‘Liam Brooker is a maverick,’ Andrea said wistfully. She did not notice the strain in Katie’s voice. ‘Be warned. He’s also a ladies’ man.’
‘Not this lady,’ said Katie, relieved at the change of subject.
Andrea cocked an eyebrow. ‘No? You sure?’
‘Absolutely.’
The older girl looked at her curiously. ‘Why? I mean, he’s fun and he’s cool and he’s even good-looking in a battered sort of way. And you’re on the loose.’ She thought about it. ‘You haven’t got someone you’re hiding away, have you?’
Katie laughed. ‘No.’
‘Then why isn’t the dashing Liam in with a chance?’
Katie’s eyes danced. This at least was one area about which she had no secret traumas at all. ‘Three reasons. One—he doesn’t fancy me. Two—I don’t get involved with men I work with. Three—I don’t fancy him.’
Andrea was dissatisfied. ‘Why not? Every other woman in the school does.’ Although neither of them was going to admit it, this included Andrea herself.
Katie shrugged. ‘I guess I’m just different.’
‘Not that different,’ said Andrea drily. ‘You’re twenty-four. You’re unattached. Where’s the problem?’
Katie hesitated. ‘Let’s just say, I’d think very carefully before. I gave my heart.’
Andrea snorted loudly. ‘Who has time to think? You don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘You could be right,’ Katie admitted. She pushed her half-drunk coffee away from her. ‘I’ll just put my painting stuff into the conservatory and then I’ll take you out for brunch. It’s really great of you to give me a hand like this.’
‘Any time,’ said Andrea, shrugging her shoulders. ‘Especially if you’re going to ask me over to play in this kitchen.’
Katie was stacking squares of hardboard and canvas under her arm.
‘Sure, if you want to,’ she said.
‘Really? Would it be all right?’
Katie was amused. ‘I’m house-sitting. I’m not in purdah. Mrs Harding said I could do what I want within reason.’
Andrea put down her own coffee and picked up the sketchbooks.
‘What does that mean? No Roman orgies?’
They went downstairs to the double-height conservatory. Katie dropped her load with relief and propped it behind a cane chair.
‘Well, not trash the place. And I can’t sublet, of course. Oh, and I’m not supposed to party loudly. The millionaire next door is freaky about noise.’
Andrea grinned and handed over the sketchbooks.
‘Kiss goodbye to Lucifer’s Eleven in the home, then,’ she said. ‘It’s going to be a long, boring summer.’
Haydon shut the door on Viola with finality. After a discreet couple of minutes Mrs Bates emerged from the kitchen.
‘You must be tired after your journey,’ she said. She was much too professional to refer to the altercation she could not have avoided overhearing. ‘Breakfast? Coffee?’
Haydon pushed a hand through his hair. He was beyond discretion. The Bateses had been with him a long time.
‘Women,’ he said explosively. ‘What I need is a strong drink. How is the whisky in the study?’
‘Ah.’ Mrs Bates looked uncomfortable. ‘Dr Davison arrived last night. He was working late and. . .’
Haydon sighed. Andrew Davison was an old friend and a distinguished researcher. But he left borrowed rooms in turmoil.
‘You mean the study looks like a cyclone hit it and you don’t even know where the whisky decanter is, let alone whether it’s full?’ he interpreted.
Mrs Bates chuckled. ‘That’s about the size of it.’
‘And I suppose Andrew is not up yet? So his papers are everywhere and you don’t like to tidy them in case you misplace something vital.’
Mrs Bates rode his annoyance with the ease of long practice. ‘You said yourself his work is very important.’
‘Yes.’ Haydon breathed hard. ‘I did, didn’t I? God preserve me from out of town friends.’
‘Why don’t you sit in the summerhouse?’ Mrs Bates suggested soothingly. ‘It’s a lovely morning and you’ll be quite comfortable. Bates put up the rocker. I’ll bring you out some breakfast.’
Haydon gave her a narrow-eyed look. ‘Alicia, are you pacifying me?’
‘Just trying to be practical,’ the housekeeper assured him. She added temptingly, ‘The coffee’s fresh-brewed.’
He flung up his hands. ‘Oh, very well. Whatever you say. Just make sure everyone keeps away from me until I feel human again.’
In the end Andrea would not stay for brunch. The dilapidated van was borrowed and she had to return it to her cousin’s boss. She hesitated, though, looking at Katie with concern.
‘Are you sure you’ll be all right? I mean, I know it’s a smashing gaff and everything. But it’s not like sharing, after all.’
Katie made a face. ‘After the last three months I’m never going to share again,’ she said with resolution. She hugged Andrea. ‘Believe me, being on my own is going to be a luxury.’ And, seeing her friend was still doubtful, she added, ‘First I’m going to have a Jacuzzi for the first time in my life. And then I’m going to paint the lilac tree in the garden. Heaven. Really.’
‘Oh, all right,’ said Andrea. ‘I suppose you know what you’re doing. But if you get lonely, just give me a ring.’
‘I won’t get lonely,’ said Katie.
Haydon was passing the telephone on his way to the garden when it rang. On pure instinct he picked it up.
Viola did not even wait for him to give the number. ‘Don’t think you’ve seen the last of me,’ she hissed.
She had to be on her mobile phone.
‘You shouldn’t drive and telephone at the same time,’ Haydon said calmly.
She ignored that. ‘I’m sending you the bill for the damage to my car.’
He sighed. ‘And I’ll be happy to pay it.’
‘You’d better.’
Haydon was so tired he felt light-headed. This, he thought, is ludicrous. He said so.
Viola gave a bark of unamused laughter. ‘It certainly is. I thought we were going to have a sensible talk.’
‘We did,’ Haydon said levelly. ‘There is no more to be said.’
‘Now that’s just where you’re wrong. I have plenty more to say.’
He could believe it. He said wearily, ‘Just send me the bill for the car, Viola.’
‘Oh, no. I’m not letting you walk away from this.’
He stiffened. But before he could demand an explanation, she spat ‘You owe me, Haydon. You’ll pay, believe me.’
And she cut the connection.
CHAPTER TWO
THE summerhouse was tucked into the end of the rose garden. It was a cool octagonal building, open on two sides to the scents of early summer. Haydon sank into the newly oiled canvas rocker with a sigh of relief.
Bates brought out the tray and placed it noiselessly on a pine table beside him.
‘I am sorry about this morning,’ he said. ‘Miss Lennox really convinced me that you wanted her to meet you in my place.’
‘I’m sure she did,’ Haydon said drily. ‘Don’t worry about it.’
‘Nevertheless, I was at fault. I should have checked. I will next time.’
Haydon shuddered. ‘No next time,’ he said with resolution.
He lowered one shoulder and twisted his head away from it, feeling the tension like a knotted rope down his neck. Bates would have thought it intrusive to express sympathy, but he poured a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice without being asked.
‘Shall I book you into the Glen for a few days? Tomorrow?’
When the pace of his life took too great a toll Haydon went to a Spartan health hydro. It was very popular and most patrons faced a waiting list. But Bates was quite right in believing the Glen would have made a place for Haydon at less than a day’s notice.
Haydon hesitated, tempted. But in the end he shoo
k his head regretfully.
‘I’ve still got work to do. And I don’t want to miss the rest of Andrew’s visit. Maybe next week.’
Bates looked concerned. Haydon did not encourage fussing. On the other hand, Bates had never seen him look so exhausted. He hesitated, but in the end said, ‘You really do look very tired.’
Bates gave him the juice. He still looked worried. Haydon smiled.
‘If I can get this deal sorted out, I’ll go to San Pietro,’ he promised.
Bates knew Haydon’s Tuscan retreat. He looked relieved.
‘I should think it would be very pleasant at this time of year,’ he said sedately.
Haydon tipped his head back and closed his eyes.
‘Mmm,’ he said. ‘No phones. No women.’ He let out a long sigh.
Bates waited. Haydon neither opened his eyes nor spoke again. After a moment Bates removed the glass from his unresisting hand. He left quietly. Haydon did not stir.
The Jacuzzi, Katie found, was rather alarming. It had almost as many instructions as the burglar alarm. She read them carefully. But still, when she turned it on, the bath became a multi-jet fountain, soaking the walls and the rosecoloured carpet.
She mopped up, unpacked dry shorts and shirt, and retreated. Her hair dripped down her back in damp rats’ tails. The sun, she thought. That was what she needed. A good book and a cheese sandwich and she could stretch out in the lush garden and dry out.
But first there was something she had been putting off for a week. She braced herself.
The phone was answered on the second ring by a bark.
‘Yes?’
Her mother hated the telephone and never sounded encouraging anyway.
‘Hello, Mother. It’s Katie. I thought I’d let you know I’ve moved.’
Her mother’s voice warmed into interest. ‘You’ve left that dead-end job?’
Katie sighed. Her mother had high ideals and absolutely no practical sense. She had been furious when Katie had decided to teach instead of devoting her time to painting. ‘You will suffocate your creativity,’ her mother had said darkly. ‘Just like I did when I married your father.’
Since she had married because Katie was on the way there was not much Katie could say to that one. Her mother did not seem to understand the realities of life. She just wanted Katie to be a free spirit and go where her inspiration took her. She thought Katie’s desire to eat very poorspirited.
Now Katie said patiently, ‘No, Mother. I’m still selling my soul for a mess of pottage. But I’ve moved house. I thought you’d want my new phone number.’
‘Oh.’
Katie gave it to her. Her mother wrote it down.
‘I didn’t know you were leaving the flat.’
‘I wasn’t. There were developments.’
Her mother would not be sympathetic if she told her about the traumas of the last fortnight. She took little interest in love affairs, and none at all in other people’s traumas. She would never have let herself get caught in between two warring flatmates. Predictably she showed no interest.
‘So where are you now?’
‘I’m house-sitting. On my own, this time.’
‘Good,’ said her mother. ‘You’ll be able to get on with your painting without those silly girls wasting your time.’
‘They were my friends,’ squawked Katie in protest. Even now, her mother’s single-mindedness could shock her.
She could almost see her mother shrug. ‘Never thought about anything but clothes or boys,’ she said, dismissing them.
Since that had been exactly the cause of their acrimonious break-up, Katie could not really argue with that.
She did, however, point out, ‘That’s life, Mother.’
There was a giant snort from the other end of the telephone. ‘Not for a serious artist,’ said her mother with conviction. ‘It’s time you faced up to it and did something about your talent.’
She rang off, briskly convinced that she had done her best for her only child.
‘Thank you, Mother,’ said Katie to the buzzing line.
Telling her father the news took an even shorter time. As usual, he was not at home. As usual, the crisp message on his answering machine reduced her to monosyllables. Katie left him the bare details of her new home. Her father always seemed to reduce her to a curt little voice, she thought, despairing. Even when she wanted to sound friendly she could not.
A drip detached itself from her hair and ran down her spine.
‘Sun,’ Katie told herself aloud. She shook her shoulders, as if that would get rid of the uneasy feeling talking to her parents always gave her. ‘I have a new home and the sun is shining. All is well with the world. Believe it.’
Haydon tipped his head back and watched the sun dance off the edge of the apple blossom. When he half closed his eyes the light refracted off his eyelashes into a thousand rainbows. His body felt light. He picked up the glass and drained his juice, then heard the glass fall to the floor as his hand missed the teak table. God, I must be more tired than I realised, he thought.
That must be why those girls in their battered van had irritated him. The redhead had looked as if she’d wanted to hit him. Shame, that. She’d been quite impossible, of course, with her travelling junk shop of belongings and her nasty temper. But still there had been something about her. He could not quite remember what. But something.
Bees hummed. The sun was warm on his skin. Haydon’s eyelids drooped. He slept.
Katie took a sketchpad and her chalks onto the lawn. Any other girl would have donned a bikini and stretched out in the sun, but Katie had her own reasons for not sunbathing. She did not even possess a bikini.
Instead she folded her long legs under her and began to sketch the lavish prospect: sky-blue grape hyacinths under a fall of star flowered jasmine, golden iris, wallflowers the colour of imperial velvet and perfumed like a night in paradise; lilac. . .
Katie drew a long breath of sheer happiness.
Her fingers flew. She forgot her parents, both the old tensions and new difficulties alike. Flowers bloomed on the paper. She hardly seemed to touch it and the image was there: half-formed, enigmatic, but somehow utterly the thing it was supposed to be. Katie worked like lightning, hardly believing her luck.
It was the lilac that was her downfall.
The tree was heavy with the drooping white blossom, but, try as she could, she could not get the curve of branch and flower. She left them and went on to draw the little lilies of the valley, cat-faced pansies, waving grasses. But time and again dissatisfaction drove her back.
She uncoiled herself. There was a branch about half-way up. It looped over the wall into the neighbouring garden but it had exactly the right arc, the right fall of blossom. It was out of reach from the ground but not impossibly high. It was touching the wall, though. Katie had done some conscientious research for her gardening responsibilities and she remembered that trees could get fungus if their branches were allowed to rub against brickwork.
‘Pruning,’ she said aloud. ‘That’s what it needs.’
And, incidentally, she would get her branch of lilac to paint without risking a terminal crick in the neck. Benefit all round, she thought, pleased. She went in search of secateurs.
Ten minutes later she was regretting the whole idea.
The lilac tree was old and sturdy. But it was not exactly the sort of tree you climbed when you were five foot ten and had never been a champion gymnast. Nevertheless, it had stood a long time, and one unwise assault was not likely to bring it crashing to the ground. Or so Katie found herself trying to believe.
‘I can do this,’ she said between clenched teeth. ‘I can.’
She looped an escaping swatch of soft hair behind her ear and applied herself to the problem. She also held onto the branch for dear life.
It had not looked this difficult when she’d started. The branch had looked nearer, the lilac tree had definitely been half its present height and there had been no sign at
all of the dog on the other side of the wall. The dog was now jumping excitedly against the wall that divided the gardens. As it did so, it showed a fine set of healthy teeth.
Normally Katie liked dogs well enough. But she averted her eyes from those teeth. If only someone would come out of the house and put a muzzle on the wretched creature. Even the bad-tempered man who had not liked Andrea’s van would have been better than no one.
‘Hello?’ she called out tentatively.
Haydon Tremayne stirred, not opening his eyes. He frowned. Something had disturbed him. He did not know what it was. He did not like it.
Somebody wanted him to do something. No, not somebody: a woman. Again. Why wouldn’t they leave him alone? He turned his head away from the source of the noise.
‘No,’ he muttered.
No response. The house looked as deserted as the summer garden. No sign of this morning’s bully. No one to catch her if she fell out of the lilac tree. Katie set her teeth. She was on her own.
‘I got myself into this. I can get myself out of it. I can.’ She said it aloud. It seemed more convincing that way.
The tree wobbled. She clutched convulsively at her branch. There were twigs in her hair and her bare arms would carry the scratches for a long time. If she got down at all.
‘Nonsense. Of course I’ll get down.’ It was, Katie thought, the bracing tone she used to her least talented pupils. It did not convince them either.
Below her the dog reared up on its back legs. At its full height both paws reached high enough up the wall to come within touching distance. It barked once. It was not reassuring.
‘Good dog,’ said Katie without conviction.
It seemed to encourage the animal, she saw dismally. Not taking its eyes off her, it set up a pleasurable barking that would, surely, have roused the neighbourhood—if there was anyone about to be roused. The dog began to drool.
Haydon was not sure whether he was dreaming. He turned his head restlessly. He knew he should be moving, doing something. Even on this warm Saturday, he had a load of work. So maybe it was the voice of conscience sounding through his head like a wild hunt. He became aware of a vast indignation at a world which would not even let him drowse in his own garden for half an hour. He stirred angrily, trying to burrow into the canvas cushions under his head and shut out the noise.
Catching Katie Page 3