Karen laughed. ‘Pretty, was she?’
‘Simple public relations, Karen. Please the secretary and you’ve got the boss.’
‘And if Miss Fleming lives on the other side of London?’
‘She’ll be even more impressed and Bob will enjoy the overtime.’
‘She was that pretty?’
‘I didn’t notice.’ His lie was rewarded with the disbelieving snort it merited before he flicked the switch. Dan straightened and looked at his daughter, remembering the pretty child she had been, seeing the lovely woman she would become once she stopped trying to hurt him, hurt herself—but only because her mother wasn’t around to take the abuse in person. ‘Come on,’ he said.
‘I’m not going back,’ she repeated stubbornly.
‘I heard you, Sadie. I’m not taking you back to school, but I’m not leaving you to run around London on your own. If you’re not going back to school you’re going to have to work for a living.’
‘Work?’ Sadie’s careless certainty, the belief that she was the one calling the shots, wavered. That gave Dan hope.
‘You leave school; you have three choices. If you’ve decided not to do re-sits, college is a non-starter. The alternative is work, and since you’re hardly likely to have employers lining up for the privilege of signing you up, you’ll have to work for me.’ He waited for her reaction. When none was forthcoming he added, ‘Of course you’re welcome to try the Job Centre if you think you can do better?’
‘You said three choices.’
‘You could telephone your mother and see if she’ll offer you a home.’ He had his fingers mentally crossed. The last thing he wanted for Sadie was a lotus-eating existence with her mother. ‘I don’t suppose she would expect you to work for your living.’
Her response left no room for doubt about Sadie’s feelings on the subject. Daniel hadn’t anticipated ever feeling sorry for his ex-wife, yet for a woman to have earned so much scorn from her own daughter would wring sympathy from a stone. ‘No? Well, it’s not too late to change your mind.’ His gaze rested momentarily on her hair. ‘Assuming the suspension is not as permanent as your hair colour.’
‘Read my lips, Dad.’ She pointed a black-painted fingernail at her mouth and said, very slowly and very carefully, ‘I am not going back to school.’
‘Are you going to tell me why? Or are you going to wait for Mrs Warburton’s letter to arrive? I imagine she will write to me.’
‘Yeah.’ Her voice was all careless indifference, but her gaze slid away from him as she stuffed a hand into the pocket of her black leather bomber jacket and tossed a crumpled envlope onto the desk. Not so tough as she would have him believe, his little girl, and his insides turned over; it was all he could do to stop himself from grabbing her and hugging her and telling her that it didn’t matter, that whatever she’d done it didn’t matter because he loved her.
By the time she had gathered herself sufficiently to fix him with a belligerent glare, he was looking out of the window, contemplating the yard as if he had nothing more on his mind than the price of engine oil. He ignored the letter. ‘I’d rather hear it from you.’ His tone was mild, but his heart was beating like a steam pump. ‘Was it drink?’ he prompted. ‘Boys?’ He turned to look at her, his mouth suddenly bonedry. ‘Drugs?’
‘What do you take me for?’
An average teenage girl with more money than was good for her and a desperate need to lash out, to hurt the people who loved her.
‘I’ve been suspended for a week, that’s all.’ Under the white make-up he could have sworn she blushed. ‘For dying my hair, if you must know.’
It had to be relief that made him want to laugh. ‘Just for dying your hair? Mrs Warburton isn’t usually that harsh.’ Surely living with the colour while it grew out would be punishment enough. ‘Is she?’ he demanded sharply, suddenly very sure that she wasn’t telling the whole truth.
Sadie lifted her shoulders in a couldn’t-care-less shrug. ‘Yes, well, when the Warthog had me in her office to haul me over the coals for ‘‘letting down the high standards of Dower House School’’…’ she affected a nasal twang that was a cruel caricature of Mrs Warburton’s aristocratic accent ‘… I suggested it was time she touched up her own roots because the grey was showing.’
He put down his cup, turned away, his lips curled hard against his teeth. ‘I can see how that might not have helped matters,’ he said, when he was sure he wouldn’t betray himself.
‘Hypocritical old cow.’
He was forced to cover his mouth, pretend to cough. ‘Maybe so, but that really wasn’t very kind.’
‘She shouldn’t have made such a big deal about it. Anyone would think I’d had my nose pierced, or something.’
‘That’s banned too, is it?’
‘Everything’s banned. Of course if I’m not going back, I suppose I could—’
‘Your mother had her nose pierced the last time I saw her,’ he said. ‘She was wearing a diamond stud.’
Sadie said nothing; she didn’t have to. Dan knew she wasn’t about to do anything that would make her look more like her mother than she already did. Or had done, until she’d dyed her hair. That was something to be grateful for.
‘So, when do I start this wonderful job, then?’
Her tone was as belligerent as her expression, but adolescent rebellion was something he knew all about; this wasn’t the moment to demand she apologise. Despite the ‘hard girl’ act, he was sure she didn’t need to be told what was required, whether she returned to school or not. He was also sure that she was more likely to get on with it if she wasn’t nagged.
‘No time like the present. Come on, I’ll get you an overall and then we’ll go and find Bob.’
‘I can’t wait.’ The heavy sarcasm suggested that this was going to be a long week. He just hoped, for both their sakes, that at the end of it Sadie would realise that school was a soft option compared with working for a living. And that Mrs Warburton was in a forgiving mood.
Should he have tried harder to persuade her to go back? What would her mother have done? Not much. Vickie was in the Bahamas with her latest lover and a new baby to drool over. He doubted if she would welcome a phone call reminding her that she had a daughter approaching an age at which she would become competition. Instinct suggested that his best bet was to set Sadie to work and hope that a week of mind-numbing drudgery would do the job for him.
‘What am I going to have to do?’
‘The options are limited since you can’t drive—’
‘I can drive,’ she declared fiercely. ‘Better than most people.’
That was true. He’d taught her to drive in the field behind the cottage he had bought a couple of years back, and she could handle a motorbike or a car with all the panache of a professional. ‘You can’t drive a car on the road until you’re seventeen, Sadie. You can’t even move one across the yard until you have your licence because you wouldn’t be insured.’ She didn’t answer, but it was obvious that calling her bluff was not going to have any immediate effect. ‘Perhaps you should try a bit of everything. Make yourself useful about the place.’
‘Be a dogsbody, you mean?’