Maid for Advertising - Susie Tate Page 0,21

through me. I could feel the hairs standing up on the back of my arms. And the atmosphere in the room was electric. After she played the last few chords and held the final note, the room plunged into silence. There was a shocked pause followed by applause much louder than I would have thought possible from that number of people.

“That is it,” Ben shouted to me over the cheers and clapping.

“What?” I replied, not taking my eyes off Urvi who was looking a little bewildered and still sitting at the piano.

“That is what I want for the campaign. You get her and you build an ad around that song and you’ve got the job.”

*****

Urvi

“You don’t understand,” I said, grabbing Mr Blight’s arm in desperation. “I really need to eat now. If you’d just let me explain, I –”

“I do not have time to listen to tales of your digestive system, Miss Radia,” he snapped. I suspected he was still a bit cheesed off about my performance earlier. Maybe he was worried that I’d get above myself just because I’d played a couple of songs for the honoured guests. I’d changed back into my uniform and he’d made me “wipe that muck” off my face so I was now virtually unrecognisable from the girl on stage. But I needed to eat.

“Get back out there and work. You can do what everyone else does and sneak a couple of canapés on the way. Better yet, eat that slice of leftover cake.”

Short Man Syndrome, as Kira had now officially christened him, had promised us a thirty minute break before starting the dinner service, but now apparently the guests wanted to move dinner forward, so there was no longer time for the staff to actually eat themselves. Something about a nightclub hired for the guests’ exclusive use that night (snobby bastards couldn’t bring themselves to mingle with the plebs) and they all wanted to get out there and “be seen”.

Dicks.

“I can’t eat the cake and I –”

“Shut up!” he shouted and everyone in the kitchen stopped what they were doing to look our way. “I don’t need to hear this shit. Now get out there and serve the guests like you’re being paid very handsomely to do.”

He shoved a tray of smoked salmon cheesy things into my hands and waved me away. I sighed, balanced the tray on one hand and threw a couple of the stupidly small canapés into my mouth. They would in no way compensate for the relatively large dose of insulin I’d just injected, but I would just have to steal some more as the evening went on. Hopefully the wankpuffins would be outta there and off to their swanky club before I had a hypo.

I had type one diabetes. My body did not produce any insulin at all. In order for my body to use the carbohydrate and sugar in the food I ate I had to inject insulin. With my diabetes being termed brittle, I had trouble getting the balance of insulin and blood sugar right at the best of times. If I injected enough insulin for a full meal, but did not then have a chance to eat a full meal, I risked my blood sugar dropping dangerously low. On the other hand, not enough insulin and my blood sugar could rise too high. In the short term both scenarios could mean becoming very ill. Even resulting in coma and death. I’d been admitted to hospital before with diabetic ketoacidosis as a consequence of my blood sugar being too high and my blood becoming acidic. It was not an experience I ever wanted to repeat.

After thirty minutes of wandering around with a too-heavy tray the nausea started and my vision became a little blurry. I could feel a trickle of sweat down my back and a fine tremor ran through my hands. Jack continued to ignore me. But I felt so ill that standing in the middle of his circle of Important Humans, offering around stupidly small canapés and then tall flutes of champagne, that being totally ignored by Jack didn’t cut me as much as before. He did spare me a glance and a small frown, but turned away and shook his head a moment later. No doubt I looked like death warmed over and was offending his sensitive, important eyeballs.

“When’rey leavin?” I said in a slurred whisper to Kira. My mouth didn’t seem to want to cooperate and form proper sentences. When she glanced