Conchita was on top of things, though. ‘Emily, you get in the shower! And you –’ she pointed at me, ‘make coffee. Strong!’

After her shower, we dressed Emily and tried to get a comb through her hair.

‘You look good,’ Conchita encouraged.

Emily shook her head and said sadly, ‘Everything is wrong.’

‘Like what?’

‘My ‘spensive suit’s in jrycleaner’s, I haven’t been reiki’d, my hair’s a Jackson Five special.’

‘Nebber mind,’ Conchita said, forcing a cup of treacly coffee on her. ‘You got a pitch, lady!’

When we were ready to leave, Conchita whipped out a little plastic bottle of holy water and flung generous handfuls of it at us. As a drop splattered on to Emily’s face, she turned to me in confusion.

‘Maggie, is this actually happening? Or mi jreaming it?’

‘It’s happening,’ I said grimly, marching her to my car and wondering how the hell you got to The Valley.

The drive was horrible. My heart was banging against my ribs and my breath didn’t want to be drawn – there is nothing more terrifying than the LA freeways when you don’t know where you’re going. Lanes and lanes of aggressive cars on all sides of you. My right arm was begging to be scratched. To make matters worse, I was trying to make Emily practise her pitch.

‘Camera pans over a breast of pairs…’

‘Good,’ I tried to encourage. ‘Good.’ I saw a sliproad approaching and peered around, looking for signs. ‘Is this where we turn off?’ And how did I cut across three lanes of traffic to do so?

By the time I’d discovered it wasn’t our turn, Emily had meandered off into silence. I managed to take my eyes off the road just long enough to see her chin nodding on her chest and a delicate trail of dribble heading south to her second-best suit. Christ! That was all we needed. Her falling asleep mid-pitch.

I shook her and begged, ‘Drink some Jolt, try and stay awake. Please!’

‘Oh my God, Maggie,’ she mumbled. ‘This is a nightmare.’ I felt for her, because she genuinely understood how serious the situation was, but simply couldn’t control herself.

‘I can’t do it,’ she said.

‘You can.’

‘I can’t.’ There was a pause and I knew what was coming next. ‘Will you do it?’

‘What? The pitch?’

‘Yes.’

What could I say? With dreadful resignation I said, ‘You’d better remind me how it goes.’

So then I was trying to remember the pitch as well as concentrate on directions. My palms were so wet they were sliding all over the steering wheel and I still couldn’t seem to get enough air.

Some time, today will be over, I told myself. Some time in the future this horrible day will have ended. Then I changed it to, Some day I’ll be dead and at peace and none of this will matter.

More by luck than judgement, we finally arrived at Empire Studios. You couldn’t miss it. On top of each of the two gateposts they had twelve-foot-high Freds.

I rolled down the window and gave our names to the man with the clipboard, who confirmed we were on the list. ‘Welcome to Empire Studios.’

‘Nice dogs,’ I nodded at the Freds.

‘Oh yeah?’ The man laughed. ‘Thing is, guy who made them had a grudge against the studio. When it rains, it looks like the dogs are peeing.’ Then he cheerfully waved us through.

Empire Studios looked very different to Hothouse. Hothouse had been high-rise glass and steel, but this studio looked like it had been built in the thirties: rows of unassuming-looking, white, two-storey buildings. It reminded me of a holiday camp.

Not that it meant that Empire was any less successful or powerful than Hothouse, it just meant it had been around for longer. And the reception area was covered with posters from mega-successful movies, just like it had been at Hothouse. The only difference was that this time it didn’t thrill me. It all felt like a nasty sham and though my knees were wobbling the way they had done there, this time it was from fear, not excitement.

‘Take a seat,’ the text-book-beautiful receptionist said.

Are you OK?’ I whispered to Emily, as we sat down.

‘Yeah, I just feel like I’m dreaming.’

‘Try and stay awake,’ I encouraged desperately.

‘I’ll try.’

A few minutes later, we were met by Larry Savage’s assistant, a pleasant-looking woman called Michelle.

‘I loved your script,’ she told us warmly. ‘I truly loved it.’

It was all I could do to stop myself from curling my lip at her.

‘This way, please,’ she said, walking us through the heat to Larry Savage’s chalet.

I’d seen Larry Savage – briefly – once before at the Club House, and he looked just like I remembered: an identikit Hollywood executive. He had the tan, good teeth, well-cut lightweight suit and – no doubt – a convincing line in bullshit. I’d become very cynical very quickly.

He was on the phone as we were ushered in. ‘I don’t freakin’ care,’ he was shouting. ‘We test-screen the ass off it. If no one salutes, then it’s straight to video.’ An angry pause, then he yelled, ‘No, you kiss MINE!’ Then he clattered the phone back into its cradle and turned to Emily and me. ‘Actors,’ he said, with a rueful smile.

‘Yeah,’ I rolled my eyes sycophantically, then effected introductions.

‘All righty. I read your script,’ he began.

I almost put my arm up to shield us from the avalanche of fake compliments. Funny, edgy, great dialogue – hadn’t we been here before?

‘I hated it!’ Larry Savage declared.

Now I hadn’t been expecting that Then I wondered if it was going to be one of those ‘I hated it so much I want to pay you three million dollars for it’ riffs?

Unfortunately, it wasn’t.

‘I hated it,’ Larry repeated. ‘Me, I like animals!’

‘So we’ve heard,’ Emily slurred beside me.

I gave her arm a sharp little pinch.

‘Fred, Babe, Beethoven, now that was a movie…’ Larry sighed wistfully. ‘But the studio is looking for smart.’ He bitchslapped the script in front of him. ‘This is real smart.’ He managed to sound glum about it. ‘It’s sassy, snappy, pacy. But I got an idea, hear me out here!’