After the Break. Penny Smith

to undergo the procedures. He already had candidates for Botox, fillers and ears pinning. He had persuaded Heather to have her eyebags done. It had been a double whammy for her. Number one: she didn’t fancy going under the knife, even though it was a local anaesthetic and she’d be straight out. Number two: she didn’t think she needed it. But when she’d told a friend how she’d been press-ganged into having her eyelids sliced off, her friend had told her she was lucky. Lucky!

      Katie Fisher caught up with all the gossip late that afternoon when she saw her senior producer friend, Richard, who had finished his stint of overnights and was about to have four days off. She caught the tube and an overground train to Twickenham, then went into a delicatessen where she bought a bottle of white, a bottle of red, some cheese, olives and a box of chocolate-covered ginger, to which she knew he was partial.

      ‘Provisions,’ she declared, as he opened the door.

      ‘Thank goodness for that,’ he responded, with a smile. ‘We were down to our last weevil.’

      ‘You look like shit,’ she said, giving him a hug and moving a small dumper truck off one of the chairs.

      ‘Why, thank you, kind lady. I wish I could say the same for you, but sadly you look great. Have you done something new to your hair?’

      ‘Washed it. It’s probably shrunk. You know how it is.’

      Richard ran his hand through his receding hairline. ‘That’s not kind. Mine’s not so much shrinking as disappearing. I’ve got to the stage where I talk about past events as “when I had hair”.’

      ‘I’d feel sorry for you, except you’re such a damned fine figure of a man that you look more handsome without it,’ she declared.

      ‘I knew I liked you. Let’s open the first bottle of wine and have all our week’s units in one fell swoop. When do you have to go?’ he asked, opening the tub of olives and putting them on the table.

      She looked at her watch. ‘I’ve got a few hours. Enough to do at least six or nine units, I’d have thought. Where are the children?’

      ‘Oooh! Are these chocolate gingers, you naughty young lady?’ he asked, picking a piece of sticky tape from the side of the container. ‘They’re out with Louise. We have a very small window of opportunity before we have to escape to the shed to continue drinking in peace and quiet.’

      ‘How are they?’

      ‘Oh, you know, a chippy thirteen-year-old, a clingy ten-year-old, and a noisy three-year-old, whose new lorry you almost sat on. Sometimes I wish I’d had the snip.’

      ‘You love ’em.’ She laughed and poured the wine. ‘Cheers.’ They chinked glasses and there was a companionable silence as the liquid eased its way to the right places.

      Richard and Louise had met as producers on Look West–and, in the throes of new love, he had swiftly given in to her demand for impregnation. Then she had quite reasonably said she didn’t want to leave it too long for another. He really couldn’t remember the third occasion, which had resulted in Brett. He claimed she had got him drunk on his birthday and the next thing he knew she was handing him the white plastic stick with a line through the middle of the window.

      ‘I do love them,’ Richard confirmed ruefully, getting up to go and get a board and a knife for the cheese, ‘but they’re knackering. It would help if we didn’t both work. What with me doing mostly nights, and Louise doing mostly days, we should have it all covered. Instead we’re always trying to sort out the gaps. God knows how single parents do it. I’d have to build some sort of cage to stop the children getting out. I thought it was bad enough when they were little and keeping us up all the time or getting into trouble. Now, we’re just a glorified taxi service. Daisy and Andrew have a bigger sporting and social life than we ever did. Even Brett gets out more than I do. Does life have to be this hard?’

      ‘You could try being sacked as the anchor of Britain’s foremost breakfast-television station and finding another job that paid as well’

      He smiled. ‘Can’t Adam give you a job?’

      ‘He’s got me in to do voiceovers here and there. But all the things he’s been working on since we’ve been together have needed a different presenter from me. Or he puts my name down and the commissioning editor says they want someone else. I could do with losing about fifteen years and eight stone.’

      ‘Don’t be silly.’

      ‘Television companies demand young flesh. Or less flesh, more youth.’

      ‘Blessed are the young, for they shall inherit the National Debt,’ he said.

      She grinned. ‘Very funny’

      ‘I think a comedian said it.’

      ‘It’s so annoying when they say it first. I like the one that George Burns said about how when he was young the Dead Sea was only sick.’ She picked out one of the larger olives.

      ‘Anything at all in the pipeline?’

      She sighed and puffed out her cheeks. ‘The usual. I get by on articles for newspapers and magazines and hosting corporate events.’

      ‘At least you haven’t got a thirteen-year-old stomping round the house, telling you she hates you and shutting herself up in her bedroom and picking her spots, or whatever she does.’

      ‘Aaah. Bless her little cotton socks. I remember Daisy when she was a sweet girl who adored her daddy. I still use her expression when I’m blow-drying my hair and it goes static’

      He raised his eyebrows questioningly.

      ‘This hairbrush is making my hair ecstatic,’ she reminded him.

      ‘Oh, I’m sure she’ll come out the other side,’ he said. ‘After all, it’s puberty, not a life choice. It’s predictably tedious, though.’

      ‘Andrew hasn’t started it yet, has he?’

      ‘No. Something to look forward to. And Brett, when he’s not banging his head on the walls and developing his lunge technique, is adorable.’

      ‘Takes after you. Oh dear. I think my glass has got a hole in it.’

      ‘It’s a trick one. It always does that. I think mine’s got a slow leak, too.’ He leaned over and topped up the glasses. ‘There’s also the smell. Did you have a bedroom that needed a public-health warning slapped on it when you were a teenager?’

      She looked horrified. ‘Do you know to whom you’re talking? Little Miss Tidy! My mother used to ask me to give a room a lick and a polish and she’d come in to find me behind the sofa trying to get the pile up on the carpet where the feet had been.’

      ‘Daisy goes berserk if you so much as suggest she wouldn’t get so many spots if she washed more often, put her clothes in the laundry basket and didn’t live in a pit.’

      ‘I hate to break confidences, but Dee’s still like that. I once found a cheese sandwich welded to the underneath of a fake Tiffany lamp.’

      He laughed.

      ‘Talking of which, how are things at the funny farm?’ she asked.

      ‘Rod Fallon’s the dullest man on earth. He’s so dull, that I almost long for Mike to be brought back.’

      Katie made a face.

      ‘I know,’ he said. I kept telling you he wasn’t what he seemed.’

      ‘I still can’t quite believe it, though. I didn’t think he had much of a sex drive.’

      ‘Hey, that’s a good one. A new version of kerb crawling. Get it?’

      ‘Yes, I get it. Doesn’t take a genius to get it,’ she said, in a quelling tone.

      ‘Yes, but I got it first.’

      ‘I wasn’t aware it was a competition,’