Penny Smith - After the Break

‘You are disgusting,’ said Dee, without looking up from her purse.

Katie’s evening was everything she had hoped it would be–and more.

Adam was charming, witty, and very, very flirty. He and Nick had both fallen for the presenter of their show the first time they had seen her. But Nick was away supervising filming in France, and Adam had stolen a march on his rival. He had absolutely no intention of letting his business partner know that he was seeing Katie for dinner–or that she was single.

As soon as he had heard on the grapevine that Katie and Bob had split up, he had begun his campaign. He was enough of a hunter to let her think he knew nothing of the separation and was merely after a discussion of future projects in a ‘more comfortable environment than the glass box that is my office’.

It had been an unnecessary subterfuge.

Katie considered dinner with any man to be a prelude to intimacy. ‘They may say it’s about work,’ she bragged to her friend Kirsty, whom she’d phoned from the back of a cab on the way home from the gym, ‘but if it was, they’d do it where I couldn’t pounce on them.’

‘Aren’t you going to let him do the pouncing?’ asked Kirsty, who was pregnant with her second child and couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to pounce anywhere.

‘We may do a double pounce,’ Katie pronounced.

‘With a triple salchow?’

‘Absolutely. Followed by a…erm…’

‘Ha. Stumped, my little fat friend,’ said Kirsty, triumphantly.

‘I think you’ll find that you are going to be my little fat friend before too long,’ said Katie, sliding to the other side of the cab as the driver swung round a bend too fast. ‘How’s it going?’

‘Vomiting a lot, which isn’t great. Actually, I wouldn’t mind so much if I thought I could eat more without putting on too much weight. But I’m eating dry biscuits to keep it down, and I’m going through two packets a day. And then I’ve got this awful craving for pickled beetroot. I get up, throw up, eat biscuits, throw up, eat pickled beetroot, get heartburn, go to bed and start the cycle all over again. And I have the midwife saying I’ve got to hold off on the biscuits and not eat so much beetroot. At the moment I’ve got spots round my mouth from being sick, got red pee, red poo and Fred has left a deposit of something on one shoulder.’

‘You poor thing,’ said Katie, solicitously. ‘Nothing I can do, I assume?’

‘Take Fred off my hands occasionally?’

‘If you’re desperate enough to ask me to take him, you must be in a bad way. Of course I will. But you know I’m not that good when they’re little. In a couple of years’ time I’ll be taking him out and about all over the shop. Tea at the Ritz. A tour of the National Gallery. Whatever.’

‘He’ll be three in a couple of years’ time.’

‘Well, the Science Museum, then.’

‘He’ll be three.’

‘You see? I’m hopeless when they’re like overgrown foetuses. I mean, honestly, what do you do with a one-year-old?’

‘Play with him?’

‘He’d get bored.’

‘You mean you’d get bored. Enjoy your dinner. The idea of flirting with anyone in my current state makes me feel sick. You know, I always wondered why they called it morning sickness when it can strike at any time of the day or night. I’ve taken to chewing a nub of toothpaste to take away the taste.’

‘Do you spit or swallow?’ asked Katie with interest. As you know, one swallow doesn’t make a girlfriend.’

‘You are rude, crude and disgusting. I am now putting the phone down.’

‘Enjoy your beetroot,’ said Katie, pressing end call and putting the phone into her bag.

Back home, she had a shower and washed her hair, making sure that the conditioner was the nicest-smelling one she had. She let it dry naturally as she padded round the flat, slowly getting ready. With the towel wrapped round her waist, she opened her wardrobe doors and surveyed the contents. First things first, she thought, and took out her brand new, vertiginous, purple Gina shoes. They were not exactly practical. She could barely walk the length of the sitting room before she needed a rest–but they were beautiful. It wasn’t often you got such a jewel-like colour. As soon as she had slipped them on in the shop, her head had buzzed with the busy refrain, ‘Neeew shoooes.’

She put them on now and stood in front of the mirror, admiring the way they made her feet look so small and elegant. She dropped the towel. Hmm. Probably better with clothes.

She took out a little black dress with discreet fringing, which she had been thinking would be perfect. Had it always been so snug a fit, she wondered, as she tugged at the zip? She flicked back her hair from her now slightly sweaty face and stood up straight. Omigod, she thought. I look like a singed woodlouse.

Over the next hour, she became more frantic as she realized that virtually everything was too damned tight. Hot and bothered, she eventually chose a stretchy silk shirt, stretchy black skirt and large stretchy belt, all bought when she was going through a fat phase. Or, at least, she’d thought it was a fat phase. It was bloody annoying how, as you got older, the phases became more frequent and longer-lasting. And how you could put on three pounds in a day, but a month later, you were still struggling to take it off.

Life, she thought. A constant battle to keep everything in place. If only steamed vegetables and pineapple were enough to keep the soul alive. She applied the bare minimum of makeup and, having checked that she looked as good as she could under the circumstances, she left the flat.

She usually tried to be a smidge late for dinner, but a taxi pulled up immediately, so she was–as usual–bang on time.

Adam, who was used to his ex-girlfriend sometimes forgetting to turn up at all, was pleasantly surprised to find Katie sitting at the table when he arrived. She was drinking a glass of tap water. ‘I know. Not exactly racy, is it?’ she said, after kissing his cheek, rather self-consciously.

To kiss or not to kiss? Too late now, she thought, gulping water to cover her confusion. First dates–if this was a first date–were always a mixture of excitement and trepidation. Not unlike opening a packet of fig rolls…

The restaurant was expensive, with heavy white damask tablecloths and elegant wine glasses. She assumed it had been chosen because it shrieked neither seduction nor business deal, but rather the quiet confidence of a platinum card.

Adam had also chosen his outfit carefully. He had started with his tan Longines watch and worked outwards. He was wearing a navy Paul Smith suit with a lilac shirt. Katie could barely look at him, he was so handsome.

After an initially shaky start, when he had talked vaguely about some of the projects he was working on, there had been an unspoken agreement that they were not there to discuss what he could offer in the way of programmes, but more about what he could offer in the realm of a merger.

As the dinner progressed, and the wine bottle emptied, they covered the gamut. Katie heard herself telling Adam how to cook aubergines: ‘Slice in half, face down on a non-stick tray, bake for half an hour. Lovely with honey.’

And Adam was surprised to find himself telling Katie how he had always coveted a pair of X-ray spectacles he had seen in the Beano: ‘I wanted them originally to see through this ant-house I had, and then, latterly, women’s clothes.’

‘Of course.’ Katie had nodded understandingly.

At one point, she deliberately brought in Bob’s name, making it clear that she was no longer with him.

‘Oh, I wasn’t aware that was all over,’ he lied. ‘Sad,’ he lied again. ‘Not for me, I hasten to add,’ finally being truthful, ‘but I remember he came down to Dorset on that first evening of the chat show. On his motorbike, wasn’t he?’ he asked, knowing full well he had been. He and Nick had gone to look (and drool) over it. Not only did he know that Bob rode a motorbike, he knew what model and even the state of the tyres. The bastard obviously raced it.