After the Break. Penny Smith

had discovered that they took absolutely hours to get ready, that there was a drama if the manicurist couldn’t fit them in, that one wrong word brought on a crisis. It was exhausting.

      Katie was refreshing. She was beautiful, made him laugh, and was sexy–in fact, sexier because there were no tantrums. There was none of the rowing that had marred his other relationships. She had joie de vivre in spades. And the peachiest of bottoms. Just thinking about her was making him hot.

      He dragged his mind back to the meeting–Nick was staring at him. Was he supposed to have said something? He brought his attention fully into the room.

      ‘Would you agree to that?’ asked the man from BBC Factual.

      Adam thought quickly. ‘What do you think, Nick?’

      Nick slightly raised his eyebrows. They were talking about an antiques project Adam had masterminded so it was basically up to him to sign it off. ‘It sounds fine to me,’ he said.

      ‘Good. Then that’s what we’ll do,’ Adam said, and looked at his watch. ‘Tell you what, I have to go now. Any odds and ends, we can discuss on the phone, yes?’

      As they left, Nick asked mildly, ‘What were you thinking about when you were supposed to be making the deal?’

      ‘Suddenly remembered there was some stuff I’d got on the computer, and I’d forgotten to save it. Debating about whether I should go back to the office and sort it.’

      ‘Cool,’ said Nick, who clearly didn’t believe him. ‘See you tomorrow, then.’

      Much, much later, between cotton sheets, the decision was made. Adam and Katie lay tangled together. She was snuggled down, with barely the tip of her nose showing, while he had most of his torso and one leg on top of the duvet.

      ‘How can you bear to have so much flesh exposed to the elements?’ she muffled.

      ‘I think you’ll find it’s tolerably warm out here. We have this new-fangled contraption called a boiler, which is linked to something we modern-day humans call central heating.’

      ‘It’s freezing.’

      ‘There’s something wrong with your thermostat.’

      Katie giggled.

      ‘What?’ he asked.

      ‘When I was growing up, we had a really dodgy boiler,’ she replied.

      ‘Called your grandmother,’ he interrupted.

      ‘Cheeky No she was not. We had this really dodgy boiler–’

      ‘Can’t believe you call your mother that.’

      ‘Stop it. If you’ll let me finish…We used to have this really dodgy boiler.’ She lifted her head and gave him a hard look, as if she was daring him to speak again. ‘And periodically it would have to be riddled. When I look back at the winters at home, they were punctuated by shouts of “Has anybody riddled the boiler?,” which is just ripe for comedy. But either we weren’t as crude, rude and disgusting as we generally are now, or that expression was not in our lexicon.’

      ‘It was a more innocent time.’

      ‘Maybe.’

      ‘Well, you only have to look at children’s television programmes then and now,’ he said. ‘They’re more knowing today’

      ‘Teletubbies wasn’t knowing.’

      ‘SpongeBob SquarePants? It’s filth. Pure, unadulterated filth.’

      ‘SpongeBob SquarePants?’ She laughed. ‘Or are you talking in the cleaning sense?’

      ‘I was watching it last night. It’s sheer pornography. This bloke Bob sponging down a woman with square pants on.’

      She chortled and put her nose below the duvet.

      ‘What are you doing?’ he asked, with a throaty growl.

      ‘Warming my nose up,’ she muttered, through the feathers. ‘I think you’re the one with a dodgy thermostat.’

      ‘How the hell would you cope in the cold weather in Norway if you decided to do Celebrity X-Treme?’

      ‘Good point. I assume there’ll be central heating,’ she said, hopefully.

      ‘What? The Norwegians have mastered the art of centrally heating their countryside?’

      ‘It’s called global warming. We’re all helping,’ she responded, wriggling onto her front and propping her head on her hands. ‘You are awfully handsome,’ she said, gazing at his chin from close range.

      Adam smiled down at her and kissed the tip of her nose. ‘You’re rather scrumptious yourself. But, really, on a purely basic level, are you up for Celebrity X-Treme in terms of the chilliness of the environment? If you find this cold, how on earth are you going to cope with minus thirty, or whatever it could be?’

      ‘I’m sure they’d provide me with adequate clothing. They wouldn’t have us freezing to death. ’Elf and safety would have something to say about that.’

      ‘And what about playing the game?’ Adam looked down at her, as she lay in the crook of his arm.

      ‘You 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