“I didn’t mean that the way it sounded,” he justified, not recanting it: he might not have meant it the way it sounded, but he still meant it.
I hid my face and my hurt from him. I wasn’t going down this road again. It’d taken years for me to build up some confidence, to believe I was worth something, I didn’t need to let this man do this to me.
Trying to blank him from my mind, I glanced up just as a yellow ball whizzed through the air at me. I ducked my head away but Luke wasn’t so quick and the ball glanced off the side of his face, knocking his glasses askew before it landed on the blanket. Unfortunately, it wouldn’t have caused him anything more than the slightest sting.
Everyone from the game waited expectantly, their bodies frozen to see how Luke would react. He peeled off his sunglasses while raising a hand to his face, then he grinned at the players. Everyone in the game laughed, and Luke jumped up to his feet, picked up the ball. Throwing, “I’ll just return the ball,” in my direction, he sped off across the grass to join the game. Once he was gone my body unfurled as I relaxed. He had that effect on me, every time I was with him I was on edge, waiting for the next insult, for the next look. I lay down on my side, propped up on one elbow, watching Tiga. Every few minutes she would take her eyes off the game and seek me out. As we made eye contact a toothy smile would spread across her face, she’d lift her right hand, wave it briskly at me, wait for me to wave back and then return to the game.
There might be better ways to spend a Saturday, but at that moment, I couldn’t think of a single one.
We’ve got a long walk home, I thought once the game had broken up. Tegan looked as if she was going to fall asleep where she was kneeling, helping me to pack up the leftover food. I was starting to wonder how we would get all this back without Luke’s help. He’d said, “I’ll be right back,” and had headed off in the direction of the park’s restrooms when the game had finished, and I was eager to leave before he returned.
Maybe I should just leave the hamper. I glanced at Tiga, her messed-up hair peeked out in unruly, random strands from under her blue baseball cap as she concentrated on resealing food in packets. There was no way she would let me leave behind something of Luke’s.
“Excuse me, Mrs. Brannon?” a female voice said. Tiga and I both glanced upward.
Beside us stood one of the mothers from the picnic, one of the people I often saw when I arrived at the school to collect Tiga. We’d only ever exchanged smiles on those days we made eye contact. She had a slender face with accentuated cheekbones, warm brown eyes and shoulder-length raven-black hair. She was a full-size version of one of Tegan’s friends.
“Mrs. Brannon?” she repeated.
I got to my feet, brushing bits of grass and dried dirt off my hands. “I’m not Mrs. Brannon. I’m Ms. Matika—Kamryn Matika. Tegan’s guardian.”
“I see,” she replied, although lines of confusion crisscrossed her eyes.
“It’s complicated,” I said. “And you are?”
“Mrs. Kaye, Della Kaye.” She paused. “I was wondering…You see, Matilda—I’m her mother by the way—she keeps asking if Tegan can come to her house, I mean, our house.”
“Of course,” I said, then realized I’d been hasty. Who was this woman? Where was their house? “I mean, Tegan’s never mentioned…” Tegan’s eyes were filled with apprehension as she stared up at Mrs. Kaye; anyone who hadn’t heard the conversation would think she was being told off by her headmistress. “Tegan?” Her fearful gaze switched to me.
“I know you’re really busy at your work,” Tegan deflected.
“I wouldn’t mind you going to your friend’s house,” I said. “You can go any time you want.” I turned to Mrs. Kaye. “Any time she wants. When would be convenient for you?”
“I was thinking,” Mrs. Kaye began, “Matilda and Tegan are best friends, what if I take Tegan when I pick up the girls and she stays with us for a couple of hours every afternoon until you come home from work? It’ll be easier for you when school starts again next week and the kids have to be picked up by four o’clock.”
“Erm,” I replied, hijacked by the kindness of the offer.
“Really, it’s no problem. We’d love to have Tegan over.”
“And you wouldn’t mind?”
“I look after six children already, one more won’t make a difference.”
Tegan was still looking fearful. Maybe she didn’t want to go to Matilda’s house, which was the real reason she didn’t mention it. “How about I talk it over with Tegan and then get back to you?”
Mrs. Kaye seemed pleased with this, then after giving me their phone number and saying her goodbyes, she walked away.
As I watched her leave, a heavy, lead feeling filled my mouth and weighted down on my chest. Why hadn’t Tegan asked me this? What else was she keeping from me?
I unfolded the blanket, sat down then patted the area of wool beside me. “Let’s sit and talk a minute,” I said, trying not to let my hurt come through in my voice. Tegan bit her inner lower lip as she crossed her left leg over her right and sat down.
“Tiga, you know you can tell me anything, don’t you?” I said. I thought about what I’d just said, I’d told her she wasn’t scared of me. “I mean, Tiga, I don’t mind if you want to go to your friends’ houses for a few hours after school. I mean, somewhere along the line you, you,” I licked my lips, “you can even stay over at their houses. You just have to tell me and we’ll arrange it.”
“But I know you’re busy,” she said in a small voice.
“That doesn’t matter. We’ll find a way around it. I mean it, if you want to go to your friends’ houses or…” My voice trailed off as I realized that she’d probably missed out on more than a few birthday parties because she hadn’t told me about them. “Or anything. Just tell me and we’ll find a way to get you there. OK?”
Tiga thought about it for a second, two, three…Then nodded. “OK,” she said, her voice even quieter.
“I’m not cross,” I clarified. “Not even a little.”
Her shoulders fell suddenly as she relaxed.
“Do you want to go to Matilda’s house after school, then?” I asked. It would save us a lot of money on the after-school club if she did. Plus I could relax a little about getting back after work—I wouldn’t take advantage of the Kayes’ generosity, but I wouldn’t want to disembowel the whole of the UK’s rail system every time a train was even slightly delayed. I’d have breathing room.
“Would I be ’lowed?” she asked.
“Yes, sweetheart, as long as you want to. And if you don’t want to, all you have to do is tell me and you can go to the after-school club as planned.”
“OK, I want to go.”
I grinned at her. More than anything I wanted her to have a friend apart from me. And not just Luke. Content as I was with my limited circle of friends and previously work-centered life, it’d be criminal to re-create it in a child as gregarious as Tegan. I had to get her to trust people, and after her recent experiences, that wasn’t going to be easy.
“Good, I’m glad,” I said to her decision to go to Matilda’s after school.
“You’re not sad?” Tiga asked.
“Not if you’re going to be happy. And I’ll make sure Mrs. Kaye knows that you have to ring me every day at four-thirty.” This was our agreement since the incident where I forgot her. Every day she rang me to find out what time I was going to pick her up, what we’d have for dinner and to tell me what she’d done so far that day. In other words, to make sure I never forgot again.
“Right, come on,” I said, moving to the picnic basket.
“Let’s get packed away before Luke reappears.”
“Can Luke come to my house for his dinner?” she asked.
“If he wants,” I replied.
“I’m sure he will,” Tegan said firmly. She exhibited an unusual boldness where Luke was concerned. She wouldn’t ask me if it was all right to go to a friend’s house, but with Luke coming to din
ner, no hesitation.
“Like I say, we’ll see if he wants to.”
“Does he like coming to our house?” Tegan asked.
“I suppose so, he does it often enough.”
“Then he’ll want to come for his dinner.” That was such logical reasoning I had to remind myself this child was only five.
“We’ll see if he wants to.”
“You’ll see if who wants to what?” Luke asked, causing my heart to lurch. I’d had my head buried in the hamper so I could pull faces without Tegan seeing and hadn’t heard his approach.
I removed myself from the hamper, looked at him. Even after the game he looked immaculately turned out: his shirt was still brilliant white, his shorts without so much as a hint of a grass stain, his legs, covered in wiry, light brown hairs, had tanned a little in the dying embers of the summer sun.
“Erm, well, we were wondering if you wanted to come over for dinner?”
Luke’s face lit up in uncensored delight and I got a glimpse of what he must have looked like as a child when given the Christmas present he’d begged for. How his cheeks must have rounded up when his plump lips pulled back into a grin, how his hazel eyes must have brimmed with happiness as he stared at his parents, unable to speak with joy. What happened, I wondered, to turn that delight-filled boy into this abundantly arrogant man?
“Would I really be allowed?” Luke asked.
“Yeah, sure, why not,” I replied.
“That’d be great,” he proclaimed. He turned his grin on Tegan, who beamed back at him.
“It’s only leftover picnic food you know, nothing fancy,” I warned.
“I know,” he replied with a happy shrug of his shoulders. “Here, let me help.” He dropped to his knees and finished off the packing. When we’d packed up the hamper, folded up the basket and collected all our rubbish, we got to our feet and he hoisted the wicker basket onto his shoulder. “I moved the car nearer to the park edge so it’d be easier to get our stuff to it.”
I nodded, held out my hand for Tegan. She slipped her hand into mine, clutching her bat with the other. Before we started to follow Luke across the grass, Tegan tugged my hand so I would come down to her level and she could whisper in my ear.
“See,” she said, “I told you he’d come for his dinner.”
chapter 20
Since my return to work, I’d noticed that the office I shared with Betsy had become a drop-in center for the other women who worked in the nonretail departments. I think it’d started while I was away, people coming by to keep Betsy company, and it hadn’t stopped. Especially when they realized that my work-machine days were behind me and I wasn’t going to look disapprovingly at them if they spent too long in our office, discussing nonwork things. I wasn’t as close to the boss, like I had been with Ted, so I wasn’t an extension of him away from the directors’ floor. And I had changed. I wasn’t engaged in work. Cruising was the wrong term for it because I knew I did a good job—I’d soon be out on my ear if I didn’t, Luke would see to that—I simply didn’t become involved in work. Not like I used to. The marketing director’s job going to Luke was only part of it. The main part, the other ninety percent, was a feeling of futility; pointlessness. I knew it was connected to Adele, but hadn’t allowed myself to examine it closely—or at all. I carried on, getting by, not taking any of the satisfaction I used to get from work. It had been my life for so long, now it was something to do to pay the bills and feed Tegan. Which meant any distraction, no matter how small, was appreciated.
“The thing is,” Betsy was saying on the Monday after Tegan’s school picnic, “I think I could fall in love with him.” She was talking about a man she had met a week earlier. She’d just shown Ruby from the accounts department, one of our most frequent visitors, a text message from this man. I’d seen it three times already, and it was still filthy no matter how many times I saw it. “There’s such a connection between us,” Betsy continued. “I’ve never felt like this about anyone.”
She’d said that about the last man she’d met, two weeks before. And the one before that. For someone who had a hard-nosed edge and brain for business, Betsy was also impressively flighty. Her dark brown eyes were staring off into the distance and she twirled a lock of her shiny, shoulder-length black hair around her forefinger. “I think he might be The One.”
A memory stung my chest. Adele had said that more than once, with that same expression on her face. We’d had these conversations so many times in the past. “He’s so gorgeous. I’ve never met anyone as gorgeous as him.” Adele would have said something like that too.
“Oh, please, you always say that,” Ruby dismissed.
“I do not!” Betsy protested, swinging her feet up onto her desk.
“You do. Oh my God, I’ve never met a girl who falls in love as much as you do. You look at a man and you start plotting marriage.”
“Kamryn, tell her I don’t always do that,” Betsy protested.
“I don’t always do that,” I stated seriously to Ruby.
“You two! You’d think neither of you had ever been in love.”
“Just cos we’re not complete love sluts like you,” Ruby replied, “don’t try to put us down.”
My office partner folded her arms across her chest and stuck out her lower lip in a partial huff.
“Oh, bless you,” I said with a smile. “I do know what you’re talking about. It’s like the icing on the cake when a bloke’s gorgeous as well. But looks aren’t everything”—I paused for effect—“agility and imagination in the sack are.”
“Glad to see you’re using company time to discuss important marketing issues, Kamryn,” Luke’s deep voice stated. None of us had heard him approach our office, nor enter, because he hadn’t bothered to knock. He’d simply appeared from nowhere, like a malevolent black cloud that waited until you left the house without a coat or umbrella, then emptied a monsoon upon you.
My heart flipped over and my stomach spiked with ice as I looked at the vision in charcoal gray that stood in our office doorway. The first time in years I say something like that at work, the first time I step out of my work persona within the walls of Angeles and he, of course, was around to witness it. This would become another piece of evidence that I was the unprofessional, unsuitable underling that he had to get rid of.
Betsy took her feet off her desk and sat up straight in her seat, Ruby leapt up and grabbed a piece of paper, pretending it was what she had come for. Both of them shot me looks of sympathy—they both knew what was coming next from Luke: at best a snarky comment; at worst a verbal warning about maintaining standards of professionalism with the staff I managed.
Ruby scuttled out of the office without uttering another word, Betsy sat frozen, staring at me. “Betsy, would you mind giving Kamryn and me a moment alone, please?” Luke said, firing her a smile of pure charm.
Reluctantly, and looking on the verge of tears, Betsy got up and exited our office, leaving the door open behind her. Luke entered the spacious glass-walled office and stood beside my desk, effectively towering over me. To stand up, I realized, would be to directly challenge his position as the alpha bastard and would result in this bollocking being more vicious than necessary. To remain sitting would be to allow him to dominate me. I chose the third option, to get up and go to the door to shut it.
When I turned back to him, he seemed to occupy the entire space beside my desk with his open-legged, folded-arm stance. As usual, his eyes flicked over me in an unimpressed manner, and I immediately felt disheveled: my black hair wiry and wild; my black trousers and black silk wraparound top shapeless and unflattering; my body lumpen and unappealing. Luke had the effect of making me feel unkempt and unattractive; being with him reminded me of being at school, hearing all those things they used to say about me all over again. Feeling as though the words ugly and fat were watermarked into my skin—hard to see but there.
“Yes?” I asked, folding my arms across my chest and straightening up to exude confidenc
e. This was my office; it had been my castle for over two years before his arrival and no one was allowed to make me feel like this in it.
“Look, Kamryn,” he began, “we got off to a bad start.”
I paused, peered at him in surprise and mentally replayed what he said. When my mind refused to believe what it’d just heard, I said, “Pardon?”
“I said, we got off to a bad start.”
“Yes, I suppose we did,” I replied, wondering when the bollocking would begin. “But whose fault was that?”
He inhaled, paused. “Mine.”
“I suppose I wasn’t completely blameless,” I conceded.
“We’ve got to work together and see each other outside of work because Tegan likes me being around.”
I contemplated him in cautious silence.
“After Saturday…With the dinner invite…I was so incredibly touched. And I got to thinking about all this and how stupid it is. And I hoped we could work out our problems; see if we can find a way to get on.” I must have looked skeptical because he said, “All right, maybe not get on but not wind each other up.”
“OK,” I replied.
“Right, then.” He paused, inhaled and exhaled deeply.
“I’m sorry for acting as though you couldn’t do your job. I’d just heard so much about you that I thought you’d be this dynamic, pretty young thing who was eager to please. Instead…” His voice trailed away and he grimaced slightly, as though he couldn’t believe he’d begun to expose his uncensored thoughts again.
“Oh, please, don’t stop now, I want to hear it all. ‘Instead…’?”
“Instead, you turned up and you seemed kind of scatty. Not what I expected at all. So, sorry, I shouldn’t have judged you like that.”
I said nothing.
“And I’m sorry, also, for listening to those ridiculous rumors about you and Ted. That’s not the way I usually work.”
“Thank you for saying all that, it’s very gracious of you. And I want to apologize for calling you a small-minded, tiny-dicked, arrogant wanker who got his job by licking arse rather than by hard graft,” I replied, even though my heart wasn’t in it. What Luke had said had hurt and I was disgusted with myself for letting it needle me.