Dolphin-san: Hey there. I know that last time I updated I asked if someone could give me a hand and beta my work, but I've been trying to send this chapter to one of the people who volunteered to help for the last couple of hours, and its not working, so I give up. If you come across something like bad spelling or grammar then please tell me in a review.

Thank you.

Chapter 7

'Here he is,' said Takao, who was pulling on his jacket and preparing to lock up. 'What happened, Ray? We were beginning to think you'd fallen into the tumble dryer.'

Ray didn't even hear him. He was too busy looking at Hungry and Homeless.

With his shiny clean hair.

And his red crewneck sweater worn over a dark green shirt.

And his black trousers and highly polished black shoes.

Slowly, very slowly, he breathed in.

And his Christian Dior aftershave . . .

'Time for that explanation now?' His light eyebrows lifted slightly as he spoke. 'I could take you out to dinner if you're hungry. Or if you'd prefer, just a drink.'

Ray had a small but interested audience. Bev, Corinne and Lucy, all with their coats on, were loitering at the desk, clearly dying to know what he'd been getting up to in his free time.

This guy's spent the last month sitting outside the shoe shop up the road, he marvelled. Between them, they must have walked past him at least fifty times.

And none of them had the slightest idea who he was.

'Why would I want to have dinner with you?' Ray squealed, outraged by his colossal nerve. 'I mean, seriously, how gullible do you think I am?'

'So,' the guy grinned at him, 'just a drink then.'

'No.' Ray backed away as the man reached into his back pocket. 'No dinner, no drink, no nothing. How do I know you're not a raving psychopath?'

Having pulled his wallet out of his pocket, he said in a reassuring voice, 'Actually, that's a good sign. If you really thought I was a psychopath, you'd have kept it to yourself, you wouldn't accuse me of being one. I'm not, anyway,' he went on, sliding a card out of the wallet and holding it towards Ray. 'I'm a journalist.'

Ray looked at the NUJ card. It belonged to someone called Kai Hiwatari.

There wasn't a photograph on it. 'All this tells me is that you mugged a journalist and stole his wallet.'

His expression truculent, Ray shrugged and passed the card back.

Takao intercepted it.

'Ray, come on, lighten up. The guy's a journalist. He was researching a piece about how it feels to be out on the streets. You blew his cover and called him some terrible names, but still he's forgiven you.' Takao reached for the door; it was time to lock up and go home. 'For heavens sake, let him buy you dinner.'

Ray hesitated. Behind Takao, Bev was saucer-eyed and nodding so fast her false eyelashes were in danger of falling off.

Nothing about Bev was real.

'Just something simple, a pizza maybe.' Kai Hiwatari – if that was his name – gave him a nod of encouragement.

Sod that, Ray though indignantly, he owes me more than a lousy pizza.

If he's taking me to dinner, we're going to go somewhere expensive.

They went to Langan's Brasserie, an Stratton Street. It wasn't a restaurant Ray had ever been to before, nut he'd heard enough about it to know it probably cost a bomb.

Well, good.

As far as Ray was concerned, the bigger the bomb the better.

And he was going to order the priciest thing on the menu.

'I'm glad you changed your mind about coming out,' said Kai Hiwatari, when the waiter had taken their order.

'I didn't have a lot of choice.'

Ray fiddled with his cutlery. He still had a terrible urge to pinch the other man. He had humiliated him and he couldn't forgive him just like that.

'I've got your wine glasses in the car, by the way. You left them behind yesterday.'

His eyes were friendly. He was willing Ray to smile back at him.

'Look, what do you expect me to do?' Ray demanded stroppily. 'Say thank you and apologise for yelling at you? Because I don't see why I should. You made a fool of me, you let me give you sandwiches . . . and chocolate . . . and a crappy old scarf . . . Do you have any idea how stupid that makes me feel?'

'Okay, let me explain.' His voice was soothing, as if he were dealing with a toddler on the verge of a tantrum. 'I couldn't give your food to a genuine homeless person but I made a donation in your name to the Salvation Army, so someone else could have a meal on your behalf. And any money I was given went to them too. You don't have to worry,' he assured Ray, 'nobody missed out.'

Except me, thought Ray, all the times I shared my lunch with you when I could have eaten it all myself.

Depriving oneself of chocolate wasn't the easiest thing to do. Heavens, it was practically an unnatural act.

Ray sighed, silently mourning the loss of all those Mars Bars.

'So how long do you have to keep this up?' Curiosity finally overcame belligerence. 'Seems like a lot of work for one article.'

'I've finished. Friday was my last day.' His dark eyes registered amusement. 'You can have your scarf back as well, if you like.'

Their first course arrived. Ray dived greedily into his scallops.

'Bet you were glad to be able to wash your hair.'

'I washed it every night,' said Kai Hiwatari. With a shrug he added, 'And rubbed Mazola into it every morning.'

Ugh, imagine.

'Still seems like a lot for one magazine article.'

He laid down his fork and looked at Ray.

'What?' Ray wondered why he was looking at him like that. 'Do I have cream on my chin?'

'No. This wasn't for a magazine article. It's for TV.'

'Don't be daft,' Ray scoffed, 'you need cameras for TV. You need lights, and those clapperboard things, and directors with megaphones shouting Action.'

'For Lethal Weapon, maybe,' said Kai Hiwatari, 'but not for a documentary. Not this kind anyway.'

'You still need a camera.'

He nodded.

'I know.'

'And you definitely didn't have one.'

'Actually, we did. In the shoe shop.'

Oh, good grief. Ray almost choked on a scallop. If the camera had been strategically placed behind him, that meant . . .

'Are you telling me I'm going to be in this documentary?'

'Oh yes. The producer's crazy about you. If he has his way,' Kai Hiwatari looked as if he was enjoying himself, 'you'll end up a star.'

Ray was appalled. Terrible mental images spiralled through his mind, all of the times he'd raced up the road to see him in his scruffy black jacket with the wind and rain splattering his hair in all directions.

Oh God, and when it was cold his nose always went bright red, like a Comic Relief one.

'That is so unfair,' he blurted out, loudly enough to startle the couple at the next table. 'Why couldn't you have warned me? What am I going to look like?'

Amused, Kai Hiwatari said, 'According to Tony, everyone's going to fall in love with you.'

'Oh yes, and by this time next year I'll be a world-famous model, all five foot eight of me.' It wasn't funny. Ray quailed, imagining the hideous footage they must have of him on their beastly hidden camera. 'Couldn't you do some of the filming again?' he pleaded desperately. 'Give me a chance to comb my hair and make myself presentable?'

'You shared your lunch with me. How you look isn't important.'

'You could blur me out,' Ray had a brainwave, 'have one of those splodgy things covering my face, like they do with criminals who aren't allowed to be identified.'

'Look, if you're really against this,' said Kai Hiwatari, 'you could always say no.'

Ray gazed at him, startled.

'I can?'

'Obviously we need your permission to use you. If it bothers you that much,' he said simply, 'refuse to give it.'

'Oh!'

Ray was taken aback. He hadn't expected him to say this.

He wasn't completely anti the thought of being on television. In fact, secretly, he was quite taken with the idea.

If only he could appear looking . . . well, a bit better.

More of a human being basically. And less like of a dog.

Yuck, dilemma.

Kai Hiwatari had finished his first course. 'You're dithering. Maybe you should just say no.' Nodding at Ray's plate, he added, 'I won't get stroppy and march you out of here, if that's what you're worried about. You can finish your meal. Although . . .'

Ray hurriedly forked the last scallop into his mouth before he could change his mind.

'Although what?'

'No, I was just thinking it could be nice publicity for the salon.' He shrugged, indicating the Takao Kinomiya logo on the front of Ray's midnight-blue T-shirt. 'But that wouldn't benefit you, would it? Only your boss.'

Only his boss?

Ray's brain leapt to attention. Kai Hiwatari might have dismissed the idea already, but that was because he didn't know him.

It was actually a powerful incentive.

The prospect of massive Brownie points wasn't to be sneezed at. Particularly by a humble employee who couldn't help feeling sometimes that he was only hanging on to his job by the skin of his teeth.

For instance, thought Ray, someone like me.

Actually, quite a lot like me.

'Publicity for the salon would be good,' he agreed cautiously as their next course arrived. 'I'd be happy with that.' His lamb cutlets glistened in the candlelight, weakening his resolve. 'Oh, I don't know . . . it's just the thought of all those people seeing me on TV and yelling, "God, look at the state of him, what a loser." They'd probably think I fancied you.' Ray winced at the idea. 'That I'm so sad, ugly and desperate that chatting up beggars and bribing them with sandwiches is my only hope.'

It would have been nice if, at this point, Kai Hiwatari could have protested, 'Oh now, come along, you're not ugly!'

But he didn't. Chivalry clearly wasn't his thing. He just smiled that irritating half-smile of his again and said, 'Okay, they might think that.'

Thanks a lot, thought Ray, deeply miffed.

'Then again, when they see you being interviewed in the second half of the programme . . . well, that's when they'll realise they were wrong, won't they?'

Interviewed?

Ray's glass of wine was halfway to his mouth. It stopped dead.

'Hang on, what interview?'

'It's a fifty-minute programme. In the first half,' Kai Hiwatari explained, 'we use the hidden camera footage. The viewers get the chance to make up their own minds about the people they see. People like you, who try and help, as well as the other kind,' he said evenly, 'the ones who yelled at me to get a job. Not to mention the bunch of kids who stole my money and gave me a kicking.'

Ray's eyes widened in horror.

'They didn't! Were you hurt?'

'Pretty bruised.' Briefly he pushed up the sleeve of his sweater, revealing the boot-shaped mark on his forearm. 'I won't show you the rest.'

'Bastards!'

Ray had forgotten all about dinner. The lamb cutlets were growing cold on his plate.

'Goes with the territory.' With a shrug, Kai rolled his sleeve down again. 'Anyway, so that's the first half. In the second, we run a series of interviews with the people our audience have come to know. Most of them good, some bad. You'd be one of the good guys, of course.' He paused for a second. 'That is, if you agreed to appear.'

Oh well, this changed everything.

'Where would I be interviewed?'

Ray was by this time quite breathless with excitement.

'That's up to you. The plan is to interweave different strands. Walking along the street . . . at work . . . in your own home, if you'd be happy with that. You're a young guy, a salon junior,' he explained with enthusiasm, 'without much money yourself. If the viewers see you living in a crappy bedsitter, they'll warm to you even more.'

Crappy bedsitter?

'If my landlady heard you saying that,' Ray told him, 'she'd run you over with her wheelchair.'

'That was your landlady, was it? I thought she must be your grandmother.'

'Oh dear, now she's going to run you over twice.'

Kai shook his head.

'I'm sorry, I'm a journalist, I can't help asking questions. What were you doing out with your landlady yesterday, drinking wine up on Parliament Hill?'

'She has arthritis. I look after her a bit, do stuff do her, in exchange for not paying much rent.' Forking up some asparagus, Ray moved swiftly on to more interesting matters. 'So in these interviews I'd be able to wear nice clothes?'

'Of course.'

'And I could have my hair looking nice?'

Solemnly, Kai Hiwatari nodded.

'So they'd definitely know I wasn't ugly and desperate.' Ray heaved a sigh of relief. That's fine then, I'll do it.'

'Great.'

Belatedly, a horrid thought struck him.

'Oh! Except there's one bit you mustn't show.'

'Don't tell me,' Kai Hiwatari intercepted with a grin, 'the stolen gloves.'

Ray was indignant. 'How did you know?'

'Tony and I ran through a few tapes this morning. That was his favourite bit.'

'Well he can't use it,' Ray said firmly.

''I did warn him.' Another broad grin. 'I had a feeling you might say that.'

The bill for the meal was astronomical. Ray determinedly didn't feel guilty; if Kai Hiwatari was involved in making TV programmes, he must be rolling in it.

Anyway, there was still the small matter of the other lie he had told him. A totally unnecessary lie, Ray thought, considering that when he'd said it, his cover had already been blown.

'You still haven't told me why you and your landlady were out on the heath yesterday, drinking wine out of Waterford crystal glasses.'

He was driving Ray home in his scruffy BMW. Ray, sitting next to him nursing the two glasses on his lap, cast a sidelong glance at the others profile.

'And you haven't told me why you said you weren't married.'

The traffic lights ahead turned red. Kai braked and turned to look at Ray.

'Because I'm not.'

He sounded so genuinely surprised. Fine, Ray accepted that. You didn't have to be married to have a child.

'Okay,' he persisted, 'but you were with your son yesterday. Why did you say you weren't his father?'

'Charlie, you mean? I'm not his father.'

Journalists, honestly. You couldn't trust them farther than you could throw them.

Kai Hiwatari's mouth was twitching. The lights turned green and he let out the clutch.

'Charlie's my sister's son. I'm his uncle.'

Dolphin-san: Well there you go. The little boy wasn't Kai's son, or little brother, but his nephew! Well, please review people.

Ja Ne