Читать книгу After the Break - Penny Smith - Страница 7

In a minimalist flat in Chelsea, the radio alarm clicked. Ten o’clock. It was the most beautiful crisp, wintry morning. The sun was shining in a pale blue sky, there was a light wind, and a bird was chirping somewhere nearby.

There was no reason for Katie to put an alarm on, but she felt that grown-ups ought to have some sort of structure or things would start to go wrong. Not that she had always believed that. In the weeks and months following her sacking from Hello Britain!, she had relished the shapelessness of her days. Afternoons running into evenings, late evenings running into two days later…the strangeness of looking at her watch and not having a clue whether it was five in the morning or five in the afternoon. But that had become boring in itself. Boring and, much worse than that, it had made her fatter and spottier. Eating outside normal hours resulted in endless snacking from nearby fast-food outlets–and organic chocolate was still chocolate.

She stretched and eventually pulled herself away from Woman’s Hour on Radio 4 to make herself a pot of tea. She clicked her computer on, and as it hummed into life, she pulled a couple of eyelashes out as she contemplated the day. For some reason, gently pulling on eyelashes until one gave itself up made her feel happy. She examined them closely. Good thick bulbous roots.

‘I feel heppy,’ she said out loud, in an upper-crust accent. ‘Oi feel ’appy,’ she said again, using a really bad East End accent. ‘Eye feel haffy,’ she said, stretching her lips really thinly, and keeping her teeth together.

She spooned loose leaves into the teapot and put a mug, a strainer and a nice milk jug onto a tray. Even at her most slovenly (and slovenly, for Katie, meant socks worn two days in a row), she liked a proper tea tray. She went back to bed, pulled the duvet up and grabbed her laptop as her tea mashed. ‘Je suis heureuse,’ she said huskily, with her head on one side as she clicked on her emails. ‘Ich bin happy,’ she reiterated, with her chin jutting forward.

A number of little boxes popped up, and Katie (happily) went through them. ‘Hmm,’ she said, as one opened with a job offer, passed on from her agent’s office. She read it thoroughly, then went back to the beginning to read it again.

On Woman’s Hour, they were discussing wages. ‘Because of the difference in wages for men and women, basically for one month of the year, women don’t get paid,’ someone was saying.

‘Oh, yes, they jolly well might,’ Katie said to the radio, getting out of bed to find her phone.

She called her agent.

‘Jim Break.’

‘Katie Fisher,’ she announced.

‘Well, hello, Ms Fisher. I can only assume you’re calling about the offer from Celebrity X-Treme that I sent you on email last night.’

‘That I am,’ she said.

‘And what are your thoughts?’

‘Well, my first thought is what a lot of money. My second is…what is everyone else being offered? My third is…who is everyone else? My fourth is…has it bloody well come to this? Because we both know that unless I get an offer of a job pretty damn smartish, I’m going to run out of savings. There’s a limit to how many articles I can write about being a woman in her forties on television. Or a woman in her forties off television, to be more accurate. And guesting on shows where they’ve run out of guests.’

‘Well, going through those questions in no particular order…I agree that you haven’t exactly been inundated with offers. But you need to think very hard before taking on something like this. It could be the worst career decision you’ve ever made. You know as well as I do what the producers will be hoping to get from you. And they’ll be doing all they can to make sure you either do the things they’re expecting…or look like you’re doing them.’

‘If you’re talking about the drinking and the men, I think we can safely say that I’m over that. I haven’t been hammered for months, and I am, of course, going out with the scrummy Adam, thank you very much.’

‘Well, my advice–for what it’s worth–is not to do it. Yes,’ he pressed on, sensing her interruption, ‘I know you need the cash and it is a large sum, but is it large enough to live on for the rest of your life? Even if you do get a few things off the back of it, you’ll soon find them drying up if you’ve ruined your credibility’

‘That’s all well and good but I need to eat in the meantime. Do you know anyone else they’ve asked? And what they might have been offered in the filthy-lucre department?’

‘I think they’re doing a trawl at the moment. I know some of the names. Not people you’d probably want to spend a fortnight with. As for the cash, no idea. It’ll depend on profile, obviously.’

‘When do they need to know by?’

‘As soon as. But I honestly do think you’d be wise not to. You know, the other thing is that if you go into this, people will think your career’s on the skids.’

‘It kind of is.’

‘No, it’s more in the doldrums.’

‘Doldrums, skids, whatever. The one thing it’s not is on the up.’

‘One programme offer, and you’d be on the way up. That’s all it takes,’ he said.

‘Which is sounding suspiciously like what actors say. And that is not why I became a journalist.’

‘It’s hardly a journalistic job, this one.’

‘But I could use it as one. Maybe write a book off the back of it. Or something,’ she said lamely.

‘Hm. I’d bet you a pound to a bunch of grapes that at least one other contestant will claim the same reason. Anyway, you asked for my opinion, and that’s it. Don’t do it. Enjoy the fact that they’re willing to pay such a lot of money for the dubious pleasure of watching you make a complete tit of yourself and say no.’

‘OK.’

‘OK yes or OK no?’

‘OK, I’ll think about it.’

‘All right. What are you up to?’

‘Drinking tea.’

‘As one does. Well, have a good morning, and I’ll speak to you later.’

Katie put the phone down and took a long draught of tea to warm up her nose. The air was positively frosty. Then she picked up the phone again, and dialled Adam.

He answered on the first ring.

‘That was a very speedy response,’ she said, putting her mug down on the bedside table and snuggling under the duvet.

‘That’s because I saw who was calling.’

‘Oh, good,’ she said coyly. ‘What are you wearing?’

‘Is this a dirty phone call?’

‘Only if you make it one. I like to know what you’re wearing, so I can imagine it.’

‘A navy suit, a cream shirt and a tan watch.’

‘A tan watch?’

‘Yes. Why? You don’t like tan watches?’

‘I’d have thought a silver one would go better.’

‘You know nothing. Are you still in bed?’ he asked suspiciously.

‘No,’ she said briskly, sitting up.

‘Yes, you are,’ he said, laughing. ‘I can hear the sheets rustling.’

‘I was up,’ she said guiltily, ‘but then I got back into bed because I was cold.’

‘Yes. Of course. I believe you.’

‘Anyway. Listen. I know we weren’t supposed to be seeing each other tonight, although I’ve forgotten why. Was it one of your meetings? But could we, at some stage?’

‘Hold on a second,’ he said, and she heard him leafing through what she imagined was his diary.

She slurped some tea.

‘Nice,’ he drawled.

‘Sorry Got my lips in the wrong order,’ she said.

‘Is ten o’clock too late?’ he asked.

‘No. That would be brilliant. How about going to that new bar that’s opened in Soho in that street that’s erm, sort of perpendicular to the one that runs parallel to Regent Street? Or do I mean adjacent?’

‘Journalism is so good for the communication skills. I assume you mean The Rag Room?’ he asked.

‘That’s the one. Oh, good. Something to look forward to.’

‘Nothing in the diary until then?’ he asked sympathetically.

‘Tons. I really ought to get on. There’s a bit of dusting needs doing behind one of my books,’ she said, with dignity.

‘Well, don’t be late for The Rag Room,’ he admonished, I know how dusting can drag on. You start with one book and before you know it you’re dusting behind another.’

‘Am I ever late? Of course I won’t be. And, in all seriousness, I do have a meeting at twelve. See you later.’ She pressed the little red phone icon. Won’t, she thought. Won’t. Funny word. Even funnier when you consider that it’s the short form of ‘will not’. Why don’t we say ‘willn’t’? I will marry you or maybe I willn’t.

She grimaced. Maybe I willn’t because I haven’t been asked. Would I say, I will,’ if I was? That’s a difficult one.

She wriggled further under the duvet, and pressed her non-phone ear into the pillow to warm it up. Maybe I should put the heating on. Or maybe I willn’t. She smiled. She might ask Adam later if he knew why it was ‘won’t’.

She didn’t have a meeting, but she didn’t like to think of him picturing her lying in bed all day like some latter-day Hollywood starlet. ‘Ooh, ’ark at me, Hollywood starlet,’ she muttered to herself, as she sat up again and drank the rest of her tea, making exaggerated lip-smacking noises for the sheer hell of it. ‘Hollywood tartlet, more like. Or Stollywood tartlet. Hey, maybe I will have a vodka martini tonight. A nod to the old days.’

Since she’d been stepping out with Adam, as she liked to describe it, she had cut down drastically on the alcohol consumption, but there was nothing in the world like a vodka martini. The oil from the two olives lying on the meniscus. The smell of the vermouth. The way it almost crept into your mouth and past your throat, coating it with a glow. She started to salivate at the memory.

She tried to conduct an internal debate about the pros and cons of doing Celebrity X-Treme, but large wads of money kept hanging over the proceedings so she gave up.

She could not have known just how much Siobhan Stamp wanted to get her on the show–that she had been given a big budget for the fee by Lamplight, the production company. And that she was already laying the groundwork for a spot of skulduggery by seducing one of the confirmed contestants, Paul Martin–not that she needed much of an excuse to seduce a handsome man but the prospect of killing two birds with one stone was delicious.

Siobhan was facing a late night working on Celebrity X-Treme. She would have been pleased to know that not only was Katie more than halfway to accepting the company’s kind offer of £150,000 for three weeks’ work, but that she was going to appear in the newspaper the next day in a very unflattering pose. She found it therapeutic seeing a woman who had bested her–even if she was unaware of it–not looking her best.

The Hello Britain! roadshow was on its fourth day and Keera had had enough. As she had predicted, Dee had been hogging the headlines with her broken ankle. She’d been an ‘…and finally’ on the late news, and had appeared on two afternoon chat shows. It wasn’t exactly Anklegate, but Keera had been relegated to a supporting role in both senses of the word–not only a shoulder to lean on as they were making their way to the outside broadcasts, but once at them people were all over Dee and virtually ignoring the star presenter.

She opened a bottle of water from the minibar and elegantly sipped. She had been sent the duty officer’s log from the morning, with all the calls that had been received, and looked through it as she sat on the bed, her suitcase open at her feet, its contents immaculately folded.

A man called Kevin Drayton had rung in: I watch your programme regularly. Obviously I’m not well’

What a rude man, she thought, before reading on.

‘I’ve been housebound for some years now. Could I please have Keera’s autograph?’

Oh, she thought, not as rude as all that, then.

Miss Pam Franks had called: ‘When are Girls Aloud coming in?’

Girls Aloud. She didn’t think they’d been booked to come in any time soon. She’d have to have a word with the head of entertainment. On a need-to-know basis, she did need to know these things.

Dave Gilbert: ‘Could I please come and visit because I love everyone on the show. Apart from Dee, who is very annoying. She always says it’s going to rain and then it doesn’t. Her hands are too big.’

Excellent. She’d make sure Dee saw that one. She wondered if there was any way of making the last two sentences disappear, since it somehow made Dave sound less sensible.

Four doors down the corridor, Dee had found one of the Sunday supplements from the week before in her suitcase. She was searching for a particular shirt that she could have sworn she’d put in. She wanted to wear it for her appearance on a local television station. The bed was piled high with clothes, makeup, hair-drying paraphernalia and a vase. Oliver had threatened to send flowers and it was best to be prepared. She swept the vase and an odd sock to one side and sat down to read her stars: ‘Capricorn. A decision you make in the next few days could have a major effect on the rest of your life. Don’t rely on other people to make it, even if you trust them. The planets are promising much–but will only deliver if you take the initiative.’

Ooh. I wonder if I’m going to be offered a new job. Or maybe Oliver will propose. Or perhaps I should. She had another look. Yes, that would work. Or was it only a decision when you had to make a choice between two things? As in accepting something offered. Because otherwise, surely, you made decisions every day from the moment you got up to the moment you went to sleep. As in should I put this magazine down now and get on with the packing? As in; should I make sure I haven’t missed something interesting in this before I get on with the packing?

She looked through the rest of the magazine, ending up at the problem page. ‘I love my husband,’ she read, ‘but I have been having an affair since we got married. My mother-in-law is very rich. If I stay with my husband, I can get some of the inheritance when she dies. But if I stay with him, my lover says he will leave me. What should I do?’

Dee was horrified. That was exactly what was wrong with marriage, these days, she thought. Her own husband had had a fling with an au pair. Then she had found her new boyfriend in bed with a male hairdresser. People were disgusting, she thought. Claiming they were in love with one person, then going off with another. She put the magazine in the bin. Was that the decision that would make the rest of her life different?

She put the vase and the sock in the suitcase–forgetting to check where the other one was–then chucked everything else in haphazardly, along with a seriously full hairbrush. She leaned firmly on the bulging case and clicked the fasteners with difficulty After a cursory look in the bathroom, she dragged the case out of the door, and let it close behind her.

At eleven o’clock, as the maids entered the hotel bedroom to find Dee’s cleanser, mascara, nightie and one pink sock, Katie was indulging in one of her favourite activities. Tidying.

She had got up an hour earlier and eaten four pieces of toast with sliced apple and Marmite, then decided that she was going to do a pre-emptive spring clean. Unlike Dee, she had not read her stars. They shared a sign, but she rarely read it, and paradoxically put that down to being a Capricorn. An earth sign. Sensible. No time for that namby-pamby nonsense. She couldn’t see how one twelfth of the planet would be having a good day, no matter where they were. Capricorns around the world were being tortured, becoming single parents, being put in jail, discovering they were ill, losing socks…yet apparently they were all about to travel or meet the perfect person. It didn’t help that her birthday was three days before Christmas, so generally people bought her a birthday-cum-Christmas present. It made you feel rather bitter about birthdays and birth signs. Although Adam had given her a beautiful Cartier watch.

She spent a blissful day cleaning and de-cluttering. There were few things more satisfactory, she thought, as she sat cross-legged in front of a cupboard, than looking round and seeing a mountain of items to be disposed of at charity shops or in the bin.

And then there were the surprises. She had found a picture of herself, which she had believed long lost, with an Olympic weightlifter. She had interviewed him when she had been on the newspaper. It made her smile. She had written an article full of innuendo, which the news editor had threatened to spike unless she rewrote it. The trouble was that the name of virtually every lift had a double meaning, and for a girl who liked a pun, it had proved irresistible. The snatch. The jerk. How on earth did sports commentators do it? ‘What a magnificent snatch. What a superb jerk.’

She remembered Mike, the pervert co-presenter on Hello Britain!, once saying, ‘Congratulations on your Brazilian,’ to the manager of a football team that had bought one of the world’s best defenders. She’d had to explain to him later why she had barked with laughter. If you were a Brazilian, could you have a close shave? she wondered. She put the black-and-white photograph into a packet with a few others.

And that, she thought, is that.

She stood up, and went to get a whole load of bin-liners. She checked her watch. Perfect. Enough time to get to the Oxfam shop before it closed, then to Marks & Spencer for some groceries.

By the time she got home with her food, she was feeling too weary to do much. She put the vegetable curry into a pan and tried to work out a way of not dirtying another for the rice. In the end, she had it with toast.

Later, in the bath, Katie pondered life’s conundrums. Why do the English call condoms ‘French letters’ and the cap the ‘Dutch cap’? Why do the French call syphilis the ‘English disease’? Who makes up jokes? What is a homonym?

She squeezed an in-growing hair on her leg and was then worried that it would look spotty later. Hopefully, Adam will be so busy elsewhere that he won’t notice, she thought rudely.

Hair and hare. I’m sure that’s a homonym. Or is it a homophone? There were days when all her English grammar lessons came back to her. And other days, like today, when she would be hard pressed to tell her oxymorons from her synonyms.

If you’re bald, put a rabbit on your head because from a distance it looks like a hare.

She wished her bath was bigger. If she sank down until her chin was in the water, her knees were chilled and if she put her knees in, her shoulders got cold. She ran the hot water, moving her knees to one side to avoid scalding them.

By the time she got out of the bath–swaying and holding on to the radiator because of the rush of blood to her head–she was cranberry-coloured. She opened the bathroom door to a welcome blast of cool air. When she could stand unaided, she went into the bedroom, opened the wardrobe doors and perused the contents for fifteen minutes, deciding what to wear. She pulled out a soft brown dress that didn’t need much ironing. Anyway, the heat emanating from her body would get rid of the creases. She matched it with a pair of high suede boots. The underwear choosing took four times as long. If underwear was going to be seen by a man, it had to produce no bulges and it had to go with the stockings. And that was another dilemma: stockings or tights? Stockings always went down well, in every way, but tights gave a smoother line. And then there were hold-ups, which some men found more attractive than stockings and suspender belts. It was all bloody exhausting.

Katie loved young relationships, but you wasted an inordinate amount of time on clothing. The only good thing about a comfortable old relationship was comfortable old clothes. Otherwise it was boring. It was like having cheese for the rest of your life–there would come a moment when you simply had to have something else.

Katie liked it when men held the door open for you and gave you flowers and gifts and wanted to kiss you all the time. She loved the electricity that flowed as your lips were about to touch. She could have lived on it for ever. She was a romantic who, deep down, was holding on to the hope that if she found the ‘right’ man, she would stop feeling like that. Was Adam the right man? He was bloody handsome. Funny. Intelligent. Good taste in music. Fit as a robber’s dog. Ticks in all the right boxes…but was he Mr Right? Her soul-mate? Her sole mate for the rest of her life? God, that was scary. For the rest of her life.

She went over to the CD player to put on some loud music to stop the voices in her head. Muse. Black Holes and Revelations. She sang along to the words she could remember.

Excellent. She went back to the underwear drawer. Brown silk with a turquoise ribbon threaded through, and Wolford hold-up stockings. So much easier to decide when death and destruction were coursing out of the speakers.

Katie did a mental bit of air guitar, and then, with her head bobbing in rhythm to ‘Starlight’, she picked out a sheer petticoat to iron out the bumps. She checked in the mirror. Dress. Boots. Gold earrings. Perfect. Or as perfect as it was going to get, she thought, peering at herself again. Getting older was a nightmare. Every day another crow’s foot. There must be no crows left with feet. Stop it, she remonstrated. Like there’s an alternative to getting older. She gave herself an imaginary shake, tied her hair back loosely (to make it easier to loosen later), turned Muse off and set out.

She would have been gratified to know that Adam had been unable to concentrate fully on his meeting because he was thinking about her. Katie was unlike any of his previous girlfriends. He had always gone for women who were high maintenance. He hadn’t known they were high maintenance until it was too late. They had seemed normal. Then they had half moved in with clothes, toothbrush and bags, and he had discovered that they took absolutely hours to get ready, that there was a drama if the manicurist couldn’t fit them in, that one wrong word brought on a crisis. It was exhausting.

Katie was refreshing. She was beautiful, made him laugh, and was sexy–in fact, sexier because there were no tantrums. There was none of the rowing that had marred his other relationships. She had joie de vivre in spades. And the peachiest of bottoms. Just thinking about her was making him hot.

He dragged his mind back to the meeting–Nick was staring at him. Was he supposed to have said something? He brought his attention fully into the room.

‘Would you agree to that?’ asked the man from BBC Factual.

Adam thought quickly. ‘What do you think, Nick?’

Nick slightly raised his eyebrows. They were talking about an antiques project Adam had masterminded so it was basically up to him to sign it off. ‘It sounds fine to me,’ he said.

‘Good. Then that’s what we’ll do,’ Adam said, and looked at his watch. ‘Tell you what, I have to go now. Any odds and ends, we can discuss on the phone, yes?’

As they left, Nick asked mildly, ‘What were you thinking about when you were supposed to be making the deal?’

‘Suddenly remembered there was some stuff I’d got on the computer, and I’d forgotten to save it. Debating about whether I should go back to the office and sort it.’

‘Cool,’ said Nick, who clearly didn’t believe him. ‘See you tomorrow, then.’

Much, much later, between cotton sheets, the decision was made. Adam and Katie lay tangled together. She was snuggled down, with barely the tip of her nose showing, while he had most of his torso and one leg on top of the duvet.

‘How can you bear to have so much flesh exposed to the elements?’ she muffled.

‘I think you’ll find it’s tolerably warm out here. We have this new-fangled contraption called a boiler, which is linked to something we modern-day humans call central heating.’

‘It’s freezing.’

‘There’s something wrong with your thermostat.’

Katie giggled.

‘What?’ he asked.

‘When I was growing up, we had a really dodgy boiler,’ she replied.

‘Called your grandmother,’ he interrupted.

‘Cheeky No she was not. We had this really dodgy boiler–’

‘Can’t believe you call your mother that.’

‘Stop it. If you’ll let me finish…We used to have this really dodgy boiler.’ She lifted her head and gave him a hard look, as if she was daring him to speak again. ‘And periodically it would have to be riddled. When I look back at the winters at home, they were punctuated by shouts of “Has anybody riddled the boiler?,” which is just ripe for comedy. But either we weren’t as crude, rude and disgusting as we generally are now, or that expression was not in our lexicon.’

‘It was a more innocent time.’

‘Maybe.’

‘Well, you only have to look at children’s television programmes then and now,’ he said. ‘They’re more knowing today’

‘Teletubbies wasn’t knowing.’

‘SpongeBob SquarePants? It’s filth. Pure, unadulterated filth.’

‘SpongeBob SquarePants?’ She laughed. ‘Or are you talking in the cleaning sense?’

‘I was watching it last night. It’s sheer pornography. This bloke Bob sponging down a woman with square pants on.’

She chortled and put her nose below the duvet.

‘What are you doing?’ he asked, with a throaty growl.

‘Warming my nose up,’ she muttered, through the feathers. ‘I think you’re the one with a dodgy thermostat.’

‘How the hell would you cope in the cold weather in Norway if you decided to do Celebrity X-Treme?’

‘Good point. I assume there’ll be central heating,’ she said, hopefully.

‘What? The Norwegians have mastered the art of centrally heating their countryside?’

‘It’s called global warming. We’re all helping,’ she responded, wriggling onto her front and propping her head on her hands. ‘You are awfully handsome,’ she said, gazing at his chin from close range.

Adam smiled down at her and kissed the tip of her nose. ‘You’re rather scrumptious yourself. But, really, on a purely basic level, are you up for Celebrity X-Treme in terms of the chilliness of the environment? If you find this cold, how on earth are you going to cope with minus thirty, or whatever it could be?’

‘I’m sure they’d provide me with adequate clothing. They wouldn’t have us freezing to death. ’Elf and safety would have something to say about that.’

‘And what about playing the game?’ Adam looked down at her, as she lay in the crook of his arm.

‘You really do have one of the best profiles of anyone, ever,’ she said, caressing his emerging stubble.

‘Is that a profile when you can only see my chin?’

‘Well, what else could you call it? An anti-file?’

‘Idiot,’ he said, stroking her shoulder. ‘And you have the silkiest skin of anyone, ever.’

‘Why, thank you kindly, sir.’

‘But you haven’t answered the question.’

‘What was it again?’

‘Do you think you can manage to do a reality show without coming a cropper?’

‘I don’t know. It depends who the other people are, I suppose. I’ll probably hate them all and look like a narky git.’

‘“Git”. What a very elegant word,’ he commented.

‘Onomatopoeic, I would say. Gittish behaviour. Just saying it makes your mouth into a long, disapproving line. Try it,’ she prompted.

‘Gittish behaviour,’ he obliged her. ‘I concur. It’s probably impossible to say with your mouth any other way’ He tried it. ‘Goatish. Ah, interesting.’

‘You see? Anyway…it’s impossible to know whether I can play the game or come out of it in a muppetish way.’

‘You do make up some interesting adjectives. I suppose what I’m trying to say is that you have to be prepared for them to edit the programme in a way that’s not in your favour. And it seems to me that those who come out of these things best are the people who are perhaps the most innocent–to come back to what we were talking about earlier and those innocent times. And innocent is possibly the last adjective I would ever use in your general direction.’

‘I open my nostrils upon you. I spit in your general direction,’ she misquoted, from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

‘Your mother smells of elderberries and your father was a hamster,’ he continued.

‘Hmm. I do see what you mean, though.’

There was silence for a while.

‘The thing is…’ she said slowly ‘…that there is also the matter of the money…’

‘Yes. It is quite a lot. But not if it’s the end of your career.’

‘That’s what my agent says. But could it really be the end of it?’

‘That’s a million-dollar question. It could radically alter how people view you, and therefore have a radical effect on the sort of jobs you get offered. But you know all the pros and cons, you don’t need me to tell you. What’s your gut feeling?’

‘I wish people wouldn’t ask me that. I don’t have gut feelings. Unless I’ve had a large dish of chillies. But it could be fun. I could maybe get a book out of it.’

She felt him smile. ‘What?’

‘You could, of course,’ he said, ‘but if that’s an excuse for why you want to do it, it’s a pretty poor one. You might as well be honest and say you’re doing it for the cash. If the money was less, how much of a difference would it make?’

‘I don’t know. I’ve done that in my head already. Obviously it would make some difference, particularly if they were offering bugger-all. I’d just say no. Funnily enough, the thing that would make the biggest difference is if I could find out who else was going.’

She thought for a moment, then sat up abruptly and looked directly at him. ‘Hey. Do you think you could?’

He put his leg under the duvet and gave a little shiver.

‘Ha. Told you it was cold.’

‘It was an involuntary shiver such as one gives when a tickly hair gets up one’s nose.’

‘Was not. You’re cold. Let me feel that leg.’ She reached out and caressed his firm thigh.

‘Mmm. Nice,’ he said.

‘Couldn’t agree more,’ she concurred.

‘I could try to find out,’ he said slowly, thinking about who he knew at the production company. ‘But you know how they treat these things–like they’re covered by the Official Secrets Act. And sometimes they honestly don’t know until the last moment.’ He paused. ‘I get the impression you’re more tempted than not.’

‘Yes, I think that would be fair.’

He hugged her to him and dropped a kiss on her hair. ‘Mmm, you smell good.’ He closed his eyes and inhaled the scent of her hair. Katie melted and curled herself round him. The duvet sighed.

And so it was that Katie found herself in northern Norway at the beginning of March, in a hut, on the first night of filming for Celebrity X-Treme. There were bunk beds and bedrolls on the floor. It was the luck of the draw as to who had been assigned what, and Katie had pulled a short straw. She tried to get comfortable in her sleeping-bag as she listened to the snoring coming from the one on her left. She stifled a giggle. A bag in every sense of the word.

Denise Trench was the singer in a pop band that had had a couple of hits and won the Eurovision Song Contest before disappearing from view. The band had been about as trendy as a pair of pale nylon slacks. Their fan base was an army of women of a certain age, who smelled faintly of wee. Nowadays, Denise was more famous for her colourful sex life, and her occasional forays into bottles of Jack Daniel’s followed by stints in rehab.

Katie sighed and wriggled around in her sleeping-bag again. Whichever bit of her ended up touching the bedroll became instantly chilled and started to hurt. This is ridiculous, she thought. If I hadn’t bought that bloody cottage in Dorset, if I hadn’t spent my money on holidays, if I hadn’t taken my eye off the ball, if I hadn’t trusted Mike and he hadn’t stitched me up and got me sacked from Hello Britain!, I could have been coasting towards a happy early retirement instead of lying here in a ruddy shed with a draught and a whole load of people I’d rather see shot and mounted. On a wall. Obviously.

She thought back to the conversation with Adam. He had warned her, but she hadn’t listened. She had been seduced by the noughts on a cheque. Had thought she’d be able to cope with it. Oh, God, she groaned inwardly. I used to think people were numpties to appear on these wretched programmes. And now I’m one of them. How has it come to this?

She wriggled again, and merely succeeded in twisting her thermal pyjamas so far round she felt like a human Mr Whippy. She raised her bottom, unscrewed her pyjamas and humphed back down. She was freezing. It was no good. She was going to have to get out and put some more clothes on.

She rolled the sleeping-bag down, wriggling like a caterpillar, and crept out, instantly alerting the producer on duty in the gallery, who was watching the bank of television monitors in front of him. He pointed it out to the director, who mixed from a shot of Denise Trench snoring like a warthog and gently breaking wind.

Mark, the producer, was bored already, and hoping he could wangle a move to daytime. Nights were so tedious. So far this evening he’d got barely five minutes’ worth of good stuff. The best bit had been some kind of movement going on in Peter Philbin’s mid-region. The girls would like that. Particularly since one of the camera angles had got his fully muscled-up chest emerging in all its glory. That would go into the storyline they were hoping to manipulate in which the handsome soap star would end up in some way, shape or form with Crystal, the model. He checked on the camera which was pointing at her to see what she was doing. Sleeping prettily, with her lipgloss surprisingly intact. She was so much better-looking without all her usual makeup, he thought.

He watched Katie as she tiptoed past the others, and boosted the sound.

‘Who’s that?’ whispered Tanya Wilton, who was close to the door. The woman more infamous than famous after a fling with a politician was having a fitful night.

‘Sorry,’ murmured Katie, ‘I’ve got to get more clothes. My head feels like an ice cube.’ ‘Mine too,’ said Tanya, quietly.

‘Do you want me to pass you something? I’ve got a spare hat.’ ‘Could you? That would be great, thank you.’ Katie tiptoed to her suitcase, which she could see in the dim light of the moon, shining through the uncurtained windows, and rummaged through its contents. Her years as a presenter on breakfast television had stood her in good stead for pitch-of-night rummaging. Even at home in the flat, she hardly ever put the lights on if she had to get up in the dark, preferring instead to move around partially blind. So here in Norway, at three o’clock on a frozen spring morning, she was in her element, mentally logging where everything was. She found her hat and then, buried underneath, discovered a balaclava. Lovely, lovely balaclava. Thank goodness her chin was going to be warm. She also found a scarf and her sheepskin mittens and crept back past the sleeping bodies to Tanya. ‘There you go,’ she whispered, handing over the hat.

She snuggled back into her sleeping-bag, and pulled on her balaclava, wrapped the scarf firmly round her neck and slid on the mittens. Within half an hour she was finally warm enough to sleep.

Up in the viewing gallery, Mark peered closer at the camera. As daylight cast a gloomy glow, it was quite clear that the erstwhile queen of the breakfast sofa had crammed an enormous pair of green pants on her head, the stout gusset protecting her nose from the cold, her closed eyelids nicely framed by one of the leg holes. The producer and director shared a smile. That would definitely go in.

At six o’clock, they handed over to the early birds. The story producer was the glorious strawberry blonde Mark rather fancied. ‘Morning, Siobhan,’ he said, unfurling himself from the seat.

‘Hi, Mark. Anything happening?’

‘Not a huge amount. Peter having an early-morning fumble. Katie with a pair of knickers on her head.’

‘Really? May I ask why?’

‘Think she mistook them for a hat.’

‘Ah. Yes. Easily done. Same number of holes. Not.’

‘No, seriously. She was rooting around in her case in the dark.’

‘Why didn’t she use a torch?’

‘Probably trying not to wake the others.’

‘You don’t think she did it hoping for air time?’

‘Watch the tape. It didn’t look like it to me.’

Siobhan went over to talk to the director as Mark gathered up his belongings. ‘What do you think?’ she asked.

‘Looked genuine to me,’ he answered, yawning and stretching. ‘Actually, even if she did it for effect, it’s still pretty funny And not much else has happened. I think we’re going to have to stop wearing them out during the day. Four hours on that ice assault course yesterday–I was exhausted just watching them.’

‘I’ll have a word with the activities people,’ she said, ‘but they seem keen on distancing us from other reality shows by having them out and about. Otherwise it’s just Big Brother Does the Jungle in a cold place. It seems to be holding up well so far, ratings wise. As soon as we start the voting next week, the senior executives will probably have another look at it. I’m going to get a coffee–do you want anything?’

‘No, thanks. I’m whacked. I’m going to get straight off as soon as we’ve done the handover.’

Mark picked up his holdall and walked over to the desk to join the other overnighters as they ran through the storylines that were emerging. Page three’s Crystal was being flirty with Peter Philbin. Denise Trench was doing lots of ranting at columnist Paul Martin. Alex Neil, the outrageously gay designer, was getting very close to the DJ Steve Flyte, who appeared to be enjoying the proximity. Tanya Wilton was continuing to spill the beans about her fling with the politician to Flynn O’Mara, ‘astrologer to the stars’. Katie Fisher was falling over a lot. And Dave Beal, the alleged comedian, was still telling jokes that failed to raise a laugh.

Mark straightened up from where he was leaning on the desk. I also think it might be worth keeping an eye on Katie Fisher and Paul Martin. There might be something going on there.’ He turned to lob his plastic water cup into the bin and failed to notice Siobhan’s slight smirk.

Siobhan was a man’s woman. She dressed for men. She studied men. She hunted men. She hated women. She particularly hated successful women. It didn’t matter that to Mr and Mrs Average, as she thought of them, with their drudge-end jobs, she was successful in the exciting world of television. She was a bitter woman. She had chips on her shoulder. And they were well-nurtured chips.

Many years ago, when she had cherished dreams of being a presenter, she had been beaten to her ideal job of hosting Hello Britain! by Beatrice Shah. She had been covering holiday shifts, and had thought it was a done deal. After finding out that her position had been usurped, she had stormed into The Boss’s office to demand an explanation. He had looked surprised and said she had never been considered. That under no circumstances would she ever be considered after research had shown her to be out of touch with the viewers.

‘Out of touch with the viewers?’ she had shrieked. ‘What do they mean “out of touch”?’

‘Apparently you sound snotty, for want of a better word,’ he had said. The Boss was not an unkind man, but he hadn’t taken to Siobhan. She was too ballsy for his liking. He preferred a more emollient woman. She did an efficient job, but her predatory nature meant that some of his male staff had confessed they felt hounded.

‘Look, I’m sorry if you were under the impression that you were a shoo-in for the job. But I was told Simon had said there was no point in you applying for the post.’

Siobhan had gritted her teeth. Simon hadn’t told her. And she had been given the impression that she was a shoo-in for the job. And she knew exactly why he hadn’t seen fit to let her know. She had literally been sleeping with the enemy. What a fool. What a waste of her unquestionable talents. She wouldn’t have minded so much except that he was such a very inadequate lover, with an unattractive pouch of fat under his stomach and rather girly pink nipples. She curled her lip derisively. Lover! No love involved on either side. A business arrangement that had worked out well for him.

He would pay. She would make him pay.

A week later, she had gone into his office and told him she was pregnant. If an etiolated man could have been said to blanch, then he did.

‘I don’t know whether you and your wife,’ she imbued the word with venom, ‘would be prepared to bring up the child as your own?’ She let the sentence hover for a moment. ‘No. I thought not. Well, in that case, I suggest you hand me a cheque for the abortion at a private clinic. If you need the bill for your records, I will obviously supply it.’ She raised her eyebrows. She was hoping he wouldn’t demand proof, but if the worst came to the worst, she was fairly sure she could cobble something together.

He had been only too keen to write her a cheque–it seemed a small price to pay for the months of illicit sex he had been enjoying. Sex with attractive women had been in short supply. His wife–a woman of limited intelligence–had married him in haste after a threat of deportation. If he had been single, Simon would have been bragging to all and sundry that he had been bedding Siobhan Stamp…possibly even that she was pregnant with his super-sperm. He handed over the money and watched her departing figure with regret.

She had left the station, and reported from various windy locations up and down the country for smaller and smaller television companies. Her failure to be nice on the way up the presenting ladder had contributed to her descent and, eventually, with hatred in her heart, she had taken a job as a producer for a company called Wolf Days Productions. In the year that she had been there, she had made no friends. Her colleagues–mostly women–were either slightly scared of or loathed her.

They recognized a vulture when they saw one, even one in sheepskin clothing from Joseph.

She had, to her delight, managed to ensnare one man. She had been proud to announce her seduction of Nick Midhurst, one of the bosses. Keeping her claws sheathed, she had managed to charm him into her bed. Not for her the tenet of discretion being the better part of valour. That had been her downfall.

Nick had faced such a barrage of fury from his staff that he’d had a rethink and brought the blossoming romance to a swift end.

‘Very wise,’ said Adam, when informed. ‘Apparently she’s poisonous. Good worker, and very easy on the eye but, according to virtually everyone here, not the most pleasant of people.’

The company was a friendly one, and everyone was encouraged to air grievances to stop the backbiting that was endemic in the industry. There had been a steady stream of people going in to complain about their latest recruit.

She had seemed to accept the end of the affair with equanimity, and continued to work hard. But she had blotted her copybook irretrievably by trying surreptitiously to add Adam’s scalp to her belt. She had sent him a flurry of explicit texts, which he had shared with Nick. And that had sealed her fate. Her contract had not been renewed.

‘She has a circular bed and black satin sheets,’ revealed Nick, darkly, after she had cleared her desk.

‘Urk,’ said Adam, making a face. ‘Or was that pleasant?’

‘No. Very slippy. And you know…she’s not quite as beautiful without all the makeup. To be honest…sort of eel-like. And,’ he added, ‘she makes quite a lot of noise.’

Adam raised an eyebrow.

‘It begins with a miaow, then works up to a full-throated roar,’ he said.

‘Goodness,’ remarked Adam.

‘I have neighbours,’ said Nick. ‘Albeit a field away. I was worried they’d come round to see whether I was setting up a safari park.’

They left their office to find everyone breaking out bottles and biscuit barrels of celebration.

‘I hadn’t realized she was that unpopular,’ murmured Adam, taking a small plastic cup of champagne.

Siobhan, re-entering an hour later to collect a contacts book, had found a full-scale party going on. There had been a hideous silence as she stalked across the office, opened a drawer and extracted her property. She had nodded at the revellers, strode back across the office and slammed the door behind her.

There was an explosion of noise as it shut.

‘Phew,’ said Gemma, one of the young producers. ‘I thought for one awful moment that she was going to put some kind of evil spell on us.’

‘I know,’ said another producer, Rose. ‘She’ll no doubt be casting nasturtiums upon us as we speak.’

‘Aspersions, I think,’ muttered Adam.

‘That too,’ said Rose.

‘And that isn’t the same as casting spells, anyway,’ added Gemma.

‘Whatever,’ said Rose, flicking the ‘what’ and ‘ever’ signs using her middle three fingers.

Siobhan, meanwhile, was walking determinedly out of the building. ‘I will prevail,’ she muttered under her breath. ‘I will get back at them. All of them.’

And, earlier than expected, she had found her chance.

At Celebrity X-Treme, she was the producer in charge of following up possible storylines and, boy, was she going to manipulate them. After the names of the contestants had been finalized, and before a frame had been shot, she had taken Paul Martin out to dinner. She had Googled him. Thirty-seven years old. Columnist. Handsome with thick, sandy hair and blue eyes. Single. Rich enough. Obsessed with television and football.

One thing she had discovered during her career was that few men would turn down the offer of free sex from an attractive woman. Within a week, she was manoeuvring him just where she wanted him. ‘Could I call this being in the pole position?’ she asked, as she shimmied into the bedroom where he had been waiting.

She had made one fatal mistake. She had taken off her makeup before emerging from the bathroom. Her deep-set eyes receded, and her translucent skin became blue. Her pale lips looked like a snake’s.

Paul Martin was keen to make his mark on this game show. He wanted to get into television, and that meant staying in the contest as long as was feasibly possible. Preferably, he wanted to win. He knew what Siobhan’s role was, and how useful she could be. And it helped that she was a cracking-looking bird. Until that moment…

Still, if he had to have sex with a woman who, without makeup, looked like a gonk, then so be it. He could have done without the black satin sheets. He hadn’t thought they existed outside the pages of his porn stash. But here they were. It was enough to put you off your stroke. And what was it with the baby-doll nightie and the high-heeled fluffy mules, which were click-clacking on the back of her heels as she sauntered towards him with a sultry smile?

Generally, he went for exotic, dark-haired beauties like Keera Keethley from Hello Britain! who, he felt sure, would never have bought a carpet with flowers etched into it such as the one he was looking at. He took a deep breath. Right, he thought. Here we go. Concentrate. He closed his eyes and threw himself into the breach.

The next-door neighbours looked at each other over their glasses as they sat in bed, reading.

‘The cat’s out again,’ said Mrs Smith, wearily, as the miaowing grew to a crescendo from the other side of the shared wall.