through!’
This is from a short, rather podgy man, hurrying through the doors behind me. Extremely podgy, actually, given that he’s wearing a tracksuit and trainers and carrying a squash racket: isn’t squash meant to burn about a zillion calories each time you play? And are you even allowed to be this podgy (borderline obese, in fact) if you’re a member of a celeb gym, frequented by Victoria’s Secret models in bright pink hot pants? I feel scruffy enough as it is – and unwelcome, too, given the hatchet-faced receptionist bearing down on me as I take a few steps further into FitLondon’s hallowed halls.
‘What the hell are you doing?’ she yells – actually yells – at me.
‘I’m just here to get some nail polish,’ I say, completely astonished and – I have to say – already composing the complaint email to the FitLondon customer services team in my mind. ‘My mum’s a member here, so …’
‘Where did he go?’
‘Who?’
‘The man who came in with you!’ She glances, frantically, in all directions, before practically sprinting back along the hallway, an impressive feat in four-inch heels. Reaching a glass reception desk at the far end, she grabs a phone, dials a number, and then says into the receiver: ‘This is Pippa, on reception. Can you send one of the personal trainers out here, please? Some idiot member of the public let a paparazzo in!’
It takes me a moment to realize that the paparazzo must have been the plump man with the squash racket.
And that the idiot member of the public must be me.
‘Send Willi, if he’s around,’ Pippa the receptionist is going on. ‘I need one of the bigger guys like him, in case things get … well, where is Willi?’ There’s a short silence, while she listens to the reply on the other end and continues to glower at me. ‘Teaching a private yoga class? But I don’t see anyone booked in for private yoga on the system …’
Suddenly, a flicker of understanding passes across her face, and she turns rather pale beneath her perfectly sprayed-on tan.
‘Oh,’ she says. ‘That sort of private class.’
Then she bangs the phone down and heads for a door, right next to where I’m still standing, marked YOGA STUDIO 1.
‘Willi?’ she calls, knocking hard on the door. ‘Just to warn you and your – er – client … we’ve had a security breach, so just be …’
Before she can add careful, the door is flung wide open and the squash-racket-holding paparazzo is literally carried out, WWF-style, by a very tall, very wide blond man who looks as if he’s been hewn out of marble and who’s wearing nothing – and I mean nothing – except a tubular bandage on one knee.
Behind them, her crop top askew, and hoiking her pink hot pants back up from mid-thigh, is a purple-faced and livid-looking Rhea Haverstock-Harley.
‘The camera, Willi!’ she’s yelling at the large naked blond man. (Willi, evidently. Which, as it happens, is exactly where I’m trying not to look.) ‘Don’t throw him out until you’ve got his camera!’
‘You can’t take that!’ the paparazzo wheezes, as Willi grabs the Nikon strap around his neck – that was why he looked clinically obese; the huge camera hidden under his hoodie – and pulls it off. ‘That’s my property!’
‘And this is private property,’ Pippa the receptionist barks, scurrying to the sliding doors to press the Exit button. ‘You’re trespassing!’
‘She let me in!’ the paparazzo says, jabbing a finger in my direction. ‘If a member invites you in, it’s not trespassing!’
‘She’s not a member,’ Rhea Haverstock-Harley says. (Actually, more like asks. In an incredulous tone of voice. As in, ‘She’s not a member?’)
‘No, she’s not,’ Pippa confirms, crisply, as Willi finally wrests the Nikon from the paparazzo’s grasp, bends down and dumps him on the paving slabs outside the door.
I have time to feel a brief stab of sympathy for the prone paparazzo – not because of his unceremonious exit, but because nobody deserves that view of Willi (so to speak) – before I feel a sharp tap on my shoulder. It’s Rhea, towering over me like a semi-clad, platinum-blonde Gorgon.
‘What the fuck did you let him in for?’ she screams. ‘Who do you work for? The Sun? The Mail? Popbitch?’
I’m tempted, for one insane moment, to reply, ‘MI5, actually’, but decide against it. This is, after all, a woman with previous form for assault. Christ only knows what it was that the poor hairdresser did to deserve being smacked in the chops with a flying smartphone, but it couldn’t possibly have been as bad as accidentally outing her as a cheating strumpet.
‘No one,’ I say. ‘I don’t work for anyone. Though, actually, I did work with your boyfriend – Dillon, I mean – ever so briefly …’
‘He’s behind this?’ she spits. ‘I swear to God, if you tell him what you saw here today … well, you didn’t see anything, OK?’
‘Just a private yoga lesson?’ Willi suggests, his voice much more polite – and Swedish-sounding – than I was expecting.
‘A naked yoga lesson?’ I can’t help saying.
‘Nobody’s naked,’ Pippa says, soothingly, grabbing a towel from the stack on her desk and – thank God – handing one to Willi.
He folds it neatly in two and hangs it around his neck.
‘For fuck’s sake, Willi!’ Rhea yells, as Pippa grabs another towel and actually puts this one around his waist herself. ‘I’m serious,’ she adds, fixing her ocean-green eyes on me again with much the same expression as a Tyrannosaurus Rex probably used on whatever unfortunate herbivore crossed its path at lunchtime. ‘You didn’t see anything. So there’s nothing to report back to Dillon. Got it?’
‘Look, I don’t really know him, even. And I’m certainly not—’
She’s already spun round, and with a brisk, ‘Willi!’ over her shoulder, is marching back in the direction of Yoga Studio 1. To do whatever it is they were up to when the photographer caught them. Whatever it is that has Willi scampering after her like an eager bloodhound.
‘Naked yoga,’ I mutter, as the door closes behind them.
‘Yes.’ Pippa folds her arms and stares me down. ‘Naked. Yoga.’
‘Fine. Whatever.’ Because really, it’s no skin off my nose if Rhea Haverstock-Harley is getting naked with anyone, for yoga purposes or otherwise, beyond the fact that I think she’s certifiably insane for cheating on Dillon O’Hara with Big Blond Willi. ‘Can I go to the spa and buy some nail polish now, please?’
‘I’m sorry, this isn’t the entrance to the spa.’
‘Oh. Could you tell me how to get to the spa entrance, then?’
‘The spa is closed.’
It’s
