Coming Up Next

by Penny Smith

  Hours later, she woke up. Not an ounce of moisture in her entire body. She had not felt so wretched since Matt Dougal had dumped her when she was sixteen. She had cried non-stop for three days and sworn she would never let anyone dump her again. And she had held to that promise. Any man who had got close, she had split up with as soon as she’d seen signs of waning interest. One had told her he had wanted to knit his soul with hers and had mapped out a future with her in the stars. He had been the most romantic boyfriend ever. She had arrived at his flat one night to be serenaded by a violin and cello duo in the corner of the sitting room. They had tactfully left and he had led her through to his bed, strewn with rose petals. But one day he had said idly that the new girl at work reminded him of Catherine Zeta-Jones. And that had been it. The end. Many years later, he told her he had been planning to propose to her.

  Anyway. No man had dumped her since Matt. But now she had been dumped as publicly as it was possible to be. Or she was about to be dumped as publicly as it was possible to be.

  No point in thinking about that now. She’d be better off trying to get some sleep that didn’t involve whisky and Benylin, so that she would look all right if the photographers took shots of her tomorrow.

  Tears were leaking again.

  She decided to clear out her wardrobes. She cried intermittently as she made an enormous pile of colourful suits in one corner of the room. Her breakfast-television outfits.

  The Boss who had employed her to replace the veteran newscaster Beatrice Shah had told her that the viewers wouldn’t care if she fucked up her interviews, but they did like to have a nice bright splash of colour in the morning while their kids were throwing the hamster around. ‘It’s not whether you’re good or not. It’s how good you look. Frankly, we could put a talking gorilla on the sofa as long as it wore nice clothes,’ he had said. ‘But they’re more expensive than humans. Never make the mistake of thinking you’re irreplaceable.’

  Maybe she had. She’d felt too secure in her work. She knew she’d done a good job. But Keera was younger, prettier … exotic.

  Keera had come to Hello Britain! after losing her job as a radio disc jockey in Devon: she had done a raunchy video that had been featured in most of the tabloids. She had got herself an agent, and the management at the breakfast-television station had agreed to her doing a stint as a reporter in a small civil war they hadn’t been thinking of sending anyone out to – no one from Britain holidayed there so most people hadn’t heard of it. She wouldn’t be paid, but she’d get a little bit of airtime. ‘Nothing guaranteed, mind you,’ The Boss had said.

  She had worn tiny little vest tops and combat trousers, which had shown off her lean figure. And a little Tiffany heart necklace … the station had been swamped with replacements when she lost it.

  She had come home to a heroine’s welcome and endless pieces in glossy magazines. ‘Beauty and the Beast of War’. ‘My Heart Remains In Africa’. ‘Out of Africa and Into the Top 10’ – that was about how she’d become one of the top ten icons of the year. No one ever revealed that her reports had been written for her and faxed over for her to rehearse.

  Katie had been supportive when Keera had started at Hello Britain! ‘You don’t need to be a trained journalist to do this job,’ she had told her, over coffee at the canteen one morning. ‘Obviously it helps. The main thing, though, is to be interested. And as informed as possible.’

  In the last few months, she had belatedly recognized the threat Keera posed to her previously unchallenged spot as queen of breakfast television.

  Mike, her co-presenter, had told her not to be silly, that she had his unwavering support: ‘You know I could never work as well with anyone else. We’re like an old married couple, you and I. There’d be an outcry if Minnie Mouse pointed her bony arse at the sofa.’ That had been his nickname for Keera ever since she’d squeaked during a live interview when she had mistakenly thought a car backfiring was a sniper.

  Katie had laughed, but thought that he would have done more than squeak in that situation: he would have had to wash his little white Calvin Klein pants.

  She checked her tear ducts. Almost dry. She took two Nurofen, and went to bed.

  She woke up at dawn, and managed to wait until six o’clock before phoning her agent.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Katie had been one of Jim Break’s most lucrative clients – he had bought his house in leafy Surrey almost entirely on the back of her groundbreaking Hello Britain! deal. Although they had fallen out a few times, they had a genuinely friendly relationship.

  While Katie was on holiday, he had been called in for a meeting. He had had an inkling as to what it was about, so had gone in to salvage what was left of her contract. Unless they could prove she had done something immoral, illegal or downright unpleasant, she’d get some cash.

  He hated dealing with the management there. Half of them were virtually related – he had felt the need to check surreptitiously that they all had thumbs. He could only assume they had information on someone at the top. How else could you explain the barrel-chested simian Barry Spicer, who was paid a huge salary and had never been seen to do anything but organize his holidays.

  Whatever you thought of Katie’s presenting skills, she turned up for work five days a week, wrote most of her own scripts, did as much research as she could, and never moaned.

  ‘Hi, Katie,’ he said, when she phoned. ‘Hold on a second. I’ll just take the phone downstairs.’ She could hear his girlfriend grumbling about people phoning at this bloody hour of the night. ‘Katie? How are you feeling?’

  ‘Oh, fine. Fine. Obviously. Just been sacked. Mortgage to pay. Never felt better. Naturally. How are you?’

  ‘I know. I did try to warn you.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘When I came over six months ago and showed you the audience research I’d got my hands on through an exchange of dirty info.’

  ‘But it said the viewers didn’t particularly like anyone, except the newsreader. And the only reason they liked her was that she didn’t frighten the horses. About as interesting as a damp flannel. Although at least flannels can germinate something interesting.’

  ‘Yes. But they hated your jokes, which had been getting increasingly bizarre.’

  ‘Not bizarre. Just silly.’

  ‘And you, of course, are so clever you’ve been out-manoeuvred by Keera.’

  ‘Was it Keera who stuffed me, then?’

  ‘That’s what I’ve heard. She’s been very quietly having conversations with the people upstairs about where she’s going to go now that she’s such hot property. She’s got a publicity agent.’

  ‘You told me I never needed one.’

  He ignored that. ‘And the publicity agent’s been busy sowing all those trumped-up stories about megabucks being offered by NBC, ABC, ITN, the BBC, et cetera, et cetera. Plus, let’s face it, she looks bloody gorgeous in a swimsuit and those wet photos in Loaded can’t have done her any harm. Particularly since the soaking was in the name of rescuing refugees from that African country that’s permanently on the verge of starvation.’

  ‘They said in Private Eye she did those pictures in southern Spain.’

  ‘Exactly. She’s canny.’

  There was a long silence.

  ‘Well, what do I do now?’

  ‘We say that it was your decision to leave. That you’re pursuing other projects. You’ve had enough of getting up at a ridiculous time in the morning. You’re thankful for the experience, blah-blah-blah, and that you wish Keera every success with one of the best jobs in television.’

  ‘And then what do I do?’

  ‘You lie low until we get you another job.’

  Jim ended the phone conversation and went back to bed.

  ‘Who was that?’ asked his girlfriend.

  ‘Katie Fisher.’

  ‘Oh, right. She in a state?’

  ‘She sounded all right. Pissed off. But she’s level headed. I suspect she’ll go to ground for
a bit. Hopefully, we can sort something out pretty quickly. Although at the moment there’s nothing around that’s even remotely in her ballpark.’

  Had he seen Katie at that moment, he wouldn’t have felt quite so sanguine. She had looked over the Cliff of the Television Career and seen the River of Smiling Through Gritted Teeth running down to the Sea of Z-list Parties and the Desert of Invitations. And had set about what was left of the bottle of whisky. Who gives a toss what time it is? she thought. I’m on Barbados time and the sun is so far over the yardarm there it’s almost … oh … last night. Who cares? I can have as many lie-downs, lie-ins, or whatever, as I want from now until I die alone in a shed and get eaten by cats.

  Was there anyone she should be phoning? Her fuzzy brain sorted through the Rolodex of Very Important People, Important People and Other People.

  People. What a weird word. Pee-pull. Pull-pee. Imp-potent pee-pull.

  She closed her eyes.

  ‘To sleep. Perchance to dream.’ What a weird word. Perchance. Perch-aunts. Puh.

  She woke up a few hours later, suddenly aware that the answerphone was going mad. She turned over on the sofa, feeling woozy and peculiar. She had twenty-four messages. The news was obviously out.

  She would stay in.

  The intercom buzzed. Katie went to pick up its phone, chewing her lip. ‘Yes,’ she said gruffly.

  ‘Katie Fisher?’

  ‘Sorry, she’s still on holiday.’

  ‘When will she be back?’

  ‘I don’t know. She may be out of the country for a while.’

  ‘Are you a friend?’

  ‘House-sitting. Must go. I’ve got a … got a – got a lithp,’ she said limply. She hung up.

  So, the press had wasted no time. They were outside her front door. At least one of them, anyway. Wanting to see her depressed and miserable having been booted off the sofa to make way for a younger woman the size and shape of a whippet.

  She felt wretched and ugly.

  She drank one and a half litres of water and ate some chocolate Brazils she’d found at the back of a cupboard, left over from Christmas. She did three sit-ups and phoned Jim.

  ‘Jim Break.’

  ‘It’s Katie again.’

  ‘I assume you’ve heard my message that they’ve released a statement?’

  ‘I’ve got twenty-four calls on my phone that I’ve no intention of listening to at this stage. Where did you say my career was going from here?’

  ‘I told them what we’d agreed. Other projects. When they asked what they were I said there were a number in the pipeline and that we couldn’t discuss them until they were further along the production route.’

  ‘So, basically they know I’ve got nothing to go to?’

  ‘Katie, if you’d listened to me instead of becoming more and more convinced of your own unassailable position, we wouldn’t be in this position now,’ he said acerbically. ‘I warned you that you were on dodgy ground. That even The Boss told me you needed to sort out the jokes. That you were going to have to do more publicity, get yourself in the papers, generate a buzz. But you decided you were going to keep your job by being good at your interviews. Like, who gives a flying fox that you managed to stitch up the home secretary with his general amnesty for thieves or whatever the hell it was? Who gives two shakes of a limp knob whether you can hold your own with some two-bit actor or comedian? You’re too clever by half. And there’s Mike, who’s handsome, well turned out –’

  ‘Uncultured.’

  ‘They don’t care. He comes across as nice. His jokes may not be particularly funny either, but at least they understand them. Yours are sometimes so far off the planet they’re nearing the heliosphere and heading towards the last-known solar system in the universe. I told you you needed to get more real. Take a leaf out of Mike’s book and sound shocked that anyone could pay more than twenty quid for a pair of shoes, that you couldn’t imagine anything more boring than reading a book, that your idea of a good night in is watching back-to-back soaps, while eating chicken curry and a packet of Penguins. But no. You’d talk about your opera, your books, your obscure European cinema – and you kept on with the jokes, like that one about Nietzsche.’

  ‘Finding my own Nietzsche in the philosophy world. I still think that’s good.’

  ‘It’s not. It wasn’t. You’re supposed to be talking to women with children. Women who have got twenty pence and a bag of sprouts to last them till the end of the week.’

  ‘Well, the advertisers wouldn’t want them, then.’

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  There was silence.

  ‘Incidentally, Mike’s been very supportive, according to my inside sources. He’s apparently been saying you’re a great presenter and he wants you to stay on the sofa. But The Boss – and the chairman – want you off it. Have you been out of the front door yet?’

  ‘No – there are reporters there. And, I assume, photographers. No idea how many are out there. How big do you think this story is?’

  ‘Sadly, no mass deaths anywhere at the moment, no politicians shagging their secretaries, no celebrity marriages on the rocks. It’s a slow Monday on a damp spring day. Could be page five. Could be front page, if nothing happens between now and ten o’clock tonight. Do you want me to come over?’

  ‘No. I’m going to have to deal with it at some stage.’

  She phoned her mum and dad and left a message telling them that under no circumstances were they to talk to anyone they didn’t know, about anything. She phoned her brother, Ben, and told him the same thing.

  ‘Can I speak to my patients?’ he asked, faux-serious.

  ‘No. Anyway, no doctor speaks to his patients,’ she said.

  He laughed. ‘So, you OK?’ he asked.

  ‘How would you feel if they told you you’d been replaced by a performing monkey because it looked good in a stethoscope?’

  ‘Keera’s hardly a performing monkey.’

  ‘Yeah, right. She’s got bags of presenting experience and is a bundle of laughs.’

  ‘Viewers don’t necessarily want funny women, Katie. I think it’s great. Wakes my brain up in the morning. I like the one you did about “Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.” I’ve been using it on some of my mates. But, you know, there are people out there who prefer Mike’s gentle humour. Easy, self-deprecating. He doesn’t talk about anything complicated or use long words.’

  ‘That’s because he doesn’t know any. And thanks for being so supportive.’

  ‘Well, I am. But I think you’re better than that bollocks anyway. I only watch it to check whether you’re still living.’

  ‘You should see me today. Barely breathing.’

  ‘Do you need me to come over and check your pulse?’

  ‘Thank you, Doctor, but I think I can manage that.’

  Ben had made her feel slightly better. Maybe she should get out of the flat. She checked in the mirror.

  No, she should most certainly not go out – or, at least, not looking like that.

  The intercom buzzed again.

  ‘Yes,’ she answered, in the gruff voice she’d used earlier.

  ‘Is Katie Fisher there?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Can you tell me when she’ll be back.’

  ‘No. I’m the house-sitter – sitting in the house until she gets back.’

  ‘Which is when?’

  ‘No idea.’

  She hung up.

  The intercom buzzed yet again. She ignored it, and decided she had been idiotic. How was she going to go out of the flat for photographs, now that she had said she wasn’t in?

  ‘Moron,’ she berated herself.

  Did it matter? Yes. Some reporter would make a big thing of how she had ‘lain low, pretending to be out … dah-dah-dah.’

  She searched through the fridge. No, still nothing but beer and vodka. She took the vodka and lay on the sofa to watch television, her mobile phone on vibrate. She might as well get som
e enjoyment out of this hideousness.

  The home phone rang. Then again. And again.

  She wondered how many messages the answerphone would take before it conked out.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  That Monday morning, Hello Britain! was abuzz. Katie Fisher had been replaced by Keera Keethley. Nobody could quite believe it. There had been rumours, of course, but any newsroom with more than two journalists in it was awash with them.

  Most of the women were not fans of Keera. Katie might have got to the top through ‘hard grind’, as she was fond of saying, but she was also a good journalist. And they found her hilarious, even if the bosses didn’t.

  Keera wasn’t funny. She was desperately ambitious. She was ingratiating. She was political with a small p but had a large ego. She was very good with men. She didn’t care what anyone thought of her journalistic skills because it didn’t matter. You asked questions. Full stop. End of story. Not difficult. No, she wanted to be thought of as pretty and sexy. And famous.

  The men in charge, who had seen her lithe body, didn’t mind that her interviews were often tedious and that she was more interested in making sure her long, shiny black hair was in tiptop condition than whether she asked the right questions. Or that she overran virtually every live report she had ever done, which meant that the producers had to cancel interviewees who had spent a day, sometimes, travelling to London to have their three minutes in the sun. There were few producers who had not had to do The Grovel. ‘I’m so sorry, but unforeseen circumstances … Of course you’ll be recompensed for your time … Last-minute breaking story …’

  And Keera was always in the editor’s office. Bringing him little gifts.

  Katie had once quoted a line from A Midsummer Night’s Dream to Dee, the weather presenter. ‘Tempting him with knacks, trifles, nosegays, sweetmeats …’ Now she was the ass. Keera had planned this moment since her last year at school, had laid out her ten-year plan – had decided she wanted to be on the famous breakfast-time sofa.

  And here she was. Her first day when she wasn’t a stand-in. Her first day when she had the status she deserved.