Katy Carter Keeps a Secret (12 page)

Tonight I’m sure it’s going to be me.

Before settling down to work I’ll just have a quick scoot round the Rightmove site to pick my dream properties, and maybe I’ll have a little peek at Facebook too. Then I’ll be in a better position to start my chapter. All this is planning and preparation and vitally important. You have to be in the right space to create. You can’t force these things. It’s all about being in a creative state of mind.

Once I’ve chosen our would-be mansion and Range Rover as well as clicking
like
on a cute Facebook video of dancing kittens, I’m more than ready to return to my book. It’s time to create.

Brace yourself, Chapter 2. Here I come.

Lucinda awoke on the kitchen floor. The vegetable rack was toppled over and her buttocks stung.

Yuk. Not sure I like the juxtaposition of buttocks and vegetables. It’s putting me off my lunch. Let’s delete that bit.

Alexi’s disdainful glance swept over Lucinda. The cabbages were ruined and the courgettes squashed. There was no way he could use them now. He smiled cruelly. Lucinda was only the starter and it was time the other billionaire diners enjoyed a special main course.

Ooo. Main courses. Like steak or maybe pizza? My stomach rumbles. It’s already apparent that writing about food isn’t going to help my waistline, if even carrots and courgettes are making me peckish.

And never mind billionaire diners. What about the billions under my floor?

Drat. It’s no use. I can’t think about writing when there are squillions of pounds just inches away from me. I don’t think even Frankie’s most devoted fan could want to see him as much as I do at this moment: I need him and his crowbar right now. I have to get under the floor! I have to!

I won’t be able to write a word until those sodding floorboards are up.

I’ll distract myself with a quick visit to the fridge. Maybe some of last night’s leftover lasagne will take my mind off it all? It’s lunchtime anyway and I’m sure there’s some law somewhere which dictates workers need regular breaks. I’ll heat up the lasagne, watch
Loose Women
and then go back to work. I can write two thousand words in an afternoon. How hard can it be? I’ve got the detailed synopsis and the chapter breakdowns spread out in front of me. All I have to do is follow them and concentrate.

I’ve just heaped a generous dollop of Ollie’s lasagne into a bowl and am about to pop it into the microwave when a furious hammering of fists on our front door makes me jump out of my skin. The cottage is tiny and the kitchen opens straight out onto the narrow lane outside. Usually the top half of the stable door is ajar so that I can wave at anyone going by and watch the fishing boats bobbing on the tide while I’m writing, but today it’s closed because I haven’t wanted to stray far from the living room. It would be just my luck if burglars got wind of the loot now and decided to search for it
Home Alone
style.

“Hello?” calls a voice as the door swings open. “Anyone in?”

Sasha leaps up from her basket, barking furiously and bouncing up and down at the door. As I dive to grab her collar my bowl goes flying. Lasagne drips onto the floor and ceramic shards are everywhere. Experience tells me that I’ll be getting splinters of ceramic in my bare feet for months.

“This is all I bloody need!” I wail.

“Pleased to see you too,” says the visitor (and cause of my lunch fail) as he shuffles into the kitchen. Familiar toffee-coloured eyes stare at me mournfully from beneath a shaggy fringe, and as an enormous rucksack is deposited at my feet I find myself crushed in a bony bear hug.

It’s Ollie’s little brother, Nicky, only not so little anymore; in the six months since I last saw him he’s shot up like a weed and is even sporting some stubble. How old does this make me feel? When I first met Ollie, Nicky was five years old. It’s hard to reconcile the cute kid with a passion for Lego and Thomas the Tank Engine with this six-foot skater dude sporting long hair, a beanie hat and a suspicious-looking roll-up tucked behind his ear.

“God, that smells good. Has Ol been cooking? Can I have some? And are there any biscuits?” Letting go of me, Nicky’s already rifling through the cupboards in search of food. My own starvation is imminent, since his appetite makes a horde of locusts look restrained. When Nicky came to stay last summer our grocery bill trebled and even Sasha feared for her dog biscuits.

“Sweet! There’s some left.” Without waiting for a reply or permission, my boyfriend’s teenage brother dives into the fridge, fishes out the remainder of the lasagne and shovels it into his mouth with a teaspoon. “God, I’m bloody starving,” he says through mouthfuls.

I’m lost for words, partly because most of the air has been squeezed from my lungs and partly because I’m so surprised to see him. Shouldn’t Nicky be safely locked away in his very posh boarding school? A
surprise
child and eighteen years Ollie’s junior, he’s very much the baby of the family. He’s also hell in converse boots and broke more hearts last summer than I did diets. Just looking at him makes me feel about one hundred and eighty.

“Shouldn’t you be at school?” I ask, wincing to hear myself. Lord. I sound like such a teacher. Just when did I get so old?

Nicky hauls himself up onto the worktop and continues to inhale lasagne while Sasha, who in all the excitement has gobbled up the food I spilled, gazes adoringly up at him in the hope of more.

“Nope. Got kicked out,” he says cheerfully. “Mmm! This is bloody good. Is there any more?”

“Kicked out?” I stare at him. “As in expelled?”

“Yep, although permanent exclusion was what they were calling it,” Nicky says. “It’s more PC apparently. Doesn’t freak the crumblies out as much.”

“And they asked you to leave? Just like that?” I’m into teacher mode now and my brain is whirling. What about his A-levels? What about his place at Oxford reading politics? And I can’t imagine Nicky has his parents’ consent to travel alone from Sussex to Cornwall.

“How did you get here?” I ask. Tregowan’s impossible to get to by public transport.

“I hitched,” Nicky says airily. “Don’t look like that. I didn’t get snatched by a danger stranger. It’s all groovy gravy.”

Groovy gravy? I don’t think so! There’s a serious safeguarding issue here, since he’s supposed to be in the care of the school! It’s shocking!

“And the school just let you leave?”

His bowl now empty, Nicky hops down from the worktop and begins to rummage through the biscuit tin.

“Cool! Chocolate ones! Can I finish them?”

Unfortunately for Nicky, I’m an expert on teenagers avoiding telling me the truth. You can’t play
Where’s Your Coursework?
for as long as I have and not know when big porkie pies are being told, deliberately or by omission.

“Nicky? What happened? Did they tell you to go? Or,” I pause and give him my best stern look, “did you just walk out?”

“Don’t give me that teacher face,” says Nicky, selecting two chocolate digestives, which he crams into his mouth. “Mmmph mmm a urgh!”

I translate this easily enough, since it’s a lament I hear most days when I’m in the classroom.

“I’m not having a go,” I say. “But, Nicky, you’ve just turned up in my house, in the middle of term and telling me you’ve been kicked out of school. So what happened? I need to know.”

He shrugs one shoulder. “They were all having a right go at me and said I was going to be excluded, so I saved them the trouble and went.”

“You walked out? They don’t know where you are?”

“Chill out, Katy. I’m eighteen. I can do what I want because I’m actually an adult,” he huffs, with a jutting bottom lip. “Hey! Have you still got that stuff that makes chocolate milk?”

“Cupboard by the Aga,” I reply automatically.

“Cool,” says Nicky and, helping himself to a pint glass, he proceeds to make enough for the whole village. Once he’s sitting at the table, his long skinny-jeaned legs stretched out while he dunks biscuits in his chocolate milk, he adds, “I thought you or Ollie might call school for me and tell them I’m all right? Let them know I’m living with you now? Then tell the olds too?”

It’s just as well I’m leaning against the kitchen units at this point.

“Err, I hate to break it to you, Nicky, but you’re
not
living with us. Absolutely no way. Of course I’ll phone the school and I’m sure Ollie will drive you back tomorrow, but you can’t stay here. You’ve got your A-levels coming up.”

“Haven’t you listened to me? I can’t go back to school. They’ve kicked me out.”

“I’m sure we can sort that,” I say. At least I bloody well hope we can, because if Ollie’s mum gets wind of this she’ll go mental. It’ll be the Home Counties’ very own version of Hiroshima. Even worse, she might turn up here, and
that
I could really do without. Ann Burrows is a nice lady but she’s very churchgoing and has a horror of dust and dirt. If she sees the state of our cottage, she’ll freak. For that matter, I must have a really good clean of the place before she next comes to visit.

I smile sympathetically at Nicky. Whatever he’s done it can’t be that terrible, surely? I know he was in trouble last year for flogging cigarettes to other sixth-formers  – but his head teacher had privately confided to Ollie’s father that Nicky Burrows was bound to be the first ex-pupil to make a billion. It was enterprising if not strictly moral.

“Whatever it is, it can’t be that bad,” I say in my best form-tutor voice. “We can make it better and put it right.”

“I don’t think we can,” sighs Nicky. “You see, Katy, the headmaster caught me and his daughter.”

I wait for the rest of the sentence but it doesn’t come.

“Caught you and his daughter _what?” I ask.

Then a horrible and very heavy penny drops. Surely not
that
? Not sweet little Nicky who wanted to be Harry Potter when he grew up? I
knew
mixed schools were a bad idea. No wonder nobody can concentrate or meet their target grades. They’re all too busy thinking about sex!

I gulp.

“You weren’t… you weren’t… doing bad stuff?”

Nicky gives me a pitying look. “
Bad stuff
? Jesus, Katy, your generation is so obsessed with sex. It’s totally boring. My English teachers talk about nothing else. Is that really all you can think about?”

Actually at the moment it is, which reminds me – I must move the Throb
notes before he sees them.

And anyway, what does he mean
my generation
? We’re in the same one.

Aren’t we?

“FYI I wasn’t shagging Cassie, although she’s well fit and I so would if she asked,” Nicky continues, locating the Nutella now and scooping it out with his forefinger. “No, her dad caught us sneaking out to a meeting of the Socialist Workers Party and we’ve all been told that’s banned. Christ, I think he’d far rather we were shagging than I might have turned his daughter into a—” Nicky makes speech marks with his chocolatey fingers, “commie-loving tree-hugger.”

I’m outraged. “He can’t kick you out for having a political conscience and an independent mind. That’s the whole point of education!”

“You know it isn’t. The point of the current education system is to pass exams,” he reminds me as he lets Sasha lick his fingers clean. “Anyway, he
can
kick me out for hijacking the PA system and calling him a fascist in front of all the parents on speech day.”

I stare at him, half impressed and half horrified. “You didn’t?”

“I did,” says Nicky. “So you and Ollie
have
to take me in. I’m being politically persecuted at Adolf Hitler High and I’m officially an oppressed mass. In fact, we should probably contact Amnesty and get them on the case.”

I can honestly say I’ve never met an oppressed mass before. I must admit I would have thought there’d be more of them than just one gangly sixth-former eating his way through my kitchen cupboards.

Nicky, sensing his advantage, presses it home. “So I thought I could live with you guys and transfer to Tregowan Comp and do my A-levels here. The olds will go for it once you and Ol have explained everything. There’s room in the cottage and I’ll even have two teachers at home to force me to study. So I’m sorted. I’ll be an A-grade student again before you know it.”

I open my mouth to protest but I can’t think what to say. After all, he’s Ollie’s brother and Ollie loves Nicky and I love Ollie. How can I say no?

While my head spins, Nicky makes a giant triple-decker sandwich and then collapses onto the sofa in front of
Loose Women
. I shut the laptop and hurriedly gather up my notes. Writing about the antics of Alexi and Lucinda and the contents of their vegetable rack seems wildly inappropriate now that I’m suddenly
in loco parentis
.

For better or worse, it appears that I am now the owner of a teenager.

Chapter 10

There’s only one thing worse than a job interview and that’s knowing that the man you love is having one. I keep looking at the kitchen clock, thinking how right now Ollie is in the head teacher’s office looking smart and slightly uncomfortable in his best suit and having to think of all kinds of clever answers as a panel of governors fire questions at him. Which he can easily do, of course, because he’s super intelligent, has prepared very hard for today and really does know his stuff. I’ve never known him be so focused on something or pursue it so wholeheartedly. It’s actually been quite scary.

Where is the real Ollie and what has this career-minded impostor done with him?

I tap a few more words into my laptop, but my mind isn’t really on it. Alexi the chef and Lucinda his assistant are supposed to be serving up one of their special banquets for a rich sheikh and I ought to be getting on with things, but all I can think about is Ollie and how much he wants this Assistant Headship. He’s prepared non-stop, and last night in bed I tested him on the data he’d analysed – which to be honest wasn’t really what I’d had in mind for him after a steamy day of writing for Throb. Still, I did my very best to help. If not, I feared Carolyn Miles might be more than happy to oblige…