LITMIR.BIZ

      4

      It’s Wednesday morning and I’m sitting at a seafront café, croissant and coffee to hand, watching Cannes come to life on the first full day of the festival. The morning sky is the brilliant blue that gives this stretch of the Riviera its other name, the Cote d’Azur, and the forecast is for a sunny day.

      All around me, there are giant billboards advertising the films that will be screening here over the next few days. Although only 7.35 a.m., there is a general sense of bustle everywhere. Queues are already forming outside boulangeries, espresso machines are hissing into life, squirting the dark, strong liquid the French call coffee into small cups.

      People are arriving, bleary-eyed, back at their hotels and apartments, hoping to catch a few hours’ sleep after partying the night away. Others, still bright eyed and with a spring in their step, are on their way out to the first breakfast meetings of the festival.

      Daisy took a swig of her coffee and a bite of croissant before continuing to type the first of her daily reports on her laptop.

      I’ve collected all the daily trade magazines, signed up for a press conference tomorrow morning with a famous star – more of that later in the week – and now I’m off to view my first early morning screening. With over one hundred and twenty films to be shown during the festival, things start early around here.

      Daisy pressed the save button and switched off. She’d add some more to it after lunch with the fashion assistant who had promised to explain how the stars managed to acquire the necessary glitz for film premieres.

      After drinking the rest of her coffee, she set off for the Theatre Bazin on the third floor of the Palais des Festivals, where many of the press screenings would be held during the festival – far away from the glamour of the red carpet.

      Emerging three hours later, her head buzzing from both the film and the Q & A session with the filmmakers that had followed, Daisy joined the lunchtime crowds that were thronging the Croisette: tourists and locals enjoying the spectacle of entertainers and starlets strutting their stuff – eager to catch the eye of any moviemaker that might be around.

      As she walked, intriguing snippets of conversation floated in the air around her.

      ‘Sharon was really upset when Michael gave the part to…’

      ‘Gosh yes, a ticket to the Vanity Fair party would be to die for. Any chance of…’

      ‘No. We can’t meet there. It’s too risky. What if we were seen?’

      Marcus was right; there was gossip everywhere.

      Surely that was Tom Hanks over there talking to Bruce Willis? And that glamorous actress getting into a limousine looked incredibly like Meryl Streep.

      Wandering through the crowds, Daisy wondered again about the possibility of chasing down a scoop for the paper. She just wasn’t that keen on investigative journalism. As she’d told Poppy, she much preferred to write feel-good stories about people rather than write ones that besmirched them.

      Lingering near the carousel she spotted the young girl from the previous day, Cindy, riding around happily on one of the gaily decorated carousel horses, the tall man standing to one side attentively watching. He smiled in acknowledgement at Daisy when he saw her, before turning as the carousel slowed to a stop and helping Cindy off.

      ‘Come on, let’s go for those pizzas. Mummy said she’d meet us there and maybe Daddy as well.’

      So Daddy had arrived then, Daisy thought, wishing she could follow them and at least put faces to Mummy and Daddy. But it was time for her to learn the trade secrets of how the stars managed their haute-couture appearances, so she crossed the Croisette and walked in the opposite direction, towards the luxury designer shops.