‘Hey, where are you going?’ He moved forward as if he were about to jog after her.
Kara laughed and waved. ‘Back to my wedding party.’ She hoped he got the emphasis on my. The girls were probably scouring the dance floor for her by now. Being tipsy and high on the aftermath of awesome sex meant she could just about tolerate the thought of being found. As far as celebrations went, this one sucked, and sucked in a truly pointless, ridiculous way. It wasn’t a hen night, a point on which she’d had to correct several people. It was the fill-in party for what ought to have been her wedding night and an orgy load of sex in a hotel room before jetting off to Hawaii. Only Gavin David ‘Tosspot’ Covey had gone and ruined that by being a clingy control freak who insisted on knowing her whereabouts 24/7. More importantly, instead of apologising when she’d called the wedding off, he’d gawped at her in horror over the deposits they’d lose. No way was she signing up for a lifetime with him. She hoped the plane carrying him and Gemma – you are so not my best friend considering how fast you jumped in to console him – over the Atlantic was hit by lightning and dropped out of the sky. It seemed appropriate punishment somehow, except that she didn’t want to hurt anyone else on board so maybe they’d have to accidentally fall out of an open door or something.
Damn! And now her good mood was gone. Time to reinstate it with alcohol. A lone tear trickled down her face as she slipped back into the nightclub via the fire exit. At least she’d just had the most glorious sex she’d had in months, far better than that painting-by-numbers crap she’d been enduring with Gavin.
‘Hey, Kara, there you are.’ Her sister clamped a hand tight around her arm. ‘You’ve about thirty drinks lined up.’
She hoped that was Karen’s usual exaggeration.
‘Come and play catch up.’
* * *
Kara woke disoriented in an unfamiliar room. Sunlight so bright she could barely open her eyes flooded in through sheet-glass walls that surrounded her on three sides. Where the hell? For a horrible moment she feared she’d taken up some fool on his offer and ended up in his bed. Only there didn’t appear to be anyone beside her. Kara shook her head to try and dislodge the grogginess. Slowly her vision corrected. Karen’s place – she was in her sister’s conservatory, huddled beneath a throw on the garden swing they’d brought inside for the winter. No wonder nausea bubbled in her stomach like she’d swallowed poison. She’d been swinging in a hammock all night, and she was always travel sick.
The wail of her phone that had woken her compounded the ache in her head. Kara flailed around and eventually wrestled it out from the pile of discarded clothes she must have torn off in the dark. Not Gavin, she prayed, as she unlocked the phone screen. She never wanted to speak to him again. She’d already deleted his number but that was no guarantee that he’d done the same.
Christopher, the caller ID flashed up. ‘What do you want, baby brother?’ she croaked. Her throat was drier than a carton of crispy fried squid.
‘Oh good, you are still alive.’
Kara resisted the urge to tell him to fuck the hell off and opted instead to swallow the water she’d had foresight enough to bring to bed with her last night, but not wits enough left at the time to drink. Didn’t he realise she was off limits today, pre-booked for wallowing in a post-my-wedding-didn’t-happen party haze?
‘I heard a rumour that you and Karen crawled in around dawn.’
Fell, was more accurate. They’d only crawled after they tripped over the doormat. Thinking of which, boy, did her knees ache. Karen really needed to get a rug to put over those tiles. ‘What did you want?’ While it was entirely possible he’d called merely to be vindictive, even that couldn’t explain the hint of excitement in her brother’s voice.
‘I got the job.’ He gave a pause so she could make appropriate noises. ‘I’m off to New Zealand for twenty-six weeks to work on that sci-fi flick I’ve been talking about. Plus, I’m focus puller not clapper loader.’
Kara pulled a cushion over her head and settled down again. The pillow smelled faintly musty, like a caravan that had been locked up for too long. However, it did allow her to open her eyes without being dazzled. The conservatory had already reached temperate and was headed for blistering within another forty minutes or so. ‘Does that mean you get to operate the camera rather than just load the film?’ she asked. Chris had explained the various camera-related roles dozens of times, but she’d never yet assimilated the facts beyond something to do with angles, trajectories and making the images crisper. ‘That’s wonderful! Great news.’ Faking exuberance only compounded her headache. ‘Couldn’t you have waited until this evening to tell me?’
‘Oh, are you hung over?’ he crowed. ‘And no, it couldn’t wait.’ The line crackled and she guessed he was in the car on loudspeaker. ‘I’ve a flight to catch. I’m on my way to the airport now, and you haven’t heard the best bit yet.’
An enormous yawn stretched Kara’s jaw as she closed her eyes and tried to relax her brain while she waited to make appropriate ‘wow’ noises over whichever major star he was going to be working with. Unless he was about to offer her a job as chief pamperer to Johnny Depp and throw in a ticket to New Zealand, this absolutely could have waited.
‘You know that place I was looking at,’ Christopher said instead, which surprised her into jolting upright, and caused the swing to start rocking. Kara bounced against the cushions and dry heaved.
‘I didn’t get it, but it’s OK, because I found somewhere else that’s twice as good.’
‘That’s great,’ she said. Somehow she managed to disentangle one foot from the throw and place it on the floor, thus bringing the swing to a tremulous halt. ‘So, you’ve bought a house but you’re flying to New Zealand.’ Hopeless timing was obviously a genetically wired family trait.
‘It’s a barn rather than a house, and it’s on an island.’
‘You mean like Lindisfarne or the Isle of Wight?’
‘Nah, smaller. More like St Michael’s Mount only with fewer tourists. It’s called Liddell Island. It’s less than a mile across.’
‘Where’s that?’
‘It’s just off the coast.’
Well, duh, she’d figured that. Where else was it going to be? She couldn’t see him moving to the Norfolk Broads.
‘Listen, K. I’ve got all the paperwork done. I just need you to pick up the keys for me. You’ll do that, right? You don’t mind.’
Of course she did. She’d rather not get out of bed today. Although, considering how much said bed kept moving, rising might not be such a bad plan. ‘Yes, I’ll do it. Just tell me where.’ She gave a sigh.
‘Thanks, Kara. Look, it needs a bit of work. I figured you could hang out there and fix it up while I’m away.’
She ought to have known there’d be more to this than just collecting some keys. Chris had a talent for layering things. He’d get you to agree to one thing and next thing you knew you were signed up for a month of hell. She was about to turn him down when he uttered the magic words. ‘I’ll pay you.’ That put an entirely different spin on things. Decorating was hardly her favourite pastime, but … ‘It has to be better than hanging out at Karen’s or going back to mum’s, right?’ Exactly, anything, bar being locked in a room with Gavin, was better than occupying a room in the family home. And since she was homeless – having sold her place to live with Gavin – and jobless – plain old economic downturn – this was likely the best offer coming her way.
‘All