Catching Katie

by Sophie Weston

  ‘Me? Why don’t you talk to him yourself? You’re next door for heaven’s sake.’

  ‘Because,’ she said between her teeth, ‘I don’t want to see the man again. Ever.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘You got me into this. You can get me out.’

  ‘Now, that’s not fair. . .’

  ‘Simon,’ Katie said dangerously, ‘do you want my canvases for your show or don’t you?’

  Simon knew when he was beaten. ‘I’ll tell Tremayne.’

  She flung herself into work. She even found a studio in a neighbouring street with the unlikely assistance of Amber Edelstein. As a result she left the house at first light and did not get back until nightfall. She never, not once, looked at the house next door as she passed it.

  For the rest of half-term Katie painted as if her life depended on it. Once school started back, she taught her classes dutifully. But she spent every morning and evening in the studio. It was almost as if she could not stop. Simon would have no cause to complain of any lack of passion now, she thought.

  She painted Amber Edelstein. She painted wild, impressionistic memories of the Italian garden. She painted the statues in the park and the turmoil in the playground. And over and over again she found herself painting a threatening male figure, half seen.

  ‘The psychiatrists will have a field-day with that,’ she muttered.

  But he was there, stalking through her work. There was not a thing she could do about it. The need to get on was so strong that Katie did not even try to paint him out after the first couple of times.

  ‘OK, my subconscious is a mess. I can live with that,’ she told herself.

  Because, startlingly, she knew she was painting as she had never painted before.

  Simon, when she relented and let him over the threshold at last, was hugely impressed.

  ‘We shan’t have any problem filling up your bit of the exhibition space,’ he said, rubbing his hands together. ‘In fact maybe you should have a show to yourself soon.’

  Miss Edelstein was less so.

  ‘Bit representational, isn’t it?’ she said, surveying her own hawk-like features on Katie’s canvas. ‘Like more colour myself.’

  Katie picked up her palette and savagely mixed a shade of yellow that would not disgrace the most golden sunflower. She applied it ruthlessly to Miss Edelstein’s painted nose and turned on her critic in silent defiance.

  ‘Better,’ said Miss Edelstein, pleased. ‘More passion.’

  Katie screamed. Unmoved, Miss Edelstein returned to her seat and took up her pose.

  ‘Artists,’ she said largely, ‘have to have passion. Didn’t think you had it in you, to be honest. Glad to see I was wrong.’

  Katie painted the tip of her left ear vermilion vengefully.

  She stopped answering the telephone and only opened her post with the utmost reluctance. Not that it mattered. Haydon Tremayne made no attempt to get in touch with her, as far as she could see. Which, of course, was exactly what she wanted. Wasn’t it?

  Sometimes when she got home in the evening there would be a light in his house. By some coincidence, those were the nights when it was too hot to sleep. Anyway, sleep brought the sort of dreams that had Katie jumping awake in humiliated tears.

  So then she painted through the night at the studio as well, though this time from imagination. She kept those paintings well out of sight of Miss Edelstein and even Simon. There were times when she could hardly bear to look at them herself.

  The last time she had painted a portrait it had been of Mike. Until the dreadful day when he saw her scar, he had sat for hours while she’d painted. Afterwards, he had not been able to meet her eyes. The painting had never been finished. For years Katie had not been able to endure the memory. Now it seemed irrelevant.

  She could not have prevented herself painting the portraits of Haydon, not if her whole world had depended on it- They pumped out of her like her life blood. They were wildly uncontrolled. If Simon saw those, thought Katie, flinging rags over them as the grey dawn touched the window, he would know at once that she had changed irrevocably. Simon, she thought bitterly, would think it was a good thing. Whereas she felt as if she was bleeding to death.

  At school, the Head was frosty. In her private misery, Katie barely noticed. Douglas Grove saw it and his frustration reached incendiary level. She did not notice that either.

  Her father rang. For the first time in years Katie did not brace herself when he announced his name. She stuck the phone under her ear and went on making a sandwich.

  ‘I wondered if you were all right.’ It was so out of character, Katie nearly dropped the phone.

  ‘Why shouldn’t I be?’ she said.

  He sounded disconcerted. ‘Well, I haven’t seen you since Christmas. Your mother said—’

  ‘You rang Ma?’ This was not just out of character, it was unprecedented.

  There was a pause. Then he said with evident difficulty, ‘I know I haven’t been much of a father. I never meant it to be like this. But your mother always made it clear you were her exclusive business. And then I was responsible for the accident. . .’

  Katie was astonished. ‘You weren’t responsible,’ she said on pure reflex. ‘You saved my life. You scared the bull away.’

  ‘Not soon enough.’ There was pain in his voice.

  She remembered the look on his face the first time he had seen her scar. That was why Mike’s repulsion had hurt so badly, she realised. It had been a mirror image of that older, earlier rejection. Well, she had a new insight into the intensity of feelings these days—and how irrational they could be. Now Katie thought for the first time perhaps it had not been disgust; perhaps it had been anguish.

  She said gently, ‘Dad, I went walking in the wrong field. It was an accident. Nobody knew the bull was there. Nobody could have known. It hadn’t been there an hour earlier. When I called out, you came as fast as you could. Don’t beat yourself up about it.’

  He said in an odd voice, ‘You really don’t—blame me?’

  ‘I never blamed you. It wasn’t your fault.’

  ‘But your mother—’

  ‘Ma is hot on blame,’ agreed Katie drily. ‘Doesn’t make her right.’

  ‘No.’ Life came back into his voice. ‘Look, Katie, can we meet?’

  She hesitated. ‘I’ve got an exhibition coming up in a couple of weeks. I’m working really hard.’

  ‘Oh.’ There was a pause. Then he said carefully, ‘Would you mind if I came to the exhibition?’

  Katie glowed. ‘I’d love it,’ she said, meaning it.

  His voice warmed. ‘Then I will.’

  He rang off. Katie did a little dance round the kitchen. For the first time in weeks she felt a glimmer of hope.

  When Simon dropped by at the studio she asked him to send an invitation to her father. He made a note of it and then looked at her warily.

  ‘You know we’ll have to ask Tremayne to the opening.’

  Katie froze in the act of applying thin lines of burnt sienna to a corner of viridian shadow.

  ‘Then you can count me out,’ she said pleasantly.

  She went back to her painting.

  ‘Katie, be reasonable. He buys a lot of new work. It’s got nothing to do with you personally.’

  She was unmoved.

  He added desperately, ‘He’s a personal friend of Keith’s.’

  ‘Fine. Just don’t expect me to turn up.’

  ‘But you’ve got to. What if the critics want to talk to you? We’ve got a lot of interest from the TV arts programmes . . .’

  Katie shrugged. ‘Haydon Tremayne or me. Take your pick.’

  Simon shook his head, curbing. his annoyance with difficulty.

  ‘What on earth did the man do?’ he said explosively. ‘You’re behaving like a child.’

  Katie shrugged again. He sighed angrily and went.

  As soon as the door closed behind him, Katie put down her brush with care. She leaned against the gr
eat studio window and pushed her hands through her hair.

  As long as she was fighting she was fine, she thought ruefully. Doing battle with Simon strengthened her backbone. But when she was on her own again. . .

  I can’t be in love with a man like that, she thought. I can’t. All those adolescent years when she had sat on her instincts and kept boys at arm’s length could not go for nothing.

  But it was more than sex and she knew it. She missed him. She was lonely for him. She wanted him to care for her, and take pride in her, and laugh at her, and—

  Katie stopped the course of her own thoughts. But it was too late. There was no hiding from it. He had forced the question on her and this was the hard, unpalatable answer. She was in love with Haydon Tremayne.

  ‘I will get over it, then,’ she said resolutely.

  It did not sound very convincing.

  The day of the private view arrived. Simon came and made his selection, prowling inquisitively among the shrouded canvases and clearly annoyed when Katie said they were not for exhibition. But in the end he did not insist, and staggered out to the estate car with his choices.

  Katie refused even to help at the hanging. She did not trust Simon not to have invited Haydon along. She said so.

  ‘You’re paranoid,’ said Simon.

  But, from his look of annoyance, Katie deduced that she was not far off beam.

  She went to school with only half her mind on the morning’s lessons.

  Finding his usual bullying tactics had no effect, Douglas Grove had come to a decision. He walked into her lesson. By chance it was the lower fifth again. A buzz went up as the Head came in. And then, apart from the mighty beat of Lucifer’s Eleven, an unnatural silence fell.

  ‘Miss Marriott. In my study,’ he said curtly.

  Katie looked around. ‘This is a double period class,’ she pointed out.

  Only the most reckless teacher would leave the lower fifth alone in a room well supplied with the instruments of mayhem and a tape-deck.

  The Head ground his teeth. ‘Very well. I’ll see you when class ends. Immediately class ends.’

  He marched out. The buzz started again.

  ‘What have you done, miss?’ asked Mark Blaney. Habitually in trouble himself, he clearly had some fellow feeling.

  Katie shook her head. She could not think of anything. Or not anything new. Before half-term she would have been in a quake about a summons like this. Now she did not care. But she was still warmed by Blaney’s open-palmed solidarity salute as the bell rang and she went to keep her appointment.

  Grove was waiting for her, standing by one of his bookshelves.

  ‘Katie, this noisy music in the studio,’ he began. ‘It’s got to stop.’

  She stared at him. ‘Why? Nobody hears it in that wing.’

  He floundered. ‘It’s bad for discipline.’

  She was scornful and did not hide it. ‘Oh, come on.’

  This seemed to be the cue he was waiting for. ‘You really don’t understand the importance of discipline, do you, Katie? I’m disappointed in you.’

  ‘Oh?’ she said.

  Grove flushed. ‘If you’re going to succeed as a teacher, you have to be committed.’

  Katie raised her eyebrows wearily. This was usually a prelude to a demand that she work late, accompanying the Head. It used to alarm her. Now, she noted with vague relief, it was just a bore. Grove flushed deeper at her expression.

  ‘Your appointment need not be confirmed, you know,’ he said. The spite showed. ‘I can report to the governors that you are too involved with your own painting to concentrate on your teaching.’

  ‘But that’s not true,’ Katie objected.

  ‘You did not come in at half-term because you were off painting,’ he pointed out.

  It was Katie’s turn to flush. The Head’s eyes narrowed.

  ‘Or were you painting? Now I come to think of it, where did you spend half-term?’

  Katie’s flush deepened.

  ‘You went off with a man,’ said Douglas Grove on a note of discovery. He sounded incredulous. And personally outraged. ‘Who was it? Liam Brooker?’

  Katie laughed. Liam had discovered Andrea’s beautiful soul via her roast duck in honey sauce on a long, lazy day on the river at half-term. The staff room had been alert for wedding bells ever since. Douglas Grove must be the only person in the school who did not know.

  He did not like her laughing at him. He took an angry step forward. One look at his expression and Katie sobered rapidly.

  ‘I mean. . .’ Katie’s voice fluttered to a halt.

  She might not care about Grove’s hostility any more. But—she could hardly believe it—now he was looking as if he wanted to kill her.

  His hands clenched into fists. ‘Who was he?’

  ‘No one,’ she said.

  And then, quite suddenly, Katie found she was tired of placating. the Head. She lifted her chin and looked him straight in the eye.

  ‘No one who is any of your business.’

  Douglas Grove looked as if he did not believe his ears.

  ‘You—you admit it?’ he choked.

  ‘I’m an adult,’ said Katie quietly. ‘What I do in my spare time is my own affair.’

  He let out a bellow of rage and launched himself at her. It was so unexpected that Katie barely had time to sidestep. As it was, she fled in the wrong direction, away from the door.

  ‘You—’ he said, his eyes blazing, his breath coming in short bursts, ‘will do—what I—say. You—’

  Katie measured her chances of getting to the door and away before he caught her. They were minimal. So she would have to find an alternative.

  ‘Stop this,’ she rapped out. It was the voice she used to the lower fifth in their worst moments.

  It had no effect on Douglas ‘Grove at all. He hardly seemed to hear. His mouth was working. He seemed totally out of control. Katie began to be alarmed.

  ‘For heaven’s sake, Douglas, you’ve lost it,’ she said. ‘Pull yourself together.’

  There was a knock on the door. He did not seem to hear that either.

  ‘You—little—bitch.’

  He lurched across the room and took her by the shoulders. He began to shake her. Katie let out a small scream.

  The knock on the door came again, louder. Then the doorknob turned. It began to rattle up and down. Katie realised that he must have locked the door.

  He shook her harder, too strongly for her to escape. Her head wagged backwards and forwards.

  Ludicrous, she thought. This is ludicrous. She gave a spurt of hysterical laughter.

  His eyes blazed. ‘You will not—laugh—at me,’ he gasped out.

  The door shook in its frame. Douglas pulled her closer. Katie twisted and turned, trying to fight him off. But he. was too strong for her.

  And then the door bulged and burst in. The lock flew across the room and hit the plate glass window like a bullet. At last something caught Douglas Grove’s attention.

  ‘What—?’ he began.

  To Katie’s blank amazement, Haydon Tremayne strode into the room. He detached Grove from her, swung him round and landed a well-aimed punch that sent him staggering after the lock.

  Douglas hit the window. After a stunned moment, he slid gently down it. He sat there with his legs out in front of him like an abandoned puppet.

  Haydon swung round on Katie.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  She put a hand to her head. It still seemed to be there.

  ‘Y-yes, I think so.’

  ‘Don’t you ever,’ said Haydon furiously, ‘do anything like that to me again.’

  He hauled her into his arms and held her against him as if he was never going to let her go again.

  Katie was laughing and crying at the same time. The relief of it put her beyond pretending.

  ‘I promise,’ she said, clinging to him.

  Haydon, a master negotiator, seized his chance. ‘And you’re never walking out on me a
gain without telling me why.’

  ‘No,’ agreed Katie, snuffling.

  Haydon gave her a handkerchief in a masterful fashion. He then let her go and looked round the devastated room. He raised a finger. An unusually subdued Mark Blaney appeared in the doorway.

  ‘Your headmaster has had an accident,’ Haydon. said in the sort of tone that heads of companies in three continents did not argue with.

  Blaney was in the lower fifth, however, and made of sterner stuff than captains of industry. ‘Looks like someone hit him.’

  ‘He slipped and hit his head on the window,’ said Haydon firmly. ‘Get the Deputy Head. Miss Marriott has also hurt herself. I shall see to her personally.’

  Blaney grinned.

  ‘Get going, then,’ said Haydon.

  ‘Righty-ho,’ said Blaney. He gave Katie the thumbs-up sign and sauntered out.

  Haydon looked down at Douglas Grove. ‘You,’ he said quietly, ‘are very lucky. You could have gone through that window.’ Then, just in case the Head misunderstood, he added, ‘If you had hurt her.’

  Douglas looked sick.

  ‘The governors will be hearing about this,’ Haydon went on, still in that level voice. It chilled Katie, hovering behind him, to the marrow. ‘I shall make sure that you never bully young teachers again.’

  Douglas said nothing. He looked appalled.

  Haydon reached behind him and took her hand without looking at her. Katie felt her fingers curl into his as if she had been waiting for this all her life.

  ‘Come,’ he said.

  He was driving the big Rolls Royce. He opened the door for her without consulting her preferences. Katie wasn’t fighting any more. She sank down into the luxurious seat and waited.

  ‘Now,’ said Haydon. ‘First of all, why weren’t you hang-. ing your pictures this morning? I got to the gallery at seven o‘clock just to see you.’

  ‘Thought you might,’ said Katie with satisfaction. ‘That’s why I wasn’t there.’

  Haydon surveyed her unflatteringly. ‘You’re a fool, then.’

  She might not be fighting but she wasn’t going to let him get away with that. ‘No, I’m not. I’ve got better things to do than hang on the whim of a double-crossing millionaire—’