“Hold on a mo, Mo,” said Jazz, and then sniggered. “I'll be back in a mo.” Hey - how come she'd never thought of that joke before?

She rushed over to Maddie.

“Hiya,” she said.

“Hi,” said Maddie shortly.

“Mark just made a confession to me,” continued Jazz.

“Mmm?”

“Mrnmm. It appears he's been hopelessly in love - that was how he put it - with a certain Features Editor whose spiritual home is IKEA.”

Maddie's face lit up. “You're kidding.”

“Nope. Did you have any idea you've been putting your junior through living hell? What kind of a boss are you anyway?”

Maddie was grinning from ear to ear. “A happy one,” she said.

“Well, go and give your employee a full de-briefing. It's way overdue.” Maddie gave her a quick kiss on the cheek and grappled her way to the dance-floor. Mo came over. “Finished?” she asked. “I'm just sorting out everyone's love-life,” Jazz told her. “Because I'm so good at sorting out my own, ha ha.”

Mo followed her eyes to where Harry was now dancing with Mrs. Bennet. The latter was pretending to do a striptease, starting with her scarf, which she had draped over Harry's smiling face. Sara was standing next to him, taking the scarf off and giving it back to its owner, pretending - badly - to find the lark as funny as he did. Harry didn't seem to mind. “He spent the whole week saving your life,” said Mo. Jazz sighed. “Yes, but only because his reputation rested on it,” she said in a hollow voice.

She was so angry with herself she could cry. She'd always scoffed at George for getting so involved in a part that she regularly fell for her co-stars, and yet she had done exactly the same thing. In the past few months, she had felt so empowered by Lizzy, so strengthened by her that she had managed, for a few foolish hours, to get carried away and convince herself that she too could have Lizzy's happy ending.

She looked miserably over to Harry as he laughed and joked with Mrs. Bennet, and she felt too melancholy to look away when his eyes met hers. Had he said he was in love with her merely to bring

out the best in her performance? He was probably that much of a perfectionist — and he was also a convincing actor. If that was the case, had she been that easily readable?

She was drowning in self-pity and humiliation. This is real life, she thought unhappily. This is not some stupid play.

“Listen, give the guy a break,” said Mo. “Remember how terrifying you are. He's probably scared stiff of you.”

“Oh, don't be ridiculous,” said Jazz.

“I am not. You can be truly terrifying. Remember that Scout and Guide camp we went on when we were fourteen? You fancied Jonny Smith.”

Jazz frowned at her. What did that have to do with anything?

“Jazz,” said Mo slowly, “you set fire to his rucksack. And then wondered why he didn't ask you out.”

Jazz smiled in amazement at the memory. She'd forgotten about that. Had she really done something so dangerous? At the time, she'd thought her heart was going to break.

“Well,” she said stubbornly, “that certainly taught him to ogle Melanie Margate instead of me during exercise.”

“Yes,” agreed Mo. “It also taught him how to extinguish a burning T-shirt while still wearing it, and how to sleep on his stomach for the next six months.”

Jazz grimaced and put her head in her hands. It felt heavy. “I didn't think it would take so well,” she said in a muffled voice.

“Face it, Jazz,” said Mo kindly but firmly. “You don't realise how scary you can be sometimes.”

Jazz faced it. “So what do I do? I've already apologised for being a bitch. If he doesn't want me, he doesn't want me. Fact. I'll just kill myself. It's the simplest thing for all.” Somehow just saying that out loud made her feel better.

Mo sighed and put her hands on Jazz's burning cheeks. “I have two things to ask you. One: will you be my Best Woman at my wedding? And Two: when you start going out with Harry Noble, will you still remember me?”

“You're getting married!” Jazz whispered, as though this was the first time she'd been told. “I haven't even asked about the proposal. Tell me everything.”

Mo's face went all dreamy. “It was wonderful,” she confided. “He took me to lunch at the Pont de la Tour. And then afterwards, when we were standing by the Thames at dusk, he proposed.”

They both sighed together. “And what was it like?” asked an enraptured Jazz.

“Well,” started Mo, “for hors d'oeuvres, we had the most amazing—”

“Not the food, Mo, the proposal.”

“Oh.” Mo went all dreamy again. “He got down on one knee — I had no idea he was going to—”

As Mo went on, Jazz maintained her smile, while marvelling that at the turn of the new millennium, intelligent, educated, responsible women still relied on men to decide when, where and how the most important decision of both of their lives was to be made.

“You'll have to help me diet for the big day,” said Mo, when she'd finished her story. She wasn't smiling any more - she had come crashing back to reality.

“Bog off,” retorted Jazz. “Why would I do that? I love you.”

“I mean it,” said Mo. “I've put on loads of weight since I started going out with Gil.”

“I mean it too,” said Jazz equally sincerely. “He doesn't know how lucky he is.” Then she added, as an afterthought, “I'm so happy that you're happy, Mo.” It was the nearest she would ever be able to get to saying “I'm happy you're marrying Gilbert.”

Mo looked at her and gave her a long, slow smile. “Thanks, Jazz,” she said quiedy. And then she returned to her diet stories. “It's not so much a case of how much I eat,” she pondered convinced, as all dieters are, that other people gave a flying fig-roll about their diet tales “but how short a time I do it in. If I only had more time to eat what I want to eat, I'd be fantastically slim.”

Fascinated though Jazz was by the conversation, she noticed Harry come over to the bar near where they stood and get himself a drink. Her palms started to sweat. Mo noticed too and without so much as a glance at Jazz, she rushed headlong on to the dance-floor. Jazz almost wished she hadn't gone. Almost.

Harry was standing just too far away for Jazz to be able to speak to him without moving, yet too near for her to pretend she hadn't seen him. He took long, slow gulps of his beer. Jazz watched his Adam's apple as he gulped. She'd never noticed before how masculine an Adam's apple was. She looked at it in the mirror behind the bar for a while and then realised he was watching her. She felt herself go crimson with embarrassment. She forced herself to smile at him. He tried to smile back while still drinking and beer dribbled down the side of his mouth.

“Nice!” mouthed Jazz at him in the mirror. His shoulders started shaking with laughter and he wiped his face with his hand. He looked so much nicer when he smiled.

She picked a napkin off the counter and handed it to him. She was now standing next to him. “Still a bit of work to do on the old hand-to-mouth co-ordination, eh?” she asked with a grin.

He laughed again. “And I thought I'd just got that sorted,” he said, using the napkin.

He ran his hand through his hair and coughed. Jazz's insides tried valiantly to steady themselves. She just stood there, leaning against the bar, looking up at him. How long did she have before Bambi-legs appeared by his side? She'd better get her apologies out as fast as possible.

“Listen,” she started, “I'm really sorry my family weren't very warm to you.”

“You can stop saying sorry any time now,” he said.

“No, I mean it. I must explain. You see, they have no idea how much they owe you. The only thing they know about you is that you once called me The Ugly Sister. Naturally, they feel protective.”

Harry looked at her blankly. "When did I call you that?”

“At the audition.” She looked a bit sheepish. “I was standing outside. I overheard you.”

Harry clapped his hand to his head. “Jesus, no wonder you acted like I'd raped your mother.”

“Well, something like that, yes,” said Jazz, recoiling from the image. Had she been that bad? Was she really as terrifying as Mo had said? She'd had no idea. Perhaps Mo was right. Perhaps Mo should have the column instead of her. It was becoming more and more obvious to her that whereas she thought she knew everything about people, she did in fact know less than nothing.

Harry leant his elbow on the bar, turned to face her and tried not to make too much fuss of sitting down on the stool behind him. It lowered him enough to make their faces almost level. Smooth, thought Jazz, and started playing with the napkin that was now lying between them.

With a look of intense concentration, Harry started speaking.

“I'm sorry I called you an unknown hack,” he said very slowly. “It was a stupid, insensitive, arrogant thing to say. Will you ever forgive me for being a prize dickhead?”

“Of the highest order,” completed Jazz.

“Of the highest order,” he repeated obediently.

“Well,” she said, heaving her shoulders. “On one condition.”

“Hmm?” He tried not to smile. He failed.

“You forgive me for all the horrendous things I said to you that night.”

“I deserved every single one.”

“No, you didn't!”

“I did. You were absolutely right - I was an obnoxious prat. I deserved all of it. Although perhaps the shoving part was a bit hard. I still have a bruise.”

They grinned briefly at each other then both seemed suddenly fascinated by their footwear. Jazz was about to thank him for saving her career when he started talking.