Where Have All the Boys Gone? (23 page)

The streets were full of people; it was extraordinary. There were women simply everywhere; the air was heady with the scent of hairspray and fake tan. As they passed by, they raised eyebrows and shot knowing looks at Katie and Louise, as if to include them in the club.

‘This sucks!’ said Louise hotly. ‘We should get T-shirts made saying, “we were here first you rancid old slutbags”.’

‘Catchy,’ said Katie. She couldn’t believe the change in the place. Oh my God, if Harry had been selling tickets to everyone willynilly – well, they only had a week to the ball. How on earth were they ever going to sort it out?

‘Look!’ shrieked Louise. ‘They
do
have T-shirts.’

Sure enough, opposite them were two women who could have been anywhere between thirty-five and fifty, caked in make-up, favouring the bright red and pink style of Christine Hamilton. Over the top of their button-up
shirts they were both wearing T-shirts that read, ‘Going like a blue-arsed fly to the men of Fairlish’.

‘Oh Christ,’ said Louise.

Katie covered her eyes with her hand. No wonder Harry had called her; he really
had
been desperate.

They paused briefly at the door of the Mermaid.

‘Come on then,’ said Louise. ‘If they’ve turned it into a theme pub we’ll just turn tail and go home.’

It wasn’t quite that bad. In fact, as the evening light shone through into the bar, Katie realised that someone had washed the windows.

‘Hello Lachlan,’ she said.

Lachlan’s little head was popping over the bar as usual, but there was something different about him.

‘Lachlan – are you wearing a Von Dutch cap?’ asked Louise, moving forward.

The bar was absolutely spilling over with women. The men were lined up against the windows and the fireplace, with an expression of hunted animals on their faces.

‘Why, I’m sure I don’t know,’ said Lachlan. His little pink face was even pinker than usual. Two blondes of uncertain vintage were leaning against the bar, drinking the yellow wine and looking at him in an adoring way.

‘Hullo lassies.’

Louise and Katie looked around nervously. Katie in particular wasn’t exactly sure how popular she’d be with the locals, now she’d brought hermageddon down on them. After all, everything had been just fine before they’d arrived, give or take a forest or two.

Lachlan’s face, however, had broken into a large grin and he was already reaching up for the vodka bottles. As they moved forward, several of the chaps nodded at them and waved.

‘Louise!’ said a booming voice, someone leaped in front
of them from the dartboard. Katie thought it might have been Iain, and took a nervous step back, but it was just Craig the Vet.

‘Craig!’ squealed Louise. ‘What’s going on? Have you turned half the men into women as some sort of grisly experiment?’

‘No,’ said Craig. ‘They all just kind of turned up one day. It’s a bit like that movie.’

‘What…
if you build it they will come
?’ asked Katie.

‘No…
Dawn of the Dead,’
said Craig the Vet. ‘Can I buy you two a drink?’

‘Aren’t you getting me a drink?’ cooed a highly-pitched, instantly grating voice from the corner. There sat a pudgyfaced woman, whose more than ample form was poured into a milkmaid top which laced up at the bodice.

‘Um, in a minute,’ said Craig nervously.

‘Ah. The new Mrs The-Vet?’ asked Louise brightly.

‘No…no, just some woman.’

‘I’ll have a double please, Craig dear,’ yelped the newcomer.

‘Well, Craig, dear…what on earth has been happening?’ asked Louise.

Katie, having ascertained that there was no sign of Iain in the bar (almost certainly off in the sand dunes having it away with one of the new residents, she thought immediately), had relaxed a little, and was looking around with interest. Who
were
these people?

‘It was after you were on television – you were very good, by the way,’ said Craig, even though Katie knew this was clearly a lie. ‘Suddenly all the caravans over at Lochmanagruich were booked, just like that. Then they just started arriving. They’re all mad.’

‘Craig,’ said Katie. ‘You don’t have a sniff of a woman for years and years, then you turn into every other man
on the planet and insist we’re all crazy and you’d never commit to one. Next thing you’ll be saying you like curves on women, then only go out with sticks with grapefruits stapled onto their chests.’

Craig looked at her. ‘Has being famous gone to her head?’ he said to Louise. ‘I didn’t understand a word of that.’

‘She’s ranting,’ said Louise. ‘Now, tell me, how are all the animals?’

‘What,
all
of them? Well, I’ve got this crocodile with dysentery…’

Katie kept half listening in to the conversation, but wasn’t really that interested. Instead, she took a leisurely look around. There weren’t half the men she remembered from last time.

‘It’s great, you know, really,’ said Lachlan to her in a quiet voice. ‘Thanks for all the muff you’ve sent our way.’

‘Lachlan!’ said Katie.

‘Sorry, sorry. Young ladies, that’s what I mean. Young and not so young ladies of course…yes,’ he said, serving two largish women pints of cider and black.

‘But, where is…everyone?’

She meant Iain, but Lachlan didn’t know that of course.

‘Well, mostly they’re at home, up to their nuts in guts…sorry, I mean, entertaining some of our new guests. Particularly the techies. It’s been a godsend to them. Although probably a terrible drawback to medical science.’

‘I bet,’ said Katie.

Lachlan mistook her glumness for being offended. ‘I’m sorry about the way I speak…not really used to lassies, you ken what I mean?’

‘ ’Course,’ said Katie, watching him beam with pleasure as a curly-haired girl patted him on the head and declared he was just the cutest thing she’d ever seen.

‘I think I’m going to bed,’ she said to Louise. ‘I’m knackered. Plus I need to phone Mum and Clara, make sure there’s the bare minimum of psychodrama and knife-fighting going on.’

‘Sure,’ said Louise, who was looking genuinely interested in Craig’s story of a deer that had been run over, much to the obvious annoyance of the pudgy blonde in the corner.

‘So, you think post-traumatic stress disorder…how fascinating.’

Outside the pub, it was still sunny, even though it was past nine-thirty in the evening. It felt very peculiar. It wasn’t warm, but it wasn’t freezing either, and Katie pulled her cardigan around her and decided. Two women passed by, asking if she knew where there was a nightclub. She shook her head.

As if by magic, her feet took her straight down to the dockside, near Iain’s house. She wasn’t going to…she definitely wasn’t going to knock on the door or anything, or, heaven forbid, look through the windows. No. Not at all. It didn’t matter if she maybe ran into him on the street, that would be entirely normal, but she certainly wasn’t snooping. And if she saw him, it would be perfectly normal. A normal thing to do in a normal part of town.

So, given she’d planned it all out so well in her head, it was quite surprising what a terrible shock she got when Iain swung around down the stairs of the narrow little alleyway with his arm around the shoulder of a blonde.

Immediately Katie backed into the shadows, until she was actually hiding behind another house. She could feel her heart race, as if it had just had a bad shock. Oh, she had to stop being so ridiculous. What did she think, that Iain, a man with whom she had had unbelievably bad sex
once, ages ago, was going to be mooching around, dreaming only of her, calling her name at night, waiting for the moment he could saddle up his big white steed and ride off to scoop her up? Life wasn’t like that. Life wasn’t anything like that. Not in Katie’s life. In Katie’s life you couldn’t find a boyfriend, and you got mugged, and your family was completely dysfunctional and you kept losing your job. That was your life. She remembered, horribly, the last time she was upset down by the docks, and who had cheered her up, then she turned around and ran all the way back to Water Lane.

She couldn’t have wanted to face Kelpie less the next day. She felt terrible, far worse than – she tried to rationalise – their brief flingette deserved. This was pain out of proportion, and it stung, and the last thing she wanted to do now was face down some Valkyrie.

She’d have liked to have roped Louise in, but she was absolutely nowhere to be seen. Probably off fixing crows’ broken wings or something stupid like that. Well, it wasn’t like she wasn’t getting used to being on her own. The morning’s headline had been, ‘HUGE TOURIST BOOST FOR FAIRLISH MAKES GOLF COURSE UNNECESSARY’. She bet he’d had a huge boost, she thought. Probably more than one. At the same time. She shook her head to try to get rid of the mental images, and steeled herself for the pie shop.

The smell of fresh warm bread, and pies, made Katie breathe deeply in pleasure. Life couldn’t be all bad, she supposed, when you could smell good, fresh bread on a sharp summer morning. How could somebody who made such beautiful bread be evil? It wasn’t possible, surely. She pushed open the door.

The shop was full, for starters. Full of women, who
were pointing at cakes and doughnuts and Mr MacKenzie, and giggling amongst themselves. Suddenly, oddly, Katie felt very protective of
her
town, and wished they would all go away. She shook herself out of it: next, she’d be reading the
Daily Mail.

Kelpie was standing next to Mr MacKenzie, who was serving as usual; she had a face like thunder, and constantly muttered under her breath as she doled out scones and pancakes to the customers, replying with absolute scorn if anyone asked for flapjacks, foccacia or anything invented after the First World War.

‘Look at her,’ said one woman, who had harshly dyed red hair. ‘Bet she’s a bit annoyed there’s a bit of competition around now, huh?’

‘God, she’s probably been banged more times than a barn door,’ said a small woman, her voice a mixture of spitefulness and envy. Kelpie flushed to the top of her pinned-on white paper hat and slammed down the paper bag in front of them, muttering something.

‘Aww, what’s she saying?’ said the red-haired woman. ‘Do they speak English up here?’

‘Well, I’ve not come up to
talk
to the locals,’ said the short woman, to general laughter.

Katie gritted her teeth. ‘Excuse me,’ she said, making her way through the crowd. Quite a few of them recognised her and started whispering amongst themselves, a peculiar but strangely gratifying feeling, Katie found. She went right up to the front of the counter, conscious that other people would expect her to be known in the area, and thus popular.

‘Um, Kelpie. Uh, can I have a word?’

Kelpie eyed her suspiciously for a long moment. ‘Why? Hiv you got another coachload of useless fucking London tarts you need to offload on us?’

The shop went completely quiet.

‘No,’ said Katie. ‘It’s worse than that.’

It wasn’t anything to do with Katie that Kelpie put down her spatula and followed her out into the little square, where they shared two slices of raisin cake. It was because, she explained, she was about to punch several people in the mouth and she didn’t really want to lose her job in the bakery.

‘Were you really going to punch them?’ asked Katie.

‘Och aye. I’d have stuck them in the industrial oven if I could have arranged it properly.’

‘Ah,’ said Katie. She’d hoped Kelpie hating all their guts might just be a hilarious affectation, but apparently not.

‘So, what’s this money thing you mentioned, then?’

Katie explained the situation.

‘You want me and Tilda and Lorna to cook for five hundred scrawny-arsed colonial bitch bags?’

Katie nodded quietly.

‘Without poisoning them or putting anything in the stew or anything?’

‘That’s right.’

‘What about pee and spit?’

‘No! I’ll report you to the Association of Master Bakers.’

‘Master
whats
?’

‘Never mind. No spit and no pee.’

Kelpie blew air out of her mouth. ‘I just dinnae like the sound of this.’

‘Well, what about this,’ said Katie. ‘If this ball’s a success and we make enough money, we can launch a legal bid against this golf course, then the golf course will go away. If the golf course goes away, I go away. And
when I go away, all the other women go away too, because there’ll be no publicity and everyone will forget about it, and once again you will rule the town in peace.’

Kelpie’s mouth twitched. ‘I dinnae rule the town.’

‘’Course you do,’ said Katie. ‘You’re the best-looking here by far. All the men worship you.’

Kelpie tried to look bashful, but failed. ‘You’re really going to go?’

Katie thought ruefully of Iain. ‘Oh yes.’

‘OK. We’ll do it for free.’

‘So, not everything’s a disaster!’ she confided to Louise, as they met up over the traditional shepherd’s pie, now without the side helping of mortal fear and terror. ‘And Shuggie and Margaret from the posh place are coming in to oversee it!’

‘Great!’ said Louise, who seemed to have got a little colour back in her pale city cheeks. ‘It’ll be great.’ She paused for a second. ‘What about the auction?’

‘What auction?’

‘The slave auction of course. That’s all the women are talking about. You can hear them, all whispering on the street corners.’

‘Are you being a misogynist?’

‘No!’ Louise played with her peas. ‘Just feeling a bit…you know, like our thunder’s been stolen? Although I know that’s stupid.’

‘No, it’s not,’ said Katie. ‘Now we know how Kelpie felt.’

‘No, not being a paranoid psychopath, I don’t know quite how Kelpie felt.’ Louise wasn’t entirely convinced of the veracity of Kelpie’s ‘no poisoning’ pledge.

‘Anyway. What’s this auction?’

‘Well, it was mentioned in the paper.’

‘Oh. Great. So, putting two and two together, I’m guessing this is some great plot of Iain’s to bag himself some more nooky. Well, he certainly needs the practice.’

‘Don’t get old and bitter,’ said Louise. ‘You’ll get wrinkles.’

‘Hmm,’ said Katie.

‘So, yes, it’s just what you’re thinking. Various men of the town are going to dress in togas, and the women are going to bid for a date with them.’