Page 1 of Vine

PROLOGUE

CASPIAN - TWO MONTHS EARLIER

Planning sessions forMy Big Gay Adventureswere once unforgettable. Like a cool rock band, the three of us—Leigh, Jonas, and me—used to throw ideas around for hours, riffing off each other and vying to come up with the most outlandish suggestion. Skydiving, for example. That crazy idea turned into our first season, aired six years ago. I broke my coccyx, my right collarbone, and my late father’s watch. My battered body eventually recovered. The timepiece perished.

But yay! We were flying! Who cared about cuts and bruises when our little TV show landed on the nation’s radar? Five more seasons were commissioned on the back of that surprise hit. We went from strength to strength. For instance, four years ago (season three), I took a crash course in pastry cheffing, before blagging my way through running the dessert kitchen of a Michelin-starred restaurant in Paris for a week. In retrospect, the intensity placed an impossible strain on both my marriage, to Leigh, and my mental health.

Then Leigh and I got divorced. If it had been up to me, I’d have walked away after the tapdancing (season five), but barringdeath or a nuclear holocaust, our contracts were as watertight as a duck’s arse. None of us could afford to leave the show until our final pay cheques were safely deposited in the bank, never mind renegue on our contracts and face being sued.

Today, in preparation for season six, the three of us were endeavouring to conduct a sensible, well-mannered business meeting. Tricky when Jonas was not only our producer, but my permanent replacement in Leigh’s bed. So here we were. As if being stabbed in the back by them both wasn’t enough, I was contractually obliged to hang around and let them suck the blood from my fucking wounds.

Jonas’s office had a synthetic odour, evocative of cheap air scents liberally squirted to cover up unpleasant bathroom smells. I refrained from snidely pointing that out, because, as Jonas was so keen to remind me, we were all grown adults. So far, the three of us had behaved as such, although unspoken rancour hung in the air of his cramped lair thicker than a June haze.

With one foot out the door, whatever was thrown at me this year, I’d suck it up. Well, up to a point. I’d graciously declined training as a cage fighter. Having an accident-prone nature and below average height (five feet six inches), combined with the build of an emaciated grasshopper, getting pummelled into a coma wasn’t the sport for me. Granted, if Leigh had been my opponent, I may have reconsidered.

“As long as I’m not stuck in that bloody sauna of a kitchen with that bloody French diva Gaston Soufflé again, I don’t care,” I grumbled. Way too many bad memories.

“I’m not sure any of us want to live through the trauma of that again, Caspy,” Leigh murmured, his voice saccharine sweet. “He wasn’t the only diva in the kitchen, now, was he?”

Fucker.

“I’ll have you know I poured a lot of myself into that seven-layered mango, coconut, and passionfruit mousse.”

The last layer being clinical depression.

Jonas smirked. “And didn’t we know it.”

“Did you?” I accused, rounding on him. “I had the impression you were too busy pouring a more modestly sized portion of yourself into my husband.”

I didn’t need an answer, which was fortunate, because he didn’t deign to offer one. They’d been shagging even back then, except I’d been too blinded by my own sweat and kitchen fat to see it. But hey, at least no one was poisoned or died, though I did slice off the tip of my left little finger. I can still throw together a uniformly crisp meringue.

“Resurrecting an overgrown vineyard it is then,” Leigh concluded, shuffling our newly signed contracts like a deck of cards. I’d always admired his strong, capable hands—less so now that the left one no longer bore a wedding band. “A gentler pace this season. It’s just as well. The latest audience figures show our demographic is ageing with us. And I’m not sure my back would survive another arduous physical challenge.”

Too much sex?I was tempted to ask, but, outnumbered and reining in my general bitchiness, I stayed silent.

Shifting in his plastic chair, Leigh straightened, rubbing his lumbar region. A part of his anatomy I used to delight in rubbing for him. “I blame those racing car bucket seats. I should sue the production company.”

My money was still on sex; these days, during my current drought, my back was about the only part of me that didn’t creak. Though those seats had been bloody uncomfortable. With our ratings soaring, season four saw us learning to drive a Formula 3 racing car. I finished an unexpected fifth at Silverstone. Hurtling at breakneck speeds around a racetrack on four slick tyres did wonders for my depression, replacing it witha hefty dose of adrenaline-fuelled anxiety. Furthermore, by a minor miracle, I emerged from the experience physically intact.

Psychologically, however, on confirming I’d signed up to an open marriage, my nerves shattered for good. So, no broken bones this time, merely a broken heart. And a growing tendency to favour long sleeves.

“I’ll massage it for you later, hon,” piped up Jonas, the smug, husband-stealing wanker. “I don’t think the vineyard thing has been done by anyone on terrestrial telly for a while. And the last Ipsos data showed our viewer demographic is still mostly in the middle income 30- to 40-something age bracket, who consider themselves sophisticated wine drinkers.”

Cheap Prosecco drinkers, more like. As the loving couple exchanged a fond look, my tea threatened to revolt.

“The tap-dancing didn’t help,” mused Leigh, still prodding his spine. “I mastered it, but I’ve not got the right frame to be jigging like I’m Michael bloody Flatley for hours on end.”

Leigh’s finest talent was bringing any conversation back around to himself. Season seven should be a one-man show centred around that. “Jigging,” I snarked. “Is that what the kids are calling it these days.”

Twelve months ago, Leigh and I frostily tap-danced in the chorus line on Broadway, jazz-handing our way through the routine from opposite ends, as far apart from each other as staging and choreography allowed. I discovered I was much better at tap than an open marriage. When the show’s short run came to an end, Leigh marked the occasion by issuing divorce papers. My psychiatrist marked it by prescribing mirtazapine alongside my regular dose of venlafaxine.

AndImarked it by rekindling an old teenage love affair between my razorblade and the tender flesh of my inner forearms.

Granted, I should have seen it coming; the real shocker was how long Jonas took to make his move. Nine months of every year spent in the close confines of filming a television series blurred the lines between friendship and sexual attraction. Romantic possibility emerged, mixed with emotional intimacy and a physical proximity—or so they told me afterwards. Totally normal, they insisted, like it had been hypothesised and proven in a scientific journal somewhere. And, as Leigh coaxed me to give the disastrous threesome with Jonas a whirl, open marriages were increasingly common, weren’t they?

“The timing for the vineyard show is good, too,” piped up Jonas, as if our catty exchange had taken place in my head. “Filming for nine months, from January to the grape harvest, which is early to mid-September, depending on the weather. We’ll resurrect the vines, add in a bit about sustainable environmental crap, make friends with some country bumpkins and discover something about our own personalities and hitherto-unknown love of the great outdoors along the way. Another winning formula. Sunday-evening television gold.”

I’d learned quite enough about Leigh and Jonas’s personalities for one lifetime. And Regent’s Park was plenty countryside for this city dweller. But, as Jonas pointed out, vines grew outdoors, which meant we would not beindoors, cramped together in a small room. Like now.

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