Barefoot in the Dark Read Online Free PDF Page B

girl on the phone had promised, there was a space ready and waiting for her, with a board on a stick beside it. Reserved for Hope Sheppard, someone had written in felt pen. It wasn’t the biggest space in the world, and she spent some minutes shunting the car back and forth before getting into it, under the scrutiny of a young man who was hovering with a cigarette just outside the entrance, and whose incurious yet somehow still critical presence made her pulse thump all the more.
    Once inside the reception, which was bare save for glass cabinets containing various awards, and six televisions with pictures but no sound, she was greeted by an elderly man in a navy-blue uniform. She wrote down her name, and her organisation, and the time she’d arrived, and then went and sat on a low leather couch, a little visitor sticker now attached to her chest.
    There was nothing to read apart from a glossy book full of accounts and montages of smiling celebrity faces, and having established that Jack Valentine’s was probably not among them, she looked out of the window instead. Eventually a pretty girl with freckles, who introduced herself as Ffion, shook her hand limply and took her off through a low glass security gate and then on though some heavy double doors.
    Hope followed her up a flight of stairs, along a short corridor and then through a door that said ‘Cubicle’ on it, which seemed rather strange. Everything seemed to be covered in hessian.
    ‘Plonk your bits down,’ the girl urged as they entered. ‘Water? Wee? Anything?’
    Hope dithered about the wee, before accepting some water and sitting down on the chair in the corner that the girl indicated. The room she was in was full of wires and huge consoles. Enough buttons and knobs to direct a small jumbo jet, presided over by a kindly-looking woman in a hand-knitted sweater. She smiled up at Hope but didn’t speak. Instead, her fingers clattered over the keyboard in front of her, and the words ‘Hope Shepherd – Heartbeat – is here’ appeared on a screen to her right. Beyond her, a long plate-glass window looked through to what Hope assumed was the studio. It was bigger than the cubicle – which figured – and housed a large circular table with a hole in the centre, the surface of which was dotted with monitors and microphones. There were two people in there. The man, who she assumed must be Jack Valentine, was seated at the far side of it wearing oversized headphones and looked not in the least like Paul Newman, and the young blonde adjacent to him was similarly attired. Their voices were issuing from some part of the equipment.
    ‘Still raining out?’ asked the lady at the console now, turning to her. Hope nodded. ‘Couple of minutes and I’ll take you through to the studio, lovely.’ The atmosphere was informal. Classroom-ish, even. An oversized clock dominated the small room.
    The man – this would be Jack Valentine, then – stuck his hand in the air and curled his fingers to form a thumbs up sign. He pushed the headphones back from his head so that they sat looped around his neck. Music – Steps ? – began to usher from the equipment.
    The lady at the console pushed a button.
    ‘Yep,’ she said. ‘Right ho.’ Hope could see the man talking, but his voice had now gone. ‘OK,’ the woman said now. ‘That’ll work. Uh huh. Go to the bus shelter straight after the weather then I’ll bring Hope in and we’ll do the Cinderella piece after that.’
    She turned back to Hope.
    ‘Still raining out?’ she asked her.
    Hope nodded a second time. ‘Still raining,’ she said.
    ‘You are so not what I expected,’ observed the girl in the studio, whose name, it turned out, was Patti. Hope, who had now been bustled into the studio and plonked down on the opposite side of the table in front of one of the big, spongy microphones, was fearful to so much as exhale. But Patti was talking, wasn’t she? So it must be OK.
    ‘My fairy godmother didn’t show