After the Break

by Penny Smith

  And then it was Katie and Paul’s turn. They were pictured getting very close, with Paul saying, ‘You have sex with them. Talking of which, I enjoyed last night…’

  Katie smiled shyly.

  ‘Oh, yes, they’re getting on like a house on fire, those two,’ said the commentator, as Paul said quietly, ‘Should I take extra water out with us in case the flames start melting the countryside?’

  At Wolf Days Productions, everyone was being very careful not to mention Celebrity X-Treme within earshot of the bosses. Gemma and Rose stood by the water-cooler, gossiping.

  ‘Do you think he was watching?’ asked Gemma, taking a sip from her plastic cup.

  ‘He can’t have been, or he’d be in a shit mood because of Katie copping off with Paul Martin,’ said Rose, in a scandalized voice. ‘Or allegedly copping off. Could just be editing, of course. We’d have seen it, otherwise, wouldn’t we? The actual moment.’

  ‘Yup. ’S not difficult, is it? Would you do it with Paul Martin?’

  ‘Yeah. Course. He looks like Daniel Craig. And he’s got, like, a six-pack or an eight-pack or something. Did you see his biceps straining under that T-shirt when he was getting into his Arctic suit?’ asked Rose, taking more water and gulping it down.

  ‘Whoah. Well cool. And he’s got such amazing blue eyes. He is cute with a capital Q.’

  ‘Or a capital C, even.’

  ‘Whatever. I bet Katie fancies him,’ pronounced Gemma.

  ‘Course she does. You can see it in her eyes. You can do all sorts of things in the editing suite, but you can’t change what your eyes are saying, can you?’

  Gemma thought for a minute. ‘Look into my eyes.’

  Rose stared into them, her head slightly forwards.

  ‘Well?’ asked Gemma, finally having to blink.

  ‘Hmm,’ Rose said. ‘They’re saying you were out too late last night and you wish you hadn’t drunk that tenth vodka shot.’

  ‘Oh, God. Are they all bloodshot?’ Gemma closed them and pressed on her eyelids.

  ‘Like that’s going to help. And, no, they’re not. Or no more than normal’

  ‘Gee, thanks, Peanut Head. Anyway, what they were really saying was that you’re a fat slag with the breath of a hyena.’

  ‘Ta, Pig Face. Does my breath smell, though?’ asked Rose. She licked her hand and sniffed. And giggled at Gemma’s face. ‘It works. You lick your hand, let it dry and smell it. And that’s what your breath smells like. Honest.’

  ‘I believe you. Thousands wouldn’t,’ said Gemma. ‘And, no, your breath doesn’t smell.’

  ‘I know. I’ve just smelled it.’ Rose grabbed a final cup of water and walked away. ‘However,’ she threw over her shoulder, ‘you do smell like an armpit.’

  Gemma laughed. ‘Cheers,’ she said, going to her desk to plough through the list of people she had to phone now that she was in charge of Dare to Bare, a new show for Channel 4.

  Nick came into the office, carrying a take-out coffee and smelling divinely of almond croissant.

  ‘Mm. Edible,’ said Rose, looking up from her computer as he went past.

  ‘I know,’ said Gemma. ‘Shame he’d never look at either of us.’

  ‘I was obviously talking about his croissant,’ said Rose, with dignity. Then she smiled. ‘Do you think we’re doomed to a life of singleness, interrupted by occasional unsuitable shags?’

  ‘Speak for yourself. I have a perfectly respectable man, thank you,’ said Gemma, who was dating a singer in an ‘up-and-coming’ indy band, which had been up-and-coming for some years.

  ‘Don’t make me laugh. Is Dracula respectable?’

  ‘Dracula?’

  ‘How many love bites can you get on one neck? It is so uncool once you’ve left school.’

  ‘One love bite. And that was on the first date before he knew how sensitive my skin was,’ declared Gemma.

  ‘He sleeps in a coffin. He’s as pale as death. He’s got a killer bite. He’s Dracula.’

  ‘Ha!’ exclaimed Gemma. ‘Got you. Dracula doesn’t kill you with his bite. He makes you undead. So.’

  ‘So what? He still kills you in real life. You’re not technically alive if you’re undead.’

  ‘You’re not dead, though, are you?’

  ‘Technically, yes.’

  ‘Technically, no. Anyway, I’ve got to get on. I need six new guinea pigs before Nick or Adam have my guts for garters.’

  Guinea pigs were not what Adam was considering at that precise moment.

  He was admiring himself in front of the mirror and pondering the day’s attire.

  His reflection showed a tall, attractive man with a washboard stomach and a smooth, muscled chest. Membership to a select gym had been his ex-girlfriend’s last gift to him before she had left him, and he had developed an almost lover-like relationship with it. He could spend hours there, losing himself in contemplation of a single muscle. A small part of him was appalled by his obsession but he wasn’t about to stop going any time soon–particularly when the results were so bloody marvellous. He reached forward and picked out a navy Gucci shirt and a pair of faded jeans. He opened another cupboard and chose a pair of brown, fashionably distressed boots. He slipped a pair of Ray-Bans into his pocket, and left the flat.

  A photographer, who was hoping to get work for one of the tabloids, started taking snaps of him, running backwards to get the shots as Adam walked along the road to his Porsche. He smiled at him in a friendly way even though his space had been invaded. Katie’s experiences had taught him that if you ever spotted a photographer you should try to look as pleasant as possible for as long as possible. That way, it was harder to illustrate a hideous article with a hideous picture.

  He was driving along listening idly to the radio when an item about pensions caught his ear. He wondered if it was possible to make an interesting television programme about pensions. Take five people who had made financial choices, say, ten, fifteen, twenty years ago. What had happened to their pensions, and who was best off? He viewed his own retirement with fear and loathing. He couldn’t imagine how anyone was supposed to have fun without a company to play with. On his way to the gym, he had seen a woman bent double pushing a shopping trolley Would he be the sort of older person who was unable to unscrew the lid of a jar? Unable to get through childproof packaging? Unable to get up once he’d fallen over?

  He smiled–Katie could probably tell him what that felt like.

  So. These five people’s finances would have to be similar, but their choices different. And then you’d see the results of investments in stocks and shares, or houses or commercial properties or Premium Bonds or whatever.

  He turned into the underground car park next to the office, and sat there for a minute, trying to think of other ways of investing. Offshore? Leaving everything in a bank on the highest interest rate? Buying a sheep farm in Wales and living off the fat of the land?

  He was still pondering this as he swung in through the double glass doors. He didn’t, therefore, notice the hush that immediately descended as everyone tried to look busy. He went straight into Nick’s room. ‘Nick. How many people do you know who have prepared adequately for their old age?’

  ‘As in got enough jumpers and made sure their boiler’s working?’

  ‘Twat,’ said Adam, in a friendly way. ‘I mean, as in pensions.’

  ‘I don’t know. Not something we talk about down the Old Slug and Limpet.’

  ‘So. What do you think of this idea?’ And he outlined the programme.

  Discussion over, Nick could contain himself no longer. ‘Assume you were watching last night?’ he asked, wandering over to the window.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And it’s obviously all in the editing suite, just as we imagined it would be. As I said to Katie before she went, they’ll do whatever they can for ratings. And I discovered that the hideous Siobhan Stamp is in charge so she’ll be doing her best to make Katie look shit.’
/>   Nick pulled a face. ‘I didn’t know that.’

  ‘Found out before Katie agreed to do it. So no surprise that she’s already trying to find a way to make us pay. Told you she was poisonous, didn’t I?’

  Nick had actually been hoping that Celebrity X-Treme would provoke a hiccup in Katie and Adam’s relationship. Not in a nasty way. But as a little payback. He wondered, again, how Adam had done it. He had come back from a trip away and discovered them virtually living in each other’s pockets. It didn’t help that Adam had been in such a good mood since. He had to admit, they were a very handsome pair. He had seen a photo in one of the gossip magazines in which Katie, her long auburn hair tied back at the neck, was smiling up at Adam.

  ‘I’m actually hoping,’ his friend broke into his thoughts, ‘or should I say, slightly hoping, that she’ll be among the first to be voted off so she can take the money and not lose too much of her dignity. But I doubt it. She’s making good copy.’

  ‘Hmm. I hate to throw a tiny spanner in the works here, but the papers aren’t going to let you off that easy. Have you seen them today?’ He lobbed one over, folded to the page.

  Adam looked at the headline: ‘Is Paul Martin Getting His Column Inches?’

  ‘Stuff and nonsense, as my granny used to say. All bluster and whatever that other word is. Baloney. No. Bluff. Bluster and bluff. Or, in Anglo-Saxon, bollocks.’

  Nick grimaced. ‘Still, bet you want to ram his teeth down his throat.’

  ‘Depends. I’ll get Katie’s view before I do that. If he’s done anything to warrant it, they will, of course, be pushed so far down his throat he’ll have to clean them by sitting on his toothbrush. Does that make you feel better?’

  ‘Much. Thank you. And now I come to think of it, why would she go with that tosser when she’s got another ugly tosser already in the bag?’ asked Nick.

  ‘Still not got a girlfriend?’ asked Adam, mock-sympathetic.

  ‘Cock off,’ Nick responded.

  Adam picked up the rest of the newspapers and disappeared to his office.

  In the part of Nick’s brain marked ‘Sex/Beer’ he had filed a picture of Katie and him. It was never going to happen now–too weird–but she was his kind of girl, and really not Adam’s. When she had first walked into the office, he had felt a stirring in his loins. It continued to this day whenever he thought of her. He had taken to having extended breaks if he knew she was coming in to avoid a difficult situation. Maybe he should take a leaf out of Adam’s book and begin heavy gym work. Getting drunk was quite useful but the effects were too fleeting, and it always made him feel rather maudlin.

  In Norway they were doing a fancy-dress slalom. On the practice runs Katie had fallen over every time. ‘I have lumps the size of a small mountain range arriving on my leg,’ she said to Paul, as he leaned on his poles waiting for his second ski down the mountain, ‘or maybe they should be described as foothills.’

  ‘Ah. The famous punning.’

  ‘Just funning punning. You haven’t fallen over at all, have you?’

  ‘Nope. I’m imagining an enormous net ready to catch me. It appears to be giving me unwarranted confidence,’ he said, with a grin.

  ‘And I’m imagining an enormous hard thing just waiting to hurt me,’ she told him.

  ‘You must be thinking something similar to what I am right now,’ he said, with a wink, as he set off down the slope.

  Tanya moved closer. ‘That boy is incorrigible,’ she said, nudging her.

  ‘I know. But he’s a laugh,’ replied Katie. ‘How much longer have we got before we have to do this wretched nonsense?’

  Tanya untangled her ski gloves and poles, and peered at her watch.

  ‘About half an hour. Why?’

  ‘Wondering if I can manage to break something only moderately important and retire hurt before I get voted off.’

  Tanya smiled. ‘Do you want to leave?’

  ‘Not exactly. It would be fantastic to win, obviously, but a large part of me thinks that’s as likely as a tortoise winning the annual reef-knot-tying contest. It would be better to leave of my own accord.’

  ‘I think we all feel a bit like that.’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘Well…no. But, then, I’ve got nothing better to do so I might as well stay here and enjoy myself.’

  They stood leaning companionably on their ski poles as Denise headed tentatively down the slope in a snow-plough position.

  ‘I’d enjoy it more if that tragic apology for a woman wasn’t constantly winding me up,’ commented Tanya.

  ‘She really is a curmudgeonly old beast, isn’t she? It goes against the grain to be civil to her. The temptation just to tell her to–I don’t know–take a flying leap…’

  ‘Let the force be with you, I say,’ replied Tanya. ‘Maybe we could both shovel her off the side of the mountain. Are you going now or shall I?’

  ‘You first. I’m debating whether I have enough arnica tablets to deal with another bruise.’

  Tanya adjusted her feathery ear-muffs. ‘No,’ she responded to Katie’s unspoken question. ‘They don’t keep my ears warm at all. But they do look pretty, don’t they?’ And the question was left in the air as she launched herself forward.

  Sighing, Katie gave it a few minutes and shuffled into position. Here we go, she thought grimly, pushing firmly on the ski poles.

  She was doing very well, by her standards, until a spectacular fall about twenty yards from the finish. She completed the course on her bottom, legs akimbo.

  Paul rushed to help her up. ‘Hey,’ he said, dusting snow off her back, ‘that was a fast time.’

  ‘Of course it was. I didn’t use my feet for the last part,’ she said, massaging her bruised rear.

  ‘Here, let me do that,’ he said solicitously, reaching round.

  ‘I think not.’ She laughed unsteadily because the tumble felt as if it had dented more than her pride. ‘Oh, God, that feels nice–not.’ She groaned, her fingers checking the damage. ‘That’s going to be one hell of a lump.’

  ‘Maybe you should go down the next one on your front,’ he suggested.

  ‘Ha-ha. Ouch. Oop. That really does hurt. You know, it sounds a bit wimpy, but I’m going to have a word with the doc and ask him if I should call it a day.’

  ‘Chicken,’ he said.

  ‘And what do you mean by that?’

  ‘I mean I saw what you did before the “accidental” accident. And don’t think you’re going to be out of this before they vote you out. That’s all’ And, with a meaningful look, he wandered off.

  She bent over to take off her skis while she had a little think. By the time she raised her head again, she had decided that she would–unfortunately–have to pull herself together and do the wretched fancy-dress slalom.

  She limped over to the doctor, a suave man in his fifties. ‘Doctor, doctor,’ she said.

  ‘Yes?’ he asked wearily, waiting for the inevitable joke.

  ‘I feel like I’m a pair of curtains.’

  ‘Pull yourself together. You can do better than that.’

  ‘Feel like I’m a dog?’

  ‘Get on the sofa. Not allowed on the sofa. And again?’

  ‘How about…I’ve only got a week to live?’

  ‘Good news, though. The patient in the next bed wants to buy your slippers?’

  ‘You’re good,’ she said appreciatively. ‘Final chance. Oh, you’ve got a fly on your nose?’

  He thought for a minute. ‘It’s got no wings. It must be a walk?’

  ‘Excellent. But, actually, you really do have a little fly on your nose. Or a speck of something.’

  He rubbed it off. ‘And what can I do for you? Or did you just come over here to discover whether I knew every doctor-doctor joke going?’

  ‘I fell over and now I hurt everywhere. Should I be worried?’

  ‘Anything you can’t move?’

  ‘My ears.’

  ‘Could you move them before you fell over?’<
br />
  ‘No.’

  ‘How many fingers am I holding up?’

  ‘Two spring onions and a tree. No. Seriously, though, I’m not concussed.’

  ‘In that case, take some paracetamol-based tablets to bring down the swelling. And be more careful.’

  ‘You have got such a wonderful bedside manner, Doctor,’ she said flirtily, smiling through her lashes.

  He was a regular fixture on a number of television programmes, was attractive, smelled nice and had an impressively firm torso. She did like a man who could distinguish his metatarsal from his dorsal fin.

  ‘Hold that smile for much longer and it’ll turn into a rictus grin,’ he warned jauntily.

  ‘Do you see many of those at the surgery?’ she asked interestedly.

  ‘Not this time of year, no.’

  ‘Migratory, are they?’

  ‘You must be thinking of the borborygmi.’

  ‘Oh. Yes, now I come to think of it, I was.’

  ‘Stomach rumbles, in case you were wondering.’

  ‘Obviously, I already knew.’

  They watched Peter sliding sideways and almost taking out one of the safety struts before leaping to his feet and punching the air.

  ‘I must say, this is a young man’s game,’ said the doctor. ‘I went out skiing this morning and overdid it. I’m fifty-four this year–’

  ‘You look brilliant,’ cut in Katie.

  ‘How kind. Anyway, I ache all over. Not as much as you will, though…’

  Crystal came over. ‘Paul’s worried about you,’ she said. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘He is, is he?’ Katie said dismissively ‘You can tell him I’m fine. So fine, in fact, that I’m going to ski over the rocks next time to make it more exciting.’

  She watched Crystal go back to Paul, her blonde hair cascading down her back. ‘Utterly stunning,’ she commented.

  ‘Yup,’ agreed the doctor.

  ‘I suppose I’d better get back,’ she said wistfully, glaring with dislike at the start of the fancy-dress race where the organizers were stretching across a tape. They had strung a host of red balloons at the finishing line.

  Half an hour later the contestants were in their outfits–wigs, feather boas, humps, fake noses and moustaches.