Katy Carter Keeps a Secret

by Ruth Saberton

  “Cupboard by the Aga,” I reply automatically.

  “Cool,” says Nicky and, helping himself to a pint glass, he proceeds to make enough for the whole village. Once he’s sitting at the table, his long skinny-jeaned legs stretched out while he dunks biscuits in his chocolate milk, he adds, “I thought you or Ollie might call school for me and tell them I’m all right? Let them know I’m living with you now? Then tell the olds too?”

  It’s just as well I’m leaning against the kitchen units at this point.

  “Err, I hate to break it to you, Nicky, but you’re not living with us. Absolutely no way. Of course I’ll phone the school and I’m sure Ollie will drive you back tomorrow, but you can’t stay here. You’ve got your A-levels coming up.”

  “Haven’t you listened to me? I can’t go back to school. They’ve kicked me out.”

  “I’m sure we can sort that,” I say. At least I bloody well hope we can, because if Ollie’s mum gets wind of this she’ll go mental. It’ll be the Home Counties’ very own version of Hiroshima. Even worse, she might turn up here, and that I could really do without. Ann Burrows is a nice lady but she’s very churchgoing and has a horror of dust and dirt. If she sees the state of our cottage, she’ll freak. For that matter, I must have a really good clean of the place before she next comes to visit.

  I smile sympathetically at Nicky. Whatever he’s done it can’t be that terrible, surely? I know he was in trouble last year for flogging cigarettes to other sixth-formers – but his head teacher had privately confided to Ollie’s father that Nicky Burrows was bound to be the first ex-pupil to make a billion. It was enterprising if not strictly moral.

  “Whatever it is, it can’t be that bad,” I say in my best form-tutor voice. “We can make it better and put it right.”

  “I don’t think we can,” sighs Nicky. “You see, Katy, the headmaster caught me and his daughter.”

  I wait for the rest of the sentence but it doesn’t come.

  “Caught you and his daughter _what?” I ask.

  Then a horrible and very heavy penny drops. Surely not that? Not sweet little Nicky who wanted to be Harry Potter when he grew up? I knew mixed schools were a bad idea. No wonder nobody can concentrate or meet their target grades. They’re all too busy thinking about sex!

  I gulp.

  “You weren’t… you weren’t… doing bad stuff?”

  Nicky gives me a pitying look. “Bad stuff? Jesus, Katy, your generation is so obsessed with sex. It’s totally boring. My English teachers talk about nothing else. Is that really all you can think about?”

  Actually at the moment it is, which reminds me – I must move the Throb notes before he sees them.

  And anyway, what does he mean my generation? We’re in the same one.

  Aren’t we?

  “FYI I wasn’t shagging Cassie, although she’s well fit and I so would if she asked,” Nicky continues, locating the Nutella now and scooping it out with his forefinger. “No, her dad caught us sneaking out to a meeting of the Socialist Workers Party and we’ve all been told that’s banned. Christ, I think he’d far rather we were shagging than I might have turned his daughter into a—” Nicky makes speech marks with his chocolatey fingers, “commie-loving tree-hugger.”

  I’m outraged. “He can’t kick you out for having a political conscience and an independent mind. That’s the whole point of education!”

  “You know it isn’t. The point of the current education system is to pass exams,” he reminds me as he lets Sasha lick his fingers clean. “Anyway, he can kick me out for hijacking the PA system and calling him a fascist in front of all the parents on speech day.”

  I stare at him, half impressed and half horrified. “You didn’t?”

  “I did,” says Nicky. “So you and Ollie have to take me in. I’m being politically persecuted at Adolf Hitler High and I’m officially an oppressed mass. In fact, we should probably contact Amnesty and get them on the case.”

  I can honestly say I’ve never met an oppressed mass before. I must admit I would have thought there’d be more of them than just one gangly sixth-former eating his way through my kitchen cupboards.

  Nicky, sensing his advantage, presses it home. “So I thought I could live with you guys and transfer to Tregowan Comp and do my A-levels here. The olds will go for it once you and Ol have explained everything. There’s room in the cottage and I’ll even have two teachers at home to force me to study. So I’m sorted. I’ll be an A-grade student again before you know it.”

  I open my mouth to protest but I can’t think what to say. After all, he’s Ollie’s brother and Ollie loves Nicky and I love Ollie. How can I say no?

  While my head spins, Nicky makes a giant triple-decker sandwich and then collapses onto the sofa in front of Loose Women. I shut the laptop and hurriedly gather up my notes. Writing about the antics of Alexi and Lucinda and the contents of their vegetable rack seems wildly inappropriate now that I’m suddenly in loco parentis.

  For better or worse, it appears that I am now the owner of a teenager.

  Chapter 10

  There’s only one thing worse than a job interview and that’s knowing that the man you love is having one. I keep looking at the kitchen clock, thinking how right now Ollie is in the head teacher’s office looking smart and slightly uncomfortable in his best suit and having to think of all kinds of clever answers as a panel of governors fire questions at him. Which he can easily do, of course, because he’s super intelligent, has prepared very hard for today and really does know his stuff. I’ve never known him be so focused on something or pursue it so wholeheartedly. It’s actually been quite scary.

  Where is the real Ollie and what has this career-minded impostor done with him?

  I tap a few more words into my laptop, but my mind isn’t really on it. Alexi the chef and Lucinda his assistant are supposed to be serving up one of their special banquets for a rich sheikh and I ought to be getting on with things, but all I can think about is Ollie and how much he wants this Assistant Headship. He’s prepared non-stop, and last night in bed I tested him on the data he’d analysed – which to be honest wasn’t really what I’d had in mind for him after a steamy day of writing for Throb. Still, I did my very best to help. If not, I feared Carolyn Miles might be more than happy to oblige…

  I don’t think I’m being paranoid on this score. In the last week Carolyn’s called Ollie constantly and he’s been closeted away in the kitchen, surrounded by files and printed spreadsheets and having low-voiced and intense conversations with her while I work in the sitting room, guard Cecily Greville’s loot and develop RSI from minimising the screen every time Nicky saunters in.

  Lord, but teenagers have a lot of energy. He might sleep until noon most days but once he’s up Nicky’s constantly bouncing around the house like Sasha – except that he spends ages media stacking, which for the uninitiated and from what I’ve seen means watching telly, listening to his music, surfing the Internet and playing on his Xbox all at once. It’s awesome multitasking and I feel very inadequate, since I can hardly string a sentence together at the moment. My target of two thousand words a day might as well be two billion. Right now I’d be happy to write two hundred.

  To all those parents I’ve met during my teaching career – I totally take it back. Having a teenager is way, way harder than it looks. I seriously feel like my brain’s turning to cream cheese, and if Nicky plays much more Xbox then I’m sure his will too.

  To cut a long and very involved story short, it’s been agreed that Nicky can stay with us until he sits his exams in the summer. Once his parents were over the shock (more that their youngest son was left wing than that he’d been excluded), Ollie managed to convince them that the state system was more than capable of delivering A-levels and that we’d make sure Nicky attended school and studied hard.

  “I must be mad,” Ollie said to me once the decision had been made and we were now the proud owners of an A-level student. “I know this is the last thing we need r
ight now, but I couldn’t make him go back to that bloody awful prison of a school, Katy. I was so miserable there.”

  It had been on the tip of my tongue to point out that Nicky hadn’t seemed miserable in the slightest to me; in fact he’d been having a lovely old time flogging black-market goods to his peers and being a rebellious left-wing anarchist too when it suited him. But knowing how much Ollie adores his little brother I kept quiet. Besides, this was only going to be for a few months. Just how hard could it be?

  The answer is: blooming hard.

  Seriously.

  Until this past week I had no idea just how difficult parenting is. I might have spent years teaching, but having kids at home? I’m soon discovering that this is a whole new ball game. All of a sudden I totally get why Bluebell and Rafferty can tie Maddy up in knots – and even local artist Jason Howard’s exhausted resignation regarding his evil teens, Luke and Leia, makes sense now. Being on somebody’s case 24/7 is exhausting.

  If I’ve ever felt the teeniest bit broody watching cute babies in TV adverts, then the last few days have put paid to that. The reality of life with a teenager is a world away from sweet tiny tots and designer buggies. So far as I can tell, it’s all about empty milk cartons put back in the fridge and trails of dirty socks. And I’ve fallen down the loo more times than I can count because Nicky has an inability to put the seat down. Then there’s his sleeping in till noon and the constant grazing on anything remotely edible. (I had to forcibly take Sasha’s biscuits away from him.) That’s not to mention the mysterious disappearance of Ollie’s beer and the miracle of the emptying wine box…

  Ollie’s trying to work, I’m trying to write and in the middle of all this we’ve also been frantically doing our best to persuade Tregowan Comp that a late-entry sixth-former who’s been kicked out of public school is exactly what they want.

  “Sleep with the Head if you have to,” Ollie had said to me last night after the oversubscribed St Jude’s turned his brother down flat. “Do whatever you can to get Nicky a place.”

  “Don’t even joke about it,” I’d shuddered, and Ollie had raised his eyebrows.

  “Who says I’m joking? If we don’t do something soon he’ll lose the use of his legs and never get out of bed again!”

  It was a fair point.

  “Maybe’s he’s nocturnal?” I’d suggested.

  “I wish I was,” Ollie had yawned. “I’ve been up all hours trying to prepare for tomorrow.”

  I’d been about to propose an early night – Nicky having vanished out for the evening with some new-found village friends – when Carolyn had phoned and embroiled Ollie in a fascinating discussion about Ofsted reports. Knowing that this conversation could well go on for several hours, I gave up and went to pace the living room, swing my crystal and attempt to pour all my frustrations into Alexi and Lucinda. But even they weren’t in the mood, so I ended up slamming my laptop lid closed in annoyance.

  Anyway, today’s been far more successful because Nicky now has a school place and I didn’t have to use my womanly wiles either. The Head wasn’t keen at first, but I swung it by pointing out that Nicky was already an Oxbridge success, which would look good on our league tables in such data-driven times and also be a great bragging point at sixth-form recruitment evenings.

  See. I have learned something from listening in to Ollie and Carolyn’s conversations, although I’m far from thrilled with myself. It feels as though these days both my literary and my educational morals are going down the swanny.

  Anyway, Nicky’s sorted and so I’m writing in the kitchen this morning and guarding the fridge. It was a tough call between the treasure and the milk, but the milk’s won because I’m getting very tired of black coffee and empty Nutella pots. Worse, when Ollie went to make his packed lunch he discovered tooth marks in the cheese, so enough is enough. Until Nicky’s safely in school I’m a human shield between him and our groceries.

  I’ve opened the kitchen half-door and glorious golden sunshine is streaming in and dancing across the tiles. Seagulls are squabbling outside, the air’s sharp and I can hear the chugging of small fishing boats as they put out to sea for a couple of hours’ netting. Surely on a day like this everything’s going to go well? Ollie will get his job, I’ll write a brilliant chapter and life will start to look up! I might not have won the lottery last week but I’ve bought a few more tickets and I feel certain that tonight’s my night. Fate’s lucky finger is pointing at me!

  “More likely it’s giving you the bird,” Mads grins, when I voice my optimism. She’s sitting next to me at the table, nursing a cup of coffee and turning the air blue with all her ideas for today’s chapter. At this rate poor Alexi will be too exhausted to open his naughty restaurant. “The lottery’s a loser’s game, babes. Don’t be fooled.”

  I know she’s right but those big-money numbers are to me what gin was to desperate Victorians.

  “Besides, don’t forget the loot under the floor,” she continues. “As soon as we’ve got a clear evening and a crowbar we’ll pull the boards up and have a good hunt, and hopefully all your problems will be solved.”

  I open my mouth to ask whether she thinks finding the treasure will solve my Carolyn problem. But then I shut it again quickly, because I still haven’t told Mads any of this. I’m teetering on the brink of confessing my deepest fears when Frankie arrives with Gabriel in tow. They’re both brimming over with excitement because they’re off to New York while Gabe stars on Broadway, and they’ll be renting an apartment on Central Park.

  “I’m going to do some recording too,” Frankie announces, in between a flurry of air kisses (me and Mads) and enthusiastic patting (Sasha). Meanwhile Gabriel, who’s so ridiculously good-looking it almost hurts to look at him, checks out his hair in the microwave window.

  “Brilliant news,” says Maddy, giving Frankie a hug. “Your solo album will be amazing.”

  “It probably won’t be, but hopefully everyone will buy it anyway,” Frankie grins. “And then I’ll get billions of downloads, be number one all over the world and One Direction can kiss my arse!”

  “In your dreams, darling,” says Gabriel, and then they squabble happily for a bit over who gets Harry Styles and who can have Bieber as a consolation prize, while Mads and I roll our eyes indulgently.

  “Frankie’s been quite low since the Queens have been on a break. This is going to be wonderful for him,” Gabriel says eventually, squeezing his husband’s hand. “A change of scene and some quality shopping is just what he needs. New York’s got it all.”

  I’m pea-green with envy. Ever since watching my first episode of Sex and the City I’ve hankered after a trip to the Big Apple, where I just know I’d channel my inner Carrie Bradshaw and become a celebrated writer. I’d also have the designer wardrobe and shoe collection too, of course, although I might draw the line at the tutu. Much as I’d love to wear it, I’d look like a ginger loo-roll dolly.

  “What Gabe actually means is that I’ve been feeling broody,” Frankie sighs. “It must be my age or something, but the last time we were over at Victoria and David’s I couldn’t help thinking how adorable their kids are.”

  “I’ve got a cure for that,” Mads tells him. “Feel free to borrow my two whenever you want. You’ll soon be glad you’ve only got a poodle.”

  But Frankie isn’t having this. “Bluebell and Raffy are simply gorge!”

  “Tell me that when they wake you up at five a.m. every day,” Mads says. “No wonder I’m haggard.”

  Gabriel looks horrified. “I can’t afford to look tired, Frankie. I’ll lose some of my modelling work and the film roles will go to younger guys.”

  “That’s what Botox’s for,” Frankie reassures him.

  “If you’re feeling broody, help yourself to Nicky,” I offer as, right on cue, in he shuffles clad in baggy tracksuit pants and with his hair on end. Yawning widely and heading for the fridge as though pulled there by a tractor beam, Nicky selects the milk and proceeds to knock it back f
rom the carton, his eyes still shut and totally oblivious to his audience. Drink finished, he belches happily and wipes his mouth on his hoody sleeve before placing the empty carton back in the fridge.

  “Err, maybe not?” says Gabriel nervously to Frankie. “How about another dog?”

  Maddy’s eyes are wide. “Dear God. Is that what I have to look forward to?”

  I nod. “Times two. Good luck.”

  As though on autopilot, Nicky’s now heading for the kitchen cupboard where, by some amazing feat of psychic prowess, he selects a packet of Frosties without looking – then tips it straight into his mouth. Munching contentedly and trailing cereal all over the floor, he shuffles past and vanishes into the living room.

  “It’s like watching a cereal-eating Lady Macbeth,” says Gabriel in awe. “Is he still asleep?”

  I nod. “Nicky’s eyes don’t open until noon. This is early for him.” I’m actually starting to wonder how I’ll manage to get him up, dressed and into school on time. Maybe an electric cattle prod? The farmer down the road probably has one. If not, then cold water should do the trick.

  “How much does he cost to feed?” asks Mads.

  “Put it this way, Nicky’s been with us less than a week and already I’m thinking of calling Geldof and arranging a Feed the Teen concert,” I say.

  “Since when did little Nicky get so big?” wonders Frankie. “I feel old!”

  I sigh. “How do you think I feel? He won’t even friend me on Facebook.”

  In fact, it’s even worse than this; I’m still smarting because, according to Nicky, only “olds” go on Facebook anyway, and all the cool young people are on Snapchat and Instagram or vlogging. Vlogging? What on earth is that? It sounds like a disease. Nicky also tried to give me a lecture on YouTubers, who apparently make a fortune. I’m starting to feel a bit like my dad must have done when Holly and I gave him an iPad (“Where’s the on button, Katy? What do you mean I swipe it?”) and my brain is clearly turning to mush.