Catching Katie. Sophie Weston
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into the end of the rose garden. It was a cool octagonal building, open on two sides to the scents of early summer. Haydon sank into the newly oiled canvas rocker with a sigh of relief.
Bates brought out the tray and placed it noiselessly on a pine table beside him.
‘I am sorry about this morning,’ he said. ‘Miss Lennox really convinced me that you wanted her to meet you in my place.’
‘I’m sure she did,’ Haydon said drily. ‘Don’t worry about it.’
‘Nevertheless, I was at fault. I should have checked. I will next time.’
Haydon shuddered. ‘No next time,’ he said with resolution.
He lowered one shoulder and twisted his head away from it, feeling the tension like a knotted rope down his neck. Bates would have thought it intrusive to express sympathy, but he poured a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice without being asked.
‘Shall I book you into the Glen for a few days? Tomorrow?’
When the pace of his life took too great a toll Haydon went to a Spartan health hydro. It was very popular and most patrons faced a waiting list. But Bates was quite right in believing the Glen would have made a place for Haydon at less than a day’s notice.
Haydon hesitated, tempted. But in the end he shook his head regretfully.
‘I’ve still got work to do. And I don’t want to miss the rest of Andrew’s visit. Maybe next week.’
Bates looked concerned. Haydon did not encourage fussing. On the other hand, Bates had never seen him look so exhausted. He hesitated, but in the end said, ‘You really do look very tired.’
Bates gave him the juice. He still looked worried. Haydon smiled.
‘If I can get this deal sorted out, I’ll go to San Pietro,’ he promised.
Bates knew Haydon’s Tuscan retreat. He looked relieved.
‘I should think it would be very pleasant at this time of year,’ he said sedately.
Haydon tipped his head back and closed his eyes.
‘Mmm,’ he said. ‘No phones. No women.’ He let out a long sigh.
Bates waited. Haydon neither opened his eyes nor spoke again. After a moment Bates removed the glass from his unresisting hand. He left quietly. Haydon did not stir.
The Jacuzzi, Katie found, was rather alarming. It had almost as many instructions as the burglar alarm. She read them carefully. But still, when she turned it on, the bath became a multi-jet fountain, soaking the walls and the rosecoloured carpet.
She mopped up, unpacked dry shorts and shirt, and retreated. Her hair dripped down her back in damp rats’ tails. The sun, she thought. That was what she needed. A good book and a cheese sandwich and she could stretch out in the lush garden and dry out.
But first there was something she had been putting off for a week. She braced herself.
The phone was answered on the second ring by a bark.
‘Yes?’
Her mother hated the telephone and never sounded encouraging anyway.
‘Hello, Mother. It’s Katie. I thought I’d let you know I’ve moved.’
Her mother’s voice warmed into interest. ‘You’ve left that dead-end job?’
Katie sighed. Her mother had high ideals and absolutely no practical sense. She had been furious when Katie had decided to teach instead of devoting her time to painting. ‘You will suffocate your creativity,’ her mother had said darkly. ‘Just like I did when I married your father.’
Since she had married because Katie was on the way there was not much Katie could say to that one. Her mother did not seem to understand the realities of life. She just wanted Katie to be a free spirit and go where her inspiration took her. She thought Katie’s desire to eat very poorspirited.
Now Katie said patiently, ‘No, Mother. I’m still selling my soul for a mess of pottage. But I’ve moved house. I thought you’d want my new phone number.’
‘Oh.’
Katie gave it to her. Her mother wrote it down.
‘I didn’t know you were leaving the flat.’
‘I wasn’t. There were developments.’
Her mother would not be sympathetic if she told her about the traumas of the last fortnight. She took little interest in love affairs, and none at all in other people’s traumas. She would never have let herself get caught in between two warring flatmates. Predictably she showed no interest.
‘So where are you now?’
‘I’m house-sitting. On my own, this time.’
‘Good,’ said her mother. ‘You’ll be able to get on with your painting without those silly girls wasting your time.’
‘They were my friends,’ squawked Katie in protest. Even now, her mother’s single-mindedness could shock her.
She could almost see her mother shrug. ‘Never thought about anything but clothes or boys,’ she said, dismissing them.
Since that had been exactly the cause of their acrimonious break-up, Katie could not really argue with that.
She did, however, point out, ‘That’s life, Mother.’
There was a giant snort from the other end of the telephone. ‘Not for a serious artist,’ said her mother with conviction. ‘It’s time you faced up to it and did something about your talent.’
She rang off, briskly convinced that she had done her best for her only child.
‘Thank you, Mother,’ said Katie to the buzzing line.
Telling her father the news took an even shorter time. As usual, he was not at home. As usual, the crisp message on his answering machine reduced her to monosyllables. Katie left him the bare details of her new home. Her father always seemed to reduce her to a curt little voice, she thought, despairing. Even when she wanted to sound friendly she could not.
A drip detached itself from her hair and ran down her spine.
‘Sun,’ Katie told herself aloud. She shook her shoulders, as if that would get rid of the uneasy feeling talking to her parents always gave her. ‘I have a new home and the sun is shining. All is well with the world. Believe it.’
Haydon tipped his head back and watched the sun dance off the edge of the apple blossom. When he half closed his eyes the light refracted off his eyelashes into a thousand rainbows. His body felt light. He picked up the glass and drained his juice, then heard the glass fall to the floor as his hand missed the teak table. God, I must be more tired than I realised, he thought.
That must be why those girls in their battered van had irritated him. The redhead had looked as if she’d wanted to hit him. Shame, that. She’d been quite impossible, of course, with her travelling junk shop of belongings and her nasty temper. But still there had been something about her. He could not quite remember what. But something.
Bees hummed. The sun was warm on his skin. Haydon’s eyelids drooped. He slept.
Katie took a sketchpad and her chalks onto the lawn. Any other girl would have donned a bikini and stretched out in the sun, but Katie had her own reasons for not sunbathing. She did not even possess a bikini.
Instead she folded her long legs under her and began to sketch the lavish prospect: sky-blue grape hyacinths under a fall of star flowered jasmine, golden iris, wallflowers the colour of imperial velvet and perfumed like a night in paradise; lilac. . .
Katie drew a long breath