The Hating Game (9 page)

‘
I know,’
Cyndi said. ‘It’s crazy, right? You look amazing! The power of make-up.’ She shook her head and thumped her chest. ‘Gets me right here, every time.’

Mattie didn’t answer. How on E
arth was she going to go outside looking like a trashy burlesque dancer, let alone appear on TV in front of the whole nation!

‘
Aw
, hon.’ Cyndi patted her knee. ‘It’s so cool, isn’t it? I mean, I saw what you looked like before. All pale, as if you were dead or something. And now you’ve come to life!’ She reached down and hugged Mattie.

Mattie
shoved her away. Why did these people keep touching her? Was everyone who worked in TV a perv? ‘Can I go now?’

‘
Ouch!’
Cyndi rubbed her arm where Mattie had rammed her. ‘No, you can’t go. Production needs a few promo shots.’ She reached behind her and threw some clothes onto Mattie’s lap, smile replaced by a scowl. ‘Here. Put these on.’

Mattie’s mouth fell open
as she held up the skin-tight gold lamé top and PVC leggings. No.
No way!
It was bad enough that her hair screamed slut. She wasn’t going to dress like one, too.

She pulled out
her mobile and rang Nate again but the phone just kept ringing. If he knew what was good for him, he’d stay hidden. So much for showing him who was in control. Next time, she vowed.

Two hundred thousand
pounds, she sighed as she pulled on the top and leggings – she just needed to keep that number front and centre. She hobbled over to the mirror, barely able to walk in the skin-tight black material. Every curve of her body was visible and her chest was straining to escape the top’s plunging neckline. Thank God Mum was away on her annual
Mind over Soul Control
cruise. If she saw this get-up she’d disown her!

Mattie stepped
into the platformed red stilettos and lurched out into the studio. To keep her business afloat, she could handle a little objectification, no sweat.

*

‘
Wowee! Who’s that?’ Baz
whistled as he stared at the photos of Mattie the photographer biked over. Mattie was smiling – or her lips were, anyway; her eyes looked furious – and her chest was almost spilling out of a skin-tight gold top. Bright red hair cascaded past her shoulders and shiny black leggings revealed every contour of her body.

The promo team had done a great job, Nate thought as he looked at the photos again. She
could be on cover of
GQ
– or even
Nuts
!

‘
Um, that’s Mattie Johns. The lead
contestant on
Second Chance for Romance
.’ Nate loved saying the name of the show. He could hardly believe he’d come up with something so clever.

‘
I’ll give her more than a
second chance for romance,’ Baz said, moving his hips back and forth in the air. ‘A third, a fourth, a fifth . . .’

‘
Yeah
, mate,’ Nate said lamely, rocking his hips like Baz. ‘Know what you mean.’ There was no way he’d get anywhere near Mattie without donning full protective gear, but she’d be the perfect bait to the exes he’d signed up. If they’d been eager to see her before, imagine what they’d think when they saw her now. ‘I’ve got a meeting with Silver,’ he said, grabbing the photo out of the still-drooling Baz’s hand. ‘Catch you later.’

He
ran to his desk to get the exes’ signed contracts and headed towards Silver’s office, rehearsing the men’s names in his head.

Adam – successful CEO, Mattie’s boyfriend
from Staines Secondary. Kind of lumpy, not so telegenic with his pock-marked face, but he’d be good to offset Giovanni’s flash appearance.

Charlie
, who’d also dated Mattie in secondary school. Nate shuffled through the paperwork to the photo Charlie had sent him. He looked almost aristocratic, with his thin face and floppy sandy hair. A nice contrast to Giovanni and Adam’s dark looks.

Nate
flipped over to Giovanni’s photo – the only one in which he was actually wearing underwear. Nate grimaced as he remembered the scene by the fax machine when Giovanni’s images had come through. The woman who watered the plants had started whooping, and within seconds every female in the office had gathered around the fax, laughing and grabbing as more nude photos spilled out.

Sure, the guy was good-
looking, but he barely spoke English. And it was pretty obvious he’d only signed up to the show to be on TV, not because he was interested in Mattie. But he’d signed the contract and that was all Nate cared about now. Mattie wasn’t there for the men, either.

T
hen there was Kyle, the one bloke Nate thought was a pretty decent guy. Nate couldn’t imagine him and Mattie together, but underneath Kyle’s friendly exterior Nate sensed he might have the balls to take her on. Shame he’d had to mislead Kyle into thinking Mattie knew he’d be on the show. But maybe they
would
get together? Imagine the ratings! The network could cover the wedding, too, along with the birth of their first child. Nate would be a network hero. He could even start his own media production company on the back of it!

‘
Hi, Ginny,’ Nate smiled as he walked into Silver’s offi
ce. He was an EP now – surely he was entitled to more than Ginny’s usually grunt. ‘How are we today?’ He tried one of those cool winks he’d seen Baz do but closed both eyes instead of just one.

Ginny
stared, then snorted. ‘
I’m
fine, Nate. Don’t know about you, though.’

‘
Could I have a glass of water?’ he asked, trying again.

Ginny waved a hand in the direction of the water cooler. ‘Water’s over there.’

Snoo
ty cow. She was a secretary, after all. And he was an executive producer. It wasn’t like he was asking her to mine gold or something. He stared at her pointedly but she just kept clacking away on the keyboard.

Nate slumped b
ack in his chair for a second then straightened up again. All he needed was one successful show, just one. Then the women around here would be swarming over him like he was one of Giovanni’s photos.

‘
Nate,
’ Silver yelled from her office. ‘You better have those signed contracts.’

Nate
stood up and marched into Silver’s office, clutching the contracts triumphantly. He dropped them with a flourish onto her desk. ‘They’re all signed up, Silver, all four, just like you asked.’ He met her flinty eyes.

Silver looked down at the
papers he’d plonked on her desk. ‘Get those
off
my sausage.’

Sausage? Nate scrambled to remove the offending pile, uncovering a plate of what looked to be tiny chorizos. He hadn’t even seen them there. ‘Sorry.’

Silver popped a whole finger-shaped sausage in her m
outh and swallowed without chewing. Nate watched as the lump moved slowly down her throat.

‘
Let me see the contracts.’

He
handed them over, shifting his bulk from foot to foot as she flipped through.

‘
Fine, fine, yes, they’re all fine. Good variety, different enough professions, and you even got
a foreigner in here.’ She looked up. ‘Did any of them ask for more money than what we offered?’

Nate shook his head. ‘I just told
them they’d get half the prize money if they won and that was fine.’ He still felt weird about that one – Mattie thought she’d get it all – but if that’s how the game was going to be played he didn’t have much choice. Anyway, it wasn’t like she’d get nothing. He’d kill for a hundred thousand pounds.

Silver flipped through the pages. ‘
Any good potential here for conflicts? We can edit to make things interesting if we need to, of course, but it’s always better if it’s genuine. We need to keep the ratings up. And the only way to do that is to make every date explosive.’

Nate
stared. ‘Conflicts? But the purpose of the show is to get Mattie back together with an ex.
Second Chance for Romance
, you know . . .’

Silver rolled her eyes and swallowed another sausage
. ‘It doesn’t matter if they want romance or if they want to club her over the head! Love and hate are the best emotions for driving ratings.’ She tapped her finger against her chin. ‘Get these men into the psychological assessment with Wheestle, and tell him to really dig. I want dirt. I want to know everything about them. Then we can come up with some great storylines for dates.’

‘
Storylines
?’ Nate had thought Mattie and the men would just go out on dates with the cameras filming them.

‘
Jesus, Nate. Yes, storylines. You don’t think we’re just going to jolly around with a camera, do you? We need
to make sure there’s action. And drama. Remember, we’re in control here. Mattie and that bunch of idiots are all pawns on our chessboard.’ Silver shoved another whole sausage in her mouth. ‘If you don’t get that, I don’t know what the hell you’re doing here.’

*

‘
You can stop laughing now.’ Mattie threw one of her Liberty-patterned silk cushions at Jess. It was the night before the live kick-off show, and Mattie had invited Jess over to her flat for a much needed ego-boost after her slut-tastic makeover. But Jess was having the opposite effect. One look at Mattie’s new hairdo and Jess had burst into giggles.

‘
It’s not
that
bad,’ Jess said, after collapsing onto the gleaming resin floor to catch her breath. She tilted her head to the side. ‘Actually, the colour’s pretty good. It’s just that you don’t look like
you
any more.’

‘
I know,’ Mattie sighed. ‘I don’t feel like me, either. I haven’t done any work all week, I’ve been wearing PVC leggings, and then
this’
– she tugged at a curl and made a face – ‘I don’t even know what to do with long hair.’

Jess scooted over
and dug an elastic out of her pocket. She grabbed a handful of Mattie’s extensions and quickly twisted them up into a knot, letting a few strands hang down around her face. ‘There. That looks quite nice.’

Mattie walked over to the mirror above the faux-fireplace. ‘Not bad.’ With most of the sausage-like curls out of her face, it wasn’t
quite
as dire as it had been.

‘
So you ready for tomorrow?’ Jess asked, plopping back down on the sofa.

Mattie shrugged. ‘I guess. I mean, what is there to be ready for? I meet the men and I pick the one I want the first date with. No biggie.’

‘
There must be more to it than that,’ Jess said. ‘Otherwise, they wouldn’t be making such a big fuss. Haven’t you seen those big billboards on the M4? It’s
a new spin on dating
.’ Jess lowered her voice dramatically.

‘
Oh
Jesus.’ Mattie couldn’t think of anything worse than being splattered across a giant board next to a motorway. Next thing she knew she’d be on Page Three! Thank God her mother was safely out of the way in the middle of the Indian Ocean. For the amount of fuss they were making about the series, you’d have thought it was freaking
Top Boot
or whatever that silly car show was called.

‘
I wonder what the spin is?’ Jess asked.

‘
I hope it’s that they’ve found the last few intelligent men left in the world. They definitely seem to be a rare species.’ Mattie shoved the remaining tendrils of hair into the bun on top of her head.

Jess sat up. ‘What if there is a really cool man there? You know – someone clever and handsome, with a good job? Maybe you can meet someone!’

‘
I’m not there to meet men,’ Mattie said, shaking her head at her friend’s naivety. ‘I’m there for one thing: the money. The men can be convicts for all I care.’ Maybe that was the twist – a dating game show in a prison, where she had to choose from a selection of criminals. She could just imagine it:
Date an Inmate
. Hopefully they’d kit out the cells with all the mod cons.

‘
Shame you’re going to miss the reunion,’ Jess said. ‘But I guess everyone there can just watch you on TV!’

Mattie groaned as she pictured all those secondary-school losers watching her every move on the small screen, night after night. She took a deep breath. It would be fine, though. She’d go through the motions, get the money, and leave those rejects behind in the dust just like she had when she’d escaped from Staines all those years ago.

Whatever she had to deal with in the coming weeks, it would be worth it in the end.

CHAPTER NINE

Three in five women say wearing a new item of clothing boosts their confidence on a first date.

Two
in three men admit they rarely notice a date’s attire.