After the Break. Penny Smith

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СКАЧАТЬ really do have one of the best profiles of anyone, ever,’ she said, caressing his emerging stubble.

      ‘Is that a profile when you can only see my chin?’

      ‘Well, what else could you call it? An anti-file?’

      ‘Idiot,’ he said, stroking her shoulder. ‘And you have the silkiest skin of anyone, ever.’

      ‘Why, thank you kindly, sir.’

      ‘But you haven’t answered the question.’

      ‘What was it again?’

      ‘Do you think you can manage to do a reality show without coming a cropper?’

      ‘I don’t know. It depends who the other people are, I suppose. I’ll probably hate them all and look like a narky git.’

      ‘“Git”. What a very elegant word,’ he commented.

      ‘Onomatopoeic, I would say. Gittish behaviour. Just saying it makes your mouth into a long, disapproving line. Try it,’ she prompted.

      ‘Gittish behaviour,’ he obliged her. ‘I concur. It’s probably impossible to say with your mouth any other way’ He tried it. ‘Goatish. Ah, interesting.’

      ‘You see? Anyway…it’s impossible to know whether I can play the game or come out of it in a muppetish way.’

      ‘You do make up some interesting adjectives. I suppose what I’m trying to say is that you have to be prepared for them to edit the programme in a way that’s not in your favour. And it seems to me that those who come out of these things best are the people who are perhaps the most innocent–to come back to what we were talking about earlier and those innocent times. And innocent is possibly the last adjective I would ever use in your general direction.’

      ‘I open my nostrils upon you. I spit in your general direction,’ she misquoted, from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

      ‘Your mother smells of elderberries and your father was a hamster,’ he continued.

      ‘Hmm. I do see what you mean, though.’

      There was silence for a while.

      ‘The thing is…’ she said slowly ‘…that there is also the matter of the money…’

      ‘Yes. It is quite a lot. But not if it’s the end of your career.’

      ‘That’s what my agent says. But could it really be the end of it?’

      ‘That’s a million-dollar question. It could radically alter how people view you, and therefore have a radical effect on the sort of jobs you get offered. But you know all the pros and cons, you don’t need me to tell you. What’s your gut feeling?’

      ‘I wish people wouldn’t ask me that. I don’t have gut feelings. Unless I’ve had a large dish of chillies. But it could be fun. I could maybe get a book out of it.’

      She felt him smile. ‘What?’

      ‘You could, of course,’ he said, ‘but if that’s an excuse for why you want to do it, it’s a pretty poor one. You might as well be honest and say you’re doing it for the cash. If the money was less, how much of a difference would it make?’

      ‘I don’t know. I’ve done that in my head already. Obviously it would make some difference, particularly if they were offering bugger-all. I’d just say no. Funnily enough, the thing that would make the biggest difference is if I could find out who else was going.’

      She thought for a moment, then sat up abruptly and looked directly at him. ‘Hey. Do you think you could?’

      He put his leg under the duvet and gave a little shiver.

      ‘Ha. Told you it was cold.’

      ‘It was an involuntary shiver such as one gives when a tickly hair gets up one’s nose.’

      ‘Was not. You’re cold. Let me feel that leg.’ She reached out and caressed his firm thigh.

      ‘Mmm. Nice,’ he said.

      ‘Couldn’t agree more,’ she concurred.

      ‘I could try to find out,’ he said slowly, thinking about who he knew at the production company. ‘But you know how they treat these things–like they’re covered by the Official Secrets Act. And sometimes they honestly don’t know until the last moment.’ He paused. ‘I get the impression you’re more tempted than not.’

      ‘Yes, I think that would be fair.’

      He hugged her to him and dropped a kiss on her hair. ‘Mmm, you smell good.’ He closed his eyes and inhaled the scent of her hair. Katie melted and curled herself round him. The duvet sighed.

      And so it was that Katie found herself in northern Norway at the beginning of March, in a hut, on the first night of filming for Celebrity X-Treme. There were bunk beds and bedrolls on the floor. It was the luck of the draw as to who had been assigned what, and Katie had pulled a short straw. She tried to get comfortable in her sleeping-bag as she listened to the snoring coming from the one on her left. She stifled a giggle. A bag in every sense of the word.

      Denise Trench was the singer in a pop band that had had a couple of hits and won the Eurovision Song Contest before disappearing from view. The band had been about as trendy as a pair of pale nylon slacks. Their fan base was an army of women of a certain age, who smelled faintly of wee. Nowadays, Denise was more famous for her colourful sex life, and her occasional forays into bottles of Jack Daniel’s followed by stints in rehab.

      Katie sighed and wriggled around in her sleeping-bag again. Whichever bit of her ended up touching the bedroll became instantly chilled and started to hurt. This is ridiculous, she thought. If I hadn’t bought that bloody cottage in Dorset, if I hadn’t spent my money on holidays, if I hadn’t taken my eye off the ball, if I hadn’t trusted Mike and he hadn’t stitched me up and got me sacked from Hello Britain!, I could have been coasting towards a happy early retirement instead of lying here in a ruddy shed with a draught and a whole load of people I’d rather see shot and mounted. On a wall. Obviously.

      She thought back to the conversation with Adam. He had warned her, but she hadn’t listened. She had been seduced by the noughts on a cheque. Had thought she’d be able to cope with it. Oh, God, she groaned inwardly. I used to think people were numpties to appear on these wretched programmes. And now I’m one of them. How has it come to this?

      She wriggled again, and merely succeeded in twisting her thermal pyjamas so far round she felt like a human Mr Whippy. She raised her bottom, unscrewed her pyjamas and humphed back down. She was freezing. It was no good. She was going to have to get out and put some more clothes on.

      She rolled the sleeping-bag down, wriggling like a caterpillar, and crept out, instantly alerting the producer on duty in the gallery, who was watching the bank of television monitors in front of him. He pointed it out to the director, who mixed from a shot of Denise Trench snoring like a warthog and gently breaking wind.

      Mark, the producer, was bored already, and hoping he could wangle a move to daytime. Nights were СКАЧАТЬ