Katy Carter Wants a Hero (19 page)

I shake my head. What is it with my family and all the hippy shit?

‘But darling,’ Jewell continues, and she sounds puzzled, ‘I can’t understand why you’ve left me three messages thanking me for paying for the private health care. I wish I’d thought of it. I’d have paid in a trice. But I didn’t, darling, so you must have a secret admirer. How thrilling! Do let me know. Much love! Lots of kisses! Talk soon!’

The answerphone clicks off, leaving me staring at it in horror. It doesn’t take a brain like Stephen Hawkings’s to work out what’s happened.

Why didn’t Ollie tell me?

And, more importantly, why did he pay?

I’m just about to trek back into the kitchen and liberate a few cans of his Fosters to help me solve this puzzle when there’s a fierce hammering at the door. Feeling like the porter in
Macbeth
, I push past the mountain bike, piles of takeaway leaflets and various other assorted hallway crap, yelling, ‘All right! All right!’ and ‘Bollocks!’ when I crack my shins on a bike pedal. Why can’t everyone just push off and leave me alone to feel sorry for myself in peace?

I yank open the door and scream in horror because a triffid almost gobbles me up.

‘Calm down, Chubster.’ James elbows past, kicking the door shut and practically burying me in lilies. Sickly yellow pollen rains down and waxy leaves bash me on the nose. ‘These are for you.’

‘Who died?’

James opens his eyes wide until he looks a bit like the Andrex puppy on a particularly sad day. With his floppy hair and pink mouth, all that’s needed to complete the picture is a bog roll.

‘They’re for you, to say I’m sorry and that I’ll die unless you forgive me and take me back. I love you and I can’t live without you.’

Have I slipped, banged my head and woken up in a parallel universe?

‘James,’ I say slowly. ‘What’s going on?’

Thrusting the lilies at me — what is it with men and flowers today? — he snatches my hands into his and pulls me against him. Even through the squished lilies and his Armani suit I can’t help but notice that compared to Ollie’s chest James’s is really puny. And his hands… have they always been this clammy?

‘Oh Chubs,’ he murmurs into the top of my head, ‘I’ve been such a fool. Can you ever forgive me? I’ve been so blind, so stupidly blind to have let you slip through my fingers.’

‘I didn’t slip through your fingers,’ I point out, nearly giving myself whiplash as I try to remove my face from the lilies. ‘You threw me out. Bin bags flying through the air? Torn-up novels? Is this ringing any bells?’

‘I was an idiot,’ he agrees, tightening his grip and nearly putting my eye out on a leaf. ‘I let my pride get in the way of our love.’

‘Oh crap.’ Twisting under his arm I make a break for freedom and pollen-free air. ‘You were shagging someone else. No, don’t deny it,’ I add seeing that he’s about to do exactly that. ‘Alice Saville, isn’t it? I saw you together at Millwards and she answered the phone at the flat.’

For the briefest second I think I see a flicker of irritation in his eyes before they glisten with tears.

‘That was a moment of madness. It meant nothing to me.’

‘It meant something to me!’ I cry. ‘I saw you with her, James! I saw you kissing her outside Millwards and it didn’t look like nothing from where I was standing. And she answered the phone. At our flat.’

James sighs. ‘I guess I have some explaining to do.’

‘I don’t think you need to
explain
anything.’

‘But I do.’ The lilies hit the floor. ‘I was angry, hurt, humiliated and Alice threw herself at me. It was a moment of madness, Chubs.’

‘Don’t call me Chubs!’ I hiss. ‘I bloody hate it. Almost as much as I hate the fact that you moved another girl into our home only days after we broke up.’

‘I was angry with you!’ cried James. ‘You ruined my promotion! You knew how much that job meant to me, Chu—er, Katy. You forced me to do it, surely you can see that?’

Is he for real, making out that I’m to blame for his crappy behaviour?

‘So it’s
my
fault you shagged her?’

‘That isn’t what I said. Just listen, will you?’ demands James, and a familiar note of annoyance creeps into his voice. ‘I’m trying to say Alice was a mistake, that the whole stupid misunderstanding between us—’

‘James, you took my engagement ring back and threw my things out of the window. What exactly did I misunderstand?’

‘I acted out of passion!’ he cries, and his face starts to go pink, always a sure sign that he’s about to lose his temper. ‘I love you, Katy, and I want you back. I want to hold you in my arms and never let go. I want your smile to be the first thing I see before I go to sleep. I… um… I want to kiss your ruby lips.’

I gawk at him. He’s either having a breakdown or a potentially lethal attack of purple prose.

‘Darling, isn’t our love worth a second chance?’ Building up to the grand finale, James steps towards me, presumably to sweep me into his arms in true romantic-hero style. I have to give it to him — he certainly knows me well enough to choose exactly the right buttons to press. He knows how I cry my eyes out over
Titanic
, has seen first hand my impressive Mills and Boon collection and on many occasions has been unlucky enough to hear me wailing my unique bathtime power ballad medley. In the past, a bunch of flowers and a few flowery phrases have been more than enough to persuade me to overlook any tosser-like behaviour, so with the monster lilies and rehashed song lyrics he can be forgiven for believing that I’ll fall gratefully into his arms. After all, everyone knows that Katy Carter’s a sucker for romance, right?

But something’s changed and I think it might just be me.

For almost four years I’ve put up with James drip-feeding me comments that chipped away at my confidence and made me think I really was as useless and as fat and as foolish as he said I was. When somebody is constantly saying how hopeless you are, even if they say it with a smile and a ruffle of your curls, it isn’t long before you start to believe them.

But what if he was wrong? And always has been? What if I’m not quite as useless as he thinks I am? I hold down a demanding job. I pay my bills — most of the time. I can even cope with thinking I have cancer.

Maybe I’m not a useless little Chubster after all?

‘James, don’t!’ I raise my hands to ward him off. Suddenly, after weeks of longing for him to realise he’s made a huge mistake and that I’m the love of his life after all, I find this isn’t what I want.

Isn’t life a bitch?

‘What’s wrong?’

‘This isn’t going to work.’ I’m looking at him as though for the first time, wondering how I never noticed how thin his lips are or how his eyes are just that little bit too close together, giving him a rather mean look. ‘It’s over, James, really over.’ And as I say it, I’m amazed to find that I actually mean every word. I really and truly don’t want him back.

It’s like the past four years has been a bad dream.

‘You don’t mean that,’ James says firmly, just as he used to when I would tell him that I didn’t like oysters or that I hated opera. ‘Stop being so ridiculous and come back home, Chubs. You’ve made your point.’

I shake my head. ‘The point I’m making is that I don’t want to come home with you. It’s over, James. You were right, even though I couldn’t see it at the time. We’re better off apart. We’d be happier with other people.’

James’s high colour leaches away from his face, apart from two bright spots that glow Ronald McDonald-like on his cheekbones. He starts to breathe heavily through his nose, a sure sign he’s about to flip, and the skin around his mouth goes greeny-white.

‘You’re seeing someone else,’ he breathes. ‘Who is he?’

When I was a kid I used to love oxtail soup, guzzling it down and mopping up the meaty dregs with a hunk of bread. Then, one memorable lunchtime, shortly after learning to read, I was studying the empty tin and with dawning horror realised what I’d been eating. Ox and tail. Ox tail. Ox tails! Gross. In an instant, something I’d loved so much became totally abhorrent to me. Just thinking about it made me want to puke.

I expect you get the analogy.

Standing in Ollie’s hall, squashed against the banisters and with the handlebars of a mountain bike digging into my hip, I thank the Lord that James dumped me before I was stupid enough to marry him.

‘There’s no one,’ I say firmly, while fiddling with the lock on the door. ‘But it’s none of your business even if there was. It’s over, James.’ I push the door open. ‘I’d like you to leave. I would say let’s be friends, but I don’t think we ever really were friends to begin with. At least now I know who my friends are.’

‘Friends?’ hisses James. ‘Oh, I get it. You think you stand a chance with Ollie, don’t you? Don’t insult my intelligence,’ he adds when I protest. ‘You’ve always had a pathetic schoolgirl crush on him. And it’s hilarious, because let’s face it, what man would want you when he could have someone like Nina?’

‘You did,’ I point out.

‘Only because of—’

‘Because of what?’

‘Nothing.’ James purses his mouth up like a cat’s bum. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘Tell me,’ I demand. ‘What did I have that Nina doesn’t?’ Apart from ginger hair and a bigger bum, of course. ‘Why did
you
want me?’

He fixes me with wide blue eyes. ‘Because I love you. Nobody will ever love you the way that I love you.’

They’re the right words but somehow they sound all wonky, a bit like when Les Dawson used to play the piano slightly off key. Love isn’t the emotion I’m seeing in the tight set of his jaw or the muscle that has started to tic under his left eye. Annoyance, anger at not getting his own way, maybe, but love? Don’t think so.

I sigh. ‘Maybe you did love me once. I know I certainly loved you. But it’s over, James, because your way of loving me isn’t enough.’

‘You don’t mean that. You need me.’

I shake my head. ‘I don’t, I really don’t. It’s over, and I’d like you to leave, please.’

‘Don’t worry, I’m going,’ James says, trampling the lilies underfoot. The smell of funerals hangs heavy in the air. ‘But this is the biggest mistake of your life.’

I press myself against the flock wallpaper, stomach against my spine in my effort not to touch him, and wish that I didn’t feel so stupidly close to tears. I should know from experience how foul James can be when he doesn’t get his own way. He pauses in the doorway, presumably to make some dramatic point, but doesn’t notice that one of Ollie’s skis is listing drunkenly in the way and tumbles head over heels across the doorstep and splat into the assorted weeds and mud that masquerade as Ollie’s garden. Unfortunately I commit the cardinal sin of laughing. Not little giggles either but great big belly laughs, which compete with the jets that circle above.

‘Laugh all you want,’ shouts James, scrambling to his feet and trying to brush dirt from his rear. It looks like he’s shat himself and I laugh even harder. ‘You’ll wish you’d taken me up on my offer. I’m the best thing that ever happened to you. You’ve had your chance to do this nicely.’ He attempts to walk in a dignified manner to the garden gate, not easy when picking bits of garden out of his hair, and fixes me with an ugly look. ‘You’ll regret this.’

‘I doubt it,’ I say, and watch him march to his BMW, his back ramrod straight and fists clenched by his sides. I’m not sure what this bizarre episode is all about, but something tells me James won’t be letting it go in a hurry. With a seesawing stomach I close the door on him and turn my attention to scooping up the lilies and scrubbing pollen stains from my fingers like a modern Lady Macbeth.

As I do so, I hope that their deathly scent isn’t some kind of omen.

‘Gracious!’ exclaims Jewell, eyeing my bulging suitcases — borrowed from Ollie because by now I’m heartily sick of bin bags. ‘How long are you staying for? I’m all for us girls having our lovely things around us, but…’ she pauses when she notices that the checked hall floor is disappearing fast beneath my laptop, two winter coats and of course bloody Pinchy in his bucket, ‘isn’t this a little excessive for a weekend?’

She’s right. Elizabeth I probably took less with her when she went on progress round the land. But today I’m a woman with a mission and I’m leaving nothing to chance. My presence in Milford Road is going to be a hindrance to Ollie’s love life so I’ve figured it’s probably best I clear off to leave him and Vile Nina to it. And I know myself too well to have left stuff behind to collect later. That would be the emotional equivalent of picking at a scab.

I bend to stroke one of Jewell’s cats. ‘Actually, I was hoping to stay a bit longer than the weekend, if that’s OK with you, Auntie.’

‘Of course it is!’ Jewell nods and the green feathers on her turban bob enthusiastically. ‘I love having you youngsters to stay. We’ll have such fun being girls together. What do you call it nowadays? Sleepovers? We can paint our nails and give each other makeovers.’

Jewell wears lipstick the colour of clotted blood and draws her eyebrows on with a pencil.

‘Lovely,’ I say weakly.

‘Why don’t you pop all this lot,’ she sweeps her hand in the direction of my worldly goods, ‘up to your old room? And I’ll make us a lovely cup of tea.’

My old room is up in the attic, and by the time I’ve heaved all my stuff up there I’m sweating and possibly one dress size smaller. Gasping for air, I collapse on to my old bed and reflect sadly upon the harsh truth that I’m nearly thirty years old but right back to where I was when I was seven. It’s like I’ve been playing virtual-reality snakes and ladders and almost got to square one hundred — merchant-banker fiancé, nice flat in west London, a sort of social life — but I landed on the biggest snake and slithered right back down to square number one.

I know. I know. It’s really pathetic, but wouldn’t you be feeling just a teeny bit sorry for yourself too if you were me? And what am I going to do about Ollie and the fact that I owe him a small fortune for my medical treatment? Why didn’t I twig? He must think I’m so ungrateful.

Since that fateful evening at Milford Road, things have been decidedly awkward between Ollie and me. I thanked him for paying my medical bills, of course I did, and offered to pay it all back, but Ollie brushed me off.