Coming Up Next

by Penny Smith

  At that particular moment Mike wouldn’t have cared if Keera had told him she was having sex with a panther for GQ, wearing a strap-on dildo and a pair of reindeer ears. He was having a major worry about his nocturnal visits. He had ‘taken the dog for a walk’ the night before and been spotted by a drunken viewer who had yelled at him in his car. He was seriously concerned that, with papers paying thousands of pounds for news of scandalous activities, the now sober viewer might be doing a deal to feather his no doubt filthy and unkempt nest.

  Would it come down to their word against his? He hoped so. He’d always been very careful. But careful wasn’t abstaining. He couldn’t do that. No way. Should he wear a disguise? No, that would be too silly. And even more embarrassing if it ever came out. Maybe he’d have to keep his head down for a bit, though.

  He should have been going out with his wife that night to a charity function but had told her he was too tired, and would try to have an early night. He only went to those unspeakably tedious events to up his profile. He really couldn’t be doing with the usual people you had to converse with at them.

  He had come into the house as the sun was glinting obliquely through the trees on the drive, and told her he was going to have a literally early bath. His think tank, as he described it. He sat there, long legs splayed out, steaming. It’s an odd phenomenon, he thought, that the more you sit in water, the more wrinkly you get. He rubbed his fingers together, noticing how they were furrowing as the boiling hot water did its work. Eventually he got out, noticing in passing, that he was as red as a skinned tomato.

  He wrapped a towel round his waist and went downstairs to pour himself a whisky.

  ‘Yes, it is two fingers of whisky,’ he said loudly to his wife, who was doing sit-ups while watching Richard and Judy. ‘Do you want anything?’

  He knew the answer before she said it. Of course she wouldn’t be having anything. She’d have her bottle of water with her and, later on, she’d guzzle an entire stick of celery. If she was really hungry.

  He took the whisky and stood at the door, watching his wife putting herself through her endless routine. She had her feet under the side of the chintz sofa so that she could see the television, and was counting under her breath. She was up to 129 … 130. What an awful lot of effort, he thought, when there are so many fun ways to get a workout.

  If the viewers didn’t get in the way, that was.

  He wondered how much she had minded being told that tonight was off. He had said she could go on her own if she wanted, but she hadn’t wanted: nobody would take her photograph if she wasn’t with him, so what was the point? She had gone to one ball at which she hadn’t spoken to anyone the entire evening. As they had sat together in the black Mercedes taking them home, she had said that some of the other guests had tried to make conversation, but they were dull. ‘Why do we have to sit with non-celebrities?’ she’d asked. ‘Surely they know we want to talk to other interesting people.’

  Secretly Mike agreed with her, but was aware that the driver was overhearing their conversation so he confined himself to a comment about the raffle.

  ‘How’s it going?’ he asked now, nodding to the leg lifts she was embarking on.

  ‘Fine.’ She grunted.

  He watched her for a while, wondering how she could bear to spend so much of her life lifting separate bits of her body like a daddy-long-legs trying to get through a patch of strawberry jam.

  ‘Be careful not to overdo it …’ he threw over his shoulder, as he made his way upstairs. As he turned the corner, he finished the sentence ‘. or they’ll turn into antennae.’

  He and Sandra had separate bedrooms – a result of ten years doing breakfast television with its unpleasant early-morning regime. Not that Mike could complain. A huge salary and a four-hour day because he was arrogant enough to think he could get away with minimal preparation. He woke up at five-thirty a.m, although in every interview he said it was three.

  His bedroom was enormous, the giant bed covered with carefully coiffed cushions. That was Sandra’s touch. She had also forced him to have dark green sheets and duvet cover because he insisted on reading newspapers in bed. ‘I’m not having white sheets with black streaks in my house,’ she had said. And, actually, he wasn’t bothered. She could do what she liked, within reason. As long as she never found the little hiding places.

  Katie’s mother had forced her to go shopping. ‘I do love you,’ she said, ‘but since you’ve come to stay, and show no sign yet of going, you may as well make yourself useful. We’re down to dog biscuits and tinned rice pudding unless someone makes the effort to drive into town and get some food.’

  There was a pause. And a look.

  ‘And drink. We’re out of everything apart from sherry.’

  It was Katie’s first trip out among the public since she’d been sacked. She was looking forward to it in the same way that she looked forward to having her verrucas frozen by Nigel at the chiropodist’s in Marylebone. No, on second thoughts she didn’t mind that too much because it felt like she was getting tidied up. She was looking forward to it like. She pulled her mouth into a line, pushed it out into a cat’s bottom shape, and decided it was like looking forward to A-level economics. Knowing you were going to hate it, but also that you had to do it unless you could convince everyone you were suffering from something major. Like your arms had dropped off in a freak cactus-juggling incident.

  Her parents’ car smelled quite strongly of dog. Dog, food and turpentine. She sniffed appreciatively. For a moment she forgot about her feelings of desperation, degradation and depression. She was safe. Wrapped in family.

  It would all be fine. And what was so bad about doing QVC, anyway? As Keera had for her special meeting with The Boss, Katie had dressed carefully. She was wearing her favourite pink cashmere zip-up top, her jeans and her pink R. Soles cowboy boots. She had washed and blow-dried her hair, then applied the minimum of makeup. Unbeknown to her, she was also wearing exactly the same shade of lip-gloss as her nemesis in London.

  And so arrayed, she had set forth in the battered old orange Volvo to purchase essentials. ‘Although,’ she said to the windscreen, ‘I do think that drink is the most essential of all the essentials.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ she posed to the traffic-lights, ‘I should buy my own so that Mum doesn’t need to have a go at me.’

  ‘And,’ she pondered to the parking spot behind the supermarket, ‘I should get them from a grog shop because they might offer me a discount for a box.’

  And also because Mum’s friend didn’t work there.

  She trundled up and down the aisles, perusing the offerings. And for the first five minutes, as she fondled the plums and hesitated over the horseradish, nothing hideous happened.

  Then a small, round, sweaty man, wearing a windcheater, grey slacks and an excited expression, came up to her and said, ‘You’re that girl off the telly, aren’t you?’

  ‘I used to be in television, but I’m pursuing other avenues. Thank you for asking,’ said Katie, firmly. She turned back to decide whether her mother had meant washing-up liquid or washing liquid.

  ‘I don’t like that new girl at all,’ said a woman standing near Sweaty Man.

  ‘Can I have your autograph?’ asked a girl in a stained white Barbie T-shirt and tight black trousers, egged on by her mother.

  ‘Yes, of course you can,’ said Katie, smiling tightly and using the proffered sticky pen to write her name on the 15p-off Jaffa Cakes coupon. She then fled round the corner to the soft-drinks section. But there was to be no peace. A middle-aged woman with a Hermès scarf sidled up to her and said it was nice to see her out and about after that ‘perfectly awful stuff in the newspapers’.

  Katie agreed it was, and moved away.

  She spent more time than she had meant to in the supermarket, mostly in a fruitless search for items her father required. She assumed that these particular ingredients had either been renamed or would be available from the deli down the road.

>   She paid for the food, put it into the boot of the car and walked briskly to the deli, where she had to stand in a queue of people who nudged each other. Just the really useful shop, then I’m home and dry, she thought, as she entered Oddbins.

  A handsome young man was only too pleased to help her make her selection. Originally she had planned to buy half a dozen bottles of wine, then decided she’d get whisky, vodka and gin too. No point in being stingy about the important aspects of living.

  ‘A party?’ he asked, as she placed the bottle of ten-year-old Laphroaig on the counter.

  ‘No, not yet,’ she answered, smiling and looking directly into his blue eyes.

  ‘Do I know you?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t think so. Common face, I expect,’ said Katie, quickly.

  ‘Yes, I do – I do. Give me a moment, and I’ll remember.’

  ‘Mm. My parents live round here. I’ve been in loads of times before.’

  ‘That’ll be it, then.’

  Katie smiled and hoped that was the end of the matter.

  But no.

  As she handed over her credit card, he read the name, and suddenly said, ‘You’re the one who was sacked from breakfast television, aren’t you? Katie Fisher. I thought I knew the face.’

  ‘Thank you. Yes, that’s right. I think I’m going to need double bags round these. If you pass me another, I’ll do it my side.’ She couldn’t wait to leave the shop, and because she was fumbling with her handbag, and the double bags, there was suddenly an almighty smash and she was bent over the pavement with the whisky bottle in pieces on the ground – with splashes on her clothes. Just as a photographer from the local paper, alerted to Katie’s appearance in town, took a snap of her. Followed by another as she rushed down the street, with her three carrier-bags of heavy bottles. ‘You’re not helping, you know,’ she puffed, as she sped along to the car park.

  He took another five pictures.

  ‘Will you please stop that? You must have enough now,’ she said, as she put the bags into the car.

  The shutter whirred. ‘Katie, look this way,’ he shouted, as though she was miles away.

  Now without the bags, she turned and smiled her best fake smile. ‘Thank you. You’ve really made my day,’ she said to him sarcastically, and stalked round to the driver’s side.

  He continued to take pictures as she drove away. She hoped – but without much hope involved – that the pictures would appear in the local rag and nowhere else. She felt like crying. There was nothing they liked better than kicking you when you were down. Why couldn’t he have appeared when all she’d had in her bags was fruit, vegetables and things with unpronounceable names?

  At least the car had started first time, and she’d been able to accelerate slightly towards the photographer. She felt like doing a wanker sign out of the window, but managed to hold on to her common sense for long enough to realize that it would look worse than any of the other photographs.

  The thing about those pictures was that she couldn’t do anything about them. If she phoned Jim Break and told him to get on to the newspapers, first, it would merely alert them to the pictures’ existence, and second, they wouldn’t let her put a spin on the copy anyway. She was stuffed. She was as good as rolled up with pâté, baked in pastry and called Wellington.

  She’d have to grin and bear it.

  Or gin and bear it.

  That was the solution.

  She drove home, mouth watering. She could almost see the slice of lemon. Smell that petrolly smell. Hear the ice crackling in the glass.

  Yes, after a few of those, nothing ever seemed quite as bad.

  At home, her parents had been having ‘a conversation’. Her father, always her champion, had been defending her right to spend as long as she wanted with them. Her mother, who generally had the bigger picture in mind, thought it was about time she went back to her flat and got herself sorted out. ‘You have to be cruel to be kind, Jack,’ she said. ‘The longer she stays here, the worse it will be in the long term. If she’s on her own, she’ll get things done. You know how she is. But while she’s here, everything’s on hold. If she had no money and nowhere to go, it would be another matter.’ Her eyes strayed to the large number of bottles in the recycling bin outside the back door. ‘If she’s not careful, she’ll sink into a Slough of Despond and be unable to crawl out. There’s quite a lot of alcohol being consumed here – and you know how she hates to put on too much weight. You keep cooking, she’ll keep eating, and before you know it we’ll be back to those slimming tablets she took last time, when she was bouncing off the walls and we virtually had to get everything reinforced in case she literally brought the house down.’

  Jack huffed, and said she’d been too thin when she’d arrived and he was making her look pretty again.

  Eventually, a compromise had been reached: Katie could stay until the weekend. ‘And I’ll have nothing to do with telling her,’ said her father, ‘since I’d be quite happy if she moved back in permanently.’ And with a flash of his pinny he was into the kitchen to reduce the sauce he was making for the duck.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Bob was settling down to a microwave cod in parsley sauce with oven chips and an early episode of The Simpsons when the doorbell went.

  Katie Fisher stood there leaning against the pillar, her green eyes sparkling as she regarded the hunk before her. He was wearing a faded, slightly ripped pair of jeans and a navy T-shirt with a scattering of holes. ‘I’ve come to, er.’ she hesitated, eyeing him gravely ‘… get rid of your moths.’

  ‘I haven’t got moths,’ he responded, then looked down at his T-shirt. ‘Oh, this,’ he said. ‘A favourite, and very, very old. At least I don’t think I’ve got moths. Have I?’ Suddenly he looked worried.

  ‘I doubt it. Pesky little beggars, though, if you have. I’ve been smelling of mothballs for years, ever since I had to go into a rented flat when I was having mine done up. I had to burn some of the more juicy specimens. And I still get the odd munch mark. But enough of that. I actually came round to see if you needed any help eating your dinner.’

  He laughed. ‘Well, it’s specifically designed by scientists at Marks & Spencer to feed one adult. But I’m sure I have something else in the cupboard designed to feed an unexpected additional adult. If that suits, madam?’

  ‘That will be fine. And I’ve brought my own bottle, if that’s all right. Obviously I’ll pay corkage.’ She followed him into the house and took in the scene. ‘Sorry if I’m interrupting a seriously good night in for one,’ she said apologetically. ‘This is one of the best Simpsons. Although generally I find Krusty the Clown a bit irritating. Are you sure you don’t mind me gatecrashing?’

  ‘No, really,’ Bob said, reappearing from the kitchen with the open bottle of wine and two glasses. ‘I was going to be a sad single and sit in with my fish, watching telly and possibly getting pissed on strong ale – which I would have had to go out and get at some stage. You’ve interrupted nothing. But I do admit I’m a bit surprised. Why didn’t you phone?’

  ‘I was taken by surprise too. My mum says I have to leave by the weekend and I was so annoyed that they hadn’t even consulted me about it that I couldn’t stay in case we had a row. And Dad was cooking the most delicious-smelling duck in cherries. Broke my heart. I could still smell the hot cherries at the end of the drive.’

  She took her glass of wine. ‘Whoops. That wasn’t very politic, was it? I’m sure Messrs Marks & Spencer can do an interesting alternative. And cherries are overrated. Have I done enough? Shall I keep digging? Shall I ask another question? What am I having for dinner?’ She made a slurping sound as she buried her head in the wine glass.

  Bob smiled. ‘Choice of chicken curry or some sort of pork thing with potato.’

  ‘What do you recommend?’

  ‘Well, pork sounds vaguely rude. And curry sounds fast. So it’s whichever.’

  ‘Pork, then, since I’ve been very rude in inviting myself round in the fir
st place.’

  She settled back on the sofa with the glass of fruity red and made sure she looked appealing. The olive-green V-neck cashmere jersey was soft and inviting. She arranged the long green skirt so that it draped round her feet. Then she took off her brown leather boots and put her feet on the sofa. That was better. She hid her boots at the side of the sofa. Better still.

  She tucked her hair behind one ear and waited for her pig.

  She rearranged herself. Then lay slightly supine on the sofa.

  Nope. That looked too obvious.

  She sat up again.

  Just when her skirt was tangled and she was in transit to a more suitable pose, Bob reappeared with an oven glove and a grin. ‘Sorry, madam. Pork’s off. The chicken is what we recommend this evening.’

  ‘Oh, pluck it. Just when I had my mouth organized for a good pork,’ said Katie, and gave a saucy smile.

  ‘The microwave instructions were not followed correctly by the kitchen staff. I’ll have them sacked and served for breakfast.’

  ‘Oh, good. I like a hearty breakfast.’

  Bob gave her a quizzical look and retired to the kitchen.

  ‘Damn. Hope that hasn’t frightened him off,’ thought Katie. She wondered if she was doing the right thing anyway. Seducing old mates hadn’t been on the cards. But, then, being sacked hadn’t. Being photographed stained with alcohol and carrying bags of drink certainly hadn’t. Being turfed out of your own home definitely hadn’t.

  This would cheer her up. She would have half a bottle of wine, possibly go to bed with Bob – or at least snog him until there was nothing left but his socks. And if she could make it all last until lunchtime the next day, so much the better. That would teach Mum to kick her out of the house.

  Two months ago, she wouldn’t have given Bob a second glance. She preferred the company of men who were powerful and persistent, preferably with pockets full of cash. Having said that, they didn’t last more than a year, tops.

  Some were so perfect on paper it was like bacon and egg. Toast and honey. Chips and curry sauce. Months later, it was all over.