by Penny Smith
‘Thursday night, Chinawhite, so we can dance and fall over with alacrity. Nine o’clock, glad rags. There are six of us.’
‘Roger and out. And don’t worry.’
‘Oh, and I didn’t tell you that originally he asked me to go with him to something this Wednesday. A première. Only he hasn’t phoned me back. Do I mention that in the text, or does that make me look desperate?’
‘Put it all in the text and say it’s cool with you either way, but you need to know because you’ve been asked out to something or other on Wednesday night. I really, really have to go. See you Thursday.’
Katie’s meeting for All Mine At Nine had gone surprisingly well. They hadn’t fallen asleep on the desk, they’d laughed at one of her jokes, she’d flirted with a boy so young his bones had hardly formed (he was – of course – the top bod), and she was feeling quite positive.
She phoned Jim Break as she was walking to the tube to give him the possibly good news.
‘And now a bit more,’ he said. And explained about a new magazine, called First Glance, which was interested in her writing articles suitable for intelligent women in their forties, who were either facing empty-nest syndrome or had chosen not to have a full nest and were happily contemplating the menopause ‘or whatever’.
‘Happily contemplating the menopause? I’m assuming you’ve had a rush of blood to the head. And apparently men have one as well. They buy a motorbike and swap their wives for younger models. Then one vainly hopes that they develop a variety of interesting sexual diseases and die a pauper’s death after they’ve handed over their goods and chattels to the ex-wife.’
‘I knew I was looking forward to something,’ he said. ‘I’ll warn Amanda now. If she leaves within a few weeks, I can have the bedroom aired and start getting in the showgirls.’
‘You do that. So, do I need to meet anybody, or write an imaginary column or whatever?’
‘Yes. As I know you’re doing precisely diddly-squat, I’ve organized afternoon tea on Wednesday at the Lanesborough for you and the editor, a thoroughly nice bloke called Tom French. He’s gay, so dress smart.’
‘Excellent. I always seem to go down well with gays. Fingers crossed. I could do without losing my flat as well as my job. Although my mum reckons I should buy a vineyard and cut out the middleman.’
‘Mm. About that … I don’t want to preach but…’ said Jim.
‘But you’re going to.’
‘Only a small sermon. For verily I say unto you that perhaps you should curb your very natural addiction to the grape, grain, potato and cactus and go steady until you have another job lined up. I think you’ve got away with what’s appeared in the papers so far, but it wouldn’t do for you to look like a dipso. And also, if you don’t mind my saying so, it makes you look like a sad loser. Which you aren’t. Here endeth the lesson. Go forth and multiply.’
‘Of course. I’ll do the nine times table. My favourite.’
‘I’ll work on that after I’ve put the phone down. ‘Bye.’
‘Oh, just before you go … did you hear Keera’s corker this morning? You know that beached dolphin in Scotland, coming hot on the heels of that beached whale in the Thames?’
‘Yup.’
‘So it comes back to a two-shot and she turns to Mike and says, “What is it with all these big fish?” and he looks at her in that way he does and says, “Think you’ll find they’re mammals.” She says, “Whatever.” Big fish. I ask you.’
‘Not one of your best Keera stories. I saw her the other day asking a poor woman whose husband had been missing for a year why on earth people go missing.’
She laughed. ‘You’re right.’
‘However, I also think you should stop watching Hello Britain! until you have a sense of perspective. You’re never going to work there again. Get over it.’
‘Thank you for your support.’ Katie smiled. ‘Bye.’
Thinking about it on the tube on her way home, sitting opposite a surprisingly attractive man (nice crotch, she nodded internally), she was finally coming to terms with the loss of the job she had loved so much. She still missed the camaraderie, the excitement when there was breaking news, the immediacy of live television – the fact that you could never be asked to do it again but with more feeling.
What she didn’t miss was getting up at chaffinch fart. She didn’t miss the politics, small p, the having to have makeup put on when your eyeballs felt like they were rocking in sockets lined with sandpaper, the rewriting of creepy Kent’s dreadful prose.
The man opposite looked up from his paper. Katie smiled at him. He smiled back. Whoops. First rule of travelling by tube. Never meet anyone’s eye. They’re probably mad. Phew: he’s gone back to his paper. Excellent bulge in the trouser department. Good jeans. Nice shoes. You could tell a lot from a man’s shoes. Jeffery West, she reckoned. Slightly battered. And funky T-shirt. Faded blue with a picture of … What was that? A rabbit of the stoned variety. Dylan out of The Magic Roundabout. And firm jawline.
He looked up again. She looked at her hands. Fiddled with her bag. Got out some hand cream. That’s it. Look busy. She glanced up again. He was checking her out. This was ridiculous. Hell. Still three more stops. She studied her shoes minutely until she got out at Sloane Square. She couldn’t decide whether she was happy or unhappy that Nice Crotch hadn’t followed her.
She phoned Bob. ‘Thanks again for a really lovely weekend,’ she said.
He was in the middle of potting and sounded as though he smelled of sunny soil. He burbled on for the ten minutes she needed to get over her tube experience, and ended the call by saying he missed her.
‘Hey, it was only yesterday,’ she said in a rallying tone.
‘Can’t I miss you if it’s only one day?’
‘If you really want to, of course you can,’ she said briskly.
Mike was having another meeting with the bosses at the BBC about his co-host. They said they were considering approaching Katie Fisher – ‘A rerun of a successful partnership,’ said Kuldeep, the producer.
‘Excellent thought. She’s a laugh. Always first to the pub over the road and always the first to dance on the bar. A hoot.’ He noticed their expressions and added, ‘But she always made it on-air every morning. Admittedly, she’d sit on the sofa at about three seconds to go. I think that was to freak out the director, though.’
He sat back.
‘And how do you feel about Saskia Miller?’
‘Well, she’s obviously one of the best female presenters around at the moment. Beautiful. Intelligent. Quick on her feet. Funny…’ he pressed on, as the director, Sam, raised his eyebrows. ‘And I think we’d do very well together.’
‘All right,’ said Sam. ‘You can’t say fairer than that. We’ll be in touch. And we’ll probably be making the announcement some time this week.’
‘Excellent,’ said Mike, standing up, pushing his chair back and running his hands through his thick hair, in what he hoped was a Hugh Grant kind of manner. He was looking forward to the new show. It had huge ratings written all over it. And where there were huge ratings, there would be huge increases in his bank balance.
Sandra was in the kitchen when he got home.
‘What have you been up to?’ she asked, making a coffee enema. ‘You look like the cat that got the cream.’
‘Good day, that’s all,’ he said, reaching into the fridge for the bottle of white wine.
‘Wine at four o’clock?’ asked his wife, pointedly, as she walked towards the bathroom.
He pulled a face at her departing back. ‘Coffee up the arse at four o’clock?’ he mouthed. He slipped off his shoes, lay back on the sofa and contemplated his life. It was looking pretty darned fine. His occasional radio show had posted solid ratings – well, the same ratings as the woman before – he was about to get a prime-time show in the bag, with his choice of co-host, and he could feel his loins stirring at the promise of a trip out with Buster that evening. He stroked the terrier, who had le
aped on to the sofa with him since Sandra was out of the room. When she was there, she would squirt all round him with the disgusting room spray she used to combat foul odours. ‘Hey, boy. Fancy a ride in my car later?’
Upstairs, the loo flushed a few times, and shortly afterwards Sandra came downstairs.
‘Successful colon cleanout?’ he asked, as she put a collection of pots and tubes into the dishwasher.
‘Thank you for asking. Yes,’ she said, snapping on a pair of rubber gloves and wiping down the surfaces. ‘I’m out tonight. You don’t need the car, do you?’
‘I do, actually,’ he said, annoyed. ‘I promised the boys I’d meet up with them in, erm, Twickenham.’
‘Twickenham?’ She turned to stare at him. ‘Since when have you ever met up in Twickenham?’
‘There’s a new pub they’re checking out ready for, er, the rugby season.’
‘That’s not for months, is it?’ she asked suspiciously.
‘Pre-season matches. Anyway, why do you need the car?’
‘I’m trying out a new exercise class and I need all my stuff with me. Maybe you can drop me off. How long are you going to be?’
‘It depends. Not late, though. Need my beauty sleep. I’ll drop you off, but I can’t promise to pick you up.’
‘Fine. Seven all right?’
‘Yes,’ he said, and slurped the last of his wine. ‘And no,’ he added, ‘I won’t be drinking. I’ve just had the one to unwind. If that’s OK with you?’ And he went off to change out of his suit.
But if Monday had been a peachy day, and a doubly peachy evening – fifteen minutes of heaven – Tuesday was a stewed prune of a morning.
He was called into the managing director’s office by a grim secretary. He had a suspicion it would be about his holidays – he had stealthily snuck in another couple of days on top of his already extraordinarily generous allocation.
But the MD had been sitting there with a pile of his expense forms. ‘Close the door, Mike,’ he had said sternly. ‘Best this doesn’t go any further.’ He pushed the sheets of paper across the desk. ‘Would you accept that these are your expenses?’
Mike took a cursory look. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘They look like mine. Any problem?’ He pushed them back.
‘There is,’ said the MD. He shuffled the papers. ‘The phone bills. Most notably,’ he said, ‘these mobile calls to 0906 numbers.’
Mike flushed. When had they ever checked the actual numbers on the bills before? ‘I think that may have been when I lent my phone to a friend recently. He’d lost his,’ he explained.
‘I don’t think so,’ said the managing director, putting his fingers together and raising them to his mouth in the shape of a pyramid. ‘The thing is, we were doing spot checks on expenses and yours were among them. When we saw these numbers, we went back over the last few months. There are at least three or four on each bill.’ He paused, then added, ‘We phoned a few to check they were what we thought they were. One of them was a foreign-sounding woman with apparently astounding breasts. Another said she was African and was wearing next to nothing. She had quite a lot to say on the subject of –’
‘Yes, yes,’ interrupted Mike.
There was silence in the room. Through the door, he could hear the secretary ordering lobelia. He wondered what for. Eventually he spoke.
‘And what is your suggestion?’ he asked finally.
‘Well, I’ve talked to the finance department. We considered you paying us back for the calls, but that’s rather time-intensive for us. So we think perhaps we should ban you from claiming expenses for anything.’
Mike bit his lip. He’d been snookered. He couldn’t do anything about it, unless he wanted the whole building to know what he’d been up to.
The MD was quite enjoying himself. He didn’t like Mike. He thought he was a bully. And now he had evidence to convict him of sleaze. He might be one of the best presenters in television, he thought, but he’s a see-you-next-Tuesday. Who’s about to get his comeuppance. He watched Mike thinking things through and realizing there was no way out. He sat back as Mike looked up from his examination of his Gucci loafers.
‘Fine,’ Mike said, his eyes hardening. ‘And I’m assuming that if I agree to that, no more will be said about this?’
‘You have my word,’ said the MD. He didn’t want it getting out, any more than Mike did. It wouldn’t reflect well on the station.
‘Well, if that’s all,’ said Mike, ‘I’ll be going. I have a radio show to record.’
‘Thanks for dropping by,’ said the MD, allowing him through the door, a slight smile hovering on his lips. He poured himself a small port from the bottle he kept hidden in a filing cabinet for special occasions. ‘Cheers,’ he said to the huge picture of Mike that hung in his office. It had been one of his favourite Tuesdays so far, and he hadn’t even got to elevenses yet.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The meeting with Tom French, the editor of First Glance, went so well that Katie was virtually hired on the spot. He was a tall, dapper man, and had stood up as she approached. His handshake was warm and firm. None of that barely-touching-the-fingers nonsense. Or the clammy squeeze of a blown-up Marigold glove. He was wearing a pale linen suit, a pale blue shirt and a lightly battered pair of beige suede shoes.
‘What a thoroughly handsome rig,’ exclaimed Katie, looking him up and down as she sat on the banquette and was handed a menu by the waiter.
‘Why, thank you, kind lady,’ he said, smiling. ‘Not often enough we hear that word, these days.’
‘I think it should be reinstated, don’t you?’ asked Katie. She turned to the waiter to order afternoon tea. ‘I’m assuming you’ve ordered,’ she checked, looking at the pot of tea in front of him.
‘Yes. A cheeky little Darjeeling, second flush, and I’m assured that a quantity of sandwhiches, cakes and scones are on their way too. And I’ve always been fond of the quirky word. It does sound so much more romantic to be hit on the head by a ruffian with a cosh than a hoodie with a brick – even if the outcome’s similar.’
‘And vagabonds don’t sound half as smelly as tramps,’ mused Katie. ‘While having a husband who’s a bedswerver is much nicer than putting up with an unfaithful git.’
‘Words. They’re all we’ve got to distinguish us from the animals,’ said Tom, flourishing his strainer at the waiter for another cup of tea.
‘And clothes,’ added Katie. ‘Imagine a bear in a D and G trouser suit. More or less scary?’
‘Would depend on the colour. Black, with a white pleated shirt … scarier. Lilac, possibly less so. But there are the teeth to consider. And the claws.’
For a moment they considered the question silently.
‘And,’ he said contemplatively, ‘that’s assuming it’s a male bear. Would you find a bear in a ball dress more terrifying?’
‘Earrings or no earrings?’ asked Katie, as the waiter promptly arrived with her tea. ‘Anyway,’ she said, putting down her cup, and picking up a wafer-thin sandwich, ‘this isn’t getting the baby bathed. Should we get down to the nitty-gritty? An expression, incidentally, that I hate – but occasionally feel the need to flourish, like a G-string poking above the top of a pair of jeans.’
For the next half an hour, give or take a few labyrinthine asides, Tom and Katie discussed articles. ‘Tell you what,’ she said, ‘why don’t I knock something off today – in writing as opposed to shoplifting – and we can take it from there?’
‘Excellent. On what?’
‘How about starting again when you’re in your forties and feel you might be over the hill?’ She smiled.
‘You’re not over the hill,’ he said, ‘unless to be over the hill is to be running up and down it with abandon. Possibly with a meadow somewhere.’
‘How very Timotei,’ she remarked, picking out a chocolate éclair from the cake stand in front of them. ‘However, I’ll bash it out today, and send it straight over. Now, business over. Let’s gossip.’
An h
our and a half later, Katie left the Lanesborough in fine fettle. She wouldn’t have to sell the flat. She would get the All Mine At Nine gig. And she hadn’t given up on the co-host’s role with Mike, who had sounded very positive when they’d had a brief chat yesterday. On a whim, she went for a manicure, then home to write her article.
Tomorrow was going to be a long old night, she imagined, so she turned in early after drinking two litres of water and eating four carrots that were marooned in the bottom of a very empty fridge. She reckoned she had lost – oh, at least three ounces since yesterday. Oh yes, she thought ironically, thank goodness she’d eaten all the sandwiches and cakes at the Lanesborough. So efficacious for the thighs. And it was the time of year when they’d be getting an airing as spring was turning into the most beautiful summer. No doubt there would be a hosepipe ban soon, but the pansies were out and the trees were wearing their greenest livery. Even the occasional cloud had looked happy to be there.
Thursday blossomed fair.
Katie tripped merrily to her favourite coffee house and ordered herself an enormous soya cappuccino.
She did a little window shopping, and was home by four o’clock to check in the fridge and see if anything had come in while she was out.
Nothing but a couple of beers and a very old bottle of champagne.
She necked one of the beers and tidied a cupboard, which had escaped the earlier frenzy, then spent a very long time getting ready to go out.
The K Club, as they liked to call themselves, met up about twice a year and always had a riotous time. Katie, Kirsty, Kathy, Carina (sounds like K), Kinsey (her last name, to fit in with the K theme – first name Jane), and Dee (who used to eat Special K, so that was all right) were journalist mates, producers, reporters and presenters. When they had first got together, they had met each month, but husbands, partners, boyfriends, children and jobs had conspired to make it an impossible schedule recently.