The Real Katie Lavender
To Edward and Samuel for continuing to keep me on my toes.
ContentsAcknowledgements
I’m grateful to a number of lovely people who helped me with various aspects of this novel and as ever I’m responsible for anything I may have twisted to suit my purposes.
Thank you to Samuel and Rebecca for their Brighton insight.
Thank you to my ‘fraud expert’ who wants to remain anonymous on the grounds that it might not look good for him to be so clued up on such things!
Lastly, posthumous thanks to Michael Jones for sharing with such enthusiasm his beloved Henley-on-Thames with me, as well as introducing me to Tony and Gloria and their stunning garden. Henley won’t be the same without him.
At the age of thirty, Katie Lavender believed she was better equipped than most when it came to receiving bad news. She had coped with the death of her mother a year ago, and with her father’s death three years before that, and as a result she was convinced there was little anyone could do or say that could shock her.
Which was why, when she was summoned that hot June Friday morning to the executive producer’s office and offered a redundancy package of derisible generosity, and politely informed that there would be no need for her to show up for work next week, she had merely nodded her consent and closed the door after her.
During her walk of shame back to her desk she was acutely aware that nobody in the open-plan office area was looking at her. Never had she seen such industrious activity as her colleagues studiously avoided catching her eye. For the past week Stella Media Productions had been rife with rumours that numbers would have to be cut, and it looked like Katie had been the first to be given the chop. Look on the bright side, she told herself; better to be a trailblazer than a mindless follower.
Her mobile was ringing when she got to her desk. ‘A job offer already,’ she said cheerfully as Daz raised his head from behind his computer and glanced over at her. He gave her a sickly half-hearted smile of what she supposed was comradely support.
The voice in her ear belonged to a man. ‘Is that Miss Lavender? Miss Katie Lavender?’
‘It is,’ she said.
‘My name is Howard Clifford, of Tyler, Robinson and Clifford. I’m sorry I wasn’t around yesterday to take your call when you telephoned, and I hope this isn’t an inappropriate moment to speak with you, but I shall be out of the office for most of next week and I didn’t want to miss you again.’
She recalled the solicitor’s letter that was in her bag and which had arrived in the post yesterday morning before she’d set off for work. The letter had puzzled her for most of the day, especially as she had never heard of Tyler, Robinson and Clifford. It had been very clear: she was to make contact with a Mr Howard Clifford at her earliest convenience so that an appointment could be made for her to visit him in his office in Fulham. ‘That’s all right,’ she said. ‘What is it you want to talk to me about?’
‘I’d rather not say on the telephone. It would be much better for you to come to my office. I don’t suppose you’re free today, are you?’
‘It’s my lunch break in an hour’s time. And since I’ve just been made redundant, I don’t see why I can’t take an extended break.’ Daz’s head bobbed up from behind his computer again, then disappeared just as quickly.
‘I’m sorry to hear that, Miss Lavender,’ Howard Clifford said. His voice sounded unexpectedly kind. Then he was all business again. ‘I’ll see you at one o’clock, then. You have the address, don’t you?’
With thunder rumbling overhead, and a strike in full swing on the underground, Katie hailed a cab on the corner of Portland Street and took out her mobile to ring her mother.
No sooner had she got the phone in her hand than she caught her breath and her heart squeezed. A year had passed and yet she could still forget that Mum was dead. That she could never talk to her again. Never again could she share a moment like this with her. She felt the hot prickle of tears at the backs of her eyes and the all too familiar panicky tightness forming in her throat, the feeling that she couldn’t breathe. She put a hand to her mouth and concentrated on breathing. Slow and steady. Slow and steady.
When she was sure she wasn’t going to cry and embarrass herself in front of the cab driver, she wondered what people would think if they knew that she still had her mother’s contact details on her phone. Would they think it was a bit weird? A bit macabre? She had thought she might remove them when the first anniversary of Mum’s death had passed – a symbolic act to prove she had moved on and was coping well – but she hadn’t been able to do it. She simply couldn’t part with that link to her mother. And the only reason she didn’t still have her father’s contact details was because she’d lost the mobile she’d had at the time and when she’d replaced it, she had forced herself not to add his name to the address book. She had felt so guilty doing that.
She took a long and steady breath and phoned her closest friend, Tess.
‘
Redundant!
’ Tess shrieked down the line. ‘That’s outrageous! How dare they? How bloody dare they? What did Ian say?’
‘I haven’t spoken to him yet. You’re the first I’ve told.’
The fact that she hadn’t told Ian before Tess spoke volumes, but if her friend was thinking what Katie suspected she was thinking, she had the decency not to say anything. Just lately Tess had made a couple of comments about Ian that suggested she thought he wasn’t right for Katie – the remarks had coincided with Katie thinking much the same.
‘Do you want to meet for lunch?’ Tess asked.
‘I can’t, I’m on my way to meet a solicitor.’
‘What for? You’re not thinking of suing for wrongful redundancy or something, are you?’
Katie explained about the letter.
‘How mysterious,’ Tess said. ‘You don’t suppose it’s some unfinished business with your mum’s will, do you?’
‘I wouldn’t have thought so. Mum’s solicitor was the same as Dad’s in Guildford, and anyway everything was sorted out some months ago.’
‘Well, call me later and tell me all. And don’t worry about getting another job; with your experience you’ll soon be fixed up.’
Katie ended the call and stared out of the side window of the cab. Would she be fixed up soon? As grateful as she was for her friend’s optimism, she knew the job market wasn’t exactly overflowing with opportunities for people like her right now.
She had been at Stella Media for two and a half years. Following several years of gofer-style jobs, she had joined the company as a production secretary and climbed the media ladder all the way to the dizzy heights of production coordinator. Her days mostly revolved around reminding everybody else what, when and how they should be doing something. It was difficult to pinpoint precisely where it had all gone wrong, but gone wrong it had.
When she had been at school, she had dreamt of being a human-rights lawyer. She had imagined herself defending the weak and the poor, of changing the world, of making a difference. Then when her A levels hadn’t panned out as well as she’d needed to study law, she had hit upon the idea of changing the world through the medium of television; she would change the way people thought and behaved by becoming an award-winning documentary-maker. She would be involved in groundbreaking projects that were dark and gritty and life-affirming and full of integrity. With a degree in media studies, she embarked upon her crusade with all the zeal of a newly converted missionary, only eventually to wind up working for a production company that churned out television programmes that pulled in good ratings but totally shamed her. As popular as some of the programmes had been, they were hardly the award-winning programmes she wanted to be associated with. Stella Media’s big success stories were
My Ugly Best Friend
and
My Fat Best Friend
– the premise being that so-called best friends nominated those closest to them to undergo drastic cosmetic surgery or to be starved within an inch of their miserable lives.
Too Big for Your Boots
had also done relatively good business – a quiz show that revolved around participants being humiliated and cut down to size with cruel glee. It was essentially car-crash telly with everyone on a journey or living the dream. One more bloody journey, one more bloody dream and Katie would take a stick to the lot of them.
Things had not turned out the way she had planned, she thought tiredly as she stared through the window at the gloomy, thundery sky. Especially now she had been made redundant. Apparently Stella Media, with the well of creative ideas having run dry, would somehow manage without a production coordinator for the foreseeable future. Frankly Katie wouldn’t trust any of them to blink without a reminder in their diaries.
She could probably get temporary work as a production assistant as a short-term measure, but she wasn’t so sure she could bring herself to do it, because now that she had allowed herself to think the unthinkable, she realized she was bored with wiping programme-makers’ bottoms. Where was the sense of fulfilment and satisfaction in that?