Coming Up Next. Penny Smith

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СКАЧАТЬ a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. If it was up to me, you’d be out on your arse.’

      ‘They wouldn’t be able to find anyone else to put up with your bullshit,’ said Richard levelly. ‘And, frankly, I don’t think the show is anywhere near as good now Katie’s gone. There’s no edge. You’re finally exposed. As I knew you would be. Until now I’ve been kind because I know that, for some reason, Katie thinks you’re a good bloke. Don’t push me too far.’

      There was a pause.

      Richard added, ‘And don’t forget, I’ve been a long time in this industry and know an awful lot of people.’

      Mike pushed back his seat. Yawned. Stood up and scratched his scrotum right in Richard’s face. ‘Don’t threaten me. I think you’ll find I have a number of very useful friends too.’ He headed for the studio.

      But Richard’s comments had hit home. Was the show worse since Katie had left? Surely the whole thing hung on him. Ratings were the only judge of what was happening, he thought. He’d go and check them at the end of the programme. Or did Richard know something he didn’t?

      To get rid of the doubt and uncertainty, he went off to harangue the head of Wardrobe for putting his expensive suits on inappropriate hangers. Little did he know that his weekly tirades merely resulted in much worse indignities perpetrated against them – and that the occasional crop of spots on his thighs was nothing to do with heat rash.

      Katie’s mum was having trouble. She was trying to do a still life with a jug, a hare and some potatoes. The potatoes had come up a treat and looked nice and earthy. But while the hare looked properly limp and lifeless, it wasn’t remotely like a hare. Her attempts to give it a glossy sheen had made it look wet. ‘Too much white,’ she muttered, as Katie appeared at the door.

      ‘Too much wet,’ said Katie. ‘I know seals come from the sea, but by the time they’re that dead there’s not much moisture left on the outside.’

      ‘It’s a hare.’

      ‘Well, it doesn’t appear to be very hairy.’

      ‘Thank you so much for your kind and unnecessary remarks,’ her mother said drily. ‘Can I help? Has Dad forgotten to get in another vat of wine?’

      Katie continued to walk towards the window, without giving any hint that she had heard the barbed comment. She had been there for five days and the bottles did seem to pile up, but she resented the implication that she was drinking too much. ‘Sorry, didn’t realize you were counting. Or, actually, that it mattered. I’m what they call “chilling”, having had the rug pulled out from under my feet.’

      ‘Just be careful you don’t end up under the rug,’ commented her mother cheerily. ‘Remember when your brother got so drunk he stayed the night at Bob’s and ripped up a corner of the carpet so that he could sleep under it? He’s still got that carpet-tack scar under his arm.’

      Katie’s eyes managed to sparkle. ‘Whatever happened to Bob?’

      ‘Got divorced. He doesn’t live too far away from here. Near Hawes. The Old Coach House – that lovely big place with the huge garden. He invited me to come round and paint there the other day. May take him up on the offer – give up with the lank hare, try harebells and hydrangeas instead.’

      ‘He was rather good-looking, as I recall,’ said Katie, as she checked her watch. Another quarter of an hour and she could legitimately ask her mother if she wanted a drink, then join her.

      ‘Well, funnily enough, I think he’s better-looking now. A bit like Richard Gere. Sort of pretty but rugged, with a hint of sadness and a soupçon of debauchery.’

      Katie had thoroughly perked up. ‘Maybe I’ll come with you. I need some more gear. Sorry. That was one of the most rubbish puns ever. Anyway, let me know when or if you go.’

      A week later, she and her mother were at the Old Coach House. Katie was thrilled. She might have no job, no prospect of a job, no way of paying her mortgage, no visible means of support in the near future, and parents who were getting a bit scratchy about her cluttering up their environment, but Bob was, as Kirstie Allsopp would probably put it, a des res with all mod cons and a particularly pleasant aspect. If an Englishman’s home is his castle, I wouldn’t mind seeing his flying buttresses, she thought.

      Her mother, after the formalities were over and done with – Yes, he was well. Yes, his parents were well. No, the cat had just been neutered, that was why his tongue was clamped between his teeth. And, yes, he did think he’d put the kettle on for a cup of coffee – had gone through to the garden and was setting up her easel by a verdant patch of hostas, flanked by snapdragons, hollyhocks and fading peonies. ‘I can already feel the muse upon me,’ she shouted back to them in the kitchen.

      Katie was flirting over a gin and tonic. ‘Ah. Thank goodness for that. Always nice to have good muse.’ She swallowed a pip and choked. ‘I am so sorry. I keep doing it today. Not the pips,’ she added, as he looked concerned, ‘the puns. As my old editor used to say: “Avoid puns like the plague.” But I appear to be in a bit of an Oasis soup.’

      Bob raised an eyebrow. Very sexy, thought Katie, then sang aloud, ‘You know … you get a roll with it. As in, I’m on a roll. Or not …’ She tailed off.

      ‘Maybe …’ said Bob, as he squashed down the coffee grounds in the cafetière ‘… your editor was right.’ He poured the coffee and took it to her mother, leaving her with time to worry if she’d cocked it up already.

      Well, whatever. It was hardly the end of the world. But bloody annoying. She had obviously lost her touch. That was what getting sacked and being away from the city did for you. The sharp edges got blunted. It was only a matter of time before she started wearing comfortable shoes, nylon slacks and a housecoat.

      ‘So …’ said Bob, as he came back to join her in the kitchen. He was smiling so she assumed she hadn’t completely blotted her copybook.

      ‘So what?’ she asked brightly.

      ‘What’s new?’

      ‘Apart from me losing my job? Not much. I’ve eaten so much good food because of Dad’s cooking craze that I can barely fit into my pyjamas and Mum kind of hinted today that I may like to leave before I become an embarrassment. But as George Burns said when he was asked how he felt about getting to a hundred, “I feel fine, considering the alternative.”’

      Bob sipped his coffee and gazed contemplatively out of the window at Katie’s mother, frantically daubing pink paint on the canvas. ‘What’s the alternative in your case?’ he asked.

      ‘What – to death? I suppose a kind of living death where I don’t get another good job in television, don’t even get offered a reality show, and end up running a dog-dependency unit in Penge. Where occasionally someone says, “Didn’t you used to be someone on breakfast television?”’

      Katie stopped. She hadn’t meant to sound so bitter. But being sacked wasn’t the same as moving on in the television world. Everyone knew what had happened because the papers, so keen when you were on the way up, were even more excited about chronicling the way down. And because it was all so public, it was almost impossible to gloss over it. You couldn’t tell people you’d decided to leave because you wanted to widen your experience, spend more time with your family, have a change of scenery when they all knew you’d been dumped.

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