“Now, apologise to your daughter.” I took a step towards him and he shrank back slightly. “I’m waiting, Frank.”
“I’m sorry,” he said in a low, almost inaudible voice.
I raised an eyebrow. “Again,” I snapped. “But this time you say: I’m sorry for being an abusive piece of shit. I’m a pathetic coward who picks on people half my size to make myself feel like a big man.”
I made him say it three times, each time a little louder than before. Then I looked at Clara.
“Enough?” I asked.
“Not quite,” she muttered, staring at her father. Before I could stop her, she took a step forward and spat in his face. I pulled her back out of his reach as he surged forward. The timer on my phone went off at that moment, and the guards burst into the room to grab Frank who was seemingly trying to attack his daughter.
Clara looked up at me and smiled. “Now we’re done.”
Chapter 39
You died magnificently
Clara
“Margot,”I said with no small amount of horror, “where did you get all that fake blood from?”
Margot looked down at her outfit then back up at me with a satisfied smirk. “It’s bloody brilliant, isn’t it?”
“You haven’t actually killed anyone at the start of the play, love.”
She shrugged. “How do you know?”
I rubbed my temples as I straightened up from my crouch. “It’s too late to find you a clean apron now,” I muttered. “Okay, go to Miss Summerfield and we’ll––”
“Going well, I see,” Rafe’s deep voice sounded in my ear, and I whipped round to face him. He was smiling down at me, looking impossibly handsome amidst the chaos of Year 3’s performance preparation.
“Rafe, you can’t come back here,” I told him. “This is a parent-free zone. Lily says that the kids need to get into character before they go on. No distractions.”
Rafe glanced over at Margot Harding, who was nowwielding a plastic straight razor with alarming enthusiasm, practising her slashing motion with such vigor that Lily had to grab her wrist.
“Ease up on the enthusiasm, Sweeney,” I heard Lily tell her. “Save it for the performance, yeah?”
Beside them, Ozzie was in the barber’s chair (aka Mrs Clayton’s office chair), gurgling and jerking in the throes of his mock death.
Rafe looked back at me and raised one of his eyebrows. “The children being in character does not appear to be the most pressing problem at the moment, darling,” he said dryly, and I let out a short laugh. His eyes warmed as he stared down at me and he reached up to brush my fringe back from my eyes.
“I was just checking you were okay,” he said softly. “This is…a lot.”
It was my first week back at Molton Prep. All the bruising had faded now and the headaches had largely settled, plus Lily really needed my help with the play. None of the teaching assistants who had stood in for me could really handle Margot. Mrs Clayton had insisted I take as much time as I needed, but I knew I had to reclaim some part of my normal life, even if “normal” now meant helping Lily stage a gory musical with inappropriately young children.
“I’m fine,” I muttered, then winced. Rafe hated me telling him I was fine, but it was a reflex now. A loud crash echoed across the stage and I flinched, instinctively flying into the safety of Rafe’s body. His arms closed around me as we both looked over to see the barber’s chair tipped on its side with a red-faced Ozzie next to it.
“Sorry!” he shouted.
“It’s okay,” Rafe whispered in my ear. “You’re safe.”
Gah! Why did Istillhave to be so bloody jumpy?
“Ozzie!” snapped Lily. “Honestly, calm the death throes down a bit. You’ll do yourself a damage.”
“It’s gotta be realistic!” he said in a grumpy tone, going to climb back up into the chair, but before he could mount it fully, Zach hooked him round his middle and lifted him up in the air to carry him over to the side of the stage. I’d roped Zach in to help tonight – after he heard the title of the play, he was all in.
“Curtain’s going up, little man,” he said as he set a disgruntled Ozzie on his feet.
