After the Break. Penny Smith

on the eye, but essentially dim Keera Keethley, was not pulling in the viewers.

      Simon gazed out of the window, his hands shoved deep into his trouser pockets, pulling the thin material tight over his bony haunches. As he waited for the news editor and the producers to come in for their morning meeting, he mulled over what was needed to give the show a boost–something that everyone would be talking about.

      He turned as they walked in. ‘Morning,’ he said nastily. ‘Not a good one, frankly, was it?’

      The news editor, Colin, was taken aback. ‘Oh. I thought it was. Bounced along. Lots of content,’ he said.

      ‘Flat as a tea-tray and about as inspiring,’ said Simon, sitting down and tapping some of the keys on his computer. ‘There was nothing that would have got me tuning in. We could start with some intelligent bloody conversation. What the hell was Keera doing asking what a potato clock was when Rod quite clearly said he’d got up at eight o’clock?’

      ‘I think she thought it was funny’

      ‘We both know she doesn’t think,’ said Simon, bitchily.

      Colin was surprised. What he couldn’t have known was that Keera could no longer be bothered to flirt with the programme’s editor. Knowing that she wouldn’t be sacked now that Katie and Mike had gone, she had no further use for the little tête-à-têtes she’d had when she’d first got her feet tucked firmly under the famous Hello Britain! sofa.

      Consequently, Simon’s view of her had altered. The stirring in his loins was still there when he caught the glimpse of thigh and panties she flashed so regularly on the show it had almost become her trademark, but her lack of intelligence grated. That morning, she had called some starving Africans ‘emancipated’. You could get away with that sort of mistake if you were seen as innately clever. People assumed you knew the right word. The problem was that Keera probably didn’t.

      ‘Right,’ said Simon, clenching his small buttocks in the pale blue trousers. I have decided that we need one of our presenters out and about. Next week we’ll go on the road. We’ll do OBs every day’

      There was a subdued groan. Outside broadcasts were a recipe for disaster. There was disruption, chaos…and that was just the presenters’ and crew’s home lives. There was so much to organize, so many things to go wrong, and therefore more reasons for bollockings from Simon, who relished them.

      ‘I want a different town every day. You can forget about Northern Ireland, but I want one morning in Wales and one in Scotland. One in the north, one in the south-west, the other wherever. But not London. And I want a proper reason for us to be there, not some made-up crap. Now. What have we got for tomorrow?’

      The rest of the meeting was conducted in the usual bear-pit manner, with one person being picked on for a special mauling.

      Afterwards they spilled out in silence.

      ‘I don’t see why it’s so awful to do OBs,’ Kent, the producer, said to Heather, wrinkling his nose in confusion. ‘I’ve never been on one, but they sound like good fun.’

      Heather was a senior producer, and had been there long enough to have seen knee-jerk reactions to low ratings before. They never worked. Only one thing did, in her opinion. Good content. Good interviewees. And good interviewers. She couldn’t be bothered to explain that to Kent. He was besotted with Keera and would have been happy to watch a three-and-a-half-hour programme of her applying her lipgloss. Mind you, she thought wearily, it would be a damn sight cheaper than going on the road.

      She wished she’d taken the job at the BBC when it had been offered five years ago. It had been a lot less cash, but she wouldn’t now be dreading going on the road with Keera. She was difficult enough to nursemaid when she was at the end of a button hard-wired into her ear…

      In his office, Simon sat at his keyboard and rattled off an email to Rod, Keera and Dee. He smiled. Sending emails that he knew would disrupt his presenters’ lives was one of the delights of the job. He wondered how long it would be before he got the phone calls, and in which order they would come. He looked at his watch.

      Keera was having a meeting with her new agent. At least, she was hoping he’d be her new agent. She had accidentally sacked the first one. She really didn’t like it when things were unplanned. She had phoned to tell him to pull his finger out. ‘I really should be doing better than I am,’ she had said. ‘I’m a high-profile presenter but what have I been offered? Nothing that I want to do. You need to get out there and be hustling on my behalf. It’s up to you to make it happen. I said I wanted my own show, and I see no sign of it happening.’

      She always liked to hear herself sounding firm. In control. Serious. She even drummed her burgundy-lacquered nails on the table as she was talking, admiring the way they looked.

      But he had told her that if she felt like that, perhaps it was time for them to part company. Taken by surprise, she had agreed.

      The agent had not been unhappy. He was relieved to see her go, despite the money she brought in for his company. She was high maintenance, constantly demanding more meetings, more action, more show reels sent to more people who couldn’t possibly have anything to offer. He could do without her running his staff ragged in pointless exercises.

      So Keera had phoned Matthew Praed, who was considered one of the best. He also charged a punitive commission, and demanded his clients follow his advice even if they felt it was against their morals, principles or best future interests. For her first meeting with him, she had chosen a slim-fitting black suit and high red stilettos.

      ‘Obviously, most people know me as a war correspondent and journalist,’ she said, to his amusement, since most people knew her for the naked photo shoot she had done shortly after joining Hello Britain!. ‘But I don’t really see myself as a newshound.’ She crossed her immaculately stockinged legs, giving him a flash of black-lace panties. ‘I want to be more famous than the people I interview. Actually, I probably am more famous than most of them. But I want to be someone whose name is so well known that I’m just Keera, no surname required. I know that sounds a little, perhaps, ridiculous…’ She tried out the latest smile she had been practising, which involved a shy look up through her fringe, then polished it off with the laugh she felt she had almost perfected. As it rang out, she wondered whether there should be a touch more bass. ‘But if you can’t be honest with your agent,’ she finished, ‘then who can you be honest with? I suppose my dream job would be my own show. Michael Parkinson, only younger and more female.’

      Matthew was not surprised that she wanted her own show. Every presenter did. And he liked her sheer determination and naked ambition. It was what had driven him from his first job in a relative’s nascent porn-film business to the über-agency he now ran out of a smart address in London’s West End. He had many famous names on his books, and was well aware of the money that could be made at the high end of television. Normally he would have turned over a breakfast presenter to one of the five agents who worked for him, but he decided that until he had added her to his burgeoning number of bed notches, Keera would be under his aegis.

      Matthew Praed was a renowned philanderer, and few women had not succumbed. He was a committed collector, and a commitment phobe. Today his well-honed body was clothed in an Ozwald Boateng brown suit, with a thin orange stripe, and a white T-shirt. Absolutely,’ he concurred. ‘One should always be honest with one’s agent. Best to set out your stall straight away. What else are you doing at the moment apart from Hello Britain!? And I assume you’d leave the programme if the right job came up?’

      ‘Too right I would,’ she responded with alacrity. ‘And as for other things that I’m doing, well…all I keep getting offered are programmes where I have to strip off.’

      ‘Hmm. Perhaps that’s understandable, considering that you’ve done a number of photo shoots where you’ve appeared naked.’

      ‘Yes, but I don’t have to tell you how different it is doing a photograph naked and being naked doing a television programme.’

      ‘Of course not,’ he said