Natasha has been audibly tip-tapping here, there and everywhere this month: sashaying into the tearoom to insist on Fallon and Emma playing crap music, sticking her shiny Louboutin-clad foot in it with Helen Archer. (OK, her boots are probably from Felpersham Russell & Bromley, but it’s only a matter of time before the upgrade, given her lust for world domination). She has also been sporting her waterproof mascara at Denise’s Zumba class, erecting foully tasteless arches of artificial wisteria around the tearoom door, and reminding hapless hack Rebecca Price that she is paid to provide advertorial, not to uphold a free press and local democracy by actually doing some reporting. (Such is the sad decline of the Borsetshire Echo – not that, unfortunately, Ms Price is a great advertisement for the ethics of journalism.)
Grey Gables, finally edging towards its soft reopening, feels as if it might need a name change: those gables don’t feel very grey any more, what with the super-luxury spa, the ballroom with its retractable stage and the soon-to-be-opened bistro. Lily Pargetter is about to do a work experience placement there; you might more accurately call it an industrial espionage placement, owing to the drain of staff from her family pile of Lower Loxley towards those newly Gleaming Gables.
