‘Sure. If you’ll ring that maniac Frieda Kiely about Saturday’s shoot.’

Lisa had gone ahead with her threat to reshoot most of the Frieda Kiely fashion piece.

‘Ashling, Trix and Mercedes, cancel Friday night, we’ll all be working on Saturday,’ Lisa announced. ‘We need bodies to carry the clothes, fetch coffees, that kind of thing.’

There was a shocked clamour of complaint but it didn’t do anyone any good.

‘She’s a slave-driving bitch,’ Ashling wailed that night over dinner in Mao with Marcus. ‘The biggest bully I’ve ever met in my whole life.’

‘Don’t hold back,’ Marcus urged, pouring her a glass of wine. ‘Go on, have a good old rant.’

‘Ah no.’ Ashling ran a stressed hand through psychiatric-looking hair. ‘It’s just that she’s such a pushy bitch, she doesn’t seem to care that any one of us has a life outside her precious bloody magazine. And when are we supposed to sleep? Or eat? Or wash our clothes?…’

By the time Ashling finally stopped she’d drunk most of the bottle of wine and was in much better form. ‘Just listen to me, I sound like a nutter!’ she exclaimed, her face rosy. ‘Oh don’t! I’ve had enough.’ She tried to stop Marcus pouring the last of the wine into her glass.

‘Go on,’ he insisted. ‘Get that inside you, you need to keep your strength up.’

‘Thanks. God, I feel better,’ she groaned, slumping in relief against the banquette. ‘Psychotic episode over, I’ll act normal now.’

Lingering over coffee, they speculated about the other customers. It was a game they usually played, attributing stories, indeed entire lives, to the people around them.

‘How about him?’ Marcus indicated a weather-beaten older man, wearing sandals over socks, who had just walked in.

Ashling considered thoughtfully, ‘A priest home on holidays from the missions,’ she finally concluded.

Marcus was greatly tickled. ‘Hmmm, funny girl, arncha?’ Admiration softened his voice, then he nodded across the restaurant at two young men drinking hot chocolate and eating cheesecake. ‘And what about that pair?’

Ashling wrestled with her opinion. Perhaps she shouldn’t voice it, but the wine got the upper hand and eventually she said, ‘OK, it’s probably not politically correct to say so, but I reckon they’regay’

‘Why?’

‘Because… well, lots of reasons. Straight men don’t eat together, they have pints together. And they don’t sit opposite each other, they sit side by side and refuse to make eye-contact. And the eating-cake thing – macho men are too afraid that it looks sissy. Gay men are much less hung-up.’

Then Marcus narrowed his eyes thoughtfully. ‘But look Ashling, they’re wearing leathers and they’ve got helmets beside them on the floor. What if I was to say to you, “Dutch or German bikers touring Ireland”?’

‘Of course!’ Instantly it was all clear to Ashling. ‘They’re foreign. Foreign men can eat cake without anyone thinking they’re gay.’ A few years back she’d had a one-weekend stand with a visiting Swiss boy who had publicly eaten a raspberry meringue with charming unselfconsciousness.

‘It’s kind of sad for Irish men,’ Marcus remarked.

‘Sure is.’ And they both laughed, the heat in her solar plexus matched by the warmth in his eyes.

At this precise moment, life isn’t so bad, Ashling acknowledged.

At eight-thirty on Saturday morning Ashling turned up at the studio, dragging two huge suitcases of clothes that she’d collected from the Frieda Kiely press office the night before. She’d never been on a proper fashion shoot before so, despite her resentment, she couldn’t help being excited and curious.

Niall the photographer and his assistant had already arrived. So had the make-up girl. Even Dani, the model, was there. Which twisted Lisa’s face into a look of scorn – real models were always at least half a day late.

‘Who’s styling this?’ Niall asked.

‘Me,’ Lisa said.

Mercedes looked like she wanted to kill her. She was the fashion editor, she should be styling it.

Lisa, Niall and the make-up girl went into a huddle around Dani while Lisa outlined her ideas. Though Niall declared they were ‘genius’, Ashling and Trix exchanged nonplussed glances when Dani was finally ready. She was dressed in one of Frieda’s mad floaty creations, made up with streaks of mud on her face and straw in her long black hair, then positioned on a chrome and white-leather couch. A half-eaten pizza lay beside her and a chrome remote control was placed in her hands. Apparently she was supposed to be watching telly. There was much talk of ‘irony’ and ‘contrast’.

‘It looks fucking stupid,’ Trix whispered to Ashling.

‘Yeh, I don’t get it at all.’

The setting up took for ever – the equipment, the lighting, the angle at which Dani was slumped on the couch, the way the folds of the dress fell.

‘Dani, love, the remote control’s blocking the detailing on the bodice. Hold it lower. No, lower. No, a little bit higher…’

Finally, finally, they were ready.

‘Look bored,’ Niall urged Dani.

‘I am.’

So were Ashling and Trix. They had simply had no idea how tedious this was going to be.

After checking something called ‘the level’ several more times, finally Niall pronounced the scene satisfactory. But just as he was about to start, Mercedes darted forward and tweaked Dani’s skirt.

‘It was a bit bunched,’ she lied. Mercedes so resented Lisa hijacking the shoot that she kept manufacturing work for herself to pretend that she mattered.

It took another fifteen minutes before Niall was ready again, and just at the point when they thought he was going to depress the button on his camera and actually take a picture, he paused and came out from behind his tripod to remove an invisible strand of hair from Dani’s face. Ashling bit back a scream. Would he ever, ever take the effing photo?

‘I’m slowly losing the will to live,’ Trix said between clenched teeth.

Eventually Niall took a shot. Then he changed lenses and took some more. Then he changed to a black and white film. Then he changed camera. Then the entire production upped sticks and went to a supermarket for more shots. Where people wheeling their trolleyful of groceries went into convulsions at the sight of the rail-thin, muddy-faced model being photographed bending over the frozen chickens. Ashling was acutely embarrassed – and worried. ‘These pictures are going to look ridiculous, we’ll never be able to use them.’