratings.) “Stop tape!” I called as I took the envelope out of my mouth and wiped off the cream. I looked at Mum. She was grinning. Dad stepped in from the side of the set. He had a big smile on his face too. The camera guys were laughing as well. I opened the envelope. Inside, all folded up, was a voucher for a plane ticket. A ticket to LONDON!!!!!!!!!!!!!
    “Surprise!” a voice sounded over the studio PA. It was the director from upstairs. I reckon my squeal nearly burst the studio lights!
    I’d been begging and begging Mum and Dad for my airfare to London for YEARS. Just give me a CHANCE to make it on the West End, I’d said. I’m the right