for your records, I will obviously supply it.’ She raised her eyebrows. She was hoping he wouldn’t demand proof, but if the worst came to the worst, she was fairly sure she could cobble something together.
He had been only too keen to write her a cheque–it seemed a small price to pay for the months of illicit sex he had been enjoying. Sex with attractive women had been in short supply. His wife–a woman of limited intelligence–had married him in haste after a threat of deportation. If he had been single, Simon would have been bragging to all and sundry that he had been bedding Siobhan Stamp…possibly even that she was pregnant with his super-sperm. He handed over the money and watched her departing figure with regret.
She had left the station, and reported from various windy locations up and down the country for smaller and smaller television companies. Her failure to be nice on the way up the presenting ladder had contributed to her descent and, eventually, with hatred in her heart, she had taken a job as a producer for a company called Wolf Days Productions. In the year that she had been there, she had made no friends. Her colleagues–mostly women–were either slightly scared of or loathed her.
They recognized a vulture when they saw one, even one in sheepskin clothing from Joseph.
She had, to her delight, managed to ensnare one man. She had been proud to announce her seduction of Nick Midhurst, one of the bosses. Keeping her claws sheathed, she had managed to charm him into her bed. Not for her the tenet of discretion being the better part of valour. That had been her downfall.
Nick had faced such a barrage of fury from his staff that he’d had a rethink and brought the blossoming romance to a swift end.
‘Very wise,’ said Adam, when informed. ‘Apparently she’s poisonous. Good worker, and very easy on the eye but, according to virtually everyone here, not the most pleasant of people.’
The company was a friendly one, and everyone was encouraged to air grievances to stop the backbiting that was endemic in the industry. There had been a steady stream of people going in to complain about their latest recruit.
She had seemed to accept the end of the affair with equanimity, and continued to work hard. But she had blotted her copybook irretrievably by trying surreptitiously to add Adam’s scalp to her belt. She had sent him a flurry of explicit texts, which he had shared with Nick. And that had sealed her fate. Her contract had not been renewed.
‘She has a circular bed and black satin sheets,’ revealed Nick, darkly, after she had cleared her desk.
‘Urk,’ said Adam, making a face. ‘Or was that pleasant?’
‘No. Very slippy. And you know…she’s not quite as beautiful without all the makeup. To be honest…sort of eel-like. And,’ he added, ‘she makes quite a lot of noise.’
Adam raised an eyebrow.
‘It begins with a miaow, then works up to a full-throated roar,’ he said.
‘Goodness,’ remarked Adam.
‘I have neighbours,’ said Nick. ‘Albeit a field away. I was worried they’d come round to see whether I was setting up a safari park.’
They left their office to find everyone breaking out bottles and biscuit barrels of celebration.
‘I hadn’t realized she was that unpopular,’ murmured Adam, taking a small plastic cup of champagne.
Siobhan, re-entering an hour later to collect a contacts book, had found a full-scale party going on. There had been a hideous silence as she stalked across the office, opened a drawer and extracted her property. She had nodded at the revellers, strode back across the office and slammed the door behind her.
There was an explosion of noise as it shut.
‘Phew,’ said Gemma, one of the young producers. ‘I thought for one awful moment that she was going to put some kind of evil spell on us.’
‘I know,’ said another producer, Rose. ‘She’ll no doubt be casting nasturtiums upon us as we speak.’
‘Aspersions, I think,’ muttered Adam.
‘That too,’ said Rose.
‘And that isn’t the same as casting spells, anyway,’ added Gemma.
‘Whatever,’ said Rose, flicking the ‘what’ and ‘ever’ signs using her middle three fingers.
Siobhan, meanwhile, was walking determinedly out of the building. ‘I will prevail,’ she muttered under her breath. ‘I will get back at them. All of them.’
And, earlier than expected, she had found her chance.
At Celebrity X-Treme, she was the producer in charge of following up possible storylines and, boy, was she going to manipulate them. After the names of the contestants had been finalized, and before a frame had been shot, she had taken Paul Martin out to dinner. She had Googled him. Thirty-seven years old. Columnist. Handsome with thick, sandy hair and blue eyes. Single. Rich enough. Obsessed with television and football.
One thing she had discovered during her career was that few men would turn down the offer of free sex from an attractive woman. Within a week, she was manoeuvring him just where she wanted him. ‘Could I call this being in the pole position?’ she asked, as she shimmied into the bedroom where he had been waiting.
She had made one fatal mistake. She had taken off her makeup before emerging from the bathroom. Her deep-set eyes receded, and her translucent skin became blue. Her pale lips looked like a snake’s.
Paul Martin was keen to make his mark on this game show. He wanted to get into television, and that meant staying in the contest as long as was feasibly possible. Preferably, he wanted to win. He knew what Siobhan’s role was, and how useful she could be. And it helped that she was a cracking-looking bird. Until that moment…
Still, if he had to have sex with a woman who, without makeup, looked like a gonk, then so be it. He could have done without the black satin sheets. He hadn’t thought they existed outside the pages of his porn stash. But here they were. It was enough to put you off your stroke. And what was it with the baby-doll nightie and the high-heeled fluffy mules, which were click-clacking on the back of her heels as she sauntered towards him with a sultry smile?
Generally, he went for exotic, dark-haired beauties like Keera Keethley from Hello Britain! who, he felt sure, would never have bought a carpet with flowers etched into it such as the one he was looking at. He took a deep breath. Right, he thought. Here we go. Concentrate. He closed his eyes and threw himself into the breach.
The next-door neighbours looked at each other over their glasses as they sat in bed, reading.
‘The cat’s out again,’ said Mrs Smith, wearily, as the miaowing grew to a crescendo from the other side of the shared wall.
Katie blew gently on her fingers as she listened to the morning briefing. Dog-sledding. Excellent. This was what she had worked towards all her life. The very pineapple of her career, as Mrs Malaprop said in The Rivals. Sheridan. Or Sheraton? No. That was a hotel chain. Concentrate. Concentrate.
