After the Break. Penny Smith

cub reporter on a local newspaper. She had worked her way up from there to the job she had loved as co-host on the number-one breakfast show.

      When she looked in the mirror, she saw a woman in her forties with clear skin, wavy auburn hair and green eyes. On a good day, she felt passable. On a bad day, she felt almost too dreadful to approach the front door, let alone walk through it.

      What the men who fell in love with her saw was a woman in her prime with sparkling eyes and a body made for the bedroom.

      Katie had made enough money during her years on the prestigious sofa at Hello Britain! to have a flat in Chelsea overlooking the river, and a pretty cottage in Dorset, which she had bought after she’d done a chat show in a nearby village. It had seen a lot of use during her relationship, now ended, with landscape gardener Bob Hewlett. He lived in a beautiful house near her parents and was one of her brother’s best friends. He looked like a blue-eyed Richard Gere, had the most attractive forearms and a cat called Caligula.

      Months of bliss had been brought to an abrupt halt by a stray remark from a friend, who revealed that Bob’s protestations of faithfulness during a temporary split had been overstated. He had apparently indulged in a fling with a marine biologist called Clare McMurray, who continued to keep in touch.

      Katie discovered her jealous gene, which she had previously thought missing.

      One of her great friends, Dee–the weather presenter at Hello Britain!–wasn’t convinced that this was the end of Katie and Bob. She had never seen Katie as happy, funny, silly and full of the joys of life as she had been with Mr Hewlett.

      Katie and she met up at the gym they had joined in a drunken pact at New Year. They were now familiar with the café’s offerings, rather less so with the inside of the adjoining gym. They sat drinking herbal tea in their tracksuits, having done no more than change into them. Dee had (as usual) claimed fatigue from the early mornings. Katie had (as usual) pleaded idleness. The window was open, allowing an occasional waft of vaguely fresh air to blow through.

      ‘Yes, I know I did the dirty on Bob first,’ said Katie, taking an accidentally noisy slurp of her tea. ‘He lied to me, though, for months. And that is unforgivable.’

      ‘To be fair,’ said Dee, ‘you probably wouldn’t have told him about that bloke, Krishnan Casey, if it hadn’t been in the papers.’

      ‘How on earth can you remember his name?’ asked Katie, impressed.

      ‘He was very good-looking and I always remember very good-looking men.’

      ‘Well. Anyway,’ said Katie, ‘the point is, I only kissed him. And kissing someone is not the same as going to bed with them. Not in my book.’

      ‘But you’d split up. Bob was a single man to all intents and purposes. He thought he could go at it with impunity.’

      ‘Her name was Clare.’

      ‘Sorry?’

      ‘You said he was at it with Impunity’

      ‘If you don’t want to discuss it, then tell me to shut up. I don’t feel like dealing with your crap punning today.’

      ‘Oooh,’ sang Katie, lips pursed.

      ‘No. Really. I’m knackered. Simon’s being a total tit and keeps hunting me down in corridors to tell me I’m shit and that he doesn’t know why I bother. Why can’t they get a different editor? I don’t believe the entire success of Hello Britain! rests on his skinny arse.’

      Simon had been one of those responsible for Katie leaving the show. He was a vindictive man with sparse hair and a penchant for weak tea with sugar.

      ‘Try not to worry too much,’ said Katie, immediately solicitous. ‘He can’t get rid of you, you’re too popular.’

      ‘You know that’s only as true as my last press cutting,’ Dee responded. ‘The only reason he wouldn’t sack me is because he sacked you. If he got rid of another presenter, it would look bad.’

      ‘To lose one presenter is unfortunate. To lose two is careless.’

      ‘Exactly.’ Dee smiled, reaching back to untie her dark hair from the elastic band she had shoved it into for the alleged workout. ‘It’s exhausting. I say something on air, then wait for him to come and tell me how rubbish it was. It’s doing my head in. It’s got to the stage where I start a sentence and then, because I’m worried, I don’t finish it. So it actually is shit. As he says it is.’

      They sipped their infusions, contemplating the man they both disliked.

      ‘Which flavour is this?’ asked Katie.

      ‘Passionfruit and vanilla, I think. Why?’

      ‘They all taste the same. Like tangy hot water. They always smell nicer than they are. What’s yours?’

      ‘Mandarin and grapefruit.’ Dee offered it, and Katie took a sip.

      ‘Yup. Tastes like mine.’ She put down her own cup, pondering the infidelity question. ‘It’s about honesty. At any stage, Bob could have told me he’d shagged that woman. But he didn’t.’

      ‘He only lied by omission.’

      ‘No. He lied. I asked him what he’d got up to while we were in limbo–’

      ‘Separated,’ corrected Dee.

      ‘Whatever. And he said he’d missed me–and that’s mostly what he did. Pined. Or some such tosh.’

      ‘You can miss someone and sleep with someone else, can’t you? To get over it, perhaps?’ asked Dee, raising her eyebrows questioningly.

      ‘In that case, he should have told me,’ said Katie, emphatically.

      ‘Maybe he thought you wouldn’t understand. You can be a bit, erm…’

      Katie smiled at her friend as she searched for the right word. ‘Yes, I know I can be stroppy. But he should have tried. It was much worse the way he did it. Anyway. It’s all over. For ever,’ she said, standing up and draining her cup.

      Dee reached for her bag and sighed. ‘Well, I think it’s a crying shame. You two were brilliant together.’

      Katie looked arch. ‘I’ve got a date tonight.’

      ‘Oh, yes?’ asked Dee, her eyes alight with enquiry.

      ‘With Matt Damon.’

      ‘No. Really?’ Dee demanded disbelievingly.

      ‘No. Not really,’ Katie agreed. ‘The next best thing, though. Adam Williams.’

      ‘Oh, God, he’s gorgeous,’ said Dee, elongating the word, and trying to zip up her overflowing gym bag.

      Adam Williams and Nick Midhurst were co-owners of Wolf Days Productions, the company that had produced Start the Weekend in Dorset.

      They were both extraordinarily handsome. If Adam looked like Matt Damon, then Nick bore more than a passing resemblance to Ben Affleck.

      ‘He’s not only gorgeous, he’s also very nice,’ said Katie, running both hands through her long hair, bringing it forwards over her face and peeping seductively through the strands. ‘And he isn’t a lying toe-rag,’ she added provocatively.

      ‘Bob isn’t a toe-rag,’ Dee asserted, rising to the bait. And this is all a bit quick, isn’t it? You finish with one, and another pops up before you’ve put the lid on the pen, or whatever the expression is.’

      ‘Bonnet on the pig?’

      ‘Whatever. So how did that happen?’

      ‘He phoned me.’

      ‘And?’

      ‘And asked if I was free tonight.’

      ‘And this