by Penny Smith
One minute, fifty-seven seconds later he reappeared, sat down, cold-shouldered Keera, and conducted an amusing interview with a woman who had spent her entire savings on a visit to Indonesia so that her pet lizard could see his homeland.
Katie was up early and, for the first time since her sacking, had turned on Hello Britain! to watch her replacement.
She could imagine the scenario after that first question, and immediately dialled Mike’s number to leave a message, then thought better of it. What was the point? Nothing was going to get her the job back, and bitching about her replacement wouldn’t make her feel any better. She turned over to watch an old episode of Friends instead.
She was pleased to notice that, on her wide-screen television, Jennifer Aniston looked positively porky.
She opened a tin of rice pudding and ate half the contents. Watched a bit of Bewitched and ate the other half so she could tidy away the tin into the bin. Right. She really must get on. Now, where was she?
Oh, yes. The fridge.
She took everything out and switched it off. It needed defrosting, and this was as good a time as any. And, there were items that obviously ought to be thrown away – or eaten. And while she was at it, the cupboards were still a mess. What on earth was she thinking of with a tub of mini muffins? Into the bin. Out of the bin. Delicious. A waste not to eat them. Put them back into the cupboard. Or eat them all and throw away the carton. Much better idea.
It was midday before she noticed the time.
She felt slightly sick. And very guilty. As if she wasn’t spreading like the proverbial chestnut tree already, with all that home cooking and the occasional small sherry.
And she’d probably see Bob at the weekend so an effort had to be made, otherwise it was lights out and lying on her back at every opportunity so that the fat wouldn’t be so noticeable. She would eat just fruit until then, and only if she was really hungry. Otherwise she’d make do with water.
She went to her vast wardrobe and chose a long soft jersey dress that wouldn’t constrict her stomach, then went out for a coffee and accidentally ate a large, chewy biscuit.
London was looking perfectly glorious. May, she thought, was shaping up to be a wonderful month all round. The trees were clothed in early green leaves, and everyone was smiling – apart from that hideously dressed woman and her ugly child. Or was that a dog in the pram?
She loved Chelsea. Nice clean people with nice clean teeth. Nice clean streets. Nice clean shops.
She walked down to the river and watched it sparkling past. There was barely a cloud in the sky. The one that was there looked as if it had wandered off from the herd and was merely emphasizing how blue the sky was. ‘God’s in his heaven, all’s right with the world,’ she quoted.
In Marks & Spencer, she went randomly round the aisles, checking what was on offer and chucking two-for-ones into her basket.
‘That’ll be forty-two pounds thirty-seven please,’ said the man at the checkout.
‘Eh? How can it be that much?’ Katie asked, raising her head from the basket that she felt made her look a little French.
‘Cherries, eight-fifty. And there’s the wine at twelve. That’s already twenty pounds,’ he said apologetically. ‘Do you still want them?’
‘No. Yes. Yes, it’s OK. I didn’t realize the cherries were so expensive.’
‘They fly in from South Africa,’ he explained.
‘Goodness! All that way! Their arms must be exhausted,’ said Katie, with a smile. ‘Or maybe they’re brought in by storks.’
He seemed confused.
‘Stalks,’ she added, smiled inanely and handed over her card.
Her agent was right. She was fatally addicted to rubbish puns.
But, hey, Bob was going to be feeding her soon. What did she care?
At about the same time that Katie was making the bad pun on cherry stalks, the picture editor of the Mirror was having a conversation with the stringer who had given them the photos of Katie and her bottles. The stringer said he had been trailing her on and off since he had spotted her leaving the supermarket and going to Oddbins, and had a number of interesting new pictures. He had shots of her going to a place called the Old Coach House in one outfit, and leaving the next day in the same one, with kisses being exchanged on the doorstep. He had photographs of the man who lived in the house getting into a car, and he had nice close-ups of her and the same man at a pub where they appeared at one stage to be glued together at the lips, in the manner of a fly on a lump of sugar. ‘I asked around, and his name’s Bob Hewlett. Divorced. No children.’
The phone call couldn’t have been more fortuitous.
The Mirror’s gossip girls were thrilled. Now they had photos to go with the snippet of information provided by their Hello Britain! mole. They would run it on Wednesday as their main picture story with the headline: ‘How Can You Fisher in a Tepee?’
The Express, meanwhile, was going to run a gossip item about Hello Britarn!’s news editor being in talks with Channel 4 for a politics show. That, of course, was hardly interesting for their readership. What was was that Colin was possibly going to take Keera with him. Hardly surprising, after that searing interview she did with the Education minister recently. There can’t be many people not left thinking that she should be the new host of Newsnight. They then used the article as an excuse to print a big picture of Keera in a bikini, kindly provided by her agent.
‘Please don’t tell anyone you got it from me,’ he had told them. ‘Keera would kill me.’ He texted Keera afterwards to tell her that the mission had been accomplished and that the evidence had been deleted.
Wednesday dawned fair and fresh. Those going into Hello Britain! could feel the nights getting shorter. Sleeping during the day was becoming more difficult, but it was so much easier to get up when it was light. It was almost a joy to watch the sunrises. Almost. Few people would go for the sunrise option if sleeping was the other possibility.
Helen was the producer of the day, and had most of the programme in hand by the time Keera came in, pulled up a seat and logged on to the computer. ‘Anything interesting in the papers today?’ she asked casually.
‘Yes, there is. Something about you going to a politics programme.’ Helen smirked.
‘Really?’ said Keera, feigning astonishment.
‘Mmm. That you and Colin are off together. I didn’t even know he was in talks with Channel 4.’
‘Neither did I. Nice to be considered as the possible presenter of a politics show, though,’ said Keera, tucking a long strand of black hair behind her ear.
There was a snicker from behind one of the computers. She glanced over. ‘Something funny?’ she asked James, the intake editor.
‘Oh, yes,’ he said quickly. ‘Skateboarding-duck item.’
Helen threw him a warning look. ‘I don’t think we have time for that today. We’re a bit tight on the programme,’ she said.
Even though Keera was suspicious, she was sensible enough to leave it there.
It was only when she was sitting on the sofa and riffling through the newspapers that she spotted the story about Katie and Bob. The editor of the Mirror had decided the item was worth taking out of the gossip pages and putting on page three. There was even a little box at the bottom asking for information about Bob. And offering fifty pounds.
Suddenly Keera discovered herself hoist by her own petard. She had sold the story so a decent cheque was coming her way. But it was a much bigger piece than the one about her, and Katie looked very pretty in one of the pictures. She flicked surreptitiously to the one in the Express again. No, it was all right. She herself looked much better. And, casting a glance at Mike, she realized she had no need to be surreptitious. He was still grumpy after that interview with the Education minister on Friday and had barely spoken to her. He was doing last-minute swotting for his next item – an interview with an actress from a soap.
‘Calling her an actress is like calling me a shot-putter,’ he had ranted at
Helen, on his way through the newsroom – running late as usual.
‘I dunno,’ she had said quietly to his retreating back. ‘You’ve always been a bit of a tosser.’
James had snorted with laughter.
Mike had got his agent to phone The Boss after the Education minister incident. There had been a row about the Big Interview of the Day, and who should be doing it.
‘My client, Mike, is far more experienced than his co-presenter, and should be doing anything that may be reported on PA,’ the agent had said pompously.
The Boss had listened on speakerphone, with his secretary taking notes and members of the newsroom passing within earshot. When the call had finished, he had rung Mike at home and told him not to be an idiot. ‘I know Keera didn’t do the best of jobs,’ he said, ‘but if she never does these things, she’s never going to learn. And she’s doing the best she can. So back off. Anyway, part of the blame lies at Richard’s door. He didn’t coach her sufficiently. She thought she had to make absolutely sure he’d resigned before she went on to the other questions. And as for saying she didn’t ask the one about the rumours that he had been caught out doing something he shouldn’t have, I would draw your attention to the fact that when he was asked that later on the Today programme, he dead-batted it.’
‘At least they asked the bloody question. It made us look like complete tits,’ spluttered Mike.
That night, Mike thought he might try out his brand new items. He threw Buster into the car and set off in high spirits. But he had to find a new patch and was unable to discover anything he liked the look of. One possibility had been snaffled by a man in a battered old Ford Fiesta. Then he heard a police siren behind him, which gave him such a start that he speeded up and almost rear-ended a Volvo. It had ruined his equilibrium to the extent that he went home and downed three large whiskies in half an hour.
He would have felt better had he not spent that afternoon with his wife’s family at the annual barbecue. It had been held mid-week because Mike refused to have his weekends ruined. (‘They’re the only days I don’t have to get up before the dawn chorus.’)
There had been a row about his refusal to put fish or vegetables on the grill for her mother. ‘They ruin the taste of the sausages. If it’s a barbecue, it’s a barbecue. And that means meat. Not vegetables. And particularly not fish. It makes the sausages taste fishy. And I am damned,’ his mother-in-law winced, so he repeated it, ‘yes, I am damned if I’m going to serve up fishy sausages.’
Sandra had left him to it. She had put a lettuce leaf and a small quantity of tomato salad on her plate.
Her mother had gone at him like a wasp at a rotting plum.
‘Next year,’ he said, slamming the barbecue shut, ‘you go to your mother’s and I’ll stay in and rearrange my face with a pair of secateurs. An infinitely more enjoyable experience.’
‘It’s one day out of your life, Mike,’ she said, helping herself to another glass of water and staring longingly at the lone sausage he was about to feed to the dog.
She went to bed early, pleading a headache. But he heard her doing her sit-ups.
‘Stupid trout,’ he muttered under his breath, then threw all the dishes into the sink. The cleaner would do it – Aurelia, or whatever her name was. Not slim enough, pretty enough or with a small enough grasp of English to be useful to him. He didn’t even want to see her bend over in a short skirt. By the time he got back from his aborted night out, he was in such a filthy mood that the only thing he wanted to do with any other human was kill them.
It was how Katie felt about the people at the Mirror. Her Wednesday afternoon had been ruined. How could she have been so thick? Of course that sneaky bastard had been taking photos of her after he’d made money out of her the first time.
A bottle bank in every way.
And she could think of only one person who could have revealed the information about the TP.
She was so full of rage she could barely eat the muffin she was having for lunch. She stuffed the last bit in, choking as she inhaled a raspberry. She stood outside Costa Coffee, slightly red and sweaty, with a coughed crumb on her Top Shop top, mobile phone in hand.
Dee’s phone was off, so she left a message ‘after the small annoying beep supplied by my provider’. It started with ‘How fucking could you?’ And ended ‘Thank you for being my so-called friend. I hope you got well paid for it.’
Luckily, Bob had taken it good-humouredly. ‘The only thing I’m confused about is TP. Are you going to let me in on the secret?’ he asked.
Katie kept her fingers crossed behind her back, as she had since childhood when she told lies. ‘It’s just a reference to the fact that we barely made it out of the tent. I told Dee about it. Actually, I’ve just had a horrible thought. She probably wouldn’t have sold it … Of course she wouldn’t. She would probably have said it accidentally to somebody she didn’t know was a gossip journalist. Toads. Sorry. I’ll call you back.’
She phoned Dee again. She left another message which started, ‘Sorry about the other message,’ and ended, ‘But could you just be more careful in future?’ Then she popped back into Costa Coffee, bought another muffin, because the last one had been ruined, and phoned Bob again.
He tried to cheer her up by saying she had warned him about photographs and that he wasn’t too worried. ‘My mum seems to think it’s rather sweet,’ he said. ‘She’s very pleased we’ve got it together. She always liked you, you know. Actually, the thing I’m most annoyed about is that I’m only worth fifty quid!’
By the time she got home, Katie was still fuming about the piece. It really wasn’t terribly helpful to her career. But she felt a bit better because Bob hadn’t taken umbrage. She opened a bottle of red wine – after all, somewhere in the world the sun was over the yardarm – then opened a bottle of something unpleasant she had found at the back of a cupboard when she was clearing up. It was blue and tasted funny but, hell, the person who invented coffee probably thought that it tasted weird first time round.
By the time The Archers came on just after seven o’clock, she could barely remember her name, let alone what Eddie Grundy was doing with the cows in her sitting room.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Dee had left her mobile at work so she didn’t get Katie’s messages until she turned it on at five o’clock in the morning. She was in the dressing room, blearily trying to decide what to wear. She put it on speakerphone, and smiled to herself when she heard William giving her possible dates for another meeting. She paused with her hand hovering around the blue section of her wardrobe as she listened hard to the second message – someone inviting her to a drinks party on Saturday. Then she almost stopped breathing as Katie blurted out her message with more than a hint of venom. She took it off speakerphone, pressed ‘1’ and listened again. She only half heard the first message before Katie’s voice was booming out again with her apology.
She let out the breath she had been holding, and stood with her hands on the table and her head down, trying to work out how she could have revealed the TP to anyone.
Derek came in to help her make her choice and found her in her tracksuit, staring into space. ‘What’s occurring?’ he asked, intrigued.
‘Oh, nothing,’ said Dee, hurriedly, turning back to the wardrobe. She allowed Derek to pick out an outfit he had bought on a sale and no-return basis, which no one had liked. He had put it into Dee’s wardrobe – and on Dee’s budget – one quiet afternoon.
‘Is that mine?’ she queried. When assured that it was, she went meekly to Makeup to wash her hair. She blow-dried it, and put on moisturizer by rote, searching every neuron to discover when she had let the TP thing slip out. She travelled down the cranial equivalent of the back of the sofa, then concluded that getting up early was turning her from alert to a blurt.
She went to sit on the makeup chair. I’m wearing a sort of snot-green outfit,’ she answered, in response to a question about eye-shadow colour.
She was very quiet as
the brushes whisked over her face. With her eyes shut, she tried to remember whom she had spoken to since the conversation with Katie. Had she told William? She didn’t think so. It wouldn’t be the sort of thing she’d tell a prospective shag. No reason to mention another girl while flirting. And she had been to only one party where there had been reporters, a photographic exhibition of landscapes. It wouldn’t have lent itself to a comment about Katie’s latest conquest and the size of his tent pole.
She opened her eyes as Keera glided past with a flash of black hair, and a little wave at those in Makeup.
Her weather bulletins that morning were a disaster. At one stage, she had cupped her hand over south-west Britain and said the shaft of Cornwall was going to get slippy. Then she had lurched over Dorset and staggered around Scotland ‘where there will be a bit of flog and mist’.
Mike smirked as she handed back to him. ‘Did you say it was drizzling in Devon, or was it just you drivelling in Devon? And possibly the rest of the poor country?’ he asked, with a smile.
Dee forced her face into an answering – if unconvincing – smile, as Grant barked a laugh into her earpiece.
She went back to the dressing room and slumped in front of the mirror, the green suit reflecting on her face, making it look as if she’d been steeped in limeade. God, what had she been thinking, buying this outfit? It was hideous. The colour of algae bloom on a pond. Really only suitable for an eighteen-year-old with a neck like a swan. Or just a swan.
After her nine o’clock weather bulletin, she girded her loins and phoned Katie.
Katie had been up for hours, staggering from the tap to her bedroom, to the bathroom, with her pyjama bottoms on back to front, and her pyjama top done up wrongly. She had drunk about a litre of water in twenty minutes. Her stomach was distended. But it was as nothing compared to the distention she could feel in her brain. She could feel it trying to get out. It was knocking at the skull wall. There was almost no room for her eyeballs. When she had been able to open them against the pressure of her brain, she had checked in the mirror to see if anything had been damaged.