Ozzie ran straight to the biscuit tin.
“Right,” I said. “Shall I make a start on dinner?”
Ozzie tilted his head to the side as he stuffed a cookie into his mouth.
“Start dinner?” he asked around his full mouth. “Whad’ya mean?”
“I mean, make dinner, Oz. You know that meal we all eat at the end of the day?”
Ozzie laughed. “You’re not cooking dinner. Dinner’s inthe fridge, like always.” I opened up the fridge, revealing a huge homemade lasagne sitting on one of the shelves and a big bowl of salad next to it. “Martha makes lasagne on Mondays,” Ozzie told me. “It’s my favourite.”
“Okay,” I said, glancing between Ozzie and the lasagne. “Is Martha daddy’s… friend?”
Ozzie frowned. “Er, I guess. She cooks all our meals,” he said as if it was perfectly natural to have your own personal chef. At least, IhopedMartha was a personal chef and not an over-enthusiastic girlfriend. Gah! Wait! What business did I have hoping that Lord Sterling didn’t have a girlfriend who made perfect lasagnes? I knew he was divorced. His ex-wife never came to the school – she must have been even more of a workaholic than him. Poor Ozzie.
“Right, where do you want to read, Ozzie?” I said, having put the lasagne in the oven. The helpful instructions written by the chef/girlfriend said forty-five minutes, so we had time.
Ozzie bit his lip and shuffled his feet. “I don’t really read at home, Miss Clara. I only read at school. With you.”
I crouched down in front of him so that we were at eye level. “Why only at school, Oz?” I asked softly. “I bet Daddy would love to hear you reading.”
Ozzie shuffled his feet again, his face settling into an unhappy expression. “Daddy’s really clever,” he whispered. “Really, really clever. Everyone always says how clever my daddy is and how lucky I am to have such a clever daddy. I don’t want to make Daddy sad. I don’t want him to know how badly I muddle up my letters and numbers.” He paused for a moment, twisting his lips to the side before he spoke again. This time his whisper was so quiet I had to strain to hear it. “I’m stupid.”
“Who told you that, Ozzie?” I said, trying to keep myvoice steady despite how my chest tightened with anger. Who would tell this precious boy that he was stupid? Pigeonholing children and putting them down like this was one of the things that made me angriest when it came to teaching. “Whoever told you that you were stupid, they were wrong – very,verywrong. And I won’t stand for it,” I said. Ozzie looked at me in surprise, not used to hearing my voice sharp with anger. But the more I thought about it, the more furious I became. “Would you tell me who said that to you?”
He shook his head in sharp, jerky movements. I decided to let it lie for the moment.
“Okay, well, you know thatIdon’t think you’re stupid, Ozzie. So let’s do some Amazing Alliterations and then we can read from your new reading book. Okay?”
It took quite a bit of coaxing and a tiny bit of bribery from the secret stash of Fruit Pastilles I kept in my handbag. But Ozzie finally caved.
It waspast seven when I heard the beeping of the alarm system. Ozzie was curled into my side on the sofa, and we were watchingBritain’s Amazing Hedgerows. Ozzie loved hedgehogs. Apparently, there was a group called the Hedgerow Warriors, which had a monthly newsletter and was run by somebody Ozzie called Hedgehog Vicky, who sounded a special kind of eccentric. Ozzie saved all his newsletters under his bed, and we’d actually worked on reading one of those tonight after we’d tackled his reading book.
After a few moments, I heard the heavy footsteps down the corridor, and then Lord Sterling appeared, fillingthe room with his ultra-masculine, almost electrically charged presence.
Rafe Sterling was an absolute force of nature. In his three-piece suit, his hair slightly damp from the rain, and his jaw darkened with stubble, he was almost too beautiful to be real. For a moment, my mind blanked. I just sat there staring up at him with my mouth open and Ozzie still tucked into my side, completely under this magnetic man’s spell.
“Daddy!” shouted Ozzie, jumping up from the sofa and running to his father, who lifted him up in a big hug. “I’ve gone up another reading level! We read a whole book tonight and one of The Warrior’s newsletters. Miss Clara says I can get up to the next level by the end of term if I carry on like this. She told me I’m amazing.”
Lord Sterling smiled at his son. It was the first time I’d seen the man smile close up and my breath caught in my throat. It was so bright, so white, so glamorous that it almost hurt to look at him. My belly whooshed and my heart rate, which had settled whilst feeling so safe in the house, sped up again.
“That’s fantastic, buddy,” Lord Sterling said as he lowered his son to the ground. “Maybe you and I could?—?”
“Gotta go brush my teeth, Daddy,” Ozzie put in quickly, backing away from his father. I could feel the frustration rolling off Lord Sterling as his son darted out of the room. Clearly, Ozzie knew where the conversation was headed, and he didn’t want to read in front of his dad.
I felt my anger spike again from my earlier conversation with Ozzie and I jumped to my feet.
“Can I have a word?” I snapped in a voice that I didn’t even recognise as my own. Lord Sterling’s eyebrows went up as he looked at me. I suspected that he was not a manused toanyonesnapping at him, least of all the meek, scaredy-cat teaching assistant who he was employing at vast expense to tutor his son.
When I stood up from the sofa, though, I lost my nerve. The height difference between us, the fact that I was in his house, the fact that he was paying me an extortionate amount to look after his son – not to mention how in all my years of being beaten down it had never been safe for me to stand up for myself – all resulted in me lowering my gaze from his, my shoulders dropping.
But then a vision of Ozzie’s little face, swamped with sadness as he told me he was stupid flashed into my mind and I forced myself to look up, straight into that piercing blue gaze.
“It’s really important that Ozzie f-feels safe at home,” I managed to force out. Yes, there was a small stammer, but other than that my voice was still firm.
“Yes,” Lord Sterling said slowly. “Of course, I thoroughly agree. That is why I have a highly trained personal protection officer in place for Ozzie and why my house has a very advanced security system.”
I shook my head, dislodging my glasses, so that I had to push them back up my nose again. “I’m not talking about physical safety, Lord Sterling. I’m… well, I’m talking aboutemotionalsafety.”
