1
Kat stared in dismay at the skimpy garment lying on the end of her bed. She had no idea why she’d ever let Chloe talk her into buying the silky red dress with a flared skirt that barely skimmed her at mid-thigh. She checked the time on her phone and sighed. She was due at the Penroses’ within the next hour and here she was not even showered and worrying about what to wear like she was a nervous fifteen-year-old preparing for her first party. She’d liked the way the dress looked in the fitting room, but then again she’d had Chloe there to boost her confidence about trying something a little more daring than she was used to. Now, though, she was wondering what had possessed her to buy it. She didn’t even suit red because it had a tendency to bring out an underlying sallowness in her skin.
Kat moved to the window and raised the edge of the soft white curtain covered in cherry blossoms to peer outside. The pavement under the street light had that slick, dark look that promised a thick frost later. Kat dropped the curtain and turned back to survey the dress. The material really wasn’t practical for winter. Perhaps she’d be better saving it for the summer. Or just chuck it in the charity bag and be done with it. There wasa perfectly serviceable black wool dress in her wardrobe back at the flat. If she hurried through doing her hair and make-up she’d have time to swing by there and put it on.
Kat eyed the small suitcase in the corner. If she was going to call in at the flat she might as well pack her bits and pieces up and drop her bag off at the same time and then she could walk home with Issy and Liam after the party. It would save any awkward scenes over breakfast when no doubt her mum would try and persuade her to stay for a few more days. Agreeing to come home had been a mistake, but her mum had all but begged her and Kat hadn’t had the heart to turn her down.
At least she’d managed to escape Christmas itself, claiming she’d promised to keep an eye on the café while her flatmate Issy was away in New York with her boyfriend, Liam. In reality, she’d seized the opportunity to spend a few days in blissful peace and quiet. She’d even started writing again. Sure, it had only been a few basic exercises and most of what she’d written was rubbish, but just to have the space and time to think creatively had been a joy.
She loved Issy and had been incredibly grateful for the chance to move into her spare room when things at her parents’ had reached breaking point, but then Issy had rekindled her childhood romance with Liam and Kat had ended up playing third wheel. Things had been easier over the autumn once Liam had taken over the running of the Penrose House Hotel on the seafront from his great-uncle and Issy had split her time between there and the flat above the café. With the hotel renovation works now underway, it was too noisy and dusty for anyone to stay there. Issy had assured Kat time and again that she wasn’t in the way, but there were only so many times she could walk in on Issy and Liam kissing or whispering together. Living in Issy’s spare room was only ever supposed to have been a stop-gap to give Kat a bit of space from the constant tensionbetween her and her parents. Finding somewhere else to live needed to go right to the top of her new year’s resolutions list.
Maybe she should give Issy and Liam one more night alone together before she went back there. Dealing with her mother wouldn’t be much fun, but Kat would just have to put on her big girl pants and get on with it. She didn’t even need to get her other dress, she had a pretty top her parents had given her for Christmas she hadn’t had a chance to wear and it would look great with her jeans and boots. And if she wore her boots she wouldn’t have to worry about getting frostbite in her toes on the walk to and from the party.
Mind made up, Kat opened her wardrobe and removed the black tunic top. The iridescent crystals on the neckline and cuffs caught the light and would add the perfect bit of sparkle for a party. She hooked the hanger on the outside of the wardrobe door then turned towards the bathroom. Her phone pinged and she paused to retrieve it from her bedside cabinet. The lock screen previewed a WhatsApp message from Chloe:
Stop panicking about that dress, you’re going to look a million dollars in it!
Kat snorted a quiet laugh as she tapped out a reply:
How did you know???
A crystal ball emoji appeared, followed by another message:
Madame Chloe knows all! Plus I was having my own panic as nothing fits. My fault for eating my own bodyweight in Quality Street over the past couple of weeks I suppose. My arse looks massive in everything.
Kat shook her head. Chloe had the kind of curves she’d dreamed of developing herself one day, and looked effortlessly beautiful in anything she wore. Kat, on the other hand, had barely grown out of her junior training bra and needed a belt to hold up her trousers half the time. She glanced down with a sigh; the stress she’d been under the past few months had cost her several pounds she couldn’t afford to have lost. Taking better care of herself needed to be the second thing on her resolutions list. She fired off a response:
Rubbish! You know you’ll look gorgeous in whatever you put on x
Chloe’s reply pinged back in seconds:
Oh yes, I forgot for a minute that I’m a total hottie, just like you! See you soon x
Kat tossed the phone on her bed with a laugh. Trust Chloe to find time to give her ego a well-needed boost. Kat eyed the red dress, wondering if she should throw caution to the wind after all, then shook her head. She’d never been a caution-to-the-wind kind of person, and she wasn’t about to start now.
Right, enough faffing around. If she didn’t get in the shower the party would be over and done with before she’d even got there. She opened her bedroom door and all but collided withher mother, letting out a little squeal of shock. ‘Gosh, Mum, you almost gave me a heart attack!’
Her mother stopped dead in her tracks to press a hand to her chest. ‘You? What about me!’ A small laugh escaped her. ‘I was already having trouble breathing after the workout Warren just put me through.’
Kat took in her mum’s messy hair, the heightened colour on her cheeks and the sweat patch darkening the front of her fluorescent pink vest and patterned leggings. ‘Been on your Watts Up bike again, Mum?’ It was all the rage in the world of fitness, a monstrous hybrid of exercise and social media platforms where members could join in with professional online classes or just go for a ride with ‘friends’ from the comfort of their own homes.
Her mother beamed. ‘It’s so good, darling, honestly I don’t know why you won’t give it a try.’
Being shouted at by a bunch of over-tanned, over-teethed, over-enthusiastic instructors who wanted her to ‘feel the burn’ and ‘stick with it for thirty more seconds’ and all the other vacuous exhortations she’d heard echoing from the spare room was Kat’s idea of hell. And she already had more than enough social media platforms sucking time out of her day without adding another one to the mix. ‘Maybe another time.’Like when hell froze over. ‘I need to grab a shower or I’m going to be late.’
‘Oh, I was just about to jump in myself,’ her mum said, with a pout. ‘I’ll be really quick, I promise.’
Kat could spend the next five minutes arguing over it, or she could just give in to the inevitable. ‘Okay, give me a knock when you’re done.’
‘I’ll be two minutes,’ her mother trilled and carried on towards the bathroom.
Kat sighed and retreated into her room to wait for what she knew would be a whole lot more than two minutes. The WattsUp bike was Jen Bailey’s latest obsession, and as she sank down on the edge of her bed, Kat wondered how long it would be before it ended up in the garden shed next to the potter’s wheel that had lasted fewer weeks than a series ofThe Great Pottery Throwdownand the easel from the art classes attended and then abandoned. Kat always hated it when her mum got into a new hobby because it meant she had no time for anything else, including working her usual shifts in the Java Brava coffee shop her parents ran.
In reality it had always been her dad who’d done the lion’s share of the work at the franchise, and the burden of helping him had fallen upon Kat’s shoulders as soon as she’d been old enough to start helping out. Her mum’s reasoning was that she’d never wanted to open the shop in the first place so she deserved a break now and then and time for herself. Funny that she never thought either Kat or her dad deserved a break from it. Not that Gavin Bailey had ever shown any signs of wanting one. He lived for the franchise, determined to make it a success, and he had a wall full of awards from the company for his hard work. Whenever her mum threw herself into a new hobby, he just retreated into himself and his twelve-hour days became fourteen- and sixteen-hour ones. It was odd, really, that Gavin never had any problem with asserting himself with anyone else – only her mum.
The new Watts Up obsession (or more likely the new Warren obsession given her mother’s track record) couldn’t have come at a more inconvenient time, coinciding as it had with the busy run-up to Christmas. So not only had Kat and her father been rushed off their feet with the influx of Christmas shoppers, they’d had the double whammy of learning and serving all the festive themed drinks, cakes and cookies some bright spark had dreamed up in the company’s corporateHQ. Whoever they were, they had zero taste and even less subtlety.
Kat shuddered a little at the memory of the tasting session they’d endured. It was a mandatory instruction that all staff had to taste new products as they came on line, to ‘improve engagement and provide an authentic sell-through experience for our valued customer base’. Kat suspected ‘Yep, it’s as vile as it looks’ and ‘I’d only buy that if you are hoping Santa will bring you diabetes for Christmas’ were probably a touch too authentic for the corporate overlords, so she’d just offered a noncommittal smile on the rare occasions any of their ‘valued customer base’ had bothered to ask her opinion.
