Kelly Harte - Spitting Feathers

was born in Northern Ireland but grew up in England. She has brought up two children, been married twice and now lives in Yorkshire with her extremely verbal Oriental cat. She has an M.A. in creative writing, has written stories for the BBC and is currently writing a TV series and her next book.

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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A big THANK-YOU to all those people

who matter to me; you know who you are….

To Joanna, Christian and Martin Harris

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

It could be said that I owe everything that’s happened to me in recent months to a mouldering, putrefied watermelon. I was coming to the end of my photographic course when my mother bought two for the price of one at her local market, and because she couldn’t fit both into her fridge she hauled the spare one all the way across town and gave it to me. I’d never had one before, and didn’t much fancy it either. I prefer my food with a few more calories, so I placed it on my ugly bed-sit windowsill and there it stayed until it finally began to collapse in on itself.

It was obviously decomposing from the inside, and it was as I was lying on my bed, noting the still glossy greenness of its skin set against the grey, disused gasometer that had been the view from my window for the past year, that I got my brilliant idea.

I’d been racking my brains for inspiration that would sneak me the end-of-year exhibition prize. I hadn’t been a particularly good student, I am sorry to say. In fact, I’d only just managed to scrape a pass on the course, and my future did not look especially rosy. The best I could hope for was a job in a second-rate studio, taking photos of uncooperative kids and perhaps the odd wedding, if I was lucky. And the only thing that could rescue me now was to win that prize.

It was a very long shot, but one thing I had over the others on my course was a tip-off from a sympathetic tutor about the judge. I’d been told she was one of those arty types, with a penchant for bleak social realism and pretentious titles. And, with this in mind, I set to at once, carefully cutting an artistic slice out of the gourd to expose the festering red flesh inside. Then, with the aid of some carefully positioned lights, I contrasted it sharply against the dreary monochrome background. My masterstroke, though, was the title of the composition. I called it Urban Decay, and the judge loved it.

It got me the prize—a place on the books of a well-known photographic agency—and a whole new future in the Capital. And so there I was, two weeks later, crashing on the sofa at Sophie’s Shoreditch flat while I waited for the expected deluge of offers.

Partly because my prize-wining photo had been of something vaguely edible—before it went off, that was— I’d decided to register myself as a specialist in food photography. It seemed a sensible move to me, what with the many images of food that surround us daily, not to mention that fact that I like the particular subject so much. Another thing that hadn’t escaped me was the possibility of an opening for a Celebrity in that particular area. There are Celebrity everything else, after all—Celebrity chefs, interior designers, hairdressers, gardeners… There are even Celebrity photographers, of course, but none, so far, that I knew about, that specialised in food. None, anyway, famous enough to have their ‘sumptuous homes’ featured in Hello! magazine, and that’s what I mean by Celebrity.

Except that my plans weren’t going too well at that particular moment. To date, in fact, there hadn’t even been a trickle of offers, let alone a flood. Which was why I dived at my mobile phone when it let out its little frog croak that sunny late-September afternoon.

‘Tao Tandy,’ I said eagerly into the mouthpiece, ever hopeful it was the agency calling.

‘It’s me,’ Sophie said, and I tried not to show my disappointment. She’d been ringing me daily from her place of gainful employment to check on my progress—or, more accurately, lack of it. ‘I might have some good news for you,’ she added chirpily.

‘A job?’

‘Better than that.’

‘What could be better than a job?’

‘I sent an internal e-mail memo to all departments of the bank today,’ she pressed on regardless.

‘What kind of memo?’ I asked her with caution.

‘Asking if anyone knew of any affordable accommodation going, of course.’

Of course. Getting rid of me seemed to be her main priority at the moment, and to be honest I couldn’t blame her. She was getting a lot of grief from her snooty flatmates about me staying there in the flat. ‘And?’

‘I think we might have hit the jackpot.’

‘What’s the catch?’ I said.

‘Don’t be a cynic all your life, Tao. I reckon we could be really on to something here. A once-in-a-lifetime offer.’

Which sounded very fishy to me indeed. ‘Where?’ I asked, picturing some bed-sitter-land dive in a run-down part of the city, much like the one I’d left behind in Manchester.

‘Hampstead…’

Now even I, with my limited knowledge, had a good idea that Hampstead wasn’t a run-down part of the city. ‘I thought you said that it was affordable.’

‘But that’s the best bit,’ Sophie said with glee. ‘It’s free. Gratis. Buckshee.’

‘Free as in in exchange for my body?’

‘Free as in in exchange for looking after a pet while the owner’s away.’

‘So there is a catch.’

‘God, Tao. Listen to yourself! You get the chance to live in the most sought-after part of London, for nothing, and you’re still complaining.’

‘I’m not complaining if this is for real, but it just seems too good to be true. You can’t blame me for being a teeny bit sceptical.’

‘Well, it’s certainly not a foregone conclusion. You’ll have to go for an interview—see if the pet owner likes you, trusts you, whatever.’

‘How long is this person planning on being away?’

‘Two months, which would be brilliant. It would give you loads of time to get established before looking for somewhere more permanent to live.’

It would indeed be brilliant, but then something else occurred to me. ‘Who told you about this amazing opportunity anyway?’

‘Someone in Foreign Investments e-mailed me back and we had a chat during our lunch break.’

Foreign Investments… I couldn’t help feeling a tiny bit jealous of Sophie at that moment. We’d both started out at the bank together in Manchester, but it had always been clear that she was the smart one, and so when she was duly promoted to the bank’s head office in London I’d decided to go back to college and study photography. It was the push I had needed to get me out of a rut and into something that appeared from the outside a lot more glamorous and exciting.