Coming Up Next

by Penny Smith

  There had been one who ticked all the boxes. He could hardly have been more powerful, running a multi-million-pound dotcom business. His persistence was legendary, and involved a number of excellent diamond pieces delivered by courier. How could she have known he was incapable of being nice to those he called ‘minions’? Or that he would refuse point-blank to reciprocate on the oral-sex front? She had withheld services in that department to see how he coped. Admirably, it seemed. He didn’t appear to care, as long as sex was still on the table.

  She giggled quietly.

  ‘What’s funny?’ asked Bob, returning with her chicken curry on a tray.

  ‘Nothing. Somebody I know who would never have used the table.’

  ‘Oh, sorry. Shall we sit at the table? I’m so used to sitting in front of the telly with my food on my lap. It is a bit slovenly, isn’t it? The disadvantage of living alone. You become a slovenly sloth.’

  ‘I didn’t mean that. This is lovely. Isn’t your cod going to be a smidge cold now?’

  ‘There’s a limit to how many bloody times I can press that microwave button,’ he said. ‘And anyway, it was hot before. Do you want one of my chips?’

  ‘I’m honoured. Few men would allow me to steal chips. And the weird thing is, one of my favourite things in the whole world is chips and curry sauce.’ She leaned over and pinched three from his plate.

  He gently removed two as she lifted her fork. ‘I said one,’ he reminded her sternly, then smiled.

  Bob, she thought, was gorgeous. Thick, dark-blond hair sticking up in all directions. And a nice thick tuft of chest hair protruding from the top of his T-shirt. She could just see a hint of flat stomach above his slouchy jeans. All in all, it was pretty much a Diet Pepsi thing.

  Suddenly Katie didn’t feel hungry. She cut up the chicken and moved it round the plate. Luckily, the wine was delicious. As was the conversation, which rapidly steered a course through microwave meals and plunged straight down into the murky world of relationships.

  She found out that he had split up with a girlfriend a few months ago. It had lasted a year (good, shows staying power), he was still friends (good, shows maturity) and he wouldn’t reveal anything about her beyond her name and what she did (good, shows discretion).

  She tried to pretend that her love-life had been more put upon than putting out. And he pretended not to know all the stuff that had been in the press. Or the stuff that hadn’t, but was fairly well known round the area. She was, after all, their own personal celebrity. He even knew one of them, Peter – a millionaire with short arms and long pockets, who had gone out with her for six months. He was a friend of a friend. And he had described Katie as ‘suffering from relationship bulimia’ – swallowing men and vomiting them up soon after. But at the Old Coach House, all was going down well.

  The night drew in. The chicken lay unloved in its nest of rice. There was a frisson. A tangible something in the air. A sparkle.

  Katie forgot that the wine had run out. She was getting high on conversation. She moved infinitesimally closer to the navy blue T-shirt.

  ‘Are you cold, or are you, erm, are you.’ Bob left the words hanging.

  ‘I think I may be,’ she said.

  Their lips touched and Katie felt as if all her follicles were standing on end. She felt fizzy. And hot. And his arms were strong. She was in love with falling in love. And she was falling in love with Bob, her brother’s friend. Handsome Bob. Bob who wasn’t wearing his T-shirt any more. And then they were upstairs and throwing themselves into musty sheets that had a faint aroma of toast about them.

  The next morning at the Daily Mirror, they were poring over photographs from one of their regular paparazzi in Barbados. They weren’t of the best quality – the angle was slightly too low. But you could clearly see the erstwhile queen of breakfast television practising her deep-throat technique on a banana. She was obviously the worse for wear and, even better, there was a hint of nipple, which they could enhance to make it stand out more. In every sense. The question was not whether they were going to use them. The question was when they were going to use them.

  Just as they were debating the issue, they had a call from a stringer in Yorkshire. Would they be interested in photos of Katie Fisher coming out of Oddbins, splattered with whisky and carrying rather a lot of bottles? There was no more discussion of when they were going to use the Barbados photographs.

  Katie’s evening had been utterly fluttery. She had woken up the next morning, feeling warm, squidgy, a bit nervous and altogether in a state of excitement.

  To be fair, she hadn’t slept well. It had been a while since she’d shared her bed space with anyone else and she had periodically come out of tangled dreams to discover herself in contact with a sinewy, hairy body. She had been surprised for a nanosecond, then caressed it lightly, and smiled her way back into strange images of wild seas about to swamp her.

  Luckily, she had woken first so she could get the fur off her teeth. Then she had found an old comb in the bathroom cabinet and broken a couple more of its teeth in an attempt to sort out her hair, which looked as if it had been set upon by squirrels. Finally, she had put on a soft blue shirt she had discovered in the wardrobe, before she got quietly back into bed. Now that she had hit her roaring forties, she hated the sight of body bits hanging around in the cold glare of the day. She also hated the way that creases could last at least four hours.

  There had been times on-air recently when they had almost got to the ‘soft furnishings’ (fashion and makeovers) element of the show before they’d dropped out. That morning, she had developed a scar through one eye, courtesy, she suspected, of the scrunched-up pillow on her side of the bed.

  Bob, on the other hand, was looking as gorgeous as he had the night before. He had turned over as she got back into bed, smiled at her and rumpled her newly unrumpled hair. His own was sticking up. His chest hair was sticking up. The corners of his mouth were sticking up. There appeared to be things sticking up in all directions.

  Katie had had the most blissful morning with him. They had only opened the curtains as the sun was getting ready to lower itself gingerly into the afternoon. She had left, feeling cuddled, cosseted and rather roughed-up round the edges, promising to meet him for lunch the next day since he had a dinner party to go to. ‘I would ask you to come,’ he had murmured into her neck, as they stood at the door saying their farewells, ‘but it was arranged aeons ago and I know that Diane will have a brain explosion if I mess up her placements.’

  ‘And we wouldn’t want that, would we?’ nuzzled Katie. ‘Brain explosions are hell to get out of the carpet. It would be offally difficult, even with Cillit-Bang. Which is the official cleaning agent for internal-organ explosions.’

  ‘You do say the most romantic things,’ said Bob, caressingly.

  With a last lingering kiss, Katie had left for an evening at home with her parents. In some ways, she wasn’t unhappy. She could get herself tidied up, and give her lips a break. The poor things were looking like a pair of guppies left out on Whitby beach during a hot day in August. Any more attention from Bob tonight and they would never swim again.

  Keera was having a lovely day. She had been asked if she wanted to be considered for the Rear of the Year award. She had to agree to be available on the day they were going to announce it, and she had to agree to a certain amount of publicity. And, no, there wouldn’t be any obvious payment to her that would compromise her position at Hello Britain! But they were sure they could do something that involved some form of pecuniary advantage. Everything in the garden was rosy – apart from a couple of producers whom she knew were not ‘on-side’, as she liked to call it. But she was working on that. She had organized a lunch with The Boss and Colin, the news editor, and had asked them if they could get Kent and Richard along too. Richard might still have been pining for Katie, but she was sure he could be brought round, particularly if he felt outnumbered. The third producer, Helen, would have to be dealt with at a later date.


  Keera had booked Langan’s in Stratton Street. She knew the owner and he would make sure she had the right table. All she had to do was keep everyone’s glass topped up – except hers – and wear the right thing. The rest she would leave to her native charm.

  She had chosen the next day – a Friday. (One infamous Hello Britain! lunch had gone on until midnight, with one of the executive producers driving home so tanked up that when the police stopped him he couldn’t remember where he had been or with whom. According to the police interview, he had repeatedly denied drinking too much, saying only that he had eaten some liqueur chocolates on an empty stomach. The fine had been heavy. But the five-year ban had meant relocation to central London, and a family on the verge of anarchy.)

  It was all coming together slowly but surely. All she had to do now was find a suitably attractive and preferably famous man to have on her arm and she would be exactly where she’d planned, all those years ago.

  And that morning, on Hello Britain!, she had interviewed a man she thought would fill the position very nicely. William Baron. He was a lifestyle guru who was making a name for himself after getting one of the porkiest stars on Big Brother into the most amazing shape. He was also very handsome and had flirted outrageously with her. She had let him know that she was single, and available most weekends.

  Grant, the director, had spoken to her when they were on the ad break. ‘Have you got your dance card marked, then?’ he had asked.

  ‘Oh, I do hope so,’ she had said, holding her lapel mike to her mouth.

  ‘Mmm. Thought there was a whiff of pheromone in the air.’

  ‘Ferret what?’ she had asked.

  The Daily Mirror had decided to go big on the photographs. The front-page headline accompanying the picture of Katie on holiday in Barbados was ‘Fishing for Friends’, with a line underneath promising more pictures. ‘Can Katie Hold Her Drink?’ was that headline, with a series of photographs showing her dropping one bottle and carrying many others.

  The overnight producers had been the first to see them as the first papers off the presses were delivered at ten p.m.

  Richard had laughed. ‘Typical Katie,’ he said, as he pored over the copy. ‘Always did like a bit of a tipple and now she doesn’t have to get up at that ungodly hour of the morning, she’s partying hard. Good on her.’ But he thought he might phone and warn her. And he could fill her in on the gossip from work, including the latest on Keera’s clothes allowance – she had managed to double the amount everyone else got, after being closeted with The Boss for an hour.

  At ten that night, Katie’s happy musings had been cast upon stormy seas by the phone call. It came as she and her parents had been vaguely watching a documentary about a giant jellyfish.

  ‘What do you think is the collective noun for jellyfish?’ asked her father. ‘A squish? A flibble? A wobble?’

  Her mother had been absentmindedly drawing a peony on a sketchpad. ‘Do they have to be pink?’ she asked no one in particular.

  Katie recognized Richard’s number on her mobile and went out into the kitchen.

  ‘Monsieur Richard. Ça va?’

  ‘Oui, très bien. Pourquoi on parle en français?’

  ‘Pas de raison. Quieres hablar en otra lengua?’

  ‘Oh, stop it, you old polyglot. Or polymat or whatever it’s called.’

  ‘Polly-wolly-doodle all the day, it’s called at the moment, since I have very little else to do. How are things at the funny farm?’

  ‘The usual,’ Richard said, and told her about Keera’s wardrobe allowance and Mike’s response when he had ‘accidentally’ told him. ‘He was beyond pissed off, even though no one can tell whether he’s wearing his navy suit from Marks & Spencer or his navy suit from Savile Row. Nobody cares. But you know what Mike’s like. He can’t bear to think someone’s getting something he isn’t. Even if he doesn’t want it!’

  ‘Yeah, bless him. I must give him a ring. He was trying to see if he could get me a co-hosting job on some programme he’s been offered.’

  ‘Now,’ he said, ‘don’t worry too much, but I did phone you for a reason. There are some pix of you in tomorrow’s Mirror.’

  ‘Oh, bugger,’ she said, after a slight hesitation. ‘Of me and my shopping incident?’

  ‘Yup. And I’m afraid you’ve also made the front page – a photo of you and a banana, which you may not remember because you look like you were a little tired and emotional.’

  ‘Oh, no,’ she wailed. ‘Oh, God. That bloody banana. Shit shit shit shit shit! Do I look ruddy awful?’

  ‘Surprisingly sexy, actually, in the banana photo.’ Richard laughed. ‘And, erm, perhaps less sexy in the buying-up-Oddbins photos.’

  ‘Damn. I could have done without those. I could have fobbed off my parents with the banana incident, but they’ll just look at the others and go quiet. They think I drink too much anyway. Damn. Oh, God. This might have a bearing on that co-hosting job. Why, why, why did it have to happen now? I was just thinking I could come back to town because the fuss had died down. Maybe I’d better go to Burkina Faso for a bit and take up whatever they do there.’

  ‘Starve?’ asked Richard.

  ‘Maybe not, then.’

  ‘Look, no one here seems to think they’re that dreadful. Go and buy the paper tomorrow. You know how things always seem much worse when you don’t know what you’re dealing with. It’s not as though you’re embezzling grannies out of their life savings or using crack cocaine.’

  ‘Yeah, right,’ said Katie, ruefully. ‘They’ll print those photos next week.’

  ‘Don’t be daft. You won’t be famous next week.’

  ‘Gee, thanks. What a pal. OK. I’ll wait until I see them before I book my ticket to West Africa.’ She clicked her mobile phone shut and chewed her lip.

  Apart from her parents, there was now Bob to consider. Or was there Bob to consider? Who decided whether or not one-night stands were one-night stands? How much would he care about photographs in a newspaper he probably didn’t read?

  She poured herself a large glass of whisky and went back into the sitting room as a transparent blob cast its baleful eye from the television.

  Her parents exchanged an anxious glance.

  ‘Anything important?’ asked her dad.

  ‘Mmm. Er. Well, I might as well tell you, since someone else will at some stage. There are some photos of me in one of the papers tomorrow. And they probably won’t be very nice. Some are from Barbados, and the others are from the day I replenished the drinks cabinet.’

  Her parents watched as a rival to the jellyfish hove into view. A giant squid. It was shown in its murky home while the narrator talked about its lonely existence.

  ‘Are you worried?’ asked her dad, as the squid danced in the current, before turning tentacle and slowly receding.

  ‘I don’t know. It’s difficult to tell. I suppose it depends on what they write,’ she said.

  The squid started eating something green in close-up.

  ‘Urgh. Get a room,’ muttered her father.

  Her mother turned to ask if another batch of reporters would be demanding tea and buns from the bottom of the garden. On hearing that it was unlikely, she stood up and wondered if her daughter would like a nice cup of hot chocolate. ‘I was going to make one for myself,’ she said, as she made her way to the kitchen, ‘and I thought it might draw the sting from that whisky,’ she said tartly.

  ‘Only a few more days to put up with it, Mum, and I’ll be out of your hair,’ said Katie, as she addressed herself once more to the giant squid and its apparent lack of a Mrs Giant Squid. ‘Oh, and by the way, Dad, the bloke on the phone said it’s a smack of jellyfish.’

  CHAPTER NINE

  There was a sense of excitement at Hello Britain! as one of their own was featured on the front page of the Mirror. She might not work there any longer, but everyone shared in the vicarious thrill of seeing Katie caught unawares. And some of the men were particularly pleased to see her revea
ling so much of herself during the banana incident – not knowing (or caring) that the photo had been subtly enhanced.

  In Makeup, Keera did her best to appear suitably sympathetic as she put the finishing touches to her hair and waited for the sound girl to sort out her microphone. ‘There but for the grace of God go I, as they say,’ she commented.

  ‘I didn’t know you liked a tipple,’ said a makeup girl, peering again at the photo of Katie covered with alcohol and lugging half of Oddbins out to the car.

  ‘Oh, yes. I can drink like the proverbal fish,’ she responded.

  ‘Proverbial, do you mean?’ asked Richard, coming in with an amendment to the top of the show.

  ‘Of course,’ said Keera. ‘I was using the word metaphorically.’

  Richard made a face, left a pause and told her they were no longer doing diabetes as the lead item. It was going to be immigration. ‘Sorry it’s a bit of a late change,’ he said, glancing at the clock. Fifteen minutes to on-air. ‘We’ve got some bids in for various guests. We’ll let you know as we go along. Mike’s just got here, but once he’s up to speed he’ll probably do most of them. OK?’

  ‘No, it’s not,’ responded Keera, her mouth turning down at the corners. ‘Why should he when I’m perfectly capable of doing them myself?’

  ‘I thought you might prefer to do the ones you’ve already got. That’s all,’ said Richard, emolliently. ‘And we have given you the big showbiz interview of the day.’

  ‘Hardly big showbiz. Julie Christie? She must be a hundred and eight. And what’s she been in? Some films no one’s ever heard of. Far From the Maddening Crowd and –’

  ‘Madding Crowd, a Thomas Hardy classic, with Terence Stamp and Peter Finch.’

  ‘Whatever. And Dr Zhivago. I saw the one with the lovely Keira Knightley in the lead role. On television. She was brilliant.’

  ‘Fine. If you want to do more of the immigration chats, I’ll leave Miss Christie in Mike’s tender care,’ said Richard. It would probably make for a better chat anyway, and he and the other producer would ensure they fed Keera the questions for the new guests.