The Perfect Hero (18 page)

‘Shouldn’t you be resting?’ Kay asked, furious that her special time with Oli had been interrupted.

‘I’m bored!’ Beth said. ‘I’ve been on that sofa for hours and I’ve missed all the fun today. It’s not fair.’

‘I think it’s time we got you to bed,’ Oli said. ‘Can you make the stairs?’

‘I might be able to if you help me,’ Beth said, her voice becoming all girly again.

‘Night, Kay,’ Oli said, bending down to kiss her cheek.

Kay felt her skin burst into flame and she watched as Beth claimed his attention, placing her arm around Oli’s shoulders.

‘Nice and slowly,’ he said, leading her to the stairs. ‘One step at a time.’

‘That’s how I like it too,’ Beth said coyly.

Kay rolled her eyes.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Gemma couldn’t believe her mother was in Lyme Regis. Well, she could. After all, it wasn’t the first time she’d turned up unannounced. As she lathered her hair with a squirt of her favourite apple shampoo, Gemma remembered the night of her performance as Lady Macbeth at drama school. It was the biggest part she’d ever taken on and she was backstage pacing up and down with nerves when somebody had screamed from the auditorium.

‘Kim Reilly’s here! Kim Reilly’s here!’

Everyone had flocked to her – as they usually did – and her mother was lost amongst a mass of hysterical drama students. Gemma had been forgotten. Not one person was there to tell her to break a leg that evening and she remembered spying her mother sitting in the front row, her mouth moving as she whispered advice to her daughter, her hands wringing themselves during the ‘out damned spot’ scene as if it was her playing the role of Lady Macbeth and not her daughter.

The party afterwards had been all about Kim Reilly too and Gemma had faded into the background.

‘My natural place,’ she said to herself as shampoo bubbles rinsed down her shoulders and back. She’d learned long ago that there was absolutely no point trying to compete with her mother. She just had to let her get on with it and hope that the experience wouldn’t be too painful.

Finishing her shower, Gemma pulled on a cotton night-dress – the kind which her mother would refer to as a ‘passion killer’.

‘How on earth are you going to get a man when you wear something like that?’ her mother had said when she’d barged into the bedroom of her flat recently and discovered the knee-length cotton nightdress covered in humming birds on the edge of her bed. But, after a long day on set, there was nothing nicer, nothing more snugly than her beloved cotton nightdress and she didn’t care what her mother thought of it.

Sophie had fallen asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow, her breathing deep and calming. Gemma was glad of the privacy because she’d known Sophie would only want to talk about her mother if she’d still been awake. That was the curse of being the daughter of a famous actress – everybody wanted to know everything.

What’s it like having a famous mother?

Lonely, most of the time.

Aren’t you terribly proud of her?

Sometimes but mostly I just get embarrassed.

I bet you want to be just like her.

That’s what I worry about more than anything else in the world.

Gemma closed her eyes and waited to welcome sleep. Perhaps her mother would get bored with everything as early as tomorrow. She had a very short attention span and would probably find Lyme Regis very dull. A small seaside town with a few bookshops, boutiques and bakers wouldn’t be enough to occupy her for long and once everybody had made a big fuss about her and returned to the job in hand, she’d grow restless and go off in search of somebody else to indulge her. And then Gemma could stop worrying about being watched all the time. It wasn’t as if she wasn’t nervous enough about this film already without having her mother’s eye roving over every move she made and questioning her delivery.

‘She’ll get bored soon,’ Gemma said to herself and promptly fell asleep, dreaming of missed cues and meddling mothers.

Kay yawned and drew back her bedroom curtains, smiling at the sea view that greeted her. Would she ever grow bored of it? she wondered. Would she ever take it for granted and not appreciate its blue beauty? And it really was blue today. After days of slate grey, the sea had changed to the most miraculous blue Kay had ever seen and it took some of the sting out of the earliness of her wake-up call.

After showering and dressing quickly, Kay stepped out on to the landing. All was quiet and she guessed the actors were still in bed. She was just descending the stairs when Beth’s door creaked open. Kay waited, eager to enquire how she was feeling this morning but it wasn’t Beth who emerged from the room. It was Oli. He was fully dressed and it didn’t take Kay long to realise that he was still wearing his clothes from the night before. He hadn’t gone to bed. At least, he hadn’t gone to his own bed last night, had he?

His blond hair was flopping over his forehead and his blue eyes were bleary, suggesting that he hadn’t slept much. Kay stood motionless on the stairs, hoping that the banister rails would hide her but she didn’t have to worry. Oli hadn’t spotted her and had sneaked back into his own room, closing the door behind him.

Breathing a sigh of relief, she fled to the kitchen. Oh, God! How could she have been so stupid as to fall in love with an actor? Hadn’t Adam warned her that they always stick to their own and here was irrefutable evidence that that was exactly what they did. It was the phenomenon that Kay was only too eager to read about in the celebrity magazines – who was having an affair with whom on location? It was one of the oldest clichés in the business; the leading man always had an affair – only this time it wasn’t with the leading actress.

‘Just as well,’ Kay said to herself, seeing as she’d already matchmade her.

As she put her floral pinny on and started to get breakfast ready, she tried to console herself.

He never would have looked at you anyway, she told herself. You’re not in his league at all. It was true enough but it still didn’t stop a girl from dreaming, did it? Your head might tell you one thing but your heart would be pulling in a different direction completely. It was the same old story with Kay – just like her mother before her, she always seemed to fall for the heartbreaker, getting swept up by the romance of everything and eager to overlook the problems that were staring her in the face. And look how that had worked out for her mother.

Kay sighed as she remembered the time her mother had announced she was getting married again and the two of them had gone shopping to celebrate.

‘You’re going to be the prettiest bridesmaid,’ her mother had told her, picking out the sweetest pink dress for her to wear whilst buying herself an outrageously expensive tiara. ‘Harry is going to be so proud of us!’ They’d smiled and giggled all the way home until they’d found the badly-scrawled note stuffed through the letterbox. Harry, it seemed, had found somebody else.

‘Poor Mum,’ Kay said to herself.

Was she destined for the same fate? And perhaps that was why she was always trying to matchmake people – it was her way of making up for the doomed relationship of her parents.

It was twenty minutes later when there was a gentle tap on the door.

‘Hello?’

It was Oli. Kay looked up to see his head popping round the kitchen door. Such a wonderful head, Kay couldn’t help thinking, despite the fact that he was obviously having an affair with Beth Jenkins.

‘How are you this morning?’ he asked.

‘I’m fine.’

‘Well, something smells good in here,’ he said.

‘That’ll be the bacon,’ she said.

He nodded. ‘You okay?’ he asked, running a hand through his hair which had obviously been washed since the floppy look he’d been sporting leaving Beth’s bedroom.

‘I’m fine,’ Kay said, smiling brightly.

Oli frowned, obviously not convinced by her answer. ‘You seem a little – distant.’

‘Do I?’

He nodded. ‘Not working you too hard, are we?’

‘No, of course not.’

‘’Cause I know we can be a pain.’

‘You’re not a pain,’ she said. ‘I love having you.
Around
,’ she added quickly. ‘I love having you all around the place. You bring things to life.’

He grinned. ‘I’ve got the morning off. I’m not needed until later this afternoon.’

‘Oh,’ Kay said, having visions of him hanging around the house all day, forgetting all about Beth Jenkins and slowly falling in love with her – once she’d taken her pinny off and fixed her hair, of course.

‘I thought maybe I’d get a bit of lunch somewhere. There’s meant to be an amazing pub out near Beaminster. I thought we might have a spin up that way and see what all the fuss is about.’

‘We?’ Kay said.

‘We,’ Oli said. ‘You and me. How about it?’

Kay nodded enthusiastically.

‘Well, I suppose you’d better feed this lot first and do whatever you’ve got to do.’

‘Okay,’ she said.

‘How’s about I see you in the front room at eleven?’

Kay grinned at him, his brief affair with Beth banished from her brain. It wasn’t Beth he was interested in at all – it was her!

Chapter Twenty-Three

Eleven o’clock couldn’t come round quickly enough for Kay. She whizzed around Wentworth House, vacuuming, dusting, scrubbing and tidying like a thing possessed. Finally, at twenty to eleven, she took off her pinny. It was time to get herself ready.

She had the quickest of showers because she was sure she smelt of bacon and cleaning products and that wasn’t the most romantic of combinations. But then came the problem of what to wear. She had to get this right. Her whole life might depend on it.

‘You know when I decided I was going to propose to you?’ Oli would tell her in future years. ‘That moment you came into the front room for our first date wearing that amazing—’

‘WHAT?’ Kay screamed in the here and now. Amazing
what
? She didn’t have anything amazing.

She flung open the wardrobe door in the hope that she’d overlooked something and stared gloomily at the contents. It was the usual problem: a packed wardrobe but absolutely nothing to wear.

‘I’ll just have to make do,’ she said, pulling out a blue cotton dress which was sprigged with tiny pink roses. It wasn’t the stuff of sex symbols but it was sweet. She then grabbed the hairdryer to work as much magic into her mop as she could in the time available and hoping her toffee-coloured tresses wouldn’t become too flyaway. Then a quick application of make-up and she was almost done. Just shoes and she knew just the pair. Last summer, she’d bought a pair of strappy silver shoes that were more like jewellery than shoes. She’d known their day would come and she placed her dainty feet into them now and sighed, hoping that sheer stockings and strappy shoes weren’t tempting those rain clouds again.

Grabbing her handbag, she took a deep breath and left the room, venturing down the stairs for her date with Oli. And there he was, pacing up and down the hallway, his blond hair bright against a sky-blue shirt, the sleeves rolled up to reveal a pair of strong, tanned arms.

‘Hello,’ she said, her mouth suddenly feeling quite dry.

He turned around, his bright eyes appraising her. ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘You look lovely, really.’

‘What’s wrong?’ Kay asked, dismayed by the look on his face.

‘Nothing – nothing’s wrong. It’s just – well, you look like you.’

Kay’s face fell. She knew she’d never be as beautiful as the actresses Oli was used to being seen with but she thought she’d scrubbed up pretty well, considering the lack of notice he’d given her.

‘I didn’t put that very well,’ Oli said. ‘I mean – we have to disguise you. There are paps everywhere.’

‘Are there?’ Kay said, looking around as if a telephoto lens might suddenly poke through the letterbox.

Oli nodded. ‘I’m afraid they’ve got wind I’m here.’

‘Oh, dear.’

‘Exactly, and if they get a picture of you, it’ll be all over the papers.’

Kay didn’t think that sounded too bad at all. In fact, the idea rather appealed to her. She could just see it now.

Oli’s Mystery Girl
, the headline would read and there’d be a photo of the two of them driving off together. Or one of them running into the restaurant together, Oli’s arm protectively around her shoulder.

Speculation has arisen over the girl the handsome star is dating and there are even rumours that the two of them are engaged. Could this be the future Mrs Wade Owen?

‘So you see,’ Oli said, ‘we’ll have to disguise you because we can’t possibly have them knowing who you are. It’s for your own privacy.’

‘Oh,’ Kay said reluctantly, her imagined headlines evaporating. ‘I see.’

‘Leave it to me,’ Oli said and he ran up the stairs two at a time and knocked on Beth’s door. Kay followed him, wondering what he was up to. Beth hadn’t come downstairs yet that morning and was still resting her ankle. At least, she was meant to be resting but Kay still didn’t know what had been going on in her room the night before. If Oli had spent the night in there, she was very doubtful that rest would have been much of a priority.

‘Beth? It’s Oli.’

It was the only password needed for the door was opened almost instantaneously.

‘What is it, Oli?’ Beth said with a sweet smile. She was wearing full make-up despite being an invalid and Kay could see that her hair had been blow-dried.

‘We need that wig of yours.’

‘Wig?’ Beth said. ‘I don’t wear wigs. Not unless I’m filming.’

‘Come on, Beth. I’ve seen it. It’s in your suitcase.’

Beth sighed. ‘That’s a hairpiece, Oli. Quite a different thing. Everyone’s wearing them these days. Some women wouldn’t even put out the trash unless they had their hair-piece in.’

‘Yeah, yeah. Let’s just have it.’

‘What for?’

‘For Kay. We’ve got to disguise her.’

Beth frowned. ‘Why?’

‘We’re going out to lunch and we need to hide her identity from the press.’

‘But I’ll need to wear it if we’re going out to lunch.’