I found Emma and Julius studying comb-bound scripts over a cup coffee, while Mechanissa, Emma’s servobot, stood by.

‘Hullo, Cliff,’ Emma greeted me. Julius just scowled and I smiled back at him.

‘Hi, sugar, all right Julie.’

Julius scowled, Emma frowned. Grabbing coffee I picked up a script and joined them, with Mechano still following me like a lapdog.

‘Alerts off, Mechano,’ I instructed.

‘Complying, you pile of pimple pus.’

Julius laughed and Emma tittered. ‘Hullo Mechano,’ she said.

‘Greetings, brainless bimbo,’ he replied. ‘May your bubs never sag as low as your knickers when you’re on heat.’

That wiped the smile from Emma’s face but Julius thought it was the funniest thing he’d ever heard.

‘Why don’t you get that upmarket dustbin mended, Cliff?’

‘Tell him, Mechano,’ I ordered.

‘To repair my circuits,’ Mechano explained, ‘would take an intelligence greater than the microcosm you call a brain could ever muster, oh Neanderthal product of a jerk off in a test tube.’

Now I laughed and Emma smiled, while Julius scowled. Emma turned to her own bot, an exact replica of Mechano, and said, ‘ Mechanissa, recharge.’

‘Complying,’ Mechanissa said and sidled off to the charging points.

‘Mechano,’ I said to my scrap heap, ‘go with Mechanissa and recharge.’

‘Complying, musclebound mimicry of mucus.’

The bot wandered off and I flicked through the script.

‘I thought you were excused filming today, Cliff,’ said Emma, ‘because of the court case.’

‘I am. The hearing was over quicker than we expected, and Gaz had a meeting here.’

‘He was risking it, wasn’t he?’ Emma commented. ‘Booking a meeting here when you were in court. What would he have done if you got tied up in legal detail?’

It had never occurred to me before, but now that I thought about it, she was right. How could he have arranged a meeting without knowing how long the hearing would take? Was that fat little git up to something? ‘I’ll look into it,’ I said.

‘We caught the broadcast on the news channel,’ Emma said. ‘What did that shivering bloke mean when he said chaff will get you?’

‘Chiversleigh,’ I corrected her, and I shrugged. ‘Dunno. The only chaff I’ve ever heard of is the one you separate from wheat, and even then I don’t know what it is. CHAFF, all in capital letters, didn’t end at the courthouse, either.’ I proceeded to tell them what had happened at the awards dinner, what I had seen on the placard at the gate, the placard outside the awards dinner, and the sheet of paper Mechano had just shredded.

‘Maybe the person on the gate was Chiversleigh’s wife,’ Julius suggested after I told him my thoughts about the note.

‘No matter who it was,’ said Emma, ‘it all sounds like a threat to me. Maybe you should call the law.’

‘And tell them what?’ I asked. ‘That a bloke we’ve just locked up sent me a threatening note three days before the hearing, and got his wife or girlfriend or even his boyfriend to stand the gate and hassle me? I don’t think they’d do anything. You two just be careful, and if you receive anything that says CHAFF, let me know.’ I abruptly changed the subject. ‘Julius, Emma, have you heard about an advertising campaign for Embargo Condoms?’

The use of his full, proper name caused Julius to take me seriously for once. ‘Embargo,’ he ruminated. ‘Odd name for a skin, unless it means, like, they’re putting a stop to you putting her up the duff.’

I felt my eyes widen in amazement. ‘Or putting an embargo on spreading brain cells as weak as yours. Try spelling it backwards.’

Emma tittered and Julius’ brow creased in an effort to spell the word back to front in his head. It was painful to watch. I could almost hear the gears grinding in his brain. Eventually, he took out a dictapad and stylus and began to write it out. He scrubbed through it once, tried again, scrubbed through it again and in a fit of frustration, I took the dictapad from him and wrote it out in capital letters: O-G-R-A-B-M-E. When I handed it back, he stared at it, and still didn’t get it.

‘It says, ‘o grab me’,’ Emma eventually explained, and giggled again.

‘I can see that,’ Julius lied, ‘but I don’t get it.’

I sighed. ‘Julie, baby, when you put a wrapper on your roger, what is it you want Emma to do?’

He blushed. ‘I , er , well , er , look you were asking about some advertising campaign. I haven’t heard nothing.’

‘I have,’ Emma said. ‘It’s only rumour, though.’

I raised my eyebrows, inviting further information.

‘My dad’s on the editorial staff of the Oldham and Rochdale Reporter. He mentioned a few weeks ago that there have been rumours in the City of a major deal between Embargo and Underlinen Productions. Senior executives from both companies have been seen in the same hotels in Amsterdam, Geneva and Bishops Stortford.’

Julius laughed. ‘Bishops Stortford? Hardly on a par with Amsterdam and Geneva, is it?’

‘It’s near Stansted Airport,’ I told him, proving that even my geographical knowledge was bigger than his. ‘Embargo is owned by a Swiss conglomerate, which explains Geneva. Amsterdam has always been linked with anything to do with sex, and the meeting at Bishops Stortford would probably be a quickie while the Swiss execs were en route to America.’

‘That’s very clever,’ said Emma. ‘I don’t think I could have worked that out.’

I sneered. ‘Why doesn’t that surprise me?’

Emma scowled by return. ‘Anyway, what’s all this about?’

‘Something Gaz said in the limo on the way here. Whisper is that Embargo will be the new sponsors of The Cove as from next year, and we’ll be moved to a post watershed slot to accommodate spicing up the plots.’

Emma rubbed her hands together with glee. ‘Oh, goody. More money and a bit of humpty-dumpty.’

I had to look twice at her to see if she was joking. I always figured she was smarter than she cracked on, but even so I wouldn’t have entered her for Brain of Britain.

‘Emma,’ I asked, ‘are you willing to compromise your artistic integrity for a few thousand extra credits?’

Her face went blank. Her eyes rolled up and to the left, which as anyone with experience of neuro-linguistic programming would know, indicated she was thinking about it. Not that I knew much about NLP. For all I knew, she could have been checking the paintwork on the ceiling.

She focussed again. ‘Yes,’ she said.

‘You sued Celeb Today when they published pictures of your jugs,’ I protested.

‘Precisely because they are my jugs and they didn’t ask if they could print them, and they never offered me any cash for publishing them. I sued them on principle, just like you did with AIZ and Chivering. What makes it right for you and not me? Anyway, as long as Embargo and Underlinen are happy to pay me for them, I don’t mind flashing them.’ She waggled her chest at me. ‘I’ve plenty show off, too, if you recall.’

Her remark and the accompanying gesture served to remind Julius of what Emma had had before she settled on him, and he pulled another face.

‘What’s the big deal?’ he asked. ‘Nothing wrong with a bit of nudity.’

‘You’ll find out what the big deal is, Julie, when the viewers compare what you’ve got between your legs with what I have. Then they’ll really see why you always come second best.’

‘It’s not what you’ve got,’ he grunted, ‘it’s what you do with it.’

‘I wish you’d thought of that last night,’ Emma grumbled.

Sensing disharmony, I groped for ways of exploiting it, but before I could, Julius stood up and went to the coffee table for a refill and Emma gave me a glance full of warning.

‘Emma,’ I said ignoring her frown, ‘it’s no use looking at me like that. We would never have worked. I’m intelligent and you’re thick.’ Before she could rise to the calculated insult, I said, ‘and can you imagine how you would have felt if I’d asked you to move in permanently then jumped the first little tramp that came along?’

She wagged a disapproving finger at me. ‘When you’re with someone permanent, you don’t jump the first little tramp that comes along. You’re reading the wrong rulebook, Cliff. It’s called commitment. Try asking your mum and dad about it.’

I shook my head. ‘I just know myself. I can resist anything except temptation.’

To almost change the subject, she asked, ‘What’s your objection to advertising rubbers? With your track record, I’d have thought you were a natural.’

‘Kind of you to say so,’ I replied, proving that I could be as thick-skinned as anyone. ‘I dunno, really. I don’t think I have any serious objections, as long as the dosh is right, but I just get the feeling that I’m being turned into cam fodder. Like, everybody wants a piece of me and I have to go along with whether I want to or not.’ I paused a moment. ‘Did you know they’re bringing Spangles on board?’

‘I’d heard the whisper,’ she admitted. ‘Is it deffo?’

‘According to Gaz,’ I nodded.

‘She’s a special, that one,’ Emma said with just the right amount of venom in her voice. ‘Did you know she’s one of the few celebs who actually majored in Celebrity? I mean, most of us took it as our minor because we were doing music or drama and stuff. But she majored in it. I thought all celebs were supposed to have talent?’

I chuckled. ‘She does have talent. A pussy that’s tighter than Gaz’s grip on a ten credit note.’

We both laughed.

‘According to my dad,’ she went on, ‘the big Embargo announcement is being delayed until after the Olympics. Underlinen have the main franchise for screening the games, and the IOC might kick up a stink if they’re seen to be involved in anything that smacks of unwholesome sex.’

‘There’s nothing unwholesome about sex,’ I told her. ‘It’s perfectly natural.’ I checked the time. ‘In fact, if you have an hour to spare, I could ,’

‘Shove it, Cliff. I expect men to treat women like pooh, but you go overboard. Anyway, I was saying about the Olympics. Advertising skins could be seen as promoting promiscuity,’ she said, ‘and the IOC won’t like that.’

I thought about this for a moment. ‘They could always include it in the itinerary. The shagging marathon. Shagathon for short.’

She laughed. ‘You’d be in line for a gold medal but where would Julius come?’

‘Over his right fist.’

We both laughed again.

Julius returned with his fresh coffee as the laughter was settling. ‘I’ve obviously missed something hilarious,’ he grumbled.

‘We were talking about you,’ I told him.

He ignored the jibe. ‘I see you made the two thirty news.’

‘I did?’ I asked.

‘Some young tart broken down on Oldham Road and you came in like a knight in shining armour to rescue her from the evil plod.’

‘She was blocking the celeb lane,’ I told them, ‘and Gaz was in a rush.  I expedited matters.’

‘Did you expedite her name, address and phone number?’ Julius smirked as if he had just put one over on me.

‘That’s very witty, Julie,’ I riposted. ‘You should be on HV. You’d look good next to the picture of my mum. It was all very simple. The chick had broken down, the flivver belonged to her mother and plod were threatening to impound it.’

Emma shrugged. ‘Well, she will break down in the celeb lane.’

‘I rang Harry Leeming told him to get her out of the crap.’

‘And garrulous Gaz rang Cal Carlin,’ Emma concluded. ‘He never misses a trick, does he?’

Even as she mentioned him, the fat man came waddling into the rehearsal room, scanned it and homed in on us.

‘All right, Jools?’ he greeted our co-star with a nod. ‘Cliff, Emma, you’re wanted upstairs.’

Emma checked her chrono. ‘I’m filming in ten minutes.’

‘Your scenes are on hold,’ Gaz told her. ‘This is more important.’