Coming Up Next. Penny Smith

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СКАЧАТЬ you sank without trace.

      Unless, of course, it was the BBC. There, they cherished you. Nurtured you. Even if you were a patronizing, irritating woman with no sense of humour like that awful Saskia Miller. ‘How are you?’ she would ask, hand grasping forearm, eyes gazing upwards as though she’d heard you were in terminal decline.

      ‘Pah.’

      ‘Sorry?’ she asked, missing what Bob had just said.

      ‘I wondered what the exclamation was for.’

      ‘Oh. Nothing. Well, nothing much. Another presenter who still has a job and who I bump into periodically,’ she said. She caught Bob’s eye and added, ‘I’m not normally like this. It’s all a bit new. Hey, Mum’s painted a blancmange – or a baboon’s anus. Shall we go and encourage her?’

      Dee was having the most hideous day. Mike and Keera had been talking so loudly through her weather bulletins that she couldn’t concentrate properly and the Met Office had phoned to complain.

      As soon as she’d handed back to the sofa she knew she’d mixed up the wind speeds with the gusting speeds. The editor had torn her off a strip and she’d had to apologize – even though it was damned hard not to say that it hadn’t been totally her fault. You had to take into account other people’s professionalism – or lack of it.

      But no. She had sat on his plastic sofa without complaining.

      He had stared at her from his seat – deliberately set a lot higher than the sofa to make sure he was in the superior position. ‘Pull your socks up,’ he said. ‘Plenty of people out there are simply itching to get into your shoes. They’d probably do the job a lot better and a lot cheaper.’

      There was nothing Simon liked more than giving his female staff a ‘damn good bollocking’, as he called it. He got such a buzz from it he’d sometimes hunt them down in a corridor and harangue them at close quarters, standing with his hands thrust deep in his pockets and his head forward, like a primate about to fight over a choice melon.

      He preferred to deal with the men by email.

      Dee had sat on the low sofa, looking troubled. He had peered up her skirt. She had seen him do it and slammed her legs together.

      Dee had taken her beating, stood up and apologized. Said it wouldn’t happen again and headed back to her warm flat. She sat in the back of the car on the way home, thinking of what she’d eat for lunch.

      On a whim, she redirected the driver to her boyfriend’s home in Islington. To cheer herself up, she’d go to Franco’s Ristorante with him, drink a bottle or two of Rioja, have a huge plate of cuttlefish in its own ink with polenta, and crash out in front of some trashy movie after a nice drunken romp on the sofa.

      She arrived to find him in bed with her hairdresser. Her male hairdresser – the only one she had ever found who could make her thin hair look thick and healthy.

      She stood at the door as they scrambled for clothes. She was tired. She couldn’t think of any articulate words that would adequately convey her feelings. ‘Fuck off,’ she said, as her now ex-boyfriend tried to explain.

      With tears coursing down her cheeks, she left. No more hairdresser. No more boyfriend. And an awful worry that maybe she should visit the STD clinic to check whether he had left her with any little presents. It would not be her first attendance. Her ex-husband had donated a number of lifetime gifts after playing the field during the last months of their marriage. ‘Well,’ he had said, as if right was entirely on his side, ‘you were never around when I needed you. What was I supposed to do?’

      ‘Abstain. Like me,’ she had suggested, blowing her nose on a wet tissue as she had packed the few possessions she cared about.

      But to discover that the moron she had been dating since her divorce was not only playing the field but playing over a couple of other acres was too much.

      What a fool. Would she ever learn? Why was she the one it always happened to? How come none of her mates had noticed he was gay? How come the queen of gaydar, Katie, hadn’t spotted it?

      She lay on the pink sofa in her flat, unable to cry any more.

      She had a headache from crying. Her nose ached from crying. Even her toes seemed waterlogged.

      She couldn’t think of a single thing that might have alerted her to the dreadful fact that she had been competing with the whole of the human race for the affections of a man who was probably, right now, coming out of the back of her hairdresser.

      She watched the television through tear-soaked eyes and wondered if it hurt to die of painkillers – or if that was an oxymoron. Or just ironic.

       CHAPTER SEVEN

      Keera was beyond excited. She had been asked by GQ to pose naked with a panther for their section on ‘The Ones to Watch’.

      It wasn’t a complete surprise – her publicist had been phoning all the magazines every week to get her something.

      When Keera had hired him, she had said she wanted publicity at any cost. He had taken her at her word. She had said she did not want ‘the usual stuff’ – soft interviews of her at home – she wanted something that would make people sit up and take notice.

      It hadn’t been difficult to sell her the idea of a nude shoot, although he had been nervous initially. ‘After all,’ he had said, ‘you do so much exercise that it’s a shame to waste the result under clothes. And it would be very tasteful. They were desperate to get you. You’d be one of ten people they say are going places.’

      ‘Excellent,’ responded Keera, a gleam in her eye. Her only anxiety was whether they’d get it past the press office.

      ‘Well, I was hoping you’d help out on that front,’ said Daniel. And he had left it to her.

      God knows how she’d managed it when one of the other presenters had been virtually put on rations for doing a photo shoot in which she had featured wearing nothing but paperclips for a recycling campaign.

      Keera’s strategy had been simple. She had gone straight to the top. She had avoided the press office, on the basis that the man in charge didn’t like her very much, and was gay, so her wiles would be wasted. She had knocked on The Boss’s door and sprawled alluringly on his black sofa, allowing him a glimpse of her lace lingerie. She had given him a whisper of more to come. So much more. After ten minutes he had caved in.

      It had taken her hours to get the outfit right. Nothing too obviously tarty … don’t want to frighten the pants off him. She giggled at the thought. She did find him strangely attractive – but with no pants on?

      She didn’t want anything too girly. She wanted him to know she meant business.

      In the end she had chosen a tightly fitting black suit with a low round neck and a thin pink stripe, from a new designer she had spotted at Selfridges. Sounded French, looked French, but actually American and lower cut at the front. Just where it needed it. She had hesitated over the stockings, then decided on hold-ups. If he caught sight of them – if? – it wouldn’t look as if she was trying too hard.

      Finally, СКАЧАТЬ