Where Have All the Boys Gone?

The other girls stared at her as the waiter popped out the cork from the bottle with practised ease and poured them large glasses.

Louise looked sulky as all around them the women squawked and chattered, their slim legs and expensive shoes glinting in the flattering soft light reflecting off the beige leather chairs. Katie looked at Louise and worried about her. And herself.

‘Goodnight Terence,’ said Katie when she got back from the loo. She tried to be as nice as possible.

‘£60!’ Terence was saying. ‘For this shit! Jesus!’

‘Would you like me to go halves?’ she asked.

He shrugged. ‘If you like.’

Crossly, Katie put down half the money, noticing Terence counted out his share and didn’t leave a tip.

She felt infinitely more sober once she hit the open air. She liked walking in the city at night. People and couples lurched, shouted or shuffled along, no one paying her the blindest bit of notice.

The familiar sounds of sirens and late-night misadventures echoed as she cut down past the Opera House, her heels clattering on the cobbles, leaving the heavy traffic behind her. A chap was weaving slightly by the side of the road, and she subconsciously hurried up a little bit.

‘’Ello darlin’,’ he shouted after her. ‘You look nice.’

Probably only compared to him, a very drunk man attempting to take a piss on the street, but still, she appreciated the gesture.

She was wondering how low she could possibly plummet on her male-attention appreciation charts, when suddenly, out of nowhere the man was right in front of her. She jumped six feet in the air.

‘Fuck!’ she said. ‘You gave me a fright.’

Her heart started to pound, hard, when she realised it wasn’t the same man after all. She couldn’t work out who this person was or how he had landed in front of her, but late on a Thursday night on a deserted street, it didn’t feel good…Her eyes whipped around to the side, but the genial drunkard was gone.

‘Ah,’ said a soft voice with a slight accent. ‘Yes. That can be what happens.’

He was tall and, with her heart banging furiously, Katie saw that he was dressed all in black, with a hat pulled down over his eyes. He was standing directly in front of the streetlight and she couldn’t make out his face. Oh shit oh shit oh shit. This was not good. Man in black on deserted street – either there was Milk Tray involved or this was definitely the opposite of good. Her eyes flicked to the side to see where she could run to and she cursed her ridiculous heels.

‘No,’ warned the voice. ‘Running. Don’t do it. I have a knife. Or a gun. Or something really bad. And you look like a nice person.’

Katie stared at him, frightened beyond belief.

‘I – I am a nice person,’ she said, her voice two octaves higher than normal. ‘Can you let me go?’

‘I can always tell,’ said the man. ‘I only go for nice people.’

Oh fuck oh fuck. She was going to get raped or killed or kidnapped or tortured. The worst, the most awful thing was happening. Oh God. She was in the middle of one of the most crowded cities in the world. Where the hell were all the people? Oh no. She was going to be left for dead in an alley. She wondered how they’d describe her in the papers.

‘Show me your phone,’ said the man gruffly. He took her by the arm – Katie flinched and started shaking like a foal – and led her to the dark side of the road. They could have been a couple talking.

Her phone. Of course. If she were an actress in 24 she would have thought to have done something useful with that. But she knew from her trembling fingers she’d have been incapable of pressing the tiny keys as she drew it out of her bag.

‘This is a shit phone,’ said the man, staring at the cheap little black handset.

‘Yeah,’ said Katie. Everyone kept telling her it was a shit phone. Maybe that would save her life – or make him kill her out of sheer disgust at her poor taste.

The man dropped it on the ground and crushed it under his boot. ‘You should be more stylish,’ he said. ‘You should have a better phone.’

He carefully took her bag from her and started rummaging inside.

‘And look at this mess. What a mess. How can you ever find anything in here? It’s full of tissues and lipsticks.’

‘It’s to deter muggers,’ said Katie. She still couldn’t get a look at his face, but for a murderous rapist, he didn’t seem very interested in her. In fact, he was looking at her lipstick with more interest.

‘You have a boyfriend?’

‘What?’

‘Yes, I think you have no boyfriend. You should ditch the orange lipstick. Orange, not good for you. Maybe why you have no boyfriend.’

‘Are you going to make me up like your dead mother and rape me to death?’ asked Katie in a panic.

It was dark, but she could catch the incredulous glint in his eye.

‘No!’ he laughed. ‘I’m going to take,’ he emptied out the coin section. ‘Twenty-four pounds and nineteen pence. And these cards, for about half an hour. Don’t worry. They’ll give you the money back, so it’ll be fine. Except for the twenty-four quid. Sorry about that.’

‘Don’t apologise,’ said Katie, furious. ‘Don’t do it!’

‘Yes,’ said the man. ‘No. I’m going to do it.’

He handed her back the bag.

‘That’s a messy bag. You should have a stylish bag. Don’t you have anyone to look after you?’

‘Shut up!’

‘Nice girl like you. Should have a nice man to look after you. Buy you nice bags.’

He looked regretful. ‘Well. Thanks. Have a safe trip home. Have you got a travel card?’

‘Yes.’

‘Good. OK. Be safe. Bye!’

Katie turned around to stare at him as he dived off, quick as a cat. Her heart couldn’t quite take in what had happened and kept whumping away, and she suddenly found it difficult to get her breath. She leaned against the wall.

‘Fuck,’ she heaved.

The drunk man wobbled over.

‘Hello darlin’!’

‘Where the fuck were you?’ she shrieked at him. ‘I could have been killed!’

He straightened up and managed to focus for a second.

‘Sorry love,’ he slurred. ‘I’ve already got a girlfriend.’

And he wobbled off.

‘Don’t worry love,’ said the policeman.

Louise, who she’d called in from home, was hanging about worriedly.

‘I mean, he didn’t, like, touch you up or nothing, did he?’

Katie looked at him hard. Was this the new, softer, intouch policing she kept hearing so much about?

‘No,’ she said calmly. She was feeling a lot less shaken up now than when she’d stumbled into the police station at Covent Garden. In fact, after a couple of cups of tea, she was actually feeling strangely embarrassed about the whole thing, as if she shouldn’t have bothered troubling anyone for something as clearly unimportant as a non-rape/murder-related mugging. Outside a car alarm was blaring away, but nobody was paying it the least attention.

‘He just jumped me, took all my stuff and scared me half to death.’

‘Yeah,’ said the policeman, as if he’d just been told one of his shoelaces was untied. ‘That happens.’

‘Go find him and put him in prison,’ said Katie. ‘Now, please.’

The policeman looked down at the blank sheet of paper on his desk. ‘It’s just, we’re not doing too well with the witness description.’

‘Black hat pulled down over his face. Foreign accent.’

‘Oh, him,’ said the policeman. ‘He shouldn’t be any trouble at all.’

‘Do you work late?’ said Louise, batting her eyelashes.

‘Louise, would you kindly shut it?’ said Katie.

Louise shrugged. ‘Sure, sure, just…’

‘I work shifts,’ said the policeman, bluntly appraising her. ‘Often up late, know what I mean?’

Katie quickly spotted the wedding ring and raised her eyebrows.

‘Do you…come and go in the night?’ said Louise lasciviously.

‘Actually, now I come to think about it, I hit my head on the pavement and now have concussion,’ said Katie crossly.

‘Depends if it’s an emergency,’ said the policeman over her head. ‘You know…if you really really need me.’

Katie stood up from the dingy grey plastic chair. ‘I don’t suppose there’s any chance of getting a lift home in a police car while it’s going “nee naw nee naw” is there?’

‘Maybe,’ said the policeman, still looking at Louise. Louise coloured.

‘I’ll just take the form for my insurance, thanks.’ Katie snatched the banda sheet away from him.

‘There’s no need to be like that,’ he said. ‘You’ve just described something that happens a thousand times a day in the West End and you’ve given us nothing to go on. We’re really sorry.’

Katie harrumphed. ‘Well, it shouldn’t happen at all. Anything could have happened.’

‘Yes, trust me, you’re not the type. Can I offer you some victim support?’

‘I’m not the type???’

‘Shh,’ said Louise. ‘He probably just meant you don’t look like a soft target. That’s good, you know. You look like a proper Londoner, not a rube.’ Louise brushed down her micromini thoughtfully.

Katie grimaced. ‘I don’t think that at all. I think I’m…I think I’m getting tired of this stupid city, you know.’

‘Shh,’ said Louise again. ‘You don’t mean that. You love London.’

‘I thought I did,’ said Katie. There was a car alarm going off here too, but she didn’t think it was the same one. She wandered over to where Louise was making instant coffee from a tiny fun-sized jar. That was one of the disadvantages of her new flatmate; she wasn’t quite the coffee purist Katie had learned to be – another important London skill. She picked up the jar.

‘How on earth could this jar of coffee cost £2.39? It’s scaled for a family of mice.’

‘It was late,’ said Louise. ‘It was all I could get from the corner shop.’

Katie looked at the massive patch of damp over the kitchen wall. ‘You know, I can’t fix that patch of damp because every ten minutes someone new moves in next door and they won’t share the cost so nobody knows what to do.’

‘And you’re lazy and disorganised,’ said Louise. ‘What’s your point?’

‘I don’t know…I think maybe London is driving me nuts.’

‘Just because of one lousy mugger? And one crappy date? What about all the fantastic museums and parks we never go to?’

‘OK, but that was just tonight. But London…it’s so full of show-offs and loudmouths.’

‘But we like those kinds of people.’

‘I know – maybe that’s the problem,’ said Katie. She stared at the damp patch and tried again. ‘It’s just…everyone always wants to know what your job is. Why is that?’

‘Because when you meet a lot of new people, you have to ask them something?’ said Louise. ‘If you live in a small village you don’t need to say anything at all. Everybody already knows how overdue your library books are and how much money you make and whether or not your husband’s having an affair with the goat from the next village. And whether so and so’s daughter cheeked Mr Beadle at the bus stop. And who threw away the advertising leaflets in the big hedge.’

‘You really hated Hertfordshire, didn’t you Lou?’ said Katie sympathetically, patting her knee.

‘Well, London is what it is. I mean, so there’s the rain and the buses and the clubs you can’t get into and the Congestion Charge and the snotty shops and the way everything is always fifteen miles away and takes for ever and the way no one from the north, south-east or west ever sees anyone from anywhere except those places and despises the people that come from anywhere else. It’s obsessed with trainers, cocktails, guest lists and whatever the fucking Evening Standard tells them to be obsessed with.’

‘That’s not sounding so good,’ said Katie.

‘But it’s all we’ve got,’ finished Louise. ‘Don’t you see? We don’t have a huge amount of choice. It’s this, or having people discuss everything you buy in the Spar.’

‘The what?’

‘The Spar,’ Louise pouted. ‘If you have no shop, you’re a hamlet. If you have a Spar, you’re a village. If you have a Fairfields, you’re a town. Anyway, that’s not the point…’

‘And if you have a cathedral, you’re a city! So that’s how it works,’ said Katie. ‘I never knew that.’

‘Well,’ Louise pouted again.

‘There’s always the suburbs,’ offered Katie.

‘Do I look like I enjoy having my hair done and committing adultery?’ sniffed Louise.

‘Yes,’ said Katie.

‘That’s not the point. The point is, that the city is cool.’

‘Why?’

‘Because it’s urban, and hip, and…there’s hip things going on, and…’

Katie sipped her coffee carefully. ‘When’s the last time you bought Time Out?’

‘What? Why?’

‘Just asking.’

‘When’s the last time I bought Time Out?’ Louise looked as if she were trying to remember.

‘You’re scared of Time Out,’ said Katie.

‘I am not.’

‘You are. You’re scared of it. I remember. You moved here, read it for six months, never ever did any of the cool things it suggested that you do. Now you’re scared of it because it reminds you that there’s lots of things happening and all we ever do is go to work, go to the wine bar, and look for men.’

‘So, what do you want? A pair of flashy wellies? Some chickens?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Katie. ‘But I do know I want a change.’

A week later, they were at a new, trendier, cocktail bar. Olivia and Louise were staring grumpily into their espresso martinis. Katie’s head was hidden behind a paper.

‘Press officer required for a children’s hospital,’ she read. ‘See! I could do some good in the world.’

‘Are you thinking about hot doctors?’ asked Louise.

‘With cool caring hands and a lovely bedside manner? No,’ said Katie quickly.

‘Make sure you ask them about the cool caring hands bit at the interview – there’s a lot of girl doctors these days.’

Katie turned the page and sighed.

‘Put the paper down,’ said Olivia. ‘You’re not leaving, and that’s the end of it. I need you. We’ve got the carbohydrate-free chip coming up. It tastes like shit, but the magic is, it looks like a chip.’

‘Plus, we’ve got lots to do. You know, there’s that new dating thing on at Vinopolis,’ Louise said. ‘We could go to that. You eat your dinner in the dark, and get to know people without seeing them.’

‘You can tell if people are fat just from the way they sound,’ said Olivia.

‘No you can’t!’

‘Yes you can! And if they’re drippy and wet.’

‘You are an evil, prejudiced woman.’

‘Hey, look at this,’ said Katie.

She showed them the advert.

Can you see the wood for the trees? Fairlish Forestry Commission is looking for a press officer with at least three years’ experience in a related field. Knowledge of local wildlife/degree in zoology preferred. Contact: 1 Buhvain Grove, Fairlish IV74 9PB. Salary £24k

They gathered around to take a look at it. There was a long silence.

‘Katie,’ said Olivia gently. ‘Put the paper down. You know your degree is in history of art and theatre studies.’

‘It says “preferred”,’ said Katie.

Olivia sighed and jumped down inelegantly from the ridiculously high stools to join the queue for the ladies.

‘Think, open spaces, fresh air…’

‘You hate fresh air,’ said Louise.

‘Maybe I just don’t know what it is…’

‘Forestry Commission?’ said Louise. ‘Katie, all you know about is lipgloss and low-fat fudge.’

‘That’s related,’ said Katie. ‘We do lots of not-tested-on-animals stuff.’

‘OK, question one,’ said Louise. ‘What is the local wildlife?’

‘Badgers?’

‘Well, I wouldn’t know,’ said Louise, ‘because I haven’t the faintest clue where Fairlish is. Do you?’

‘You’re being very negative,’ said Katie. ‘Is it so bad to want a change?’

‘It is if they’re only paying you 24k.’

‘I think I’ll head for home,’ said Katie, folding up the paper in a suspiciously noisy flurry.

‘Why?’ Olivia, returned, sounded suspicious.

‘Bit tired…no reason.’

‘Are you going home to make up an imaginary CV?’ whispered Louise as she got up to walk Katie to the Tube – she was still a little nervous late at night.

Katie didn’t answer.

‘You realise you’d put the lives of hundreds of innocent animals at risk?’

‘What if Fairlish is actually in Liberia?’ said Olivia. ‘Lots of people read this paper, all over the world. You’ll be sorry.’

‘Well, I’m in PR,’ said Katie. ‘I’d put a brave face on it.’

Chapter Two

There were only three other people on the train. The rolling stock seemed to be pre-war, and big clouds of dust had risen from the seats when she put her bag down. One couple of old men were talking a language she didn’t understand, didn’t recognise from anywhere, despite her year travelling. It seemed to consist mostly of Bs and Vs and sounded as though they were singing.

It wasn’t them that captured Katie’s attention however; further down the carriage was a woman stroking the nose of what Katie had assumed to be a poodle. She had had to check herself to see if she was sleeping (it had been a very long journey) when she heard the poodle baa.

Katie turned her head and stared out of the window. She couldn’t believe she had travelled so far and was still in the same country – well, on the same island. Instead of small mean houses and grey buildings filling her window, there were dramatic hills soaring steeply up on either side of the track. The hills were dark colours, greens and purples and blues. It looked cold and austere, with occasional shafts of sunlight breaking through and the occasional flash of something bouncing through the undergrowth – rabbits, probably.

Katie shifted uncomfortably. She still couldn’t believe she’d applied for this job. It may as well be the rainforest out here. Olivia had thrown her hands in the air when she realised Katie had never even visited Scotland before.

‘Not even once? To take some crappy show to the Edinburgh Festival? School trip to the Burrell Collection? Horrible school holiday where it rained all the time and you lost your Pacamac, your sandwich lunch and your virginity all on the same day?’

Katie looked at her curiously.

‘Not that that ever happened to me. Or anyone I know,’ continued Olivia quickly. ‘But that’s not the point. How can you have been to India and not to Scotland?’

‘Have you been to Northern Ireland?’

‘That’s not the point either. And I’m not the one who’s got an interview in a country I know nothing about. Which, by the way, you’re not taking, as I need you on the margarita toothpaste account. Where are you going to change your money? Are these interview people going to sort out your working visa?’

Katie’s eyes widened. ‘I need a…?’

Olivia put up her hands. ‘Oh God. This is going to go horribly, horribly wrong and we, your faithful, lonely, overworked, underpaid London spinster friends are going to have to find time in our packed schedules to pick up the pieces when it’s over. In about a month.’

She’d been right about the money though, Katie thought, feeling for her coat pocket. She didn’t even know pound notes still existed.

The letter had been brief.

Dear Ms Watson,

You are invited to an interview at Fairlish Forestry Commission at 4.30 p.m. Tuesday April 20th. You will be picked up at the railway station. Travelling expenses may be claimed.

Yours faithfully,

Harry Barr

Katie had pored over this letter a hundred times, trying to read between the lines, of which there weren’t many, admittedly. Was she expected to stay overnight (given the length of the journey, she couldn’t really see any other way, barring a helicopter airlift)? Was she expected to find out lots of information on the commission by herself? She’d done as much crash-course research on national parks as she could manage, but she was very nervous that her obvious lack of experience would tumble out as soon as she opened her mouth. Then there was her Southern accent, which had made her few friends the four times she’d had to buy herself a connecting ticket on the journey so far.

She smoothed out her wrinkled Tara Jarmon interview suit. This was probably an enormous mistake too. She should have probably worn rubber overalls and a Barbour. No, forget probably – there was no place here for anything but wellingtons. Where was she anyway? The train had already stopped at lots of stations that appeared to be in the middle of nowhere – Dundonnell, Gairloch – which seemed to be nothing more than platforms, with miles of scenery around them.

The few people that were left on the train got off, including the woman with the sheep, until it was just Katie, her briefcase, a headful of terms like ‘judicious pruning’ and ‘sustainable development’ that she didn’t understand, and a slowly mounting sense of panic.

The tiny train cut through a huge oversized valley and gradually slowed to a halt. There was one weather-beaten sign that said ‘Fairlish – Fhearlis’. Shocked out of her reverie, Katie jumped to her feet and stumbled about, as if the train were going to carry on without her.

The station confirmed her worst fears. She did a 360-degree turn. Above the purple mountains, a black cloud was ominously moving across the sky, and there was no building at the station at all; it was simply a halt, a platform in the air.

‘Bollocks,’ said Katie out loud – there was no one to hear her, just some enormous birds circling silently in the air above.

There was a torn old timetable on the side of the platform, but she didn’t have the energy to look at it. She felt tired, grubby from the journey, starving hungry, and as far away from London as she’d ever been in her life – certainly a lot further away than she had felt on her year off in Goa, which had been full of Brits, Kiwis, Aussies and South Africans. This place was full of nothing at all, and she didn’t know what to do. For a second she let herself remember the wide-open spaces and hot colours of India. She’d felt so free there.

There was a rumbling noise above her. Katie looked up. The birds had fled. Instead, the cloud had hit the side of the mountain. A few spits turned into a deluge. Katie’s blue peacoat, of which she’d been rather proud, was no match for it at all. Within thirty seconds it was soaked through.

‘Shit!’ she yelled, staring straight at the sky. This was the stupidest waste of a day’s annual leave she’d ever had in her life, applying for this stupid job on a whim, just because she had been upset.

The rain showed no signs of letting up, as she stared into the horizon, but she thought she saw something else move; a white dot, far in the distance. She stared at it hard, blinking away the water from her eyelashes. The white dot got bigger. Hugging her arms around herself, she stepped forward and squinted. The white dot resolved itself into a moving shape, then a car, then a Land-Rover. She kept her eyes on it as it bumped over the undergrowth towards her, windscreen wipers going furiously. After what seemed like ages, it finally drew up in front of the platform, and she slowly went down the wooden staircase to meet it.

The engine stopped and a man leaned over, opened the passenger door and beckoned her over. Katie wasn’t sure what to do. This person could be anyone. On the other hand, he could be the person coming to pick her up. After all, how many murderous rapists would pass by a deserted local station in the rain on the off chance that there might be a nervous young city girl hanging around? On the other hand, maybe the whole advertisement had been a trick to get someone here. On the other hand, that was a lot of trouble to go to if you were an unhinged murderous rapist, down to the headed notepaper and everything. And that was a whole lot of hands anyway. This stupid mugging had upset everything.

Katie dropped her head and peered into the front of the car doubtfully.

‘Get in,’ said a voice crossly.