Coming Up Next. Penny Smith
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different matter: more Volvo than Ferrari, more bedsocks than stockings.
Had her jokes gone off?
Or had they only just noticed the smell?
She groaned out loud. Which seemed to upset the man in the aisle seat. She was feeling bloody-minded and did it again, with gusto.
He gave her a look, but no more.
That was the wonderful thing about travelling with the British: in general, they didn’t like to make a fuss.
If they sacked her, would she go quietly?
Right, she thought. I’ll think about this for half an hour and then I’ll enjoy my holiday. Do what Dad says: ‘Don’t worry about the things you can do something about. Just do something about them. Don’t worry about the things you can’t do anything about, because you can’t do anything about them.’
Having made that decision, she proceeded to get more and more depressed about it. She thought about all the worst things that could happen. They gathered around her, looking worse and worse and worse.
Eventually she checked her watch, flagged down a passing stewardess and ordered the equivalent of an elephant tranquillizer in vodka.
The hangover had lasted two days. But most of the holiday had been wonderful. She had gone to Barbados to stay with some friends in a beautiful house on the west coast. She had rarely seen daylight. Barely eaten a meal.
She had kissed assorted men, none of whom she’d be able now to pick out in a police line-up, and only put on a pound. She could hazily remember an odd incident with a banana. Had she eaten it? Who was that bloke? And then she had answered the call on her mobile from her agent.
Jim Break had been brusque and to the point. ‘Hi, Katie. I’m not going to beat around the bush. They’re not renewing your contract. I understand you spoke to Simon before your holiday …’
Katie, eight hours away by plane, five hours behind in time, had been about to drink her first coffee of the day. She put down her cup with a shaky hand. So it had happened. Her lovely job – her lovely, well-paid job, which she had worked so hard to get – was an ex-job.
‘Katie?’
‘I’m still here,’ she said.
‘We’ll have a longer talk when you’re back from Barbados,’ he said, ‘but I do need you to make a decision now, about whether you want to go back on air for the weeks you’d be owed, if you got paid to the end of your contract, or take it as holiday. You don’t have to tell me right now, but by the close of today. As in, within the next … what time is it now? … three hours. Remind me what time it is there.’
‘Ten in the morning.’
‘Right. So, if you ring me before lunch?’
‘What do you think I should do?’
‘Entirely up to you. There are upsides and downsides to whichever option you choose. But they’ll announce it on Monday with the name of your successor.’
He could hear her breathing.
‘Keera, I assume?’ she finally said.
‘Yes. Listen, I’ll call you later when you’ve had time to think. Ring me if you need to talk it over.’
She had phoned him ten minutes before the deadline and spent her last few days in Barbados in a haze of rum punch.
The flight home had been a blur. She had avoided eye contact with everyone, apart from the stewardess with the drinks trolley.
Her mouth felt as if she’d been sucking on the lint from a tumble-dryer, and her eyes were as pink as soft-set raspberry jelly when she let herself back into her flat in Chelsea. She put down her bag, opened it and then, on autopilot, began to unpack everything into the laundry basket.
She ought to get on with whatever needed to be done about the job. Was there anything she could do on a Sunday?
She went to the fridge, opened it. Yes, it definitely needed tidying. She put the beers on the left, moved the vodka and white wine to the right. She wiped the mayonnaise bottle and ate the pickled dill cucumbers so that she could throw away the jar. Then she took all the tins out of their cupboard and stacked them according to the size of the vegetables within. She retuned the radio.
She could procrastinate no longer. She pressed play on her answerphone.
It was Jim. ‘Call me when you get in. You don’t need to go to bed early on Sunday night.’ Followed by The Boss. ‘Just a brief message, Katie. I’ll explain when you ring me. You won’t be needed for the show on Monday.’
She stood in the kitchen, staring out of the window at a pair of ladybirds in the first throes of love. I should have gone caravanning in Shropshire to save the five thousand quid I’ll be needing for the bloody mortgage, she thought. I should have seen this coming. I should have done something. I should have … Should I have cleaned the windows so that I don’t constantly have wildlife fornicating on them?
Bugger Dad’s advice on worrying. What the hell was she going to do to pay the mortgage?
Katie Fisher had been bequeathed two outstanding attributes by her parents: wavy auburn hair (mother) and the ability to talk on any given subject for any amount of time (father). Both had stood her in good stead.
She had done her journalism training the hard way. After college, she had slept with the deputy editor of the local weekly newspaper – he had resembled a tapeworm in a stripy jumper. She had moved fairly quickly to a local daily paper, partly because of the tapeworm’s refusal to accept that hanging about with his hook out was not going to rekindle their ‘romance’.
A few years later, she had decided it was time to move on. She had performed various lewd acts on a man who had claimed he could get her into radio. Then she had discovered he meant hospital radio. After that, she checked the labels: if they did not display the four cherries in a row, she didn’t display her ample charms.
Her move into television had come at some cost to her sofa. But, then, the sofa was what she aspired to. The sofa of Hello Britain! The cost to her own, in reupholstering and stain removal, was a small price to pay for her dream job. She had a beautiful penthouse flat in Chelsea with views over the river, a silver Audi TT and an enormous mortgage. When she had taken it on, she had experienced a moment of panic. But what was the worst that could happen?
She had smiled at that. Her brother had once asked the same thing when they had decided to hit tennis balls for the dog from her bedroom window instead of taking him for a walk. The neighbours had had rather a lot to say on the subject of wrecked greenhouses, and the dog had had to wear a cone round his neck for months to stop him gnawing at the stitches.
She had signed the mortgage document with a flourish, and her years at Hello Britain! had ensured that she’d paid off a fair chunk. Nevertheless …
She lay on the leather sofa and pondered her future. And thought about the reaction of her friends, most of whom would be obviously upset for her, but probably secretly thrilled. Who had said something about it taking a strong man not to see the rise of a friend without thinking it should have been them up there – and not to gloat as that friend fell?
Whoever.
She needed to speak to someone.
Andi. She was in the business yet not. Andi was a producer at Greybeard Television, which made some of the best-known programmes on the box, mostly dramas and serials with style.
‘Andi? It’s me. I’ve been sacked.’
‘God. Why?’
‘Not being funny. Or something. Probably not just not being funny. It was sort of intimated before I went