By the time we drop the kids back with Sarah, I am exhausted and barely have the energy to turn down the offer of staying for supper. Which under normal circumstances I’d turn down with extreme force.

‘Stay – we’re having lasagne and Mam and Dad are down the pub, Richard’s at Shelly’s, Linda’s here. There will be no one at home. You’ll be rattling around an empty house.’

Hearing this, I get another surge of dynamism and almost wrench Darren’s arm out of its socket as I pull him from their kitchen and bundle him into the car. Laughing, he turns the ignition.

‘Had enough of kids for one day?’

I feel a twinge of guilt. Perhaps he wanted to stay and was too polite to contradict me; after all, he probably doesn’t get to see his family much, being based in London. But my arms are aching with playing ‘one, two, three, swwiiinnnng’. I smell of baby puke, my mind is fried with coming up with answers to the perpetual ‘why’ question (nearly all of which had come from Darren). Most importantly, I haven’t reapplied my make-up since leaving the swimming pool.

‘To be honest, yes. I’m not used to kids. No nieces or nephews.’

‘Some of your friends must have children, though,’ he comments.

I think about it. No, not really. Women in TV rarely nod towards their reproductive capacity and my friends in other lines of work seem to disappear once they have babies. I suppose it’s because we keep very different hours.

‘No.’ I smile at Darren and decide to confess, ‘In fact, until today I don’t think I’ve ever held a child, or dressed one, brushed its hair, taken it to the loo, changed a nappy or fed it.’

‘Really?’

‘Really,’ I confirm.

I’m slightly shamefaced and don’t know how Darren will take this. He obviously values these motherly skills in his women. Indeed all men like to see a woman behave perfectly with kids. Most women like to think they have a natural ability to be patient, entertaining and loving. Not me. I’m not bothered. Well, I was keen to put the shoes on the right feet but that was because I hate to be inadequate at anything. As a kid myself, I didn’t like anyone else winning musical chairs. Second place is nowhere. If something is worth doing, it’s worth doing well. That’s always been my motto. It has nothing to do with impressing Darren. I don’t care what he thinks of me. I sneak a look at him to check his reaction to my confession. Richard’s car is so tiny that Darren is almost folded double. He’s concentrating on the curling roads. He puts on the long beam lights and the windscreen wipers are valiantly trying to clear the pouring rain. I fear it’s a losing battle. Without taking his eyes off the road, he mumbles, ‘You’re amazing.’

I’m amazing! I’m floating on air. My bum is absolutely refusing to stay in the car seat.

I’m amazing? Oh yeah, and how many times have I heard that before?

I’m amazing! I’m floating on air. My bum is absolutely refusing to stay in the car seat.

I’m amazing. I bet he says that to everyone.

I pretend I haven’t heard and close my eyes, keen to get some sleep on the short journey back to the Smiths’ house.

I wake up and a young Kevin Keegan is smiling down at me. Where am I? I’m in a single bed with itchy nylon sheets and itchy nylon bedspread. They are brown. Different shades of brown. My worst fear – I’ve screwed someone with bad taste. I hear children laughing in the garden and I look out of the window.

Darren.

And Charlotte and Lucy. It’s a grey, bleak day. Grey grass, grey sky. But Darren and the girls are a remarkable contrast, their clothes and laughter, a colourful relief to the horizon. Impetuously I bang on the window and wave furiously. They all look up and wave back. Then I remember I haven’t got any make-up on, so I dive back into bed before they can see me properly. There’s a knock on the door and, before I answer, Mrs Smith bustles in. She smiles broadly and I bathe in it. Perhaps she’s heard how good I was with the children yesterday and is beginning to approve of me. Not that it matters. I neither want nor need Mrs Smith’s approval.

Much.

She hands me a cup of tea that’s so strong the spoon can stand up in it. I take it from her and thank her.

‘By, you were tired, weren’t you?’

A strange feeling of unease creeps into bed with me; it gets under the sheets and disperses the cosy feeling. Oh bugger, yes, now I remember. Last night I’d been very tired. Too tired to argue my case about the show properly but tired enough to argue petulantly. We were having a laugh. In the absence of wine or gin we decided to raid his parents’ cocktail cabinet. A walnut veneer monstrosity, straight from the Ark, justifiably hidden in the ‘front room’. We agreed that tequila was the perfect accompaniment to cheese on toast (desperate measures for desperate times. The other choices were all fluorescent in colour and likely to have been radioactive). I had the idea of broaching the subject of the show whilst the family were out and we had the house to ourselves. I thought that as he was beginning to warm to me he might be open to discussion. He wasn’t. The conversation had been brief, powerful and cold.

He turned his back to me and concentrated on grating the cheese. The hairs on the back of his neck were standing to attention. I had an overwhelming desire to blow on them.

‘I’m not saying that you should have sex with Claire.’ God forbid. ‘Just find out what would happen. Just let fate take its course,’ I argued to his very wide shoulders.

‘But your programme isn’t about fate or what would happen naturally if everyone was left to their own devices. Your show is designed to distort. To bring out the worst in people.’ He was watching my reflection in the window against the black night sky.

‘The worst in people is the norm.’

He tutted dismissively. But he did, at least, turn back to me. Or was he just turning because he needed to put the bread under the grill?

‘No, it’s not. You just think that the peculiar is normal because it’s prevalent in your life.’

Fucking cheek. What does he know about my life? Well, besides the stuff we’d talked about at the Oxo tower restaurant, on the train and today. But that hardly amounts to revealing insight. He knows little more about me than what my favourite milkshake was when I was a kid. Oh, and admittedly, we had a fairly flirty but extremely coded (due to the presence of minors) conversation about condom flavours this afternoon. But then half the men at TV6 know that I prefer banana-flavour condoms.

None of them know it’s chocolate milkshake.

I glared at him and said, ‘Infidelity is a fact. Disloyalty is a fact.’

‘OK. Maybe. But it’s a horrifying fact and should remain horrifying. By continually showing betrayal as an acceptable form of entertainment you are neutralizing the horror. Are you so damaged that you can’t see that?’

I was tired and sick of his sanctimonious attitude. I found I was shouting. I ignored his question and asked my own instead. ‘You want to shelter who, exactly, from these cultural and moral norms of the West? I’m not suggesting anything that they aren’t already endorsing, committing.’

We both fell silent as Darren concentrated on retrieving the cheese on toast from under the grill. He set it down in front of me and offered Worcester sauce. I refused it. I poured him tequila; he’d left it untouched. We ate in silence and then I went to bed, alone, defeated.

Now, I try to find my wristwatch.

‘It’s three thirty, pet,’ says Mrs Smith, cheerfully.

‘In the afternoon?’ I jump up suddenly. Mrs Smith clocks my lacy negligée.

‘Yes, in the afternoon. By, love, you must have been tired not to notice the cold in that flimsy thing. If you’d said you only had your underwear to sleep in I’d have lent you one of my nighties.’

Duly mortified, I crawl back into bed and cover myself from her disapproving gaze. Underwear indeed! I’d especially selected the most conventional and practical nightdress I own to bring on this trip. I normally sleep naked. If she thinks this is skimpy enough to be underwear, what would she think of my knickers?

‘Darren wanted to get you up but I said, “Let her sleep.” You obviously needed it. He’s just taking the kids into town for a ride on the merry-go-round on the seafront. I thought that you might want to get bathed and then we can think about a bite to eat.’

I nod politely, although I’m sure my stomach will actively revolt if I try to eat anything more. Yesterday’s binge of sweets, chocolate cake, scones, hamburgers and finally cheese on toast was more than I normally eat in a week. It must be the fresh air that’s given me such an appetite.

‘What time did you say it was?’

‘It’s nearly twenty to four now.’

‘What day is it?’ I’m not normally so vague, but then I don’t normally sleep for seventeen hours. And I don’t ever sleep in nylon sheets.

‘Tuesday.’

‘Oh shit.’

‘Excuse me.’ Mrs Smith looks horrified but I have no time to placate her.

‘Shit. Shit.’ I scramble in my bag looking for my mobile phone. ‘Shit. Fourteen messages.’ Mrs Smith tuts and leaves me to my own devices. I think it’s safe to assume that any tentative strands of approval she’d been weaving my way are now well and truly snapped. So what? I turn to my messages.

The first is from Issie, reminding me that my New Year’s resolution was not to have casual sex. Ha, fat chance. Darren doesn’t even seem to want to swap pleasantries, never mind bodily fluids. And anyway, what is she talking about? That’s not why I’m here. I’m here to endear myself to Darren so that he agrees to be on the show. Nothing more. I thought I’d explained that. All the other messages are work-related.