Kissing Toads by Jemma Harvey Page B

yourself, ‘It doesn’t matter, I’ll never see him/her again,’ they’re absolutely guaranteed to become a major part of your life within a month or two. I had always suspected Fate was a malevolent goddess, and now I was sure of it. Worst of all, I found I wanted to show Ash that he was wrong about me – that I do care, I do have compassion – but my chances of showing compassion in the luxury castle of an ageing rock star were practically nil. At Dunblair, compassion simply wasn’t in demand.
    Damn Kristof Ashley. I knew a craven urge to jack the job in then and there and flee south – a reaction out of all proportion to the circumstances. I had to get a grip.
    It really was awfully cold in there. And gloomy. The tin-can light fittings and magenta sheep hadn’t penetrated this far. I almost regretted them.
    â€˜Can’t you feel it?’ Dorian said, clutching my arm. ‘Like . . . this eerie chill, giving you goosebumps.
    For once, I didn’t say anything cynical. There was a chill, and my geese bumped.
    â€˜Let’s go,’ I responded.
    Â Â 
    Delphinium
    Roo met me at the airport, driving a Millennium Mini from Hot God’s garage. ‘It’s the only normal car he’s got,’ she said. ‘He bought it for Dorian, I gather, only he hasn’t passed his test yet.’
    â€˜Who’s Dorian?’
    â€˜Son. Sixteen. Not sure which wife.’
    I’d been doing a little homework on Hot God, and I made a mental calculation.
    â€˜Should be the model – Tyndall Fiske. Neck and legs like a giraffe, big nose, own hair a yard long. Good-looking in an ugly sort of way. After the split she got mixed up with some cult in America living out in the middle of nowhere and growing their own vegetables and not having proper sanitation. I remember reading about it. Is Dorian like her?’
    â€˜Spots,’ said Roo.
    â€˜Yuk. Must be awful for Hot God, having a son with zits. I mean, it reflects on him genetically. Roo, I’ll never get all my luggage in here. Couldn’t you have borrowed a bigger car?’
    â€˜Big cars make me nervous,’ Roo said. ‘HG offered me a cream-coloured Bentley, but I was afraid I’d scratch it.’
    â€˜Let’s get this straight,’ I said. ‘You could’ve picked me up in a Bentley, and you chose a Mini ?’
    There are times when I despair of Roo.
    In the end, I left two suitcases at the airport to be collected later, and crammed everything else into the back of the car. Roo complained she couldn’t see out of the rear window, but, as I said, there was nothing there but a load of landscape. We drove for hours (or what seemed like hours) through more and more landscape, the kind that looks good in pictures or as background in Christmas cards. I can never figure out why some celebrities want to go and live miles from anywhere, when you can be a recluse perfectly happily on a gorgeous estate about an hour from London, and all the people who want to invade your reclusion can do it much more easily from mainline stations or after a short drive down a motorway. After all, there’s no point in being a recluse if the world doesn’t want to beat a path to your door, is there? Should I ever decide to take up reclusivity I shall do it somewhere civilised, like Wiltshire or Gloucestershire, out of sheer consideration for my fans and media colleagues. Which shows I’m really a very unselfish person, whatever people may say.
    The castle stood beside a lake (or loch) and looked wonderful , like something out of Disney, all funny little towers and roofs like upside-down ice-cream cones, with a row of crumbling battlements in the middle and a big arched doorway like something in a cathedral. I was a bit disappointed there wasn’t a moat, but I suppose they had the lake instead. (Of course, with his kind of money Hot God could have moved the castle somewhere