Quick! Write that down! Maybe they can do something naughty with risotto too? Nibble grains of rice from all kinds of exciting places? Dust themselves with Parmesan cheese? I’ll ask Mads what she thinks. It could work; everyone’s MasterChef and Bake Off mad these days, so some food-themed cheekiness might be the very thing to hit the spot.
I’m just hunting for a notebook (which is something of a challenge, seeing as I’ve turned the desk inside out and everything’s now in a bit of a muddle), when I hear the front door open. Moments later Sasha, our Irish setter, hurls herself at me as though she’s been away for twenty years rather than just with the dog sitter since eight a.m. Shortly afterwards Ollie walks into the kitchen, staring about the place in disbelief.
“Bloody hell! Have we been burgled?”
Honestly, what’s Ollie like? “No, of course not. Whatever makes you say that?”
My boyfriend runs a hand through his curly brown hair. “Err, the fact that it looks like the entire house has been ransacked? The contents of the cupboard under the stairs have been emptied out all over the hall? And what on earth’s happened to our kitchen?”
Ah. The kitchen. Earlier I rummaged through every drawer, examined the oven and even scaled the worktops in my search, but somehow I don’t think he’s referring to my new Olympic sport find the ring. A lot else has gone on in the kitchen since then.
“I’m cooking dinner,” I say, reaching onto my tiptoes and kissing him, but he’s far too busy gazing around wide-eyed to pay me much attention. Is he looking to see if I’ve found the hiding place? Oh! I can hardly wait! Come on, Ollie! It’s all I can do not to just shriek “Give me my engagement ring!” and jump up and down at him a bit like Sasha does when she thinks we’re off for a walk.
“Well, that explains the mess in here,” he says with a wry smile, then winces as he peers into the bubbling saucepan.
“That looks very… err… unusual.”
It does? What’s risotto supposed to look like? I thought it was meant to have some texture to it, although maybe those lumps and the black crusty bits shouldn’t be there. Oh well, if not we can always pick them out.
“It’s mushroom risotto,” I announce. “With bacon. And wine and chocolate mousse too.”
“In the risotto?” He steps backwards in alarm.
“No, silly! Prosecco to drink and chocolate mousse for pudding.”
Ollie takes off his steamed-up glasses, wipes them on his sleeve and looks at me long and hard with those amazing brown eyes flecked with gold, which always make me melt just like the spatula did earlier on the Aga hotplate. (Hopefully dousing the house in Febreze earlier has disguised the stench of this disaster. Poor Ol’s only recently finished removing the soldered-on remnants of the last one. I have a very bad track record when it comes to melting things on the hotplate.)
“OK,” he says slowly. “What have I done wrong?”
“Nothing!”
Ol replaces his glasses. “All right then. What have you done wrong?”
Isn’t that nice? Here I am cooking my (nearly) fiancé a romantic Valentine’s dinner and he instantly assumes I’ve done something terrible.
“Any lobsters hiding? Giant cactus under a pile of coats? Dog shredded a valuable document?” he asks, pulling me into his arms and tickling me just under the ribs, in the one place he knows is guaranteed to have me pleading for mercy in about two seconds flat. I gasp and writhe while Ollie continues to tickle me and describes the disastrous dinner party I once threw for my ex-boyfriend and his dreadfully strait-laced boss.
“No! No! Nothing like that!” Managing to pull myself away and escape to the far end of the kitchen, I just about suck in enough air to gasp, “It’s Valentine’s Day!”
The grin vanishes from Ollie’s face in a nanosecond. He stops laughing instantly and my stomach swoops from excitement to utter crushing despair. I know my boyfriend inside out and I can tell from the horrified expression on his face that he’s totally and utterly forgotten. There’s no surprise and there’s no ring. Mads was right: Ollie’s text meant he was going to call me, not propose. I’ve been so stupid. Me and my bloody, busy, overactive imagination. Why couldn’t it just have been content with writing blue scenes for Throb Publishing? Isn’t that enough for it? Did it really need to make me believe I was about to get engaged? Or was I just choosing to believe this was possible because I want it so much? I’ve been kidding myself, haven’t I? Nothing could be further from Ollie’s mind. He wasn’t gearing up to propose at all. He can’t even be bothered to remember bloody Valentine’s Day.
Yes, I know I forgot it too, but that’s different. Totally different!
“Oh shit!” Ollie looks at me aghast. “I’m so sorry. I completely forgot.”
I try to say something but all I do is make a feeble little squeak because there’s a lump in my throat so huge it makes the risotto look smooth.
“I knew Valentine’s Day was coming up and I meant to do something,” Ol continues, looking absolutely mortified, “honestly I did, baby, but I’ve just been so busy. We had a massive meeting after school about Progress 8 and the new GCSE bandings, and I had to make sure my analysis of the Key Stage 2 data was spot on for Carolyn’s presentation, otherwise come three years’ time our value added will be a negative residual and we’re all screwed.”
I stare at him. Firstly, because I have no idea what on earth he’s talking about, secondly because who gives a toss about what might happen three years away, and thirdly because he’s mentioned Carolyn. Steph’s comment earlier today about male staff enjoying the “Miles High Club” has triggered such a big red alert in my brain I can almost hear the claxons sounding.
Ollie’s forgotten Valentine’s Day because he’s been working on a presentation with Carolyn Miles?
Seriously?
“You were at a meeting?” I ask, and Ollie nods wearily.
“Of course I was. I always have a middle leaders’ meeting on Tuesdays. This was a long one too; I think the dog sitter thought I’d abandoned Sasha. I’m sorry to be back so late, Katy, and even sorrier I forgot it’s Valentine’s Day.”
He puts his glasses on the kitchen table, pushing aside a pile of plates I plonked there earlier while emptying the dresser in my ring search, and grinds his knuckles into his eyes. He looks absolutely exhausted and I notice just how pale he is and how deep the shadows are under his eyes. He’s working far too hard in this new job and I wish with all my heart that he didn’t have to. Suddenly Valentine’s Day doesn’t matter half as much as it did.
“It’s OK, Ol,” I say, stepping forward and hugging him. “It doesn’t matter. I only remembered at lunchtime myself.”
Ollie pulls an outraged face. “I see. So you don’t love me anymore?”
“How can you say that when I’ve made you dinner?”
He drops a weary kiss onto the top of my head. “Is that the dinner I can smell burning?”
We both look at the risotto pan. A plume of black smoke is starting to rise and with a shriek I dash forward to snatch the saucepan from the hotplate and plunge it into the sink. There’s a sizzle and a hiss and then – voila! I have made risotto soup.
Ollie’s laughing so hard that tears are running down his cheeks.
“I do love you, Katy Carter,” he gasps. “Don’t ever change, will you?”
I look around at our kitchen – with the cupboard doors open, contents strewn all over the place and yet another ruined saucepan languishing in the sink – and feel very lucky that he loves me just the way I am because, to be quite honest, I don’t think I can change. I’m a disaster zone. A lesser man would have given up years ago.
“I don’t think I could handle living with a normal woman,” Ollie adds, and I dig him in the ribs before kissing him. His lips taste of the cold air outside and I pull him closer, thinking that maybe burning the dinner was a blessing in disguise and there are far more interesting things to do than eat dinner. And we still have the chocolate mousse too…
But I’m not the only person thinking about food; at this point Sasha bounds into the kitchen, tongue lolling and gazing beseechingly up at us with big brown eyes, which is Red Setter for please feed me. Since we both know from bitter experience that a hungry Sasha is likely to chew her way through coursework folders/important documents/Ollie’s most expensive wetsuit, any hopes of passion are hastily put aside for the very important job of filling her bowl.
“Why were you rummaging through the cupboards anyway?” Ollie asks me as he hunts for the dog food. He’s looking totally confused, which is fair enough seeing as I relocated all twenty tins underneath the kitchen table while searching for the ring that never was.
“I was spring cleaning.”
“In February?” He raises his eyebrows. “There’s still frost outside most mornings, Katy.”
“It never hurts to start early,” I say piously.
“We’ve lived here nearly five years and this is the first time I’ve ever heard you mention spring cleaning.” Ollie locates a tin, tugs the ring pull and forks the contents into Sasha’s bowl while she dances about ecstatically. He grins at me over his shoulder. “I’d hardly call that starting early! Are you sure you weren’t looking for something?”
“Of course not!” I cross my fingers behind my back and pray very hard that he never guesses what I was actually up to. I think I’d die of mortification. There was I thinking he was planning to give me a ring, when in reality nothing could have been further from Ollie’s mind. Far better he thinks I’m a bit unhinged – which to be fair he always has done anyway – than he suspects I was hoping for an engagement ring. He must have forgotten what he said to me on the quay all that time ago, and I really haven’t the heart to remind him.
Luckily my prayers are answered (take that, Reverend Rich!) and Ollie seems to accept my spring-cleaning explanation. Once Sasha’s fed and the kitchen’s been restored to something like order, we peer into the fridge in the hope that something to eat might have miraculously appeared. Alas, even the chocolate mousse looks unfit for consumption. Unless we want to make an onion-and-jelly baby omelette, starvation is imminent.
“Let’s go to the pub for dinner,” Ol suggests.
I almost collapse onto the kitchen floor with shock because it’s Tuesday and teachers never, ever go out on a school night. Our pupils might be up until the small hours playing Call of Duty or sending pictures to total strangers on Chatroulette, but rest assured that most of their teachers are tucked up by ten o’clock with a mug of Horlicks. Any who are still up are scaling mountains of marking while necking Red Bull to keep their heavy eyes open.
“Really?”
“Really,” Ollie replies. “It’s Valentine’s Day and I’m bloody well going to have a night off from working and take my gorgeous girlfriend out for dinner.”
“Can’t wait to meet her,” I say. “Will she mind if I’m there too?”
Ollie’s answer to this is to kiss me again. “You are gorgeous, Katy, even if you make a total mess and cost us a fortune in ruined saucepans!”
And he says this with his glasses on too. How lucky am I?
I do up my coat and pull on my pink spotty wellies before Ollie can change his mind, and moments later we’re walking hand in hand through the village towards the Mermaid Inn with Sasha lolloping ahead, ears flapping and her excited barks punctuating the still evening air.
It’s a perfect Valentine’s night. The twinkly stars and smile of moon are reflected in the still water of Tregowan Harbour, while the tide beyond it laps against the harbour walls and smoke drifts softly from cottage chimneys. It’s bitterly cold and the narrow streets are deserted. With our breath rising in front of us and our faces tingling in the chilly air, we walk along the quay, past fish boxes piled like yellow Lego bricks, before turning sharp right and climbing the crooked steps that lead into the pub.
The minute the door opens the peace of the outside world evaporates because the Mermaid’s absolutely heaving. No wonder the village is empty: everyone’s in here celebrating Valentine’s Day. Red paper hearts are strung across the low beams, the menu’s offering two-for-one steak dinners with free bubbly, and over the ancient sound system Chris de Burgh is warbling about a lady in red dancing with him.
“Not in here she won’t,” Ollie says drily as we elbow our way to the bar. “There’s hardly any room to stand, never mind dance. Tell you what, why don’t you see if you can grab us a table while I order the food?”
I look around but if there’s even room to swing a gnat I can’t see it. Golly, I had no idea Tregowan was such a loved-up village. Usually on a Tuesday in February the pub’s deserted apart from a few diehard drinkers and the occasional piece of tumbleweed blowing by. Today, however, practically everyone we know is out and about. I even spot my sister and her fisherman boyfriend sitting in the window seat tucking into steaks. I’m gobsmacked, because if there was ever a prize for the world’s most unromantic couple then they’d be the winners by a mile. Holly’s true passion is applied mathematics, and the only fishnets that turn Guy on are the ones dragged behind his trawler. They’re the most unlikely couple in the world; they bicker non-stop and only see each other in passing when he’s off to the pub and she’s coming in from lecturing. Then again, maybe that’s why it works? I’m very fond of Guy but he’d drive me mad in twenty seconds flat. Saying that, I feel exactly the same way about my sister, so it’s probably a match made in heaven after all.
Mads reckons the sex must be good. (“Because, let’s face it, Katy, all he thinks about is fishing and all she talks about is numbers!”) And she could be onto something, I guess – not that I really want to think about it for too long. Besides, it’s not my sister’s relationship I’m worried about; I can’t help feeling it doesn’t bode well for me and Ollie if even Guy Tregarten can remember Valentine’s Day…
“Guy and Holly are over there,” I tell Ollie, pointing in their direction.
“Blimey,” he says, glancing across the bar. “That’s a bit out of character for Guy, isn’t it? Maybe they ran out of beer at home?”
I laugh. “That’s probably it. If they move up, then maybe we can join them? You know those two, they won’t mind if we crash their Valentine’s dinner.”
“Guy certainly won’t if we get a round or two in,” agrees Ol, “and I think I can brave an hour talking about the Common Fisheries Policy if it means we get a seat.”
“You must be hungry,” I say.
“You’d better believe it. I’ll even talk about fishing if it means I get to eat,” he tells me.
Leaving Ollie to wait in the queue, I thread my way through the press of bodies to join my sister. I wave and call out, but either Chris de Burgh is too loud or I’m so short that she can’t see my little ginger head above the crush. Being five feet three is such a curse, and in my flat wellies I don’t even have the advantage of the platform boots I usually wear to crowded places – so I give up trying to attract their attention and focus instead on not being elbowed in the head or dunked in beer.
Once I’m closer, however, I soon realise that even if I were eight feet tall, painted blue and tap-dancing naked through the Mermaid, Holly and Guy still wouldn’t notice me. Squashed up in the window seat with their knees rammed under a tiny table and their heads close together, they’re completely engrossed in one another. Guy is actually stroking Holly’s face and gazing at her with such blatant adoration that it brings a lump to my throat. And what’s this? Is he really holding her hand?
Crikey! Maybe they’re not quite as unromantic as Mads and I thought?
I’m just backing away quietly, not wanting to interrupt their Valentine’s Day, when Holly spots me.
“Katy! What on earth are you doing skulking away from us?”
“I wasn’t skulking!” I protest. “I just didn’t want to disturb you.”
“You were totally skulking, you harris,” grins Guy. “Skulk. Skulk. Skulk. That’s you, Katy Carter, although those bloody silly wellies stand out a mil
e. Nobody could miss those.”
“They’re not silly! They’re Joules.”
He shrugs. “I don’t care who you borrowed them off. They’d be no use on a wet deck in a force nine. You’d slide everywhere.”
I’m more likely to join the Mars mission than I am to go deep-sea fishing in a storm, but that won’t stop Guy from telling me what I should wear.
“Put a sock in it, Guy,” my sister orders. To me she says, “Just ignore him. You know Guy would like us all to dress in smocks and rigger boots, a bit like him, and wear oilskins in the rain.”
“Makes sense to me,” Guy says sulkily.
“Well we’re not all you, Guy Tregarten,” retorts my sister, and then they’re up and running – bickering about the right clothing to wear, whether Holly really needs more than three pairs of shoes and why Guy needs to brave a trip across the Tamar and go clothes shopping.
Time for me to escape…
“I’ll catch you guys later,” I say quickly while Holly pauses for breath and Guy’s still searching for counterarguments. “Have a lovely night!”
“Don’t go,” my sister cries. “Come and join us! It’ll be fun.”
Fun? I think I’d have a more peaceful evening hanging out with Tom and Jerry.
“Oh no, no. You two are having a romantic meal together,” I insist, poised for flight. Out of the corner of my eye I spot Ollie, armed with a tray of drinks and several packets of pork scratchings (allegedly to keep Sasha quiet, but which I know are to tide him over until our food arrives). If Guy clocks the beers, we’ll never escape. “We’ll catch you later.”
“No you bloody won’t,” says Guy, moving up and patting the space next to him. “We’ve got some bloody brilliant news and who better to celebrate with than you two?”
They have? Has Guy caught a giant fish? Or maybe Holly ‘s discovered a new magical prime number or something?
My sister’s nodding. “He’s right for once! We really do have some good news! Look!”
Slowly, she slips her left hand from Guy’s and holds it up proudly – and a big diamond on her third finger sparkles in the candlelight.
Katy Carter Keeps a Secret Page 4