Penny Smith - Coming Up Next

‘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 on holiday, and when I was on holiday the sharpened axe fell on my sunburned neck. I was given the option of working out the month left on my contract or taking it as holiday. I chose to work it out. Then they came back and said they’d decided otherwise. So I don’t even get the chance to say goodbye.’

‘Or slag them off?’ asked Andi.

‘As if I’d commit career suicide like that. My replacement is the wicked witch of the north, Keera Bloody Keethley. I bet she’s been putting on that fake poor-Katie face she does so well. It’s amazing she can manoeuvre her toothbrush of a morning, she’s holding so many knives to plunge into people’s backs.’

‘You always said you liked her.’

‘Quite liked her.’

Katie pulled out three eyelashes in a clump. It was a habit that left her with occasional bald spots, but was curiously satisfying. Not top of her list – like tidying. Not up there with sneezing either. But a bloody close third. She selected one and chewed it.

‘Katie?’

‘Yes – sorry. Just thinking about all those bastards who are going to be sooooo happy about this. Colin the news editor for one. He’s never liked me – not since I threatened to report him for fondling the barmaid at the Queen’s Head and Artichoke. Do you know how hard I worked for that bloody job? All those wankers I had to shag? Not to mention all that training. Law, frigging public administration, shorthand. Talking of which, do you remember Don – with the really short arms and small hands?’

‘I don’t know. Erm. Local radio?’

‘No. Don. The editor of the Evening News.’

‘Sorry. There have been rather a lot.’

‘Thanks for reminding me.’

Don had been short, balding, with a few teeth missing at the back, and a round, hard stomach – from endless business lunches and copious quantities of ale – which he was fond of patting as he said, ‘All bought and paid for.’

‘Don,’ Katie had said, ‘you was robbed. Surely you could have got a bigger one for all that money.’ She had given him a smile and raised her eyebrows.

That had been all he had needed to leap on her after a drunken lunch just down the road from the newspaper offices. He’d given her a peach of a job, doing fashion and motoring. Noses out of joint all round because of the freebies.

‘Anyway. He was the one I nicknamed Mr Horse.’

‘Oh, right. The one who liked you to get togged up in jodhpurs and whip him while he whinnied?’ She laughed. ‘How could I forget him? Didn’t you call him “Horse By Name But Not By Nature”?’

‘A veritable nub of a knob.’ Katie smiled. She looked at her elegant feet propped up on the sofa. Would anyone else give her a job? Once she had been young and thrusting. Now there were so many others – much younger. And still capable of thrusting without the hips squeaking.