Coming Up Next. Penny Smith
being sacked?’
‘Thanks, Mum. Not exactly sacked, more replaced by an upstart who just happens to be younger and prettier. And, talking of arses, has no doubt licked a number to steal my job. Scheming little witch called Keera Keethley. Should have known she was up to something. She was always in The Boss’s office. She’d have fluttered her breasts and stuck out her eyelashes – he’d never have been able to resist.’
‘Odd-looking woman, then,’ commented Ben, as he opened a bottle of wine. ‘Must get her to come to the hospital and see if I can’t get her into the British Medical Journal.’
‘You know what I mean,’ Katie said. ‘Anyway, here I am. Trying to escape from the press, so that the story dies away and I can sink into oblivion.’ She ended on a happy smile, then burst into tears.
Her dad hugged her and patted her shoulder. Her mother muttered something about turps and left the room. And Ben drank his wine, apparently unable to think of anything constructive to do or say.
As Katie showed no sign of stopping, her father took her to the sitting room and put her in front of the television. He went back into the kitchen. ‘Daytime television’s a Godsend, isn’t it?’ he said to his son.
‘Couldn’t do without it,’ said Ben. ‘I only passed my exams by watching hospital dramas.’
‘Actually, since we got the satellite dish, I can watch some really interesting stuff while I’m waiting for my peppercorns to soak,’ his father added robustly. ‘Soooo,’ he said, after Ben had refilled his glass, ‘what say you to a fish?’
‘I say yes please to a fish.’
‘And I say yes please to a glass of wine, which you haven’t offered me yet,’ shouted Katie, from the sofa. ‘A schooner of alcohol to take away the pain of watching this shite on the telly.’
A few hours later, Katie had finished what was left of the bottle, had downed another, and was still crying. Her family decided to take the dog for his evening stroll and leave her to watch How Green Is My Valley, a makeover show involving whole villages doing up everything from their houses to their rabbit hutches.
The dinner had been delicious, only moderately ruined by the occasional sniff from Katie’s corner.
‘Oh, enough now,’ said her mother brusquely, as Katie blew her nose over the broccoli. ‘I know it’s a bit bloody, but there are worse things that can happen. As your brother will testify.’
‘Oh, yes,’ Ben perked up, who’d only just stopped crying himself after eating a hot chilli. ‘Let me tell you about the bloke who came into A and E with his dick stuck up the end of a vacuum-cleaner.’
‘Do you mind if we don’t?’ asked his mother.
By the time Ben had finished his story, even Katie had raised a watery smile. In fact, she was finding that the red wine helped quite a lot and, with a muttered, ‘Is it OK?’ opened another bottle.
They decamped to the sitting room and sat in front of the television to ruminate. Katie drank her way steadily through the Merlot until the late-night news began. Ben made the by-now-habitual comment about the well-known newsreader putting the emph-ARSE-is on the wrong syll-ARB-les, and their mother pressed the off button. ‘Time for bed, I think?’ she said pointedly to her daughter.
Katie had about two hours of blissful drunken sleep before the quest for water sent her to the kitchen. The dog turned in his basket, farted, then went back to twitching and worrying about next door’s ferret.
Katie returned to bed.
Got up again.
Went to the bathroom.
Went downstairs for more water.
Went back to bed.
Then decided that what she really, really wanted was more wine.
She opened the cupboard and perused the contents. 1986. Was that a good year? Château Lagune. Definitely something that shouldn’t be drunk alone. Methylated spirits? Oh, that must have been Mum. She squinted. A Spanish Rioja squinted back.
She poured a large glass, went into the sitting room and turned the television on low. Rock Hudson hove into view in a black-and-white film involving doctors and nurses. He nudged another male doctor and said, sotto voce, ‘She’s the one I want.’
Katie giggled. ‘No, she’s not. He wants you,’ she whispered at the screen.
She didn’t remember seeing the end of the film – or the end of the bottle – when she was woken by the dog, giving her a wet patch. ‘Erk,’ she said experimentally. Her mouth tasted disgusting. I wonder if this is what my kidneys would taste like if they were marinated.
In the bathroom mirror, she viewed the cushion crease on her face, which resembled a fresh scar, and prodded a spot that had arrived on her cheek. Must’ve taken the overnight bus, the bastard, she thought, which is what I’ll be doing soon, now that I haven’t got a job.
Tears welled.
Ben walked in wearing his boxer shorts, his hair looking like it had been licked by the morning gorilla. ‘Oh, God … Bit early for that already,’ he said, as he yawned and scratched and reached for the toothpaste.
‘I wasn’t crying. I yawned too big and made my eyes water,’ said Katie, stalking out of the bathroom.
A little later, Ben headed off for the journey back to London and work.
Her mother flitted about with unhelpful suggestions. ‘You could always go back to writing for a local newspaper,’ she said at one point.
Katie rolled her eyes. ‘For God’s sake, Mum, I’ve come a bit further than that. That’s like telling you you could go back to painting by numbers. Or Dad that he should try making coconut pyramids.’
‘I love coconut pyramids,’ announced her father, as he flicked through his mountain of cookery books to see what he fancied making for dinner. ‘Anyway, you don’t have to do anything for a while, do you? You must have got some money stashed away. Why don’t you give yourself a month off and then make a decision? You could even stay here while you do it …’ He noticed his wife’s expression. ‘. for a couple of weeks,’ he finished lamely.
Katie shot her mother a look. ‘Thanks, Dad. And if you don’t mind, Mum, I will stay for a few days, then go back to the flat. No point in eating you out of house and home, eh?’
‘Or drinking us out of house and home,’ said her mother, who had not seen quite so many bottles for a family dinner since her daughter had last come to stay for a weekend.
The next day, Katie mooched round the house.
The day after, she woke up to find the house surrounded. ‘Sorry,’ she said to her mum and dad at a crisis meeting round the kitchen table. ‘I thought they’d have given up. After all, it’s not that much of a story. Must be a slow news day. To talk or not to talk, that is the question.’
‘And answer came there none,’ added her father. ‘And that was hardly odd because they’d eaten every one.’ Alice in Wonderland had been a favourite bedtime story and was often quoted inappropriately.
Katie sucked her bottom lip, then her top lip, then both of them together. Then made a decision.
‘I’m going to phone my agent,’ she told her parents, ‘who will no doubt recommend that I go out and tell them I have nothing to say on the matter, although I wish Keera well in one of the best jobs in television. Then I’ll say I have a number of projects in the pipeline, which can’t be discussed at the moment because, as we know, I have bugger-all. No, Mum. Obviously I won’t say that.’
‘How are you?’ Jim asked.
‘Been better. How are things there?’
‘We’ve been fending them off. Saying you’ve been