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VENUS IN LEO IN THE 4TH HOUSE

She can show great extravagance, both practical and emotional, to those she cares for. She is loyal but likes to dominate situations of the heart. She has creative ability, which can sometimes lead to self-dramatization. Her domestic surroundings must be easy on the eye.

From Written in the Stars, by Dorothea Dawson

My second evening bodyguarding Gloria Kendal taught me that I really should pay more attention to the client. The evening engagement I’d so blithely agreed to turned out to be another of the nights from hell that seemed to be how Gloria spent her free time. That night, she was guest of honour at the annual dinner dance of the ladies’ division of the North West branch of the Association of Beverage and Victuals Providers. I’ve never been in the same room as that much hairspray. If taste were IQ, there would only have been a handful of them escaping Special Needs education. I’d thought the Blackburn outfit would have blended in nicely at a women-only dinner, but I was as flash as a peahen at a peacock convention. I should have realized Gloria wasn’t wearing those sequins and diamanté for a bet.

About ten minutes after we arrived in Ormskirk, I sussed this wasn’t one of those dinners you go to for the food. I know ’70s food is coming back into fashion, but the Boar and Truffle’s menu of prawn cocktail, boeuf bourguignon and, to crown it all, Black Forest gateau, owed nothing to the Style Police or the foodies. You could tell that every cooking fashion in the intervening twenty years had passed them by. This was a dinner my Granny Brannigan would have recognized and approved of. It wasn’t entirely surprising; nobody who had any choice in the matter would spend a minute longer than they had to in a town characterized by a one-way system that’s twice the size of the town centre itself. It’s the only place I know where they’re so proud of their back streets they have to show them to every unwary motorist who gets trapped there on the way to Southport.

The landladies, most of whom almost certainly served better pub grub back home, didn’t care. The only function of the food they were interested in was its capacity to line the stomach and absorb alcohol. It wasn’t a night to be the designated driver, never mind bodyguard.

Gloria was on fine form, though. She’d heeded what I’d said about keeping her back to the wall and trying to make sure there was a table between her and her admirers. It wasn’t easy, given how many of the female publicans of the North West desperately needed to have their photographs taken in a clinch with my client. But she smiled and smiled, and drank her gin and made a blisteringly funny and scathing speech that would have had a rugby club audience blushing.

‘I’m sorry you’ve been landed with all this ferrying me around,’ she said as I drove across the flat fields of the Fylde towards the motorway and civilization.

‘Who normally does it?’ I asked.

‘A pal of mine. He got the sack last year for being over fifty. He’s not going to get another job at his age. He enjoys the driving and it gives him a few quid in his back pocket.’ She yawned and reached for her cigarettes. It was her car, so I didn’t feel I could complain. Instead, I opened the window. Gloria shivered at the blast of cold air and snorted with laughter. ‘Point taken,’ she said, shoving the cigarettes back in her bag. ‘How much longer do you think we’re going to have to be joined at the hip?’

‘Depends on you,’ I said. ‘I don’t think you’ve got a stalker. I’ve seen no signs of anybody following us, and I’ve had a good look around where you live. There’s no obvious vantage point for anybody to stake out your home–’

‘One of the reasons I bought it,’ Gloria interrupted. ‘Those bloody snappers with their long lenses make our lives a misery, you know. All those editors, they all made their holier-than-thou promises after they hounded Princess Di to her death, but nothing’s changed, you know. They’re still chasing us every chance they get. But they can’t catch me there. Not that I’m likely to be doing anything more exciting than planting out my window boxes, but I’m buggered if the Sun’s readers have any right to know whether I’m having Busy Lizzies or lobelia this year.’

‘So that probably confirms that whoever has been sending the letters is connected to the show; they can keep tabs on you because they see you at work every day. And they can pick up background details quite easily, it seems to me. The cast members talk quite freely among themselves and you don’t have to set out to eavesdrop to pick up all sorts of personal information. I’ve only been on the set for a couple of days and already I know Paul Naylor’s seeing an acupuncturist in Chinatown for his eczema, Rita Hardwick’s husband breeds pugs and Tiffany Joseph’s bulimic. Another week and I’d have enough background information to write threatening letters to half the cast.’ What I didn’t say was that another week among the terminally self-obsessed, and threatening letters would be the least of what I’d be up for.

‘It’s not a pretty thought, that. Somebody that knows me hates me enough to want me to be frightened. I don’t like that idea one little bit.’

‘If the letters and the tyre slashing are connected, then it almost certainly has to be somebody at NPTV, you know. Of course, it is possible that the tyre slasher isn’t the letter writer, just some sicko who took advantage of your concern over the letters to wind you up. I’ve asked you this before, but you’ve had time to think about it now: are you sure there isn’t anybody you’ve pissed off that might just be one scene short of a script?’

Gloria shook her head. ‘Come on, chuck. You’ve spent time with me now. You’ve seen the way I am with the folk I work with. I’m a long way off perfect, but I don’t wind them up like certain other people I could mention.’

‘I’d noticed,’ I said drily. ‘The thing is, now everybody at NPTV knows you’re taking what Dorothea said seriously. The person who wrote you those letters is basking in a sense of power, which means that he or she probably won’t feel the need to carry the threats through any further. Besides, they won’t know whether I’m off the case altogether or I’ve taken the surveillance undercover. Much as I’d love to be on this hourly rate indefinitely, I’d be inclined to give it another couple of days and then I’ll pull out.’

‘You’re sure I’ll be safe? I’m not a silly woman, in spite of how I come across, but what Dorothea said really scared me, coming on top of the business with the tyres. She’s not given to coming the spooky witch, you know.’

‘When is she in next?’

‘Day after tomorrow. Do you want to see her?’

‘I want to interview her, not have a consultation,’ I said hastily.

‘Oh, go on,’ Gloria urged. ‘Have it on me. You don’t have to take it seriously.’ She opened her bag and took out a pen and one of the postcard-sized portraits of herself she carried everywhere for the fans who otherwise would have had her signing everything from their library books to any available part of their anatomies. ‘Give us your time, date and place of birth.’ She snapped on the interior light, making me blink hard against the darkness. ‘Come on, sooner you tell me, the sooner you get the light off again.’

‘Oxford,’ I said. ‘Fourth of September, 1966.’

‘Now why am I not surprised you’re a Virgo?’ Gloria said sarcastically as she turned off the light. ‘Caligula, Jimmy Young, Agatha Christie, Cecil Parkinson, Raine Spencer and you.’

‘Which proves it’s a load of old socks,’ I said decisively. A couple of miles down the road, it hit me. ‘How come you can rattle off a list of famous Virgoans?’

‘I married one. Well, not a famous one. And divorced him. I wish I’d known Dorothea then. Virgo and Leo? She’d never have let it happen. A recipe for disaster.’

‘Aren’t you taking a bit of a chance, working with me?’

Gloria laughed, that great swooping chuckle that gets the nation grinning when things are going right for Brenda Barrowclough. ‘Working’s fine. Nobody grafts harder than a Virgo. You see the detail while I only get the big picture. And you never give up. No, you’ll do fine for me.’

It’s funny how often clients forget they’ve said that when a case doesn’t work out the way they wanted it to. I only hoped Gloria wouldn’t live to regret her words. I grunted noncommittally and concentrated on the road.

It was almost one when I walked through my own front door. Both my house and Richard’s were illuminated only by the dirty orange of the sodium streetlights. I’d hoped he’d be home; I was suffering from what my best friend Alexis calls NSA–Non-Specific Anxiety–and my experience of self-medicating has told me the best cure is a cuddle. But it looked like he was doing whatever it is that rock journos do in live music venues in the middle of the night. It probably involved drugs, but Richard never touches anything stronger than joints and these days all the cops do with cannabis is confiscate it for their own use, so I wasn’t worried on that score.

I turned on the kitchen light, figuring a mug of hot chocolate might prevent the vague feeling of unease from keeping me awake. I couldn’t miss the sheet of paper stuck under a fridge magnet. ‘Babysitting for Alexis + Chris. Staying over. See you tomorrow. Big kisses.’ I didn’t need to be a handwriting expert to know it was from my besotted lover. The only problem was, it wasn’t me he was besotted with.

I’d know how to fight back if it was a beautiful blonde waving her perfectly rounded calves at him. But how exactly can a woman keep her dignity and compete with a nine-month-old baby girl?

The following day, we were let out to play. Because Northerners traded so heavily on its connection to Manchester, the city of cool, they had to reinforce the link with regular exterior and interior shots of identifiable landmarks. It had led to a profitable spin-off for NPTV, who now ran Northerners tours at weekends. The punters would stay in the very hotel where Pauline Pratt and Gordon Johnstone had consummated their adulterous affair, then they’d be whisked off on a walking tour that took in sites from key episodes. They’d see the tram line where Diane Grimshaw committed suicide, the alley where Brenda Barrowclough was mugged, the jewellery shop that was robbed while Maureen and Phil Pomeroy were choosing an engagement ring. They’d have lunch in the restaurant where Kamal Sayeed had worked as a waiter before his tragic death from streptococcal meningitis. In the afternoon, they visited the sets where the show was filmed, and a couple of cast members joined them for dinner, persuaded by veiled threats and large fees.

To keep that particular gravy train running, the show had to film on the streets of the city at least once a month. That day, they were filming a series of exterior shots at various points along the refurbished Rochdale Canal. According to Gloria, a new producer was determined to stamp his authority on the soap with a series of themed episodes. The linking theme of this particular week was the idea of the waterway providing a range of backdrops, from the sinister to the seriously hip. Gloria had drawn the short straw of an argument with Teddy outside Barca, Mick Hucknall’s chic Catalan bistro. On a summer afternoon, it might have been a pleasant diversion. On a bleak December morning, it was about as much fun as sunbathing in Siberia. It took forever to film because trains and trams would keep rattling across the high brick viaducts above our heads when the cameras were rolling.