After the Break Read online

  ‘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.

  ‘Yes. But it’s definitely over,’ said Katie, making sure she hadn’t been misunderstood.

  He got it. ‘Well it’s always horrible when it doesn’t work out,’ he said, his fist balled into a valedictory salute under the table.

  The restaurant was warm and cosy, the candles were guttering, the glasses empty. It was time to get the bill. Katie was feeling as smooth and melting as the chocolates that had come with her coffee.

  Outside, she shivered, despite her coat.

  ‘Cold?’ Adam asked, wrapped in his cashmere jacket.

  ‘A bit.’

  ‘Let’s see what I can do about that,’ he said, and enveloped her in a warm hug that turned into a tentative kiss. Her response was everything he had hoped it would be. She almost fizzed with electricity.

  Katie was in heaven. In stumbling words, between kisses, she invited him back to her flat, where cloud nine was superseded by clouds ten and eleven and eventually every silver lining in the sky seemed to be lying in front of her.

  A few months’ later when she had introduced him to her parents, they had been cautiously complimentary. They had driven up to Yorkshire in Adam’s Jaguar, a sleek car with a throaty purr that was incredibly sexy. Just the feel of her thighs on the leather seat made Katie feel in the mood. It had been a balmy evening, with the scent of grass cuttings wafting through the open window.

  It had all gone well until Adam had left half of his pot au feu of braised pork belly, as though it had been a restaurant.

  All attendant members of the Fisher family were horrified. Katie’s father, Jack, was an enthusiastic chef who spent hours poring over recipe books and watching television cookery shows. He didn’t approve of leaving food. You took what you wanted and ate it all. Unless you didn’t like it–in which case, you shouldn’t have taken so much in the first place.

  Katie’s mother, Lynda, who was more than happy to let her husband do all the work in the kitchen, had been brought up by parents who had struggled to make ends meet, and she didn’t approve of waste. And Katie was a pig, who couldn’t understand why anyone wouldn’t eat every single mouthful of her father’s delicious food, then go back for more.

  By the end of the weekend, Adam had partially overcome their distrust of a man who could leave food on a plate, and had charmed them. His major Brownie points had been accrued when he had praised a painting in the dining room, which he had correctly identified as a posy of peonies. It had been executed by Lynda during her artist phase, and derided by her family as reminiscent of the rear view of a family of baboons with their heads down a well.

  ‘Mum is what we call, a keen…erm…trier,’ Katie explained, as Adam admired a pottery vase in the kitchen while they were making coffee. ‘That was originally a milk jug but, as you can see, its handle melted in the kiln. If
you look closely, you’ll also notice a small hole in the bottom where she failed to supply enough clay. Hence the dried flowers. It’s like living with an overgrown primary-school child.’

  ‘Oi,’ said her mother, coming up behind them as they considered her creation. ‘I’ll have you know that was modelled on one by a famous arts-and-crafts exponent.’

  ‘Called Slipshod,’ said Katie.

  Her mother smiled. ‘I’ve left it to you in my will,’ she said.

  ‘Gee, thanks, Mum. Just what I’ve always wanted. Do hope you’ve left Baboon Anuses on a Summer’s Day to me as well. Or does anus become ami in the plural?’

  ‘You are a rude and ungrateful girl. If I were you, Adam, I’d have nothing more to do with her.’

  He nodded. ‘You’re absolutely right. No one could ask for more than a beautiful painting of peonies and an homage vase,’ he said, rhyming homage with fromage.

  ‘Homage vase!’ puffed Katie. ‘What are you like? It’s a piece of clutter.’

  ‘My daughter, as I’m sure you’re aware by now, considers everything to be clutter,’ said Lynda. ‘She would probably live in a sterile lab, given the choice. Every home she’s had, you feel like you’re sitting in a show house. Can’t put your tea down without her tidying it away. And never anything in the fridge. Prisoners make their cells more homely.’

  ‘Hey, Mum,’ said Katie, a bit hurt by her mother’s comments. ‘I’m not that bad. Honestly. Just because I can’t be doing with all the dust. Do you know, we shed an entire outer layer of skin every two days? That’s a whole human. This vase has probably got one of Mum’s legs and Dad’s ears on it.’

  Adam smiled. ‘Actually, I’m afraid I have to blot my copybook and confess that I, too, live a slightly minimalist life.’ He made a face of apology.

  Lynda harrumphed and put the vase back on the windowsill. ‘Shall we have coffee in the garden since it’s such a nice day?’

  They took the tray out to where lack was pinning back some of the trailing roses, which were threatening to swamp, rather than cascade over, a small wall near the greenhouse.

  ‘It looks lovely out here, Dad,’ said Katie, gazing about her and sniffing appreciatively. She loved coming home to the grey-stone house, even if her mother did sometimes make her feel unwelcome by using her old bedroom as a repository for the detritus from her discarded hobbies. ‘Incidentally, Mum,’ she said, pouring milk into her coffee, ‘I think Hercules may have rolled in some fox poo. He was smelling very ripe when I passed him.’

  Hercules was their ageing Labrador.

  ‘Wretched dog,’ said her mother, without heat. She took her coffee, raised her voice and, without looking round, said, ‘lack. Your dog has been rolling in fox poo.’

  He was lost in contemplation of a hollyhock and didn’t respond.

  ‘lack. Hercules smells,’ she said, louder this time.

  ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘I’ll get on to it. Excellent. Coffee. Have you poured me one?’

  Katie passed him his cup and he took a big gulp. ‘Your mother’s turning into a right old cantankerous trout,’ he said quietly, but with feeling.

  ‘Was she ever different?’ asked Katie, who had always had a difficult relationship with her.

  He didn’t answer but put his cup back on the table and went off to get some secateurs.

  ‘Are you going to wash the dog, Jack?’ asked Lynda, annoyed.

  ‘I’ll do it in a minute,’ he responded curtly.

  Later, when Katie phoned to let them know they had got back to London safely, her father told her that he had taken up fishing to get out of the house more. And, in passing, he mentioned that Bob was a frequent companion.

  She hadn’t said anything at the time, but that night, lying between crisp sheets and reading Private Eye, Katie acknowledged a twinge as she thought of her father and the handsome landscape gardener casting their lines into the cool waters of the river.

  All her friends loved Adam, but Dee had expressed reservations. ‘He seems just a teensy-weensy bit self-obsessed,’ she told Katie, during a drunken night out with the girls.

  Now, eight months on, Katie had to confess that she was beginning to feel she came a poor second to his business. He was expanding Wolf Days Productions, and they were taking on new staff. He did invite her to some of the business dinners, but they were dull, involving talk of editing suites and cabling. She had tried to lighten one up by brightly announcing that coconuts killed 150 people a year. Adam had had the temerity to tell her to be quiet. In front of everyone. It had taken her so much by surprise that she had immediately phoned her friends to discuss the state of her relationship.

  She met her perennially single friend Kathy at their favourite budget café, its gay plastic tablecloths covered with garish pictures of vegetables. They ordered enormous frothy cappuccinos. Katie took all the foam and chocolate sprinkle off the top of hers and ate it before she addressed the matter in hand. ‘He seems really keen one minute, then cools off the next,’ she said. ‘I know he’s busy businessing at the moment, but it’s making me feel needy. And I hate feeling needy.’

  ‘Maybe it’s because you don’t have a job,’ said Kathy, who was juggling two, and still not earning enough to make ends meet.

  ‘Thanks for reminding me.’

  ‘Well, you are what you do, and you’ve done bugger-all of any consequence for rather a long time.’

  Katie had been limping along by writing for newspapers and magazines, hosting awards ceremonies and standing in for people on local radio. ‘There’s not much about,’ she said ruefully. ‘I was offered Celebrity Masterchef, but I hate cooking anything that’s not vegetable soup. And I couldn’t do the meat thing. A mate of mine, who was training to be a chef, gave it all up after he had to debone a whole pig. Apparently shot the shoulder ball, or whatever it was, into an enormous trifle made by the head pastry chef. Nobody saw it happen, but he was convinced that if he confessed the pastry chef would kill him. And that if he didn’t, he’d be up before the beak for killing a trifle-eater with E. coli or whatever you get from uncooked pork.’

  ‘Tapeworms.’

  ‘Nope. Don’t think it was a tapeworm. Anyway, he said he felt sick, drove home and never went near the place again. He presents some show on BBC4 now.’

  ‘Food?’

  ‘No, thanks. Unless they have one of their special lemon meringue pies. Why? You hungry?’

  ‘I meant, does he present a programme about food?’

  ‘Oh. No. I think it’s vaguely intellectual. He was telling me something about Einstein’s brain being bigger in one area than another and scientists trying to work out whether it developed like that or had always been that way. It seemed to me that it was a bit difficult to prove. I mean, it’s not as though you can cut the top off people’s heads to look at their brain–like peering into a boiled egg–to find out whether nature or nurture is responsible for what’s going on in it.’

  ‘What was his answer?’

  ‘I don’t recall.’

  The inside of the café was steamy. Katie rested her hands on her cup to warm them. ‘Hey, talking telly for a minute, did you see that beast Keera Keethley on Hello Britain! this morning?’ she asked.

  ‘Why do you watch that programme? It only annoys you,’ said Kathy, who had witnessed the hurt Katie had suffered when Keera had replaced her on the Hello Britain! sofa.

  The new presenter was exotically beautiful, with long black hair and blue eyes. She was also hugely ambitious, and employed publicists to make sure she was constantly in the public eye. She rarely drank alcohol, appeared at all the right events and in all the right places, and never left the house without checking in a mirror…unlike Katie, who had appeared in numerous periodicals and publications coming out of the wrong sort of places in the wrong sort of state.

  ‘So what did she do this morning?’

  ‘She was interviewing this chap from some massive quango about what they were going to do for consumers. And then–because, as we
know, she’s as thick as a Scotch pancake–she asked in that sugary little-girl voice she does, “But do you have any teeth?” And he looked bemused, smiled and said, “Of course I do.” And then she looked confused. And Rod Fallón rescued her with, “Yes, she obviously doesn’t mean it literally. What Keera means is what teeth does your organization have?” And then there was a two shot with Keera looking thunderous. It was hysterical.’

  ‘You know, Hello Britain! suddenly sounds like it’s worth watching,’ said Kathy, rolling her eyes.

  ‘Yes. All right. Maybe you had to be there.’

  ‘Anyway. As for the Adam stuff, I’m sure he’s in love with you, just as they always bloody are.’

  ‘Being, as I am, the most gorgeous creature alive,’ said Katie, deadpan.

  ‘Frankly, I don’t know what it is. You’re an ugly muppet with no personality. It must be the smell of your feet,’ said Kathy, glancing at her watch and doing a double-take. ‘Damn. I really have to go. Enjoy your relationship for what it is. That’s what you tell me when I occasionally get lucky. See you.’ She grabbed her things.

  CHAPTER TWO

  All was not well at Hello Britain!. The ratings were down, and the editor was blaming everyone but himself. To be fair, it wasn’t entirely his fault. He had had a new male presenter foisted on him by The Boss. Rod Fallón had all the presence of a sock. He had been brought in as a safe pair of hands to replace the previous male presenter, who had been unveiled as a kerb-crawling sex pervert. Mike had been the consummate breakfast-television host. He had looked good, sounded good, and could do a good interview. He had been able to turn a difficult situation into must-watch television with a sense of aplomb. Rod could do a passable interview–period, as they would have said in the States. He was grey in every sense of the word. And that, coupled with the easy on the eye, but essentially dim Keera Keethley, was not pulling in the viewers.