The Real Katie Lavender (44 page)

‘No. But frankly he wasn’t in any condition to talk coherently last night. I thought I was going to have to call for a doctor.’

Before she’d rung off, she’d made Rosco promise that he wouldn’t breathe a word of Stirling’s breakdown to Scarlet. ‘Your sister’s got enough on her plate without worrying about your father,’ she had said.

Then at breakfast this morning, Stirling had announced that he was meeting Katie to sort things out today. He’d said that he saw things very clearly now, that it was seeing his granddaughter for the first time that had helped him to come to the decision he had. That the only way to put the lie right – a lie that he’d lived with all these years, and indirectly forced her to live with – was to nail his colours to the mast and prove to those he held most dear just what they meant to him.

His words had moved her to tears. And because he had proved his love to her so unequivocally, she would do whatever she had to to make him well again. She would continue to be strong and capable and would take care of him for as long as it took. Anything rather than see him as broken as he’d been on Thursday night.

In the kitchen, she shrugged off her cardigan and got on with making a list. A list of things to do for tomorrow’s lunch. A list to stabilize her. A list to stabilize the family. She would do it. She would drag the family back to the way they’d been before Neil killed himself.

In his small cramped, extremely untidy office at the workshop on the outskirts of Marlow, Lloyd had gone through the paperwork for the timber order he’d been concerned about, and found that everything was as it should be. Better safe than sorry, he told himself as he filed the delivery docket.

But that was him all over: cautious and suspicious to the last. He’d always been like it; it was in his nature to take things slowly. Just as it was to commit one hundred per cent to something once he was convinced it was the right thing to do.

And he supposed that was where he was with Katie: he felt committed to her and their relationship. Something he hadn’t ever felt before.

From the moment he’d set eyes on Katie he’d been drawn to her, and under normal circumstances that would have given him cause to hesitate. He would have been suspicious that it was merely a superficial attraction that wouldn’t stay the course and therefore wouldn’t be worth the bother. He’d grown tired of jumping through the relationship hoops of getting to know someone, only for it to end with recriminations and bad feeling.

Looking back on it, there had been none of that carefully finding-one’s-way with Katie. He realized now that from the off, it had felt as if he knew her already. They fitted together well. He was tempted to say they fitted together perfectly, but he was reluctant to go that far. It was tempting fate to slap him down for getting above himself.

Better to err on the side of caution and say there was always room for improvement, especially on his part. Doubtless any number of past girlfriends would rush to agree with that sentiment. He’d been criticised for many things over the years during break-ups, often unjustly in his opinion, but then he would say that, wouldn’t he? But was he really expected to justify himself for condemning the Black Eyed Peas as being as cerebral as a bag of dolly mixtures? Not likely. One girlfriend had been annoyed with him because he walked too fast. Another had accused him of being on a par with Jack the Ripper because he wouldn’t convert to vegetarianism. And the last one had claimed he was laddish and immature. His crime? He’d been resistant to taking their relationship to the next level, which amounted to her moving in with him. They had only been seeing each other for a month when she had started leaving her things in his bedroom and bathroom after staying the night. ‘Easier to have them here instead of dragging them backwards and forwards,’ she’d said when he had mistakenly used her shower gel instead of his own. He’d spent the rest of the day smelling like a sickly banana milkshake and working up the courage to tell her he didn’t want to see her any more. For weeks afterwards he couldn’t eat a banana without thinking of her.

But with Katie it was different. For the last two mornings he had liked seeing her things neatly placed on the windowsill in his bathroom, along with her red-spotted (complete with black furry ears on the hood) Minnie Mouse dressing gown hanging on the back of the door. ‘Minnie Mouse?’ he’d asked, amused.

‘Don’t ask,’ she’d said.

‘But I just did.’

‘A silly present from Zac. All his presents are silly.’

Recalling Katie wearing her comical dressing gown as she brushed her teeth that morning, Lloyd couldn’t help but think that when it was the right person leaving their shower gel in your bathroom, it didn’t matter.

As he switched off the computer and tidied away some files, he wondered how Katie would react if he suggested she left some of her things with him, just so that she wouldn’t have to carry them backwards and forwards from Brighton. Would she think he was jumping the gun?

Out in the workshop area, he went over to his bench, where yesterday he’d laid out the drawings of a new range of garden furniture he was planning to make. Harking back to the smooth, sensual lines of the art deco period, he was putting together a new range of luxurious daybeds, tables, chairs and swing seats. It was an ambitious project, but one that excited him. Everything would be made of reclaimed oak, which he was sourcing from a supplier in France who was salvaging it from old agricultural buildings.

He thought of Katie’s courtyard garden and Cecily’s suggestion that he should make something for her. He already had something in mind from this new range and planned to surprise her with it as a Christmas present. Again, was that jumping the gun? Thinking ahead to Christmas when it was only September?

It was four o’clock when he arrived home. He was disappointed to see there was no sign of Katie’s car. He let himself in and wondered about ringing her, just to find out an approximate time when she thought she would be back. He decided not to. He didn’t want to look like he was pestering her. This was her day to see Stirling.

He checked the answering machine for messages. Nothing of any importance. He then made himself a ham sandwich, realizing that he hadn’t eaten since their late breakfast that morning. Sandwich in hand, he flipped open his laptop at the kitchen table and dealt with a string of emails.

That done, he then slipped into the frustrating limbo land of trying to decide what to do with himself while he waited for Katie to return. His arms folded behind his head, he leant back in the chair and thought how eerily quiet the house was. And how empty. Katie had only been here two days, hardly any time at all, but the place suddenly felt incomplete without her. If she were here, he would know exactly what to do. After all, he’d been thinking of little else in the car driving home. The thought made him smile. And at once aroused in him the by now familiar desire for her. He sighed deeply. Only one thing for it, he’d go for a run. He hadn’t been running in ages. There just didn’t seem enough hours in the day or enough days in the week to spare the time.

He went upstairs to change. It was when he was sitting on the end of the bed and about to kick off his shoes that he noticed Katie’s overnight bag wasn’t where she’d left it this morning. He glanced round the room. He then noticed that the bedside table on her side of the bed was bare – her make-up bag was gone, as was her hairbrush and small pot of lip salve. He crossed the landing to the bathroom. Her Minnie Mouse dressing gown was gone. So were all her other things. There wasn’t a sign of her having been here.

He rushed downstairs to the hall and snatched up his mobile from where he’d left it on the bookcase with his keys. There were no missed messages from her. No texts either. Despite having checked earlier, he rechecked the answerphone. Nothing.

He rang her mobile. It went straight to voicemail.

He rang Stirling’s mobile. Nothing. Not even voicemail.

His heart thudded in his chest. It had done the same thing just minutes ago when he’d thought of Katie, but now it was a different type of thud. Now it was a hollow, aching thud.

He sat at the bottom of the stairs and stared at the front door, as if willing her to come through it. He replayed their conversation at breakfast and when her mood had changed so abruptly. He hunted through the minutiae of what had been said, hoping to find a clue, some kind of hint that would make sense of her disappearing without so much as a word. All he could think of was the moment when she had described herself as an outsider. He had dismissed the description out of hand, but had he been too flippant in his response? Had he been insensitive? But even if he had, why had she gone?

Not just gone.

She had
left
him. He knew it with every ounce of his being.

She must have seen Stirling and then come back here, let herself in with the key he’d given her and packed her things. Had she known she was going to do that when she’d said goodbye to him?

The key, he suddenly thought. Where was the key he’d given her? If it wasn’t here, did that mean she still had it and meant to return with it?

Clutching at straws, he told himself.

Even so, he went over to the front door and looked down at the mat to see if she had pushed it through the letter box. Nothing, of course. Anyway, he would have spotted it straight away when he let himself in. And the door had definitely been locked. He hadn’t imagined that.

But then he saw a glint of metal sticking out from beneath the bookcase to the left of the door. He got down on his hands and knees and fished the key out. It must have bounced off the mat and skittered a few inches across the tiled floor to the bookcase.

He stood up. He may have solved the mystery of the key, but it didn’t explain Katie’s disappearance.

And why hadn’t she left a note, some kind of explanation? Something for him to make sense of.

First Dad not leaving a note.

Now Katie.

Sunday morning and thirty minutes into the journey, and it had begun to rain.

The wipers on Lloyd’s car were doing little more than smearing the windscreen with dried-on dead flies and whatever else was stuck to the glass. Even the weather was conspiring to make him think of Katie, reminding him of the first time they made love. He remembered what he’d said to her about the rain, and felt a curdling mixture of foolish anger and sadness. Mostly sadness.

I’m a world-class faker
, she’d said in bed yesterday morning. Had she been pretending? Could she be that devious, or that clever an actress? He didn’t think so. It
had
been real between them. He just knew it.

He’d left numerous messages on her mobile and landline last night, but she hadn’t replied.
Just let me know you’re all right
, he’d texted her at midnight. Still nothing. He felt hurt. And worried. What if something had happened to her?

He had to know.

Which was why he was driving to Brighton at six thirty in the morning.

Gina was up early. She had lots to do. She wanted everything to be perfect. She wanted to look back on this day and remember it as being the day everything began to feel right again. She wanted Stirling especially to remember it. She wanted him to sit proudly at the head of the table during lunch and think,
This is what counts. This is what I so very nearly lost
. She wanted him to be proud of his family. And of her.

She’d had a few moments of awkward dilemma over the guest list, but all was in hand now. Which was more than could be said for the weather: it had turned unseasonably chilly and was raining.

The weather aside, she had everything else under control. As she’d promised Stirling, it would be a small family get-together – Charlie and Scarlet and little Louisa-May, John and Caroline, and Rosco, who had asked if he could bring his new girlfriend with him. Gina was particularly pleased by this; it suggested Rosco had met someone he was serious about. Previous girls had come and gone with increasing rapidity and often without Gina ever meeting them. ‘You wouldn’t have approved of her, Mum,’ Rosco would say when she asked how things were going with his latest girlfriend only to learn that she was history. She had long since accepted that she was on a need-to-know basis when it came to her son’s love life.

Her dilemma had been whether or not to invite Cecily. The trouble was, if she invited Cecily, it would look bad not to invite Pen and Lloyd. But she didn’t want Pen and Lloyd here, not when she considered them as Katie Lavender allies. Cecily was one too, of course, but being Stirling’s mother, Gina felt she didn’t have much choice about including her in the luncheon party. She had no such qualms about Pen and Lloyd. Quite the reverse, given that Lloyd and Katie were carrying on together. Rosco had been right when he’d foreseen the danger of that liaison continuing; it could only ever be divisive and result in creating a massive schism in the family. But frankly, she didn’t care. What did it matter to her if she never had to speak to Pen and Lloyd again? And as brutal as it was, how much longer would Cecily be with them? Gina still hadn’t forgiven the appallingly high-handed way the imperious old woman had spoken to her.

Having decided she had no choice but to invite Cecily, she had called her last night only to be told by her mother-in-law that she had come down with a cold and had declared herself to be in quarantine for the sake of her great-granddaughter. Much relieved, Gina had said with considerable magnanimity that if there was anything Cecily needed or if she was feeling particularly poorly, she mustn’t hesitate to ring. In her customary off-hand manner, Cecily had told her not to fuss, that she had nothing more life-threatening than a light head cold. Gina had said goodbye, relieved also that the brief conversation had revealed that Cecily knew nothing about Stirling and Katie’s meeting yesterday, or the outcome. Doubtless that particular storm was yet to arrive. For now, Gina was happy to put it to one side. They would deal with it when Stirling was feeling more like his old self and was strong enough to explain matters fairly and squarely. She would support him in that whole-heartedly. She didn’t care how the old woman reacted, but she would not allow Cecily to bully Stirling into changing his mind.