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‘Fifty to a hundred times?’
‘So he hasn’t called, why?’
‘Because you have a bad personality?’
‘I scarcely think so.’
‘Because you’re frightening?’
‘It’s 2005. ALL women are frightening.’
She examined her blood-red talon nails carefully. ‘Do you think these nails are a bit much?’
‘Do you gorge nightly on human blood?’
‘Look at me. I’m a size six. I gorge on NOTHING.’
‘Well, we’re back to the whole personality thing…’
‘Olivia wants you,’ said Miko, curtly.
‘How are you? Keeping well I hope? What did you have for breakfast this morning?’
Oh no, Olivia was in ‘I’m your boss now’ mode.
Katie had eaten the last four chocolate digestives in the flat. ‘Two bananas and a fruit smoothie,’ she said.
Olivia’s brow furrowed, but not very much. It looked suspiciously taut. ‘Smoothie? You know there’s dairy in smoothies.’
‘A whole dairy?’ asked Katie.
‘Well, we can’t be too careful. NOW.’ She placed her arms on her desk in what was meant to be body-language-speak for ‘Look at my wide stance! How approachable I am!’ This wasn’t good at all. ‘Now, you won’t believe this…it’s just the funniest thing.’
Katie’s ears pricked up. Was this going to be one of those kind of nettle-drinking sample things she got in her office that she was always stuffing down unsuspecting juniors, to check their vomiting reflexes?
‘Yes?’
Olivia’s office was full of crystals that made annoying tinkly noises whenever anyone moved even a finger, and scattered various colours in different parts of the room. Years after everyone else had moved on from Feng Shui, Olivia was still clinging on to it with the tips of her fingers.
‘We have,’ she said, opening her eyes very wide in the manner of a nursery teacher, ‘a new client!’
‘Great,’ said Katie. ‘Well done.’ She hoped it was shampoo. Her hair had been all tired and gritty recently – not entirely unlike her mood. Plus, she’d plucked a grey one out in the mirror.
‘And it’s in a completely different field to our usual one!’
Now she had her attention. Ooh, maybe it was celebrities? She saw herself suddenly being one of those barky dog PRs who sit in rooms with celebrities and growl when cheeky journalists bring up their drugs hell/adultery.
‘Yeah?’
‘Yes. this is really going to put the LiWebber name on the map. It ticks all our boxes, does our bit for the environment, fills our charity requirements…oh, it’s perfect really. Of course, you know I’ve always been very in tune with the environment…I’m not surprised they came to us really…’
‘What is it, Olivia?’
Olivia spread out her hands in excitement. ‘The Fairlish Forestry Commission! The one you saw in the paper!’
Katie took a step back, felt a chair behind her legs and collapsed onto it.
‘…and, well, apparently, would you believe this, they couldn’t find anyone to take on the job. So they called us.’
Katie looked up. Hang on. She would have taken the job. Well, possibly. That wasn’t the point. The point was, that bloody Harry whatever his name was hadn’t ‘offered’ her the job. That was the point. But she’d given him her card…and now presumably he was calling to see who else was available. But if she told Olivia she’d already been up for the job without telling her, Olivia would mince her innards. Crap!
‘And, well, I spoke to Miko and she agreed with me that, well, you do seem to have been a little under the weather recently, with Louise and the mugging and everything.’
Under the weather? The weather has been FARTING on me, thought Katie savagely to herself.
‘So we thought, maybe a bit of fresh air…change of scenery for a few months…go up there and sort them out…gorgeous scenery I’ve heard…take a few photos…get our charity bit in the annual report by next year and Bob’s your uncle. What do you say? Fantastic, eh?’
‘Well, I’m not sure the outdoors is quite…I mean, my hayfever gets quite bad.’
Olivia looked up, her face instantly less beatific. ‘When I said “fantastic”, Katherine, you understand I meant “pack”.’
God, Katie hated ‘boss mode’.
Chapter Four (#ulink_2f9b8edb-e246-5a79-a483-cff29d998840)
‘You can’t leave me too,’ said Louise, clinging to the toaster as if it were a life preserver (which, given her lack of cooking skills these days – all built up to cater for Max, all immediately abandoned – it was).
‘Yes, that’s what I’m doing,’ said Katie. ‘I’ve been planning this all along. Put the toaster down, I’m running a bath and no longer trust you.’
‘Oh God,’ said Louise, in a tone of voice that Katie recognised was gearing up to start on about the future course of her life, involving loneliness, misery, telly and gradually slipping into obesity brought on by sadness inspired TUC-biscuit blowouts. Louise put on a good face in public, but once they were back in the flat it was a different story.
‘I’m having a bath,’ said Katie heavily. ‘I have a premonition it’s going to be my last one for six months that isn’t shared with goats or something.’
‘Do you want to go?’
‘Durr! No. It was just a stupid whim at the time. Which has come right around to bite me in the arse, because now, do I have a choice? No. Is everything going great guns for me here? Not, as it happens, necessarily.’
‘Things aren’t going that well for me either,’ said Louise, sticking her finger in the Philadelphia.
‘Really? I hadn’t noticed.’
‘Where is this place?’
‘It’s on a higher latitude than Moscow.’
‘Is it pretty?’
‘If you like that kind of thing.’
‘What kind of thing?’
‘Lambs. Fresh air. Stink. That kind of thing.’
‘What kind of stink?’
‘It might have been the fresh air. Or some cow thing.’
‘Does it smell worse than the litter bins on Oxford Street on a hot day?’
‘No. It’s in Scotland, not the devil’s anus.’
‘It might be fun.’
‘I’ve been there. It is not fun. It has no cable, no Joseph, no proper coffee, and everyone up there is horrible. I know I moan about the shallowness of London life, but I’ve kind of got used to these staples.’
‘How many people did you meet?’
‘Only one. But there’s only about twelve people there anyway, so it’s a reasonable statistical sample.’
Louise stirred her coffee thoughtfully. ‘When do you have to leave?’
‘Two weeks on Monday. I don’t know if I’ll have time to knit all the waterproofs I’ll have to take.’
‘What’s the job involve?’
‘Trees. Looking after trees. Apparently trees need a PR.’
‘I thought they had Sting.’
‘He’s on tour. Anyway, he only cares about foreign trees.’
‘That’s bigo-tree.’
Katie looked at Louise. ‘That’s the first joke you’ve made in about three months.’
‘That waiter was a joke.’
‘You know, I wonder if you might just be recovering.’
‘Huh. You know, I think it might be really interesting. It’d be great to get out of this cesspit for a while,’ Louise said wistfully.
Katie suddenly had a great idea. ‘Do you know how long it takes to drive up there?’
Louise shook her head.
‘Me neither. Wanna come?’
Packing for three months in March was absolutely not easy. In London, the daffs were out in the public squares, and you could make it on a sunny afternoon with just a cardie. But according to www.middleofnowhere-weather.com, Fairlish still had six inches of snow and a wind-chill factor of minus ten.
Olivia was very grumpy that Louise was going too. She had found it very easy to get leave from her employers, who were still trying to work out if her behaviour at the Christmas party constituted sexual harassment.
‘I can’t believe you’re leaving me alone here, desperately trying to ferret out the last good-looking, rich, kind, straight man in London,’ Olivia wailed.
‘You sent me on this stupid assignment!’ said Katie.
‘Yeah, but I didn’t want you both to go.’
‘I’ll be back in a couple of days!’ said Louise indignantly.
‘But you’re either a biscuit-strewn crumbling mess or under a waiter. You’re no use at all!’
‘Well, that’s nice.’
‘I’m just saying,’ replied Olivia gruffly, ‘good luck – I’ll miss you.’
‘Well, I’ll miss you too,’ said Katie. ‘Along with electric lighting, central heating, comprehensible English, Belgo, sushi, mojitos, movie theatres, wine bars, radio, fajitas…’
‘I’ll get the drinks in,’ interrupted Olivia.
Katie’s Fiat Punto fought a brave fight, but it still took them twelve full hours, much circling around and two full bouts of crying (one and a half Louise’s, one half Katie’s, who felt that red eyes and a crack in the voice wasn’t quite as bad as Louise’s full-on tantrum on the subject of unmarked B roads, leading to an extremely long diatribe on Max’s inability to find his way anywhere which meant he was probably lost in the foothills of the Himalayas, which, Katie had thought, was exactly where she’d like to be right now, a thought she committed the profound error of voicing) to finally limp into Fairlish late that evening.
To Katie’s horror, the Forestry Commission had politely turned down Olivia’s offer to organise their accommodation and said they’d sort something out. Which in practice meant that rather than automatically booking the nicest hotel in the area and billing it to the client, Katie was somewhat at the mercy of…well, the fax she was clasping in her hand. It didn’t say anything along the lines of ‘Gleneagles’. It didn’t say anything along the lines of ‘hotel’. It said, ‘4 Water Lane. Do not arrive after 8 p.m.’.
It was 11.30 p.m. The last time they’d got out of the car, near Killiemuir, it had been so cold, Louise’s sobs had frozen in her throat. It had hurt to breathe.
The darkness was almost complete. Louise was looking out of the window, failing to spot a single road sign, whining, ‘I can’t see a thing.’
Katie was trying her best to be patient, but it was like travelling all day with a six-year-old.
‘Well, look harder. I’m just concentrating on trying not to run over any more squirrels or rats or badgers or hedgehogs or deer, OK?’
‘No need to get snitty,’ said Louise. ‘It’s not my fault you forgot to pack the night-vision goggles.’
Without warning, the Fiat dropped into a huge puddle of freezing water. The girls both screamed. Katie somehow managed to push the car on through before it stalled, and they came to a shuddering halt. They looked at each other, neither wanting to get out in the cold.
‘Where’s the torch?’ asked Louise, finally.
Katie looked at her soaking wet feet. ‘Um, I didn’t bring one.’
‘What did your dad say about driving at night without a torch?’
‘I don’t have a dad.’
‘Oh, yes, bring that up now we’re trapped in a flood in the middle of nowhere.’
Gingerly, Katie opened the door. There was definitely water running under their feet. ‘Bollocks,’ she said.
Louise gasped sharply.
