Coming Up Next

by Penny Smith

  ‘It’s not the eye that’s the problem. It’s the ear,’ she said. And almost blushed because it came out sounding so eleven-year-old petulant. ‘Look, she’s not my favourite person because she ousted one of my best friends from the sofa, is all. And she’s not the best interviewer in the world. But yes. Easy on the eye.’

  ‘Why was she talking about strands, anyway?’ he asked, reaching for his glass of lime and soda.

  ‘Well, she said maybe you should do a strand. Which I agreed with. Helping different people to get their life on track. Harassed mums. Harassed students. Harassed pets. Harassed television presenters who are late.’

  He smiled. ‘You’re not harassed, are you?’

  ‘Not so much now,’ she responded. ‘But I did have a horrible time getting here, and it was like that scene in the film Airplane where everyone was wanting to accost me. In fact, there was one beggar near the tube who said, “Spange”, to me. I know I was late, but I had to go back round and do another fly-past. He was definitely saying, “Spange”. I was sitting on the Northern Line wondering about it, and I suddenly thought, I bet it’s because he’s so bored with saying the whole shebang – he’s shortened the traditional “Can you spare any change?”, if that’s what it was, and I’m pretty sure it was. How brilliant is that? It’s like speech as text. You know when you write L and then the number eight for “late”? As in how L-eight was I? No, you don’t have to answer that. I do know I was unforgivably late. I can’t believe you’re going on and on about it…’

  ‘Eh? It was you.’

  ‘So it was. Anyway, we could do short language – like what-dinner?’

  ‘As in?’

  ‘What are you going to have for dinner?’ she explained.

  Her face lit up as she smiled at him.

  She was doing the Annie Hall thing. Normal words at ground level, but on the mezzanine she was about ready to strip him down to his fundamentals. It overshadowed her menu slightly because she wanted to order food that would make her mouth taste nice, yet not be too difficult to eat. She chose asparagus (smelly wee, but it would be over within a few hours) and Dover sole with green beans.

  He chose soup and a salad, with no thought whatsoever as to how he would taste. ‘Wine?’ he asked.

  ‘Aren’t you ever going to stop drinking that water? And why do you keep going on about me being late? And don’t you think the congestion charge is a tax on mobility?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Whine. As in whine – with an h. Almost as old a joke – and as terrible – as the white horse going into the pub.’

  ‘And the barman saying, “Hey, they’ve named a whisky after you,’” he continued.

  ‘And the horse saying, “What? Eric?”’ she finished. ‘Yes, it’s almost as old as that one. And to answer your question, dry white, please. No, sorry,’ she said, suddenly remembering how disgusting it made your breath smell, like three-day-old sick. ‘How about another cocktail after dinner, and water with the food?’

  ‘Hmm. I like the cut of your jib,’ he said, and ordered a jug of tap.

  The food was delicious. The water flowed. And the conversation ebbed and flowed with a nice undercurrent of sexual tension.

  Dee entertained him with tales from Hello Britain! She was careful not to mention that Keera’s interviews provided the bulk of the anecdotes.

  One of the stories concerned a new weight-loss strand. ‘There were all these people desperate to lose weight, and they were telling their stories, and they were actually very moving. One woman put on weight during pregnancy, then her husband died and she turned to food for comfort until she was about thirty stone. Another was bullied at school because he was shy, and became a tub of lard because the fridge was his best friend. And there was, erm, there was, erm, Mike. Yes, there was Mike, watching them running down to the sea, and she – er – he says as they switch back to the studio, “Look at that tidal wave of obesity.” How sensitive is that?’

  It didn’t get quite the response she was expecting.

  ‘I can see where you’re coming from with the sad stories,’ he said, cutting a cherry tomato in half and spearing a small piece of cucumber to go with it. ‘But people do have to exert more self-control. It’s far too easy to blame it on someone else. Fat is a hedonist issue. I doubt that Neanderthal man – and woman, of course – got fat through grief. Or, at least, there are no known incidences of partners being gored by woolly mammoths with consequential explosion on the weight front. You had to hunt for food. You got your exercise and you ate to keep your energy up. And there were no fat people in concentration camps, were there? You starve people. They get thin. Obviously I’m not advocating concentration camps, but you shouldn’t eat more calories than you expend. Run ten miles, you can eat more. Sit on the sofa watching television, eat a stick of celery.’

  The conversation had lost its edge.

  William was not a habitual Hello Britain! user, and knew nothing of Dee’s battle with weight. Not so much the Battle of the Bulge as an assault on Cheddar Gorge. Dee wondered if there had been any point in putting on her scrumptious underwear. Would he simply check out her fat suit? Typical, she thought. I finally get a date with someone I fancy, and he’s a body Fascist.

  ‘I’m not a body Fascist,’ said William, warming to his theme. ‘I like curvy women like Halle Berry, Jennifer Aniston.’

  ‘They’re bloody tiny,’ Dee said. ‘They might have breasts, but there’s more meat on a chihuahua. What on earth are you doing with me, pray tell?’

  William looked at her, debating. ‘I’m here because you’re warm, beautiful, funny, and I fancy you.’

  Dee put down her forkful of fish. She opened her mouth to say something, then closed it again. Opened it again. Looked nonplussed, then smiled her gorgeous smile. ‘Top marks, matey,’ she said. ‘Very nicely done.’

  And the evening was back on course. Although she had to have a few stiff martinis to get her into the mood in which she felt she could rip off her clothes with gay abandon.

  His flat in Fulham was not quite as she had expected. Smaller, more sterile than she had imagined. But the sex was everything she’d dreamed and more. What need of a vibrator when you had a man who could breathe through his ears and had a twelve-inch tongue? as Katie was wont to say.

  There was no sleep to be had that night in Fulham.

  Saturday morning dawned fair in Hawes, but there was no gazing through the windows at Wensleydale unfurling in all its glory as the day threw off her morning clouds to reveal an underskirt of duck-egg blue.

  Katie spent the entire day drinking water and watching Bob pottering about in the garden. Occasionally lust overwhelmed them and a tangling of limbs resulted in a crumpling of sheets.

  He had told her what he’d planned for the day – rambling round the hills and a pub lunch – but she had vetoed it on the basis that even the smell of a pub would turn her into Linda Blair from The Exorcist, and she had brought only a limited number of shoes to decorate with slime.

  ‘Nice,’ he said lovingly, leaning forward to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear.

  His revealing gesture went unnoticed by Katie. She had been too busy thinking of what a waste it would be to go hiking when there was a perfectly good way of getting in the exercise without thundering round the hills like a pair of goats. When, in fact, there was a perfectly good place to be acting like a pair of goats a mere hoe’s throw from where she was sitting in a deckchair, admiring the view. Of Bob, with his T-shirt clinging damply to his firm body. His dark-blond hair sticking damply to his handsome head. His trousers clinging damply. There they went again. Not that Bob seemed to be complaining.

  When he mildly passed comment on the number of T-shirts he was getting through, she told him to do the gardening without one on. He had wanted to throw out the vegetable mess from last night’s aborted meal, but Katie persuaded him to make it into a shepherd’s pie.

  ‘We can go on a quick ramble, if we must, so that we can pick up a real sh
epherd to put on top.’

  ‘Aha. A fellow fan of the Stephen Sondheim, I see. Should we have parson pie tomorrow?’

  ‘It’ll be Sunday,’ she replied. ‘I’d prefer gardener. Even if it’s a bit green.’

  And that had been another half an hour of lust quenched.

  ‘I am Charlotte Duvet Rumpling,’ she murmured into his chest, where she was blowing the hair gently up her nose. ‘And you are Chuck Sheetz.’

  ‘There’s no such person as Chuck Sheetz,’ he said disbelievingly.

  ‘Oh, yes, there is,’ she replied, threading her fingers through his chest hair. ‘He’s an animation director … or might even be the animation director on The Simpsons. I saw his name at the end of the credits on the movie.’

  ‘Well I never,’ he said, impressed. ‘Maybe Chuck Sheetz and Charlotte Rumpling could get together to do a film called Lust in Space. Or a play – Tis Pity She’s in Hawes. Only it’s not, of course,’ he added, grabbing her hand and pulling her towards him again.

  It had been the perfect weekend for both of them.

  Bob had come to the conclusion that Katie was the woman he might very well want to spend the rest of his life with. Katie had forgotten the shabby state of her career in the all-consuming edibility of the gardener she had known for years. The weather stayed fair, the wisteria silently grew another centimetre, the birds had conversations about their favourite telephone lines, the worms squelched together in wormy harmony.

  On Sunday, they lunched on crunchy bubble-and-squeak with an egg on top.

  ‘It all began with an egg,’ Katie said sagely, squishing her yolk into the potato.

  ‘And a sperm,’ said Bob, misunderstanding her.

  ‘I meant the weekend, you idiot.’

  ‘And I,’ said Bob, ‘meant your creation. And mine, of course. Unless there’s something my mum hasn’t told me. And, actually, it started with a vodka in your case. The weekend, that is.’

  ‘How is your mum?’ asked Katie, adding a dollop of ketchup to the mixture on her plate.

  ‘Fine. Still missing Dad. But, then, it’s only been six years and they were together for decades. Not surprising she still misses him. I do, too. But gardening helps. And I’m looking forward to landscaping this hospice. It’s a pretty big job for me. I’m not getting paid vast sums for it, but it means I can do virtually what I want. Which is to create secret places … benches round trees, hidden behind bushes. That sort of thing. Places where you can go and contemplate if you need to. It’s what Dad always told me. Some people can be alone when all around is confusion, but most of us can’t. Nature offers us a rather more pleasant alternative to the locked room. I think he’d have approved of what I’m about to do. He was on the committee of a children’s charity, trying to organize some sort of youth centre, when he died.’

  ‘Bloody sad,’ said Katie, deciding it was better to keep slightly upbeat when talking of tragedy.

  There was just the sound of scraping forks for a while, and then she started up again. ‘Now, this week I’m going to get to grips with the tatters of my career. I’ve got this meeting tomorrow about the dating show, but I’m about as likely to get the job as my pagan aunt has of making pope. They’ll be wanting a twenty-four-year-old with breasts and hair. I’ve got feelers out all over the place, newspapers, magazines, radio, and I need to knuckle down. So if you don’t hear from me it’s not that I don’t want to speak to you. Just that I’m busy. And then I can’t quite remember what I’m doing next weekend, but I have a faint memory of something on Saturday, so I probably won’t see you.’

  ‘Excellent. I might get my mulching done,’ said Bob, putting down his knife and fork and pushing his chair away from the table.

  ‘You romantic young thing, you,’ responded Katie, and helped him to clear away the dishes. The sink was like a map of the New York skyline since they had done the bare minimum – bare being the operative word.

  Bob gave her a lift to the station, then a lingering, moist, meaningful kiss before he waved her off.

  Not that Katie realized it was meaningful.

  She settled into her seat, replete in every way.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  There is no more pleasing sight on a computer than an email from somebody offering money. But a handsome man offering a date comes a close second. And on Monday morning Keera was gratified to discover one of each.

  Her agent had forwarded her an At Home With … from OK! magazine for a nice number of noughts, and WBaron1@ hotmail.com had written to say thank you very much for suggesting him for the lifestyle strand, and would she like to meet up?

  Yes, she would. Very much. Although she would also like to know where he’d got his information from since she’d only mentioned it in passing to the senior producer on her way up to the morning meeting.

  Curious.

  She clicked on reply to her agent with a few available days, and replied to William Baron with a few available nights.

  She watched her fingers on the keyboard, bashing away. Oh, yes, look at them go. I’m a journalist. Oh, yes. I’m a success. Oh, yes. I’m so going to clean up in this gig, she hummed in her brain.

  Logging off smugly at 5.03 a.m., she picked her way down the stairs to Makeup and Wardrobe, watching her Gina-clad feet moving gracefully on the stained carpeting. What gorgeous feet. What gorgeous hands. I’m so gorgeous they should write a song about me, she thought, swaying along the corridor to her dressing room. ‘Good morning, Derek,’ she sang to the head of Wardrobe as she passed. ‘I feel fitted and sleek today. Sort me out a selection, will you, please?’

  Derek mimed her words back to her, his head bobbing graciously from side to side, then came out of his cluttered room and followed her. ‘You’re in a good mood,’ he remarked, as he opened the wardrobe doors and surveyed the collection. Fitted and sleek. He let his hands roll over the fabrics.

  ‘Navy?’

  ‘No, that one’s flared,’ she threw over her shoulder, as she went through some of the mail in her tray. A satisfying collection of fan letters – and a parcel. ‘Something a bit more fitted.’

  ‘The dark green?’

  She opened the parcel. ‘More sleeker.’

  ‘Rubber suit?’

  ‘Ha-ha. No. How about the chocolate with that thin pink stripe? Tight jacket, snug trousers.’

  ‘And what underneath?’

  ‘I think I’ll go topless,’ she said, having got to the contents of the box and discovered some freebie cosmetics. What a wonderful Monday. ‘Yes, topless,’ she continued. ‘It’s a low-cut jacket, but not so low that I’ll fall out. Anyway, it’ll give the weirdos on the Internet sites a thrill. You know how they like to post pictures of me in various poses. Did you spot the one where you could see my pants?’ she asked, as though horrified.

  ‘No,’ said Derek, finally locating the chocolate and pink. ‘I must have missed it during my extensive late-night searchings for pictures of you.’

  He exited to steam up her suit.

  In Makeup, Keera had her hair blow-dried and revealed her two pieces of good news to Vanda. ‘They’re offering me a big-figure sum for the At Home With.’

  ‘Lovely,’ said Vanda, concentrating on the back section of shiny black hair.

  ‘And,’ she said, in a slightly more confidential manner, ‘that William Baron’s asked me out on a date. The lifestyle man? Handsome? Tall, dark and handsome, to be accurate?’

  ‘Vaguely. Came in a few weeks ago?’ asked Vanda, teasing down a frond of fringe.

  ‘Mmm. Very tasty. He’s asked me for dinner.’

  They nattered on, as Dee seethed quietly in the other makeup chair.

  What the fuck was he playing at? The bastard. Here we go again. Another shit. I’m the worst picker in the world. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fucker. Wanker. Now she knew why he hadn’t phoned her yesterday. Or on Saturday. The arsehole was double-dating. And with another presenter at Hello Britain! Calls himself a lifestyle guru? As if he wouldn’t be caught out.

>   Matthew, the makeup artist, was quietly applying himself to the grim face in front of him. ‘All right?’ he queried, as he perused his eye pencils.

  ‘Fine,’ said Dee, anything but. Boy, was she going to tear a strip off that toerag. She could barely contain herself until offair.

  Only one thing lightened her morning: Keera asking a husband-beater, ‘So essentially, what you’re saying is that he was asking for it?’ with a solicitous face.

  She phoned Katie because Katie was always up for a go at Keera.

  ‘What am I going to do?’ she wailed, after she’d explained the gory details.

  ‘You definitely know he’s asked her out?’

  ‘Yes. She was as smug as a smug thing on National Smug Day about it. As smug as a bug with a smug rug. More smug. As smug as –’

  ‘Yup, I get the picture. But maybe he’s doing it to further his career. It may be a dinner he thinks will help his strand along, as it were. Not a dinner that will help him get his end away. Talking of which, was he good?’

  ‘Brilliant. The bastard. Body like a Greek god’s. And he has an appendage like an elephant’s trunk. And, as you would put it, a twelve-inch tongue and he can breathe through his ears.’

  Katie laughed. ‘I bet he’s not after her, just her contract. She’s a stupid trout with the brain of a sea cucumber. He’ll see through her immediately.’

  ‘Well, no other man here has,’ pointed out Dee.

  ‘Richard and Mike?’

  ‘Two men out of a barrel-load isn’t many.’

  ‘True,’ said Katie. ‘But I wouldn’t totally condemn him. He deserves a chance. If only so you can get your paws on his love rocket again, and have your hands-free orgasms. Why not text him? We’re too old to be playing games. Just say you had such a great time, does he feel like a rematch? And bring up the Keera stuff when you go out. I bet you a pound to a pickled herring he’s not after her for her perfect body and perfectly pointless mind. He’s just after the work. Listen, I’ve got to go. Talking of perfectly pointless, I have a meeting to get to and I haven’t even had a shower yet. By the way, I had a fantastic weekend with Bob the gardener. I’ll tell you about it when we meet up. Which is when?’