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chew. And chew. And chew. I try to eat it, I really do, but it’s like rubber.

      ‘Nice?’ asks Jamie, and I just smile back at him. ‘Is this your first time with sushi?’

      ‘Yes,’ I say, thinking – and the bloody last time. Eventually I have to take it out of my mouth. ‘I could do with it being cooked properly,’ I explain, and Jamie roars with laughter.

      ‘Very funny,’ he says. ‘Very, very funny. I’ll tell the waiter, shall I? “Make sure you cook your sushi properly for my friend in future.” Ha! Very good.’

      I take a large gulp of champagne, then a larger one, and laugh back as if I know what the hell I’ve just said to cause such merriment.

      ‘Right, tell me something about you that I don’t know,’ he says.

      Silence. Well, what am I supposed to tell him?

      ‘OK,’ he says, when the silence becomes unbearable. ‘You’re obviously not used to talking about yourself. People in LA tend to open up all the time because they’ve had so much therapy. Tell me a little bit about your dad. You mentioned your horrible mother, but you’ve not said anything about your dad.’

      ‘Well, I’ve never met my dad,’ I say. ‘Mum told me that he really hated me, then I discovered that Mum hadn’t passed on any of his letters or presents or anything over the years, and that he did like me after all, and was very keen to meet me. He’d sent loads of money for me that Mum kept for herself.’

      There’s a silence as I tail off and just stare into the bottom of my empty glass.

      ‘That’s awful,’ says Jamie. ‘I am sorry, Tracie. Terrible.’

      ‘It’s not so bad,’ I say. ‘They’ll fill it up soon.’

      ‘No, not the empty glass, the thing with your mum and dad.’

      ‘Yes,’ I say, lifting my glass to my mouth and tapping the bottom to make sure I’m getting every last drop.

      ‘I don’t think they’re used to speed drinkers in here,’ says Jamie, seeing my plight. ‘I think perhaps LA women and Luton women have a different attitude to alcohol.’

      ‘I think they do,’ I reply, looking around for the waiter. He comes running over.

      ‘Why don’t you just leave the bottle where I can reach it?’ I suggest.

      ‘Would you like to meet your dad one day?’

      This is a difficult question to answer. There’s no question that I do want to meet him, but I’m absolutely terrified that he won’t like me. That’s why I never made any effort to contact him while I was in England. I’m scared that he’ll take one look at me and run away, or that Mum was right all along. I try to tell Jamie this, but I don’t expect him to understand. How could he?

      ‘There’s no way he’s going to hate you,’ says Jamie. ‘No way on earth. If you can face it, go and visit him. It could change your whole outlook on life if you meet him and the two of you get on.’

      ‘Yes, you’re right,’ I say, and we sink into a companionable silence.

      ‘This is nice,’ says Jamie, leaning across and holding my hand. He’s right. It is nice.

       9 p.m.

      I can’t believe how late it is when Dean finally gets home.

      ‘You’re a football coach,’ I say when he comes through the door clutching piles of notes and folders. ‘Stop making like you’ve got a proper job.’

      ‘I can turn this team round, you know,’ he says, placing the notes down carefully and leaning casually against one of the furiously expensive leopardskin-covered bar stools in the kitchen. ‘You know Chuck made an interesting point. He was saying today that there’s no “I” in team.’

      ‘No, but there is in “Piss off!”,’ I say under my breath. Please God don’t let him start talking like Cheesy Chuck.

      ‘I can make them good,’ Dean is saying. ‘If they pull their fingers out they can get through to the play-offs, and then who knows what could happen.’

      ‘Drink?’ I say, in the absence of anything more helpful to contribute on the subject of skill improvement in American soccer.

      ‘Actually I won’t, love, thanks,’ he says. ‘I’ve got a few DVDs to watch and some player analyses to run through. I’ll be in my office if you need me.’

      ‘Dean, are you OK? Why don’t you want a drink? Is it something I said?’

      ‘No, love, I’ve just got quite a lot of work to do, and I’ve been thinking that I probably drink too much. You know, we should both cut back a bit. People out here don’t drink.’

      ‘People out here are mad!’ I exclaim. ‘Dean, don’t go all LA on me, will you?’

      ‘Of course not, babes. Look, give me a couple of hours to finish this work and give myself a bit of a stretch out, and I’ll be right with you.’

      Stretch out? Stretch out? Oh God, Dean’s been infected by these people. It’s horrible.

      ‘You watch yourself,’ I say. ‘They’ll have you doing yoga positions if you’re not careful.’

      Dean walks away to his office, with me shouting after him. ‘Lycra … they’ll have you in Lycra, doing dog to the moon and ankles in your ears and all that. You watch it, Deany …’

      Email to: Michaela & Suzzi

      From: Tracie

      Hi girlies, how are you? It’s me – Tracie – speaking to you all the way from Los Angeles. Thanks so much for your email, Mich. It was so nice to hear from someone nice and normal after these mad, healthy and fit loonies over here, for ever worrying about what they put in their bodies and whether they’ve done their state minimum of 25 yoga classes every day. Hope you’re feeling better after the stomach pump. Great that it was the same doctor as last time. Perhaps they’ll give you one of those cards, like they hand out in coffee shops, and after your sixth pump you get one free!

      Suz, thanks for your email too. I don’t think your tongue’s supposed to grow to twice its natural size when you have your lips plumped – mine never has. Perhaps they accidentally injected some of the plumper into your tongue? I can’t see how else it would happen. If I were you I’d get a truck load more filler chucked into your lips to compensate, then hopefully no one will notice that you’re tongue’s turned into a swollen nasty lump of gristle? Just a thought!

      Life here is really peculiar because hardly anyone drinks. They’re just not interested in locking themselves away in dimly lit bars and getting off their faces. They want to run in the sunlight (is that even good for you?) and be all energetic all the time.

      When I first got here and people talked about not drinking, I just pissed myself, obviously thinking they were joking, but I swear to God they just don’t get off their tits. They always wake up in the morning on first-name terms with the guy lying next to them (Mich … imagine that! Have you ever known the name of the guy whose bed you wake up in?) and they stretch and do pilates and all that crap. I’ve not seen a kebab shop since I’ve been here, they prefer raw food restaurants. (I know what you’re thinking Suz … that kebab shop on Luton High Street serves half-raw food anyway!)

      All in all, it’s taking a bit of getting used to. The very worst part of it is that bloody Dean seems to be getting the bug! He was mumbling on about cutting back on alcohol. Can you believe it? My Deany. For the first five years of our marriage I hadn’t seen him sober. Now he’s saying we drink too much, and crap like ‘I’m going for a stretch.’ What’s that all about?

      Anyway, the really good news is that I’m all set to become an international film star of staggeringly large proportions (not that my physical proportions will be staggeringly large – it’s

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