‘It’s all starting for you,’ Lara promised Emily. ‘Look at Candy Devereaux. One minute she’s waitressing and thinking about getting the bus back to Wisconsin. Then she writes a dream script and now she’s charging a hundred thousand dollars a week, doing script surgeon.’

‘Prada will send a truck of stuff over and whatever I want will be mine to KEEP,’ Emily said gleefully, stretching out on the couch.

Fantasy stuff and yet… In other jobs you’re supposed to toil away patiently and incrementally better your lot. But I got the feeling that things worked differently in this town: your luck could turn on a sixpence and you could shoot from the gutter to the stratosphere very, very quickly. I was distracted by a girl passing by with a cleavage as deep as the Grand Canyon. Talk about silicon valley – those breasts couldn’t possibly be real…

‘Can I have a part in the movie?’ Lara asked.

‘Sure!’

‘When Lara first came to LA, she was an actress,’ Emily told me.

‘So how come you’re not now?’

‘I didn’t have what it takes.’ She tipped her head back and funnelled crackers into her mouth from her fist. ‘I wasn’t thin enough. Or beautiful enough.’

‘But you’re really beautiful.’

‘She’s hot for me,’ she drawled.

Emily gave her a stern look, which was interrupted by Lara’s cellphone ringing. An animated chat ensued, then Lara snapped her phone away. ‘It’s Kirsty, she’s nearby, she’s going to join us for a quick drink.’

Emily made a face. ‘A quick alcohol-free, dairy-free, sodium-free glass of water served with a slice of organic lemon in a lead-free glass.’

‘She’s OK,’ Lara said.

‘Yeah. She’s just so virtuous and humour-free. And she thinks she’s gorgeous.’

‘But she is.’

‘That’s no reason to go round showing off.’ Emily directed this to me. ‘We were all talking about who would play us in the story of our lives – yeah, I know, but it’s an LA thing – and Lara there, beautiful Lara there, says Kathy Bates. I say ET in an afro wig, Justin says John Goodman, and even Troy says Sam the American Eagle from The Muppet Show, and who does Kirsty say would play her? Nicole Kidman, that’s who. Says people are always mistaking her for Nicole. She wishes. Well, before she gets here, can I show you something?’

She opened her handbag and slowly produced a keyring. I recognized it. It was from the shop where she’d bought the clothes; it even had the logo, picked out in rhinestones.

‘I’ve been a bad girl,’ Emily said, but she couldn’t hide a grin.

‘Oh my God,’ Lara groaned. ‘You have got to stop!’

‘You stole it?’

‘Liberated it, I prefer to say. Hey, I’m really stressed right now.’

‘I know, but could you not just do a relaxation tape or something?’ I said.

‘You’re just jealous,’ Emily accused.

‘I know,’ I admitted humbly.

I’d only shoplifted once in my whole life – a choc-ice from a newsagent’s. I hadn’t even wanted it, I much preferred Cornettos, but they didn’t have any and Adrienne Quigley had dared me to do it. Anyway, wouldn’t you know it? – I got caught. The man was very nice about it and said he’d let me off if I promised never to do it again. Which meant I had to spend the rest of my teenage years looking on enviously as everyone else returned from trips into town with their bags crammed with all sorts of stolen booty: earrings, lipsticks, glittery nail polishes, a length of electrical flex and a handful of screws from a hardware shop. It was Emily who’d nicked the screws and the flex, because she just shoplifted for the thrill, whereas Adrienne Quigley shoplifted to order. I was sick with envy at their daring (and the free stuff, apart from the screws and the flex), but I knew for certain that if I tried it again, I was bound to get caught –and bring everyone else down with me too. There’s just something about me. Each of my sisters could get away with brazenness because Claire was feisty, Rachel was funny, Anna was away with the fairies and Helen was fearless. But me – all I had was obedience, it was my only survival tool.

The arrival of Kirsty put paid to my sudden introspection, and actually she did look quite like Nicole Kidman, all tendrilly strawberry-blonde hair and alabaster skin. (Also, she was as thin as a rail, but you could have guessed that, I’m sure. How do they all manage it? These women are in their thirties, traditionally not the age to be as insubstantial as a sixteen-year-old. It’s a mystery to me.) Kirsty was sparkily vivacious and I couldn’t understand Emily’s antipathy – until the waiter came and she made him list every mineral water they carried.

Then I offered her a Japanese cracker and she all but shuddered.

‘They’ve only four calories each,’ Emily said. ‘The waiter said.’

Kirsty quirked a know-all eyebrow around the table. ‘They’ve been sitting there for the longest time, with everyone’s hands in and out of them. You wanna eat other people’s germs? Go right ahead!’

Instantly the mood became subdued, even shamefaced. No one went near them after that, and when the waiter finally took them away, relief loosened us.

A girl with a tiny pink T-shirt stretched to the limit over a HUMUNGOUS pair of boobs strolled through the bar. Out and proud, it was like the breasts were taking her for a walk. Everyone knows LA is Plastic Surgery Central, but when you see these human Barbie dolls with your own eyes, it defies belief…

Emily grinned meaningfully at Lara, who regretfully shook her head. ‘Too phoney. The fake ones don’t feel as good.’ She looked down at her own golden cleavage. ‘And I should know.’

‘Too much information!’ Kirsty chided. ‘We so do NOT want to know.’

There she was wrong, actually. Was Lara saying she’d had a boob job? I was fascinated, but too embarrassed to push it. Was it true that sometimes they burst on planes? That if you shine a light underneath them they turn green? That in a swimming pool they float like armbands and you can’t get them beneath the surface for love nor money?

‘Tell Kirsty your news,’ Lara prompted Emily.

Emily succinctly told the story of the forthcoming pitch, and in all fairness to her, Kirsty seemed delighted.