Katy Carter Wants a Hero

by Ruth Saberton

  ‘I’ve just has the weirdest text,’ I gasp, waving the phone. ‘You’ll never guess, but—’

  ‘There’s a lobster in the bath?’ says Richard from the kitchen table, where he’s munching dry toast and drinking tea. ‘You’ve come to stay indefinitely?’

  Ten bums in a row. Shouldn’t he be at a prayer meeting or something? I’m suddenly conscious that my Little Miss T-shirt is a size too small and the word Naughty is stretched across my boobs in a highly inappropriate manner. Richard has a strange effect on me. Whenever I’m around him I’m either compelled by a perverse desire to be as obnoxious and outrageous as I can or to confess all my sins and see what he does about it, which, let’s be honest, could take some time.

  I’m sure I was a Catholic in a past life.

  ‘Hello, Katy.’ Richard rises and kisses me on the cheek, which feels awkward, a bit like being kissed by your headmaster. ‘Mads tells me you’re staying for a while.’

  ‘If that’s OK with you,’ I say quickly. ‘It was a sudden decision.’

  That we’ve been planning for weeks.

  ‘Indeed?’ Richard raises an eyebrow.

  Yes in-bloody-deed.

  ‘Do you want some tea? The kettle’s just boiled.’

  ‘Thanks.’ I fish a mug out of the sink and give it a rinse. ‘Where’s Mads?’

  ‘Exactly what I was wondering yesterday,’ says Richard, fixing me with a penetrating look.

  Fuck. He saw me in the pub.

  ‘If you want to go incognito, I should try dying the ginger hair,’ he suggests, biting viciously into his toast. ‘I suppose she went to collect you? And you popped into the Mermaid for a drink?’

  ‘Er, something like that,’ I say and wait for a thunderbolt to strike me dead. ‘And then we went to a party.’ That’s not a lie, is it?

  Richard sighs wearily. ‘Katy, you need to realise that Madeleine isn’t like you. She’s a married woman with all the responsibilities that her state entails.’

  Her state? What is she, the bloody Queen?

  ‘If you’re going to stay with us,’ continues Rich, ‘you’ll need to abide by the standards of this household. And that means not encouraging Maddy to lie to her husband.’

  I’m struck dumb by the unfairness of this. I seem to recall I was the one who pointed out to Mads that deceiving Richard was not a good idea.

  ‘Maddy is a vicar’s wife,’ Rich says solemnly, folding his hands together and fixing me with a stern look. ‘She has responsibilities towards the people of this parish, a duty of care to them, and a duty to lead an edifying life. She isn’t free to take off when she feels like it, and she knows that. If you are to stay here then I need you to understand this.’

  Hello! Have I gone back to the Middle Ages without noticing? But then for Richard, feminism is just something that happened to other people, so he ploughs on regardless of, or maybe because of, my incredulous expression.

  ‘Wives must submit to their husbands, Katy. It’s a Biblical truth. The husband is the head of the household, and there’s a reason for that. It makes for a stable and happy marriage,’ he finishes sanctimoniously.

  It does? Sounds like a recipe for disaster to me.

  Especially when the husband’s an idiot.

  ‘Thanks for telling me.’ I know I’m being flip but I can’t help it. ‘I’ll make sure I remember all that when I next go on a date.’

  ‘Just remember it while you’re here,’ Richard says, popping open the washing machine and shoving in some clothes from a carrier. The smell of white spirit wrestles with Comfort. Slamming the door shut, he straightens up and fixes me with a beady look. ‘Get that lobster back in the sea, do a bit of brass cleaning and I’m sure we’ll all get on famously.’

  I’m glad you’re sure, I think as I splosh hot water on to a tea bag, because I’m starting to feel freaked out.

  ‘Mads has gone to fetch milk and papers.’ Sermon safely delivered, Richard gets around to answering my earlier question. ‘There she is, look!’ He points down towards the village, where sure enough, Maddy’s curly head is bobbing along through the streets. Then she rounds a corner and approaches the quay at a run, scattering seagulls and tourists in equal measures.

  ‘Does she always run?’ I ask, bemused. The Mads I know makes snails seem speedy.

  Richard frowns. ‘Never. Something must be wrong.’

  ‘Katy!’ pants Mads, tearing in through the side door. ‘You’ve got to see the papers!’

  Not her as well.

  ‘I’m making tea.’ I fetch milk from the fridge, very calmly, even though inside my heart is pounding. ‘You want one?’

  ‘Tea!’ cries Mads, flinging a wad of red-top papers on to the kitchen table and shoving Richard’s breakfast out of the way. ‘I think you’ll need something stronger than tea when you’ve read this lot, babes!’

  I put the mug on the table and let Maddy sit me down and push a copy of the Sun towards me.

  What I see makes me gasp.

  ROCHESTER DUMPS JANE FOR MYSTERY REDHEAD! screams the headline, and below it is a blurry picture of Gabriel Winters looking divine in his white T-shirt and jeans with his laughing blue eyes and perfectly tousled hair. Nothing unusual there, except that next to him, looking dishevelled and pink-cheeked, is a woman leaning forward and displaying a rather Jordanesque cleavage and quite a bit of thigh, actually. Of course, it’s me. All that red hair, as dear Richard has already pointed out, is a dead giveaway. I could try ringing the Sun and saying it’s actually Chris Evans in drag, but I don’t think they’d fall for it. This hair of mine is such a pain. All my life I’ve never been able to get away with anything.

  ‘It must have been that bloody woman with the digital camera!’ I peer closer. No cellulite. Thank you, God, for dimly lit pubs. But how come I never noticed how low-cut that gypsy top is? And has Gabriel got his arm around my waist? I wasn’t so pissed I wouldn’t have noticed that.

  Has the photo been tampered with?

  Oh my God. All these years I’ve taught Media Studies and the mysteries of Photoshop and I never once thought of that.

  ‘Just remind me,’ I say, and my voice is shaky, ‘isn’t there a hideous conflict in Iraq? Aren’t people being persecuted in Zimbabwe? Why is this… this crap on the front page?’

  ‘Because people love Gabriel,’ Mads tells me, twirling her hair up into a knot and securing it with a chopstick. ‘And they love gossip even more.’ She looks at me through narrowed eyes. ‘Are you sure there’s nothing going on? You guys look pretty cosy.’

  ‘I only met him yesterday!’

  ‘But he’s got his arm round you,’ Mads says. ‘What happened exactly?’

  ‘You were there,’ says Richard. ‘Weren’t you?’

  Bum. Bum. Bum. No time to get our stories straight.

  I try frantically to catch her eye.

  ‘I was? I mean, I was!’ says Mads hastily. ‘But this is something else. I must have, um, been in the loo.’

  ‘This is a disaster.’ Richard has his head in his hands. ‘The press will be here in droves. I’ll never get any work done.’

  ‘What will Gabriel say?’ I wonder.

  ‘Don’t worry about him,’ says Mads airily. ‘He’ll love it. No such thing as bad publicity, remember?’ She flips through the rest of the paper. ‘You’re mentioned in Richard Kaye’s column in the Mail, and the Dagger has an exclusive interview with Gabriel’s now ex-girlfriend, who apparently wants to kill you. The Sport’s running a competition to guess the size of your boobs.’

  Richard groans.

  ‘Page three in the Express, nothing in the broadsheets, except a tiny piece in the celebrity section of The Times,’ Mads finishes. ‘Enjoy your fifteen minutes of fame.’

  ‘I don’t want to be famous,’ I wail.

  ‘Then don’t go out drinking with celebrities,’ snaps Richard. ‘I’m sorry, Katy, but you’ll have to go home.’

  ‘What!’ chorus Mads and I.

  ‘This is the last th
ing I need,’ Richard tells his wife.

  ‘Bishop Bill will be seriously unimpressed. Having a seedy tabloid affair taking place under my roof won’t do my career any favours.’

  ‘I’m not having a seedy tabloid affair,’ I protest. ‘I only had a drink with him in the pub.’

  ‘Trouble is,’ says Mads, ‘it doesn’t look like that.’

  I examine the picture again. She has a point. That low top doesn’t exactly scream ‘innocent drink!’.

  ‘I was leaning forwards to get out of the shot.’

  ‘Sure you were.’ Maddy pats my shoulder. ‘But to Joe Public it looks like you were saying “come and get it”.’

  Oh Lordy. No wonder Frankie sent me that text. It really looks as though not even twenty-four hours after I left for Cornwall, I’m bonking Gabriel Winters’ brains out.

  Actually, I don’t think that would take too long.

  ‘You’ll have to leave before we get doorstepped by the press,’ Richard tells me.

  ‘Don’t be daft,’ Mads says firmly. ‘This’ll blow over. There’s no way you’re going back, Katy. You’ve got a hero to find and a novel to finish. Gabriel’s just the first man you’ve come across. I promise there are lots more.’

  ‘This is a rectory, not a knocking shop,’ bursts out Richard.

  Richard, if you only knew what lives under my bed, you wouldn’t be so sure!

  ‘Besides,’ he carries on, ‘what about Katy’s teaching job?’

  ‘Don’t worry about that,’ says Mads cheerfully. ‘She’s resigned.’

  ‘What?’ Richard’s mouth is a little ‘o’ of horror. ‘Can’t they take her back?’

  ‘Hello? I am in the room, people!’ I point out.

  ‘What’s she going to do?’ Richard is really agitated now and starts to fiddle with the edge of the Sun, tearing at it and scrunching it up with equal ferocity. I watch in fascination. ‘What’s she going to do to earn money? Go fishing? Bake pasties? We’re not exactly crying out for unemployed teachers in Tregowan.’

  ‘I’m going to write a book,’ I say helpfully.

  ‘You gave up your teaching career to write a book?’ Richard buries his face in his hands. ‘Dear Lord, give me strength.’

  ‘It’s a romance,’ I tell him. ‘It’s about a highwayman who—’

  ‘Spare me the details. Save them for the press, who I’m sure will love it.’

  ‘Darling,’ Mads adopts a soothing tone of voice, ‘you’re overreacting. This will all blow over, the press will push off and Katy and I will have a lovely summer together. There are loads of things she can do. We’re off to the job centre this morning.’

  ‘But what about the bishop? He won’t be impressed by all this press attention. It detracts from what we’re really here for.’

  ‘He’s an open-minded man,’ argues Maddy. ‘In the world but not of it, remember, darling? Katy needs our support right now. She’s had a terrible time lately, with her broken engagement and then the cancer scare. She needs her friends about her at such a difficult time. Show some compassion, Richard. What would Jesus do?’

  Whoa! She’s good! I’m almost in tears myself.

  ‘He’d love and care for her, wouldn’t He?’

  Richard’s torn between booting me out and behaving in a charitable and Christian manner. ‘I suppose so. Yes, of course He would. All right, Katy. You can stay.’

  ‘Oh, thank you, darling!’ Mads flings her arms around Richard and plants a kiss on the top of his head, winking at me over it. ‘Katy will be an asset to us. She’ll clean the brass, do the toddlers and sort the flowers.’

  Sell the sex toys?

  I nod manically. ‘And the first thing I’ll do is put Pinchy back in the sea.’

  ‘Katy’s lobster,’ explains Maddy swiftly. ‘Besides, you must admit that her rent will come in handy.’

  Richard’s ears prick up. Mammon is so tempting.

  ‘I’ll pay lots,’ I tell him. ‘And I’ll clean and cook.’

  ‘Don’t overegg the pudding,’ he says drily. ‘I’ve already said yes. Just try and stay away from TV stars, please.’

  ‘Oh, totally! No more of those!’

  Let’s just hope Frankie doesn’t choose to turn up unannounced on the hunt for his crush. Good old Rich would burst a blood vessel.

  Richard disentangles himself from his wife and mutters something about going to Truro. Once the front door slams, Mads and I heave a sigh of relief.

  ‘Fuck me,’ she says. ‘That was a close shave. Next time let me know what fibs you’ve told my husband.’

  ‘Next time let me know when you’re going to show your husband sordid tabloid stories about me,’ I retort.

  I put the kettle back on, although to be honest I could do with something stronger. Mads rummages through the papers again, but I can’t bear to look. Ollie, James and most of Britain think I’m Gabriel Winters’ latest bit of crumpet.

  What a mess.

  A mess? Who am I kidding? I’ve made a Ground Zero of nearly all the relationships in my life. My family only still talk to me because I hardly ever see them.

  While I think these gloomy thoughts, the house phone rings. Maddy answers, tucking the receiver beneath her chin while she pours boiling water into a blue china teapot.

  ‘Tregowan Rectory. Oh! Hi! Yes! Fine!’

  What’s happened to her voice? She sounds like Marilyn Monroe with asthma.

  ‘Katy? Yes. She’s right here.’

  Maddy puts her hand over the speaker’s end of the receiver. Her eyes are fever bright.

  ‘Are you sure you’ve told me everything, Katy Carter?’ she asks, wagging her finger at me. ‘You are in so much trouble otherwise.’

  ‘Course,’ I say. ‘Why?’

  Mads holds the phone out.

  ‘Because, you lucky, lucky cow, Gabriel Winters is on the phone, and he says he can’t wait to see you again. Katy! You’ve pulled!’

  Chapter Fourteen

  ‘“Waitress required for the Piskie’s Kitchen. No previous experience required. Minimum wage”,’ I read. ‘What do you think?’

  We’re standing outside the job centre with our noses pressed against the glass. There are several boards covered in cards that have handwritten details of a vast array of jobs. I could apply to be a pasty cook, a care assistant or a barmaid. Any of those will do as far as I’m concerned, but Mads has other ideas.

  ‘No, no and no,’ she says firmly. ‘The whole point of this exercise is to find you that romantic hero you said you needed.’

  And there was I thinking we were job-hunting.

  ‘And you won’t find one of those in a care home,’ Maddy adds when I express an interest in the next advert. ‘Maybe a rich one, like Anna Nicole Smith did, but not a young, fit love god.’

  ‘Give it a rest. I’m not interested in love gods! In fact I’m thinking about donating my sexual organs to charity since I’ll probably never use them again.’

  ‘Bollocks! Of course you will! You couldn’t get down here quick enough when I told you all about the talent.’

  ‘I needed to get away from London,’ I remind her.

  ‘And we need to find you a hero, for your novel obviously,’ carries on Maddy, busily jotting down job details and phone numbers. ‘Although you already seem to have done that without my help, you crafty moo. Mr Winters was gagging to talk to you. What’s going on?’

  Our eyes meet in the reflection in the window and I laugh because Mads is waggling her eyebrows suggestively. ‘You’ve been really quiet since he phoned. What did he say? Did he ask you out? Tell me everything! Has he proposed to save your honour? Has OK! got an exclusive?’

  ‘Who’s the romantic novelist here?’ I laugh. ‘Listen to yourself! He’s just asked me up to Smuggler’s Rest for dinner to discuss the situation and how we can best handle it.’ I glance at my reflection in the mirror. Big shades and a baseball cap might work wonders for Victoria Beckham, but they do nothing for me. I’m desperately hoping Gabriel’s means
of avoiding the press are more sophisticated than Maddy’s. Still, at least we’ve managed to lose the lone reporter from the Cornish Times who was door-stepping us.

  ‘Arrgh!’ shrieks Mads, so loudly that several passing tourists turn and stare at us. ‘I can’t believe you kept that to yourself all morning. No one else I know in the village has been invited up to Smuggler’s Rest. Gabriel’s been really funny about his privacy. Wear your new knickers. I reckon you’re in there, babe.’

  ‘It isn’t like that,’ I insist. ‘He’s just being kind.’

  ‘Bollocks is he,’ grins Mads. ‘Men are only ever helpful when they want something.’

  ‘Believe what you like. He’s not interested. I can tell.’

  Take our earlier telephone conversation, for example. It wasn’t exactly melting the phone wires with sizzling passion.

  ‘Hi.’ I’d turned my back on Mads, who was making kissing faces. ‘I’m really sorry about the misunderstanding in the papers.’

  Gabriel had laughed his dark, velvety laugh. ‘Don’t worry about that. It’s all par for the course in my business. I’m just phoning to make sure that you’re OK. I hope your boyfriend isn’t too pissed off.’

  ‘I haven’t got a boyfriend. So you needn’t worry about that.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Gabriel slowly.

  ‘If you were worried,’ I said hastily.

  ‘I wasn’t worried.’ Gabriel paused, presumably for dramatic emphasis. ‘I was just wondering what the matter is with all the men in London. Still, at least I don’t have to worry about an irate partner charging over to challenge me to a duel.’

  I laughed. ‘No, you have absolutely no worries on that score.’

  ‘Well, the press is likely to be a pain in the rear end for a day or two,’ he said. ‘Don’t be surprised if some of them turn up. We need to get together to work out a story.’

  ‘Can’t I just deny it all?’ Call me naive, but I thought if I kept my head down all this would go away. Ostrich tactics have never failed me before.

  ‘I’d prefer it if you didn’t,’ said Gabriel carefully. ‘That might just make them even more persistent. We’ll be doorstepped until they can find a story, and if they can’t find one they’ll make something up, or dig about for anything unsavoury. You haven’t got any skeletons in your cupboard, have you?’