Katy Carter Wants a Hero (4 page)

Maybe I am a bit scatty.

Or, as James puts it, disorganised.

I can’t help it, though. When I’m deep in my notebook and thinking about sexy highwaymen, there’s not a lot of room for the twenty-first century. And to be honest, when it’s a choice between a forest glade with Jake or hauling my shopping up the street, I know which I prefer.

I heave the carriers up the steps to our front door and then stand panting on the doorstep for a minute. I’m trying really hard to lose weight for the wedding, but it doesn’t seem to be happening. I partly blame the thoughtless bastard who installed a vending machine in the staff room. Honestly! After two lessons I’d kill my granny for a Kit Kat, so any hope of resisting temptation is futile.

Our flat’s on the top floor of what used to be a rather large Victorian townhouse. We’ve got lovely views over towards Ealing Common, which almost makes up for the fact that you need to climb three steep sets of stairs to get to the front door. Still, as James likes to point out to anyone who’ll listen, this flat is an investment and holds a lot of equity. James knows
loads
more than I do about finance, not hard really since you could put all I know about money on a postage stamp and still have room for
War and Peace
, and I’m sure that he’s right, just as he’s right about all the blond wood flooring and minimalist furniture. I’m sure it
does
look better than my clutter, but it’s not exactly comfortable. I once threw myself on to the futon and put my back out for two weeks, not to mention that I cracked two of the slats, which really upset James. As I lay groaning amid the wreckage, he was racing to the phone to call the Conran shop to check he’d taken out insurance. I suppose it’s nice to have a man who cares about domestic stuff, but sometimes, to be honest, it really pees me off. All this white makes me nervous; a herd of polar bears could move in and go unnoticed. I’d really like a few squidgy cushions and an Indian throw just to add a spot of colour to the place. But like James says, I’m not a student any more and it is time I developed some adult tastes.

Guess I hang out with teenagers too much.

‘I’m home!’ I call, as I drag my shopping into the hall and take my coat off in record time. If I drip on the floor it ruins the wood, apparently, so I hastily kick off my shoes and put them in the rack.

I can’t hear any noise from the lounge, which suggests that James is probably working away somewhere plugged into his headphones. With a sigh I lug the shopping into the kitchen, where I switch on the shiny chrome kettle and reach for the biscuit tin. I could murder a HobNob! Bugger the wedding-dress diet! I have thought about dieting. I have!

And it’s the thought that counts, isn’t it?

Munching contentedly, trailing crumbs all over the floor, I start to unpack the shopping, marvelling at the amount Ollie’s managed to persuade me to buy. There are ingredients here I haven’t even heard of. What on earth is a vanilla pod used for? I rattle the packet just in case the answer flies out, but instead end up tipping the whole lot everywhere. Great. I’ve only been back ten minutes and already I’m wrecking the joint. There’s something about this kitchen and me that means that whenever I enter it I end up creating the kind of mess that’s more in keeping with a big-budget disaster movie. My sticky little paws make prints all over the chrome cooker, the funky steel bin vomits forth all the detritus from my culinary attempts and my feet virtually suction themselves to the floor.

The sad truth is this kitchen is too good for me, and I have a horrible feeling it could be a metaphor for my life with James, the hero who’s too good for the heroine. Mills and Boon never mentioned that bit, did they?

But it’s Friday night, the end of another busy teenager-riddled week, and I’m not going to let myself start to dwell on the uncomfortable thoughts that sometimes beat like dark moths around the edges of my mind. I brush them away. It’s the wedding stress that sometimes gets to me, that’s all. And I know a great cure for stress! It lives in the door of our Smeg and goes by the name of… alcohol!

I grab a glass and uncork the bottle. The cool pale gold liquid glugs cheerfully into the glass and even more cheerfully down my throat; just what I needed after Sainsbury’s on a Friday night. I never knew people could get so frantic about their food shopping. Somebody should tell all those women rushing around like demented Formula One wannabes that Domino’s do a mean takeout!

At the thought of a Meat Feast with extra cheese, my stomach does an impression of Vesuvius erupting. Perhaps I’ll order one. I know I’m not meant to be eating crap, but surely one pizza won’t hurt? And maybe some garlic bread as well. I’ll do some extra sit-ups to make up.

Extra sit-ups? Who am I kidding? I’ll do
some
sit-ups.

En route to retrieve the number, I happen to pass the biscuit tin, which I take as a sign from God to help myself to a couple more. Once I’ve ordered us a pizza, I’ll get on with unpacking the shopping, and I’ll even sweep the floor. That’s got to be a workout in itself.

Perhaps I’ll even have
cheesy
garlic bread.

But you know what they say about the best-laid plans and all that. Just as my eager little fingers are poised over the phone, ready to dial, the kitchen door flies open and in sweeps my future mother-in-law.

Picture Cruella De Vil’s meaner older sister and you’ve got a pretty good picture of Cordelia St Ellis. Groomed and plucked and waxed and suctioned to within an inch of her life, she looks pretty much like a desiccated skeleton, albeit one dressed in Joseph and with Chanel-tipped talons. It costs a lot of money, apparently, to look this well preserved, so Mrs St Ellis is lucky her son still has a well-paid job. Cordelia doesn’t work. Blimey! There’s no way she could fit in earning a decent crust. Keeping her ageing body embalmed is a full-time occupation.

Either that or she has a pact with Satan.

As I guiltily try and swallow my biscuit, Cordelia pauses elegantly in the doorway and regards me in the same way you might regard a lump of gum that’s stuck to your foot. Her eyes are flinty grey and her mouth is pursed like a cat’s bum. I’m in the bad books.

Again.

She didn’t like me when I was seven, and time hasn’t altered her opinion.

‘What do you think you’re doing?’ she hisses, sounding as horrified as if she’d caught me torturing babies. In fact I’m pretty sure she’d rather I was torturing babies, instead of stuffing my face with calories. It would be a minor crime in comparison.

‘I’m just having a snack,’ I try to say, but sound instead like I’m speaking Klingon and spray the pristine marble work surfaces with regurgitated HobNob. ‘Just the one biscuit.’

‘Are you deliberately trying to sabotage my son’s wedding? ’ she demands, hands on hips so bony they could grate rock. ‘Do you want to be even fatter than you are already? Well? Do you?’

It’s a tough question, because I really want those biscuits. Funny how I never used to think I was overweight till I met James. A little cuddly in places, and I have boobs for sure, but fat? Still, Mrs St Ellis, professional body fascist, has seriously disabused me of any misconception that I might be acceptable.

‘But I’m starving!’

‘You are not.’ Cordelia tips the contents of the biscuit tin into the bin. ‘Children in Africa are starving. You are merely greedy. If you want to eat between meals then have an apple.’

Is she mad? Who eats apples rather than chocolate biscuits?

‘If you carry on eating at this rate, we’ll never get you into that size eight Vera Wang.’

Quite frankly I have more chance of flying to Mars than I have of fitting into a size eight wedding dress. I’m size twelve on a good day, breathing in and wearing granny knickers.

‘Er, Cordelia,’ I venture, ‘I’m not entirely sure about that dress. I’ve seen one in Debenhams I really like—’

‘Debenhams!’ echoes Cordelia, as horrified as though I’d said I wanted to get married stark naked and with tassels on my nipples. ‘Debenhams! Are you insane? A high-street store?’

To be honest, until I met Cordelia St Ellis, I was under the impression that high-street stores were
exactly
where most people bought their clothes. She’s never had to eke out a teacher’s salary, though, and if it’s not Harvey Nicks or Harrods then she won’t give it house room.

She must be gutted to be gaining a daughter-in-law whose idea of heaven is a trolley dash in Top Shop. If she wasn’t such an old boot I’d almost feel sorry for her.

‘Yes,’ I say bravely. ‘It’s a lovely dress and only six hundred pounds.’

And it is my perfect dress. Not the elegant cream tube Cordelia’s selected and which might just about go round one of my thighs, but an off-the-shoulder romantic dream of a dress. The type of thing Millandra would wear to a ball or that Jake would lift gently from her soft skin…

Am I getting obsessed here? That’s what happens when I can’t write stuff down. In any case, I tried the dress on and it was
perfect
, skimming over any less-than-toned bits and making my boobs look like soft high peaches. The creamy satin was just the right shade for my pale skin and made my flesh look warm and tanned. In fact it’s the only dress I’ve ever worn that’s made me look good!

I tell you, I could practically have fancied myself.

I simply have to have it!

But Cordelia’s looking at me as though I’ve sprouted another head.

‘Debenhams!’ she whispers, one bony claw held theatrically to where her heart would be if she had one. ‘I take you to Vera Wang,
where Jennifer Aniston shops
, and you want to go to Debenhams?’

I’m tempted to say that if she throws in Brad Pitt I’ll go to Vera Wang with joy, but since Cordelia truly believes that James is Brad Pitt, Einstein and baby Jesus all rolled into one, I keep my mouth shut.

‘What’s wrong with you?’ asks Cordelia, slumped now against our electric Aga. ‘Are you trying to ruin the wedding?’

‘Of course not!’ I say, although actually wanting to take her Vera Wang brochure and shove it up her backside. ‘It’s just that I tried on this other dress yesterday and it looked much better. My friend said I looked lovely.’

Probably best not to tell her that the friend in question was Ollie and that the expression he used wasn’t ‘lovely’ but ‘totally shagadelic’. Which, thinking about it, is probably one of the nicest things anyone’s ever said to me.

Cordelia looks extremely doubtful. But then she hasn’t seen me trying to squeeze into the size eight sample of the designer silk sheath she’s set her heart on. I looked like a snake shedding its skin in reverse.

‘And,’ I continue, ‘I can have it practically off the peg! All they need to do is shorten it a little.’

‘Off the peg?’ shudders Cordelia. ‘I think not. There’s not going to be anything cheap and tacky about this wedding. If James insists on…’ she pauses and the words
marrying you
hang almost visibly in the air like something out of
Harry Potter
, ‘having this wedding, then I shall do my utmost to make it perfect for him. And if that means a designer gown for his fiancée then so be it.’

It’s lucky for Cordelia that I’ve been doing anger management strategies with my tutor group this week, because otherwise she’d be wearing the frying pan. And since it’s a Le Creuset and requires two men to lift it, I don’t think she’d have been a pretty sight. But as she’s going to be my mother-in-law I take a deep breath and count to ten while she continues to huff and puff about my (many) flaws, the main one apparently my being related to my eccentric parents, which seems a tad unfair since I’m hardly wild about this myself. When she finally stops recalling the episode in 1989 when Dad passed out on her doorstep — he’d been a bit confused about where Jewell lived — I seize my chance to speak. After all, who knows when she’ll next let me get a word in?

‘I really like that dress,’ I say, through gritted teeth. ‘My dad says he’ll buy it for me too, so you needn’t worry about paying. I was going to go back and put a deposit down.’

‘There’s no need for that,’ Cordelia says hastily, no doubt picturing me in some hippy number drifting up the aisle in a cloud of cannabis smoke. ‘I’m more than happy to buy my son’s fiancée a wedding dress. Now tell me, how did today’s fitting go?’

Have you ever had that horrible feeling when your blood goes all icy cold and seems to drain out of your body, leaving your legs all rubbery and your fingers numb with terror? Well that’s how I feel right now.

The fitting.

Oh shit.

I forgot the fitting.

My mouth opens but for once I can’t find any words. What can I say? That while I was supposed to be being pinned and prodded and peered at in one of London’s most exclusive boutiques, I was actually out on the piss with my friend? That while I was meant to be choosing colours and silk slippers I was hooning around Sainsbury’s having trolley races with Ollie?

‘Um,’ I squeak, HobNobs and wine curdling nastily in my stomach, ‘I didn’t make it to the fitting. Sorry.’

‘Didn’t make it to the fitting!’ shrieks Cordelia, sounding just like Lady Bracknell discussing handbags. ‘What do you mean?’

‘That I didn’t get there?’

At this you’d have thought I’d shot her. Cordelia’s cheeks drain of colour and she practically staggers to the door.

‘Have you any idea what you’ve done? I’ve had to pull strings to get them to fit you. I’ve had to use my own good name and pay over the odds. That dress was going to be for a supermodel!’

Well, no wonder it didn’t fit me then. The only thing that I have in common with Kate Moss is that we both breathe.

‘I’m really sorry,’ I say.

‘Sorry! I don’t care about sorry, you stupid, ungrateful girl!’ Cordelia’s shrieking is now on a par with the noise a 747 makes on take-off. I hear a door open and footsteps echoing on the wooden floor. Fan-bloody-tastic. Here comes James, who’ll be less than delighted that his preparation for the partnership interview has been interrupted. Once he appears, Cordelia will be all sweetness and light and I couldn’t look more like the villain of the piece if I was wearing a black cape and twirling my moustache. How she manages to pull this off I’ll never know; it must be some kind of twisted talent.