Olivia Joules and the Overactive Imagination by Helen Fielding Page A

bugging. Maybe it was the nosy, overly chatty bellboy with the bulging muscles and strange facial hair. Maybe the bellboy was working for the tabloids and had thought a celebrity was going to be checking into Olivia’s room and had planted the bug.
    By six-thirty she had psyched herself into thinking it was all completely okay. It was fine. She would just have this last fun dinner and then go back to London and start to rebuild the tattered remnants of her journalistic career.
    Then she stepped out of her room and lost her cool again. What was she doing? Was she out of her mind? She was about to have dinner, alone, she didn’t know where, with an al-Qaeda terrorist who knew she was on to him. There was no positive scenario. Feramo didn’t want to have her to dinner, he wanted to have her for dinner. Still, at least the blotches on her face didn’t show now.
     
    The elevator doors opened.
    “Oh, my dear, what has happened to your face?”
    It was the wrinkly voice-coach lady, Carol.
    “Oh, nothing. I, er, had a facial,” said Olivia, stepping inside. “Have you been working with the actors at the auditions?”
    “Yes, well. Not just the audition people.”
    Olivia looked at her quickly. She seemed to be troubled.
    “Oh, really? So you’re not just working with the actors then?” She decided to risk a bit of boldness. “You work with the rest of the team as well?”
    Carol looked her straight in the eye. She seemed to be thinking a lot of things that she couldn’t say.
    “I always thought it was only actors who needed voice coaches,” said Olivia lightly.
    “People change their accents for all sorts of reasons, don’t they?”
    p. 87 The elevator doors opened to the lobby. Suraya was crossing their line of vision, radiant against the white walls.
    “What do you reckon?” said Olivia conspiratorially, nodding towards Suraya. “Malibu with a touch of Bombay?”
    “Hounslow,” Carol said. She wasn’t laughing.
    “And Pierre Feramo?” whispered Olivia, as they stepped out of the elevator. “Cairo? Khartoum?”
    “That’s not for me to say, is it?” Carol said overbrightly, never taking her eyes off Olivia’s. “Anyway. Have a lovely evening.” She gave a brittle smile and, pulling her cardigan around her, headed off towards the parking valet.

Chapter 18
     
    p. 88 O livia approached the reception desk and asked to have the charges since her arrival and all future charges taken off the Elan account and moved onto her credit card. It was turning into an expensive trip, but a girl has her pride. As she waited, the nosy bellboy with the goatee beard and muscles appeared.
    “Leaving, Ms. Joules?” he said. There was something far too clever and self-possessed about him for a bellboy.
    “Not yet.”
    “Enjoying your stay?”
    “Yes, apart from the microphone in the room,” she said softly, watching his face.
    “I’m sorry?”
    “You heard.”
    The receptionist returned just as a vaguely familiar, nastily sweet smell invaded her nostrils. Olivia turned. It was Alfonso, chest hair protruding from a polo shirt, which this time was pink.
    “Olivia, I was beginning to think you would never appear. I was going to call up to your room.”
    The accumulated stress erupted in a burst of irritation.
    “Why? Are you coming to dinner as well?” she snapped.
    For a second Alfonso looked hurt. He was a funny chap. All oiliness and bluster, but she had the feeling that underneath he was suffering from low self-esteem.
    p. 89 “Of course not. Mr. Feramo simply wanted me to make sure you arrived safely. The car is waiting for you.”
    “Oh. Okay. Well, thanks,” she said, feeling a bit mean.
    “My God, what happened to your face?”
    It was going to be a long evening.
     
    Alfonso led her out and proudly pointed to the “car.” It was a white stretch limo, the sort that people from out of town ride up and down Sunset Boulevard in on bachelor nights, wearing brightly colored wigs. As the driver held