Chapter 11
This was a command, not a request
Rafe
Okay,so I was spoilt. You could blame my parents who worshipped the ground I walked on, or my sister who thought of me as her all-knowing big brother, or my secondary school who never liked to stand up to me seeing as my family had paid for their science building…but whatever the cause, I was definitelywaytoo used to getting my own way.
Now, with Clara over the last month that she’d been working for me, I certainly hadnotbeen getting my own way.
Since that first day when she’d confronted me about my son’s emotional safety, brave, quietly furious Clara had disappeared to be replaced by shy, scaredy-cat Clara who avoided me like the plague and barely spoke two words to me.
It didn’t help that I’d been allocated another new case which was proving to be extremely time-consuming. The barrister I’d called a cockwomble had proven his incompetenceagain and actually dropped the entire case out of the blue, which was almost unheard of so far into the proceedings. The Crown Prosecution Service had then allocated it to me. They needed an experienced barrister – not due to the complexity of the case itself (some thug who was being done for GBH), but because of the wider case that it was linked to. The thug’s family – a fucked-up crime syndicate with a penchant for violence – was the target of a much bigger police sting operation which had been in the offing for months. The guy at the top was evil personified. He had some sort of God complex, loved to make people kneel in front of him before he beat them to shit. The police had been trying to take down the entire family for years and had only recently had a breakthrough. Someone from within the organisation had given them the access code to the dark web messaging system they used, which contained a motherlode of evidence against them.
The trial for the first case – against the thug – would be in a couple of months. The arrests for the second case hadn’t even been made yet as the police still had the family under covert surveillance, gathering as much evidence as they could with which to nail the fuckers and bring down the entire organisation.
So I’d had no choice but to take on both cases, hence an even higher workload, meaning that I often arrived home after seven, which was when Clara officially finished. Most days, by the time I walked through the door, she was already up on her feet with her bag over her shoulder, prepared to leave. She would give me the very briefest of handovers about Ozzie, muttered directly to my tie, and then scurry out of the door like the hounds of hell were on her heels. With anyone else, I would have simply blocked their path, forcing them to interact with me. But I’d already scaredClara twice, and I wasn’t about to make the same mistake again.
The entire situation was extremely frustrating. Most things in my life I could control, mostpeoplein my life acquiesced to me without complaint, but Clara was totally aberrant. It was ironic that this tiny mouse of a woman was the first person to stand up to me properly in well over two decades (the last had been Mrs Clayton who never stood for “my nonsense” as she put it).
One thing that could be said for Clara was that she was stubborn. It took a week of clipped commands when I had the chance as she was scurrying out the door, and angry emails and texts from me to her before she started eating the goddamn food with Ozzie. I was happy that she looked slightly less emaciated than she had when she first came to my house, but she was still underweight. I knew some women went on weird fad diets, and I had briefly wondered if that was the case with Clara. But actually, once she did start eating, she seemed to put away a fair amount and didn’t seem to shy away from carbs, so I doubted that she was starving herself deliberately. I considered the food consumption situation a small win, but I still wanted to actually speak to the woman.
She seemed to have no problem speaking to my bloody sister. Although Clara had taken over from Poppy with childcare duties, my sister still regularly made herself at home in my house. I’d arrived back last week to the three of them playing a spirited game of Uno at the kitchen table. Clara had been laughing when I walked in. A glorious sound that abruptly shut off when she realised I was in the room.
“Oh balls!” Poppy had cried dramatically. “Fun Sponge is home.”
I ignored her, focusing instead on a flustered Clara who had abandoned her cards to scrabble around and collect her stuff.
“Hey, Clara!” Poppy said when she realised Clara was leaving. “You can’t leave us hanging. I’m about to smash your butt!”
Clara smiled at Poppy which elicited the weirdest snap of anger in me. Claraneversmiled at me. Poppy and Clara were total opposites. My sister was a frivolous, posh, fun-loving explosion of a person with bright blonde hair and even brighter clothing (that day she’d opted for some sort of neon romper suit, which was honestly toned down for Poppy), and Clara was shy, quiet, reserved, with a soft London accent and dark, baggy jumpers. I was surprised they got on so well but then again Poppy was so social she could bring literally anyone out of their shell. But having Clara play a game with her and bloody well smile at her was galling when I couldn’t even keep the woman in the same room as me for more than a few seconds.
Well, at the end of last week, I’d finally wrapped up my previous caseload, leaving me free to concentrate solely on the new ones I’d been allocated. Therefore I was now able to execute my leave-Clara-with-no-choice-but-to speak-to-me plan. So, on this particular Monday, it was five o’clock rather than my usual seven o’clock when I pushed into the house and reset the alarm system.
My eyebrows went up in surprise when I heard the music blasting from down the corridor. I followed the noise and stopped dead at the doorway to the kitchen. Ozzie and Clara had their backs to me, and they were doing some sort of bizarre dance routine which involved much flailing of arms and bouncing on the spot. When they both droppeddown to the floor on their arses and spun around to face me, Clara froze.
Her normally pale face was flushed, she was grinning, her light brown hair was up in a high ponytail, she wasn’t wearing her glasses, and her fringe was slightly damp with sweat. She’d also ditched her normal oversized jumper, leaving her in a skin-tight tank top, which I was quite sure she had not meant for anyone but Ozzie to see. My mouth went dry. Yes, she was too scrawny for my usual taste, but clearly the woman did have some curves under all those baggy clothes. I watched, spellbound as she stumbled to her feet. Her top moulded to her small breasts, then down to reveal a slither of flat stomach where the material had ridden up. Her jeans sat low on her hips which flared out slightly from her tiny waist.
“Daddy!” Ozzie shouted as he jumped to his feet and ran to me, colliding full force with my legs and throwing his arms around them. I smiled and squatted down to give him a hug. “Clara’s helping me practise for the play!” he shouted right into my ear, likely blowing straight through my eardrum. I pulled back to look at his excited face and save myself from permanent deafness.
“Is that right?” I said, my gaze going from his to over his head where Clara was standing. She blinked a couple of times in our direction before moving towards the kitchen table with her arms outstretched. I frowned when she started feeling the surface of the table, then I saw her glasses in among a load of other clutter and realised that she was struggling to find them. So I patted Ozzie on the shoulder a couple of times and pushed up to standing, striding to the table and grabbing the glasses just before her fingers were about to close over them. When her hand brushed mine, she pulled back fast as if I’d given her an electric shock. I pickedup her glasses and then moved so that I was standing directly in front of her. Once I’d opened the arms, I lifted them up and slid them onto her nose. Her hands came up to cover mine at her ears briefly before she leapt back.
“I-I-I didn’t realise that you’d be home so early,” she said. “I can… I’ll just…” She reached for her jumper and threw it over her head, dislodging her glasses and her high ponytail. Once her jumper was on, she pushed her glasses back up her nose and tucked her hair behind her ears, shooting me another nervous glance. “Well, if there’s nothing else, I probably should go. But, um, I might have…” She cleared her throat and risked a small moment of eye contact before looking back at my tie. “I might have made dinner tonight. It’s just meatballs, but Ozzie said that he, um, he really wanted that today, so… I picked up some ingredients at lunchtime and made it for him. I hope you don’t mind.” Why the fuck would I mind her buying food and cooking for my son? “So I’ll just be going, okay?”
She practically ran for the door then but it was Ozzie that blocked her way this time, his small body bristling in outrage as he put his hands on his hips and scowled up at her.
“Miss Clara, you’ve got to stay. You told me you would do thewhole dancewith me, and you still haven’t eaten your supper. Daddy says it’s super important I make you eat supper.”
I smiled. Ozzie was sounding more and more like me every day.
Clara gave Ozzie a strained smile. “Um, well, Oz. Your dad’s home now, so I should probably get going. You won’t want me hanging around.”
“Clara,” I said in a soft but firm tone that got her attention immediately. Both Clara and Ozzie turned to me. “Ibelieve that I am paying you until seven this evening. That’s not for two hours.”
She blinked. “Uh… okay, well, you can maybe just, uh… dock my wages? I don’t want to intrude on you and Ozzie and?—”
“Clara,” I interrupted her stuttering. “You’re staying.” There could be no confusion about my tone. This was a command, not a request.
She snapped her mouth shut. Her gaze flicked to the exit and then back to me. I could tell that she wanted to run. I could tell that she wanted to tell me where to shove the two hours I was insisting on. But, disappointingly, that fire in her eyes settled into defeat, and she swallowed before she spoke again.
