Madelynne Ellis: Anything But Vanilla

‘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 right. I said I’d do it. Give me some directions and tell me where to get the keys from.’ She jotted down some notes on the edge of the TV guide as Chris went through the details.

‘You’ll need to check the tide timetable before you make the crossing. The causeway floods at high tide for several hours. Once you’re on the island, you pick the keys up from Alaric Liddell at the fort.’

‘Little of Little Island,’ she joked.

‘Liddell,’ Chris corrected.

‘Yeah, I got it.’ Kara grimaced at the phone. ‘The Liddell king of the castle.’

On the other end of the line, Chris huffed. ‘Now you’re just being silly. Besides, it’s a fort, not a castle. Don’t you know the difference? I thought you did history.’

‘Evidently I missed the lesson on forts.’ Just as he’d missed the lesson on humour. ‘Is there anything else I need to know?’

‘Not that I can think of. Listen, I’m coming up to the turnoff for the airport. Skype me about the house and what needs doing and I’ll transfer you the money. Try and get there without flushing the car away. Talk to you later.’

‘Will do. Bye.’

He hung up without muttering a corresponding farewell.

‘Was that Chris?’ Karen wafted in straight from the shower smelling of lime and carrying two mugs of tea. She passed one over to Kara. ‘I had to get up. Mum phoned to nag me about you. She wants you over there later so you can have a talk. She’s still pissed off at you about the wedding.’

‘Yeah, I got that even though Gavin’s the controlling twerp, it’s still all my fault that the wedding is off. I think she actually suggested that I didn’t look after him right. Like if I baked him apple pie every night and did as I was told there wouldn’t be a problem.’