After the Break. Penny Smith

wish people wouldn’t ask me that. I don’t have gut feelings. Unless I’ve had a large dish of chillies. But it could be fun. I could maybe get a book out of it.’

      She felt him smile. ‘What?’

      ‘You could, of course,’ he said, ‘but if that’s an excuse for why you want to do it, it’s a pretty poor one. You might as well be honest and say you’re doing it for the cash. If the money was less, how much of a difference would it make?’

      ‘I don’t know. I’ve done that in my head already. Obviously it would make some difference, particularly if they were offering bugger-all. I’d just say no. Funnily enough, the thing that would make the biggest difference is if I could find out who else was going.’

      She thought for a moment, then sat up abruptly and looked directly at him. ‘Hey. Do you think you could?’

      He put his leg under the duvet and gave a little shiver.

      ‘Ha. Told you it was cold.’

      ‘It was an involuntary shiver such as one gives when a tickly hair gets up one’s nose.’

      ‘Was not. You’re cold. Let me feel that leg.’ She reached out and caressed his firm thigh.

      ‘Mmm. Nice,’ he said.

      ‘Couldn’t agree more,’ she concurred.

      ‘I could try to find out,’ he said slowly, thinking about who he knew at the production company. ‘But you know how they treat these things–like they’re covered by the Official Secrets Act. And sometimes they honestly don’t know until the last moment.’ He paused. ‘I get the impression you’re more tempted than not.’

      ‘Yes, I think that would be fair.’

      He hugged her to him and dropped a kiss on her hair. ‘Mmm, you smell good.’ He closed his eyes and inhaled the scent of her hair. Katie melted and curled herself round him. The duvet sighed.

      And so it was that Katie found herself in northern Norway at the beginning of March, in a hut, on the first night of filming for Celebrity X-Treme. There were bunk beds and bedrolls on the floor. It was the luck of the draw as to who had been assigned what, and Katie had pulled a short straw. She tried to get comfortable in her sleeping-bag as she listened to the snoring coming from the one on her left. She stifled a giggle. A bag in every sense of the word.

      Denise Trench was the singer in a pop band that had had a couple of hits and won the Eurovision Song Contest before disappearing from view. The band had been about as trendy as a pair of pale nylon slacks. Their fan base was an army of women of a certain age, who smelled faintly of wee. Nowadays, Denise was more famous for her colourful sex life, and her occasional forays into bottles of Jack Daniel’s followed by stints in rehab.

      Katie sighed and wriggled around in her sleeping-bag again. Whichever bit of her ended up touching the bedroll became instantly chilled and started to hurt. This is ridiculous, she thought. If I hadn’t bought that bloody cottage in Dorset, if I hadn’t spent my money on holidays, if I hadn’t taken my eye off the ball, if I hadn’t trusted Mike and he hadn’t stitched me up and got me sacked from Hello Britain!, I could have been coasting towards a happy early retirement instead of lying here in a ruddy shed with a draught and a whole load of people I’d rather see shot and mounted. On a wall. Obviously.

      She thought back to the conversation with Adam. He had warned her, but she hadn’t listened. She had been seduced by the noughts on a cheque. Had thought she’d be able to cope with it. Oh, God, she groaned inwardly. I used to think people were numpties to appear on these wretched programmes. And now I’m one of them. How has it come to this?

      She wriggled again, and merely succeeded in twisting her thermal pyjamas so far round she felt like a human Mr Whippy. She raised her bottom, unscrewed her pyjamas and humphed back down. She was freezing. It was no good. She was going to have to get out and put some more clothes on.

      She rolled the sleeping-bag down, wriggling like a caterpillar, and crept out, instantly alerting the producer on duty in the gallery, who was watching the bank of television monitors in front of him. He pointed it out to the director, who mixed from a shot of Denise Trench snoring like a warthog and gently breaking wind.

      Mark, the producer, was bored already, and hoping he could wangle a move to daytime. Nights were so tedious. So far this evening he’d got barely five minutes’ worth of good stuff. The best bit had been some kind of movement going on in Peter Philbin’s mid-region. The girls would like that. Particularly since one of the camera angles had got his fully muscled-up chest emerging in all its glory. That would go into the storyline they were hoping to manipulate in which the handsome soap star would end up in some way, shape or form with Crystal, the model. He checked on the camera which was pointing at her to see what she was doing. Sleeping prettily, with her lipgloss surprisingly intact. She was so much better-looking without all her usual makeup, he thought.

      He watched Katie as she tiptoed past the others, and boosted the sound.

      ‘Who’s that?’ whispered Tanya Wilton, who was close to the door. The woman more infamous than famous after a fling with a politician was having a fitful night.

      ‘Sorry,’ murmured Katie, ‘I’ve got to get more clothes. My head feels like an ice cube.’ ‘Mine too,’ said Tanya, quietly.

      ‘Do you want me to pass you something? I’ve got a spare hat.’ ‘Could you? That would be great, thank you.’ Katie tiptoed to her suitcase, which she could see in the dim light of the moon, shining through the uncurtained windows, and rummaged through its contents. Her years as a presenter on breakfast television had stood her in good stead for pitch-of-night rummaging. Even at home in the flat, she hardly ever put the lights on if she had to get up in the dark, preferring instead to move around partially blind. So here in Norway, at three o’clock on a frozen spring morning, she was in her element, mentally logging where everything was. She found her hat and then, buried underneath, discovered a balaclava. Lovely, lovely balaclava. Thank goodness her chin was going to be warm. She also found a scarf and her sheepskin mittens and crept back past the sleeping bodies to Tanya. ‘There you go,’ she whispered, handing over the hat.

      She snuggled back into her sleeping-bag, and pulled on her balaclava, wrapped the scarf firmly round her neck and slid on the mittens. Within half an hour she was finally warm enough to sleep.

      Up in the viewing gallery, Mark peered closer at the camera. As daylight cast a gloomy glow, it was quite clear that the erstwhile queen of the breakfast sofa had crammed an enormous pair of green pants on her head, the stout gusset protecting her nose from the cold, her closed eyelids nicely framed by one of the leg holes. The producer and director shared a smile. That would definitely go in.

      At six o’clock, they handed over to the early birds. The story producer was the glorious strawberry blonde Mark rather fancied. ‘Morning, Siobhan,’ he said, unfurling himself from the seat.

      ‘Hi, Mark. Anything happening?’

      ‘Not a huge amount. Peter having an early-morning fumble. Katie with a pair of knickers on her head.’

      ‘Really? May I ask why?’

      ‘Think she mistook them for a hat.’

      ‘Ah. Yes. Easily done. Same number of holes. Not.’

      ‘No, seriously. She was rooting around in her case in the dark.’

      ‘Why didn’t she use a torch?’

      ‘Probably trying not to wake the others.’

      ‘You don’t think she did it hoping for air time?’

      ‘Watch the tape. It didn’t look like it to me.’

      Siobhan went over to talk to the director as Mark gathered up his belongings. ‘What do you think?’ she asked.

      ‘Looked genuine to me,’ he answered, yawning and stretching. ‘Actually, even if she did it for effect, it’s still pretty funny