After the Break

by Penny Smith

  ‘I’m getting out of here,’ said Crystal. ‘This conversation’s making me feel sick.’

  ‘Why don’t you go down to the lake, then, and bring up some water?’ asked Denise.

  ‘Because that’s your job, since you didn’t do yesterday’s team event.’

  ‘Doesn’t stop you helping.’

  ‘Why should I?’

  ‘Your “boyfriend” is down there.’

  There was a short silence as the toast popped up. ‘Butter?’ Katie asked.

  ‘Yes, please. Have we got any Marmite left?’ asked Paul.

  ‘Think so. But you’ll have to put your own on. It’s something even one’s mother doesn’t get right.’

  Crystal went towards the door. ‘All right. I will go down to the lake but only because you didn’t bring up enough water. Not because Peter’s down there.’

  ‘Of course not,’ said Denise, sardonically. She reached for her cigarettes, and flicked her lighter.

  ‘Not in the hut,’ said Katie.

  ‘OK, Herr Kommandant,’ said Denise, nastily, making a snappy salute and stalking outside.

  ‘She’s what we call a right mardy cow.’

  ‘“Mardy”. There’s a word. What does it mean?’ Paul asked.

  ‘Moody.’

  ‘Are you a mardy cow, Miss Fisher?’

  ‘I don’t think so. But, then, it’s like being mean. Do we ever know that we are?’

  ‘Do bullies know they’re bullies?’

  ‘Some of them must. Others probably think they’re being funny A friend of mine once accused me of being a bully because I used to flirt with this young guy at work every morning.’

  ‘No,’ said Paul, mock-horrified. ‘You? Flirt?’

  ‘Um. I know. Hard to believe. So, this friend accused me of abusing my position. Said the guy was probably too scared to complain about me because I was a presenter. I stopped it immediately. Many years later he told me he was really sad when that happened because it had perked up his mornings…’ She stumbled to a finish. ‘Which makes it sound like I’m marvellous when actually I was trying to make the point about bullying. That it’s like the difference between sexual harassment and flirting. Maybe it depends on whether you like the person doing it. If you don’t–’

  ‘Then it’s an industrial tribunal.’

  ‘Exactly And if you do like them…’

  ‘You have sex with them,’ he finished promptly.

  She laughed. ‘Obviously.’

  ‘Talking of which?’

  ‘Talking of which? What? And let us not forget that there are cameras here. And that anything we say may be taken down and used in evidence against us. And that we have no recourse to an industrial tribunal’

  ‘I enjoyed last night. That was all I was going to say.’

  Katie’s mouth formed an O. ‘But that implies we had sex!’ she said instantly.

  ‘No, it doesn’t.’

  ‘It does. I think we ought to stop this conversation immediately. Do your toast.’

  He turned to his plate and meekly applied the Marmite.

  In the control room, Siobhan was beside herself with excitement. ‘Excellent,’ she said. ‘That gives us a final out on that little storyline, I think. Can you get us all a celebratory coffee, please?’ she asked one of the runners.

  Paul seemed to be following instructions. She wondered how Adam was responding to the nightly broadcasts–and how he would react to tonight’s after she had finished the edit.

  That afternoon there was a meeting between the senior executives, the senior producers and the producers to discuss how things were going and whether there needed to be any tweaking. ‘Do we need to have more stuff in the hut?’ she asked, as everybody scraped their chairs and got comfortable. ‘I’m only asking because that’s where all the good stuff’s happening.’

  ‘But it’s only happening there because of what’s going on outside, surely,’ said one of the senior executives, leaning back in his seat. ‘You wouldn’t have got them in the hot tub again the other night if it hadn’t been for the ice-climbing, and the massaging stuff without that rather mad tug-of-war type thing.’

  ‘I just think we could do with less jauntering about, Mai, and more down time. With drink,’ she said, with a look.

  ‘I reiterate. We’re only getting the storylines because of the outside activities. The bonding that they’re generating is influencing what’s happening inside the hut. Obvious, really,’ he said pointedly.

  Mal, a fat, sweaty man with a penchant for pies, had taken issue with the way that Siobhan seemed to be leading these discussions. She found him as appetizing as a spleen, and had done nothing to get him on-side.

  ‘What do you think, Pamela?’ Siobhan asked, turning to the other senior executive.

  Pamela had been doodling on her pad since the meeting started. She had immaculately manicured nails and the sort of sharp trouser suit worn by the military leaders of a junta. ‘Difficult to say, really. There’s an element of truth in both statements. Perhaps a compromise. We chop an hour off the outdoor stuff and give more alcohol as a reward. Even if they haven’t earned it. How does that sound?’

  Mal and Siobhan nodded agreement.

  ‘How do we feel that the outside is going, in general?’

  ‘We could do with more close-up shots,’ said Siobhan. ‘In editing, we’ve always got loads of long shots but not enough of their faces.’

  ‘Camera crew have got their work cut out already,’ commented Mai. ‘They can’t rush around in those bloody great Arctic suits, stuffing their cameras up people’s noses. Quite apart from anything else, we’ll get the celebs putting on an act.’

  ‘Like they’re not already,’ sneered Siobhan.

  ‘It’ll be worse if the cameras are closer.’

  ‘I disagree.’

  ‘Pamela?’

  ‘How about we appoint one of the cameras to try to get closer, no matter where they are? We might get random shots of the wrong celebs for the storyline, but we can always cover it in voiceover.’

  ‘Fine,’ they said together.

  ‘Anything else?’ asked Pamela.

  ‘Have we decided who we’d like to go?’ Siobhan asked her.

  ‘Not yet. For my money, we could do without Alex and Steve. And Flynn and Denise aren’t coming through on the female side. You’re the one who’s seeing all the shots. Are we getting the full picture?’

  ‘I think so,’ she said.

  Mai piped up, ‘Denise is just a drunken old bag who smokes and doesn’t want to do anything. And if Flynn makes one more pronouncement about the moon being in ruddy Venus…’

  ‘She is an astrologer,’ Siobhan reminded him.

  ‘Oh, is she?’ he asked sarcastically, ‘I had no idea. The point is,’ he emphasized, ‘that she never says anything interesting about it. She just makes all this shit up and says that that’s why X is doing whatever they’re doing.’

  ‘Well, I think Flynn should stay,’ said Siobhan. ‘She makes me laugh. I think Tanya should get the chop. Tanya, Denise, Alex and Steve.’

  ‘Right,’ said Pamela. ‘Let’s assume that Denise, Alex, Tanya and Steve are incidentals, and concentrate on the others. Anything else?’

  There was a swift discussion about other storylines, and then it was back to the gallery.

  The hut was fugging up. Tanya and Denise were slugging it out over the washing-up. ‘Could you just rinse the things before putting them in the rack so I can tell whether there’s muck still on them?’ asked Tanya, handing back a plate with appliquéd egg.

  ‘Who gives a toss? They’re only going to get dirty again.

  Wash the frigging dishes yourself, if you’re so ruddy particular.’

  ‘I would. But then that would mean you’d done precisely sweet FA in the last twenty-four hours. Apart from sitting on your lardy arse.’

  ‘How dare you?’ Denise turned from the sink with a plate she’d been tickling with the sponge, and thumped it down on the drai
ning-board so hard that it cracked.

  Peter and Crystal, sitting very close together on a chair by the fire, stopped speaking and looked over. Crystal whispered something and Peter stood up.

  ‘Hey,’ he said, going over to the sink, ‘shall I take over on the washing-up?’

  ‘No,’ said Denise, firmly, through gritted teeth.

  ‘Yes, please,’ said Tanya, smiling sweetly.

  ‘I’ll do the drying, then.’

  He took the tea-towel from Tanya, giving her a swift nudge in the ribs.

  She stomped off to get her snowsuit. ‘I’m going out for a walk.’

  ‘Don’t forget the briefing’s in half an hour,’ shouted Katie, as the kitchen door shut behind her.

  Paul, who had been filling his water bottle, made his way over to her.

  ‘They’re getting on like a house on fire,’ he whispered. ‘Should I take extra water out with us in case we need to throw it on the flames?’

  ‘I think you’re supposed to throw a damp towel on a kitchen fire, aren’t you, not water?’ she whispered back.

  ‘That’s a chip-pan fire.’

  ‘Have they had their chips, do you think?’

  ‘Let’s hope one of them has.’

  The camera lights above them glowed red. In the control room, the producer logged the time code.

  At Hello Britain! Keera was having her first ever setback. She had been called into the editor’s office. She sat down, expecting to be told how marvellously she had done with the Round Britain tour. Instead, Simon had told her to brush up on her general knowledge, and her general knowledge of the news in particular. He fiddled with his mug of weak tea as he spoke, and his knee jigged.

  ‘I assume this is because I didn’t know that that pop group had split up,’ she asked, biting her lip.

  ‘No, it isn’t. Although if you’re going to say you didn’t know one of them had gone solo, best not to compound your mistake by saying they must have split up recently. It gives that bloke whose name I’ve now forgotten the right to say–which he did–that it happened some time ago and that you did the interview when they announced it.’

  Keera’s brows came together mutinously.

  ‘Before we get on to the particulars, I also wanted to say that it would be better if you avoided words you don’t understand. You said the other day that the difference in the atmosphere was palatable.’

  ‘What’s wrong with that?’

  ‘The word is “palpable”.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘And I seem to remember telling you before that a rhetorical question is one that does not require an answer, not a difficult question that you don’t know the answer to.’

  She looked at his bony hands as they continued to caress the mug. ‘Do you think the viewers actually care?’ she challenged.

  He turned towards the computer and clicked a couple of times. ‘So, last, erm, Tuesday. This is one example of shoddy interviewing. You were talking to a man who was in the middle of hundreds of lorries and cars blocking the Ml. And you said, and I quote, “I’m talking to you while looking at the pictures from a helicopter above you, and all I can see is a mass of lorries and cars. What can you see?’”

  ‘So?’

  ‘The only answer he could have given you was the answer he did give you–“I can see loads of lorries and cars.” What else were you expecting him to be able to see? Chimpanzees swinging through the trees carrying bananas? Polo matches on the hard shoulder?’

  Keera kept quiet. It didn’t sound so bad to her. And other people made mistakes, didn’t they?

  Simon turned back to the computer. ‘Last Monday you asked an Alaskan who had moved to Texas how he liked living in America. You asked subsequent questions that reinforced the impression that you thought Alaska was another country, as opposed to the largest state of the United States of America.’

  ‘I think that’s an easy mistake to make,’ she said petulantly.

  ‘It is not. Read newspapers. Expand your knowledge. If you don’t know something, ask before you go on air. That’s it. You can go.’ He swung his feet under his desk, dismissing her by clicking on an icon and checking his emails.

  She stood up and strode through the door. Ugly little man, she thought. What was all that about? She couldn’t believe it was because of a few questions that weren’t her fault. She phoned Matthew Praed.

  ‘Hello, Keera. How are things?’ he asked, leaning back in his chair and running his spare hand through his hair. He imagined her lithe body lying beneath him. He had taken her out to dinner a couple of times. Instinct told him she was about to fall into his hands like a ripe plum.

  ‘I don’t know. I’ve just had a meeting with the editor, which was less than satisfactory. I need to know how much longer my contract has to run. And, also, when I am going to get a new show so that I don’t have to worry about this one?’

  ‘Do you want to meet up tonight, and see if there are any stones we’ve left unturned?’ he asked soothingly.

  ‘I’ve got to work tomorrow.’

  ‘We could make it an early one.’

  She hesitated. ‘All right, then.’ She sounded excited about the prospect of dinner with him.

  They would look so good together. Keera Praed, she thought. It had an exotic sound to it. She imagined the wedding. A big, socialite one, full of celebrities.

  In the car on the way home, her driver kept up a running commentary on what was happening on the road and hummed along to the songs on the radio. Keera asked him tersely to be quiet. She was trying to visualise her wedding dress and he was getting in the way. The driver pulled a face, but shut up. Apart from an occasional hum, he managed to say no more until she’d got out.

  Her bad mood evaporated as she opened the door to her flat. Sitting on her beige sofa, she thought how perfect she would look if she was being followed by cameras right now. She was wearing chocolate and cream, her black hair glinting in the mid-morning sun shining through the big window. Gazing at herself in the huge Venetian mirror propped up against the opposite wall, she crossed her legs to see if that made them look more elegant. Then she uncrossed them, and simply rested them together at a slant. Difficult. On balance, uncrossed. She leaned forward, and cupped her head in one hand. No wonder she got so much fanmail from obsessed men. She really was extraordinarily beautiful.

  ‘And welcome to The Keera Show’, she said, with a little wriggle in the seat.

  That did sound good. What did stupid, simple Simon know about television? He’d never presented anything. Apart from the audience figures and things. Which wasn’t at all the same thing. Now that she’d had time to mull over what he’d said to her, she dismissed it. Nobody she knew would have given a damn about the Alaska-America business. And as for that motorway question, that was the fault of the thick lorry driver. No. Something else was going on here.

  Had she phoned her editor, she would have discovered that it was nothing more than the usual wounded animal inflicting pain on another. The shareholders were after their pound of flesh. The Boss had told Simon to sort out the programme to try to get revenue up. In the absence of anyone else, Simon had gone for the easy option. Keera cocked up on a daily basis and hadn’t massaged his ego for a long time. In his eyes, presenters were overpaid monkeys who turned up for a few hours a day and read aloud for a living–they needed to be slapped down regularly. It was people like him who put in the hard graft and ought to be remunerated. He should have taken that Channel 4 job when it was offered. He conveniently forgot that it would have involved longer hours for less money and working under a woman. And he despised women more than he despised presenters.

  Keera, meanwhile, had put him out of her mind and was concentrating on the evening ahead. It took her all afternoon to get ready. A final pose in front of the gigantic bedroom mirror showed that it had been worth the effort. Her blue eyes gazed back in satisfaction. She smiled the smile she had been working on ever since she was tall enough to see herself in the bathroom mirro
r at home, picked up her Dior handbag and walked to the door, Christian Louboutin heels clicking on the floorboards.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  That night, millions tuned in to watch the latest episode of Celebrity X-Treme.

  ‘Tonight,’ the commentator said, ‘it’s like a bad production of Henry VIII. We’ve got debauched, breaded, fried, debilitated, bedded, survived.’ As he said each word, the screen showed a close-up of those involved.

  Dave Beal, legless.

  Paul Martin, with toast.

  Tanya Wilton, smearing cream on a very sunburned face.

  Alex Neil, being taken off the slope on a stretcher.

  Katie Fisher, pursing her lips as Paul whispered in her ear.

  Crystal Blake, lying in the snow laughing and whipping off her goggles.

  ‘The day’s task was cross-country skiing,’ said the commentator. ‘With a difference. They had to work as a team to decipher clues and gather hidden treasure, which could be exchanged for food and drink. They experienced varying degrees of success. And cracks are already starting to appear.’

  The celebrities were shown standing together, with Katie upsetting Alex.

  ‘Language is strange, isn’t it? Like, you could say someone was down to earth, but if they were small and down to earth, it could be misconstrued. And the same if you were standing next to someone really small, and you said you were dwarfing everyone.’

  ‘I assume that’s a dig at my size,’ he said, with a tight smile, ‘and it’s not remotely funny’ He turned round, fell over, landed awkwardly and, in a freak incident, sprained his wrist.

  The programme turned to Tanya’s sunburn. Shots were bundled together of everyone stopping to put on sunblock. ‘Black don’t crack,’ she said, when offered cream. The picture cut to her putting aloe vera on her burned nose.

  Crystal and Peter, looking like an advert for toothpaste, were shown being cute, particularly when she fell over, and her long blonde hair was covered in snow.