“Language, Zach.”
“For fuck’s sake, Clara,” he snapped. “Who gives a fuck? The f-word is probably one of the first words we heard as babies.”
“We don’t have to be like them, Zach,” I saidfiercely. “You’re not like them. You never have been. Don’t start speaking like them either.”
He sighed heavily. “Well, I’m going to end up like them if I can’t bloody revise.”
“How about that subscription to the online learning platform I bought for you?”
“I need the physical copies, Clara. You know I do. And I…” He cleared his throat. “Look, I know it’s a big ask, but I need you to come over and test me as well. If you could bring those flashcards with the questions on, that would really help. I can’t learn it all by myself. Not if I want to get a nine.”
Zach was doing his GCSE mocks, and he was absolutely determined to do well. His driving desire was to become a vet. He loved animals to the very depths of his soul and had always wanted to look after them, even as a tiny child. He was kind, empathetic, gentle and studious – all qualities that were not held in very high regard within my family. Zach and I were oddballs as far as the Masons were concerned. Aberrations in the matrix, and they hated us for it. I’d felt horrendously guilty when I left home at eighteen. I’d never forget Zach’s heartbroken little face when I walked out of the house. I’d wanted to take him with me, but even if, as a broke student, I’d had the means to support him, our family would never have let him go.
They were into possessions, you see, be that material goods, money or people. And they didn’t like having their possessions removed from their control. I’d always flown under the radar as a small child, largely avoiding my father and older brothers. My mother had checked out years before I was born, so she wasn’t much help. I fended for myself and then Zach after he came along when I was ten. Iwas always aware that my father and brothers didn’t like me and thought I was totally useless, but it was only when I began showing signs of breaking away from the family that things had escalated.
But for now, I shoved all those memories down. If I had to go back to the house for Zach, now was not the time to relive all of that. His little face on the day I left swam into my consciousness again, and I sighed. Guilt would drive me back there again, just like it always did. And I would pay the price, just like I always did.
The next day,I waited until Zach texted to say the coast was clear and that it was just him and Mum at home. It took Mum a good few minutes to answer the door when I knocked, which felt like an eternity as I glanced nervously up and down the road for any of my dad’s cronies who would report back to him. Everyone was terrified of Frank Mason. You couldn’t take a shit in this neighbourhood without it being reported back to him in full.
“Oh, it’s you,” Mum said, her lifeless eyes giving me a once-over as she stepped back from the door.
“Hi, Mum,” I said softly. “Can I come in? I’ve got some stuff for Zach.”
She nodded vaguely as she drifted back in the direction of the kitchen, where she was likely nursing her fifth or sixth glass of wine. Life had beaten down Marie Mason so thoroughly that now she was really only a shell of a human being. From the age of seventeen, when my father knocked her up, she’d had her spirit slowly and relentlessly crushed. I sometimes saw a flash of resentment in her eyes whenshe looked at me, like she was jealous that I’d managed to make it out of that house and away from the family. But Marie knew as well as I did that you could never really escape the Masons. If my family wanted me to be somewhere or do something for them, they would be able to make me do it. I only had as much freedom as it suited them to grant me. If they wanted me on a shorter leash, they could make it happen. But for the moment, I was lucky that they had bigger fish to fry.
I shook my head and turned to the stairs, taking them two at a time to get to Zach’s room at the top of the house. The house was large and had over four floors. Dad had decorated it in marble and gold, like the ostentatious new-money wanker that he was. It was cold and desolate, and I hated it. I rolled my eyes when Zach didn’t answer his door at my knock and pushed my way in. As expected, he was at his computer with his noise-cancelling headset on, talking to his mates as they marched around a virtual world together.
“Hey, loser,” I said as I pulled one side of his headphones off his ear. He jumped, then grinned up at me, telling his friends he had to go before he leapt to his feet to give me a hug, which squashed the books and stacks of revision cards I had in my arms between us.
“You came,” he said with relief onto the top of my head. Zach had long since passed my height. He was six-foot now to my measly five-foot-two, but still skinny and gangly, not being keen on the relentless gym routine that my scary older brothers kept up with. One of the books dropped to the floor between us, and we broke apart to pick it up.
“Of course I came, you wally,” I said through my tight throat. That guilt swamped me again, but I pushed it down. “Don’t I always come when you ask?”
His expression darkened as he helped me unload the books onto his desk. “It’s just…” he paused and swallowed, a flash of fear and apprehension in his expression, “After last time. After what happened, I…” he broke off, dumped the remaining books on his desk and then sat heavily on his bed. “Maybe I shouldn’t have asked you to come, Cla-Cla.”
When Zach was a baby his Rs had been tricky. He’d always called me Cla-Cla and it stuck. There was a time when he started calling me mummy, probably because I was doing all the things you would expect a mummy to do. But I had to shut that down quickly. Mum hadn’t seemed to care, but it annoyed my dad, and anything that annoys Frank Mason is not a good idea. He was happy as long as his wife was immaculately turned out with a full face of make-up and perfect figure. He did not care if she was neglecting her children, but he certainly didn’t want other people to know that was the case. Hence we stuck to Cla-Cla.
“Hey,” I said, sitting next to a dejected-looking Zach on the bed and laying my hand on his back to rub the small circles that always soothed him as a child. “Don’t you worry about that. You needed me and I’m here. Everything’s going to be fine. Okay?”
“You were really hurt last time,” he whispered. Zach had always done that too. He’d always whispered when he talked about me “getting hurt”. One reason was likely because my dad didn’t like to overhear us talking about it, but the other was because I think Zach felt like if he said it out loud it made it more real. More scary.
“Hey,” I said softly, laying my hand over his on his lap. “I’m fine now. And you’re going to kick butt in your mocks with all this junk I’ve bought you, so cheer up, geek-face.”
Zach managed a small smile and turned his hand over togrip mine. “How’s work?” he asked and my smile dropped a little. He frowned in concern. “Shit, sorry, Cla-Cla. I thought talking about work would cheer you up. It always does, normally.”
I shrugged. “It’s fine. It’s just there’s this dad…”
I trailed off and felt some heat hit my cheeks. Zach squeezed my hand, and when I looked up at his face, his eyebrows were in his hairline. “You fancy adad?”
“W-what?” I pulled my hand from his and jumped to my feet. “No, of course not! Why would you even say that?”
Zach grinned. “Er… maybe because you’re blushing like a tomato, and you wouldn’t look me in the eye when you mentioned him.”
“Ugh, you’re ridiculous,” I snapped, putting my hands on my hips to glare at him. “I donotfancy this guy. He’s just a bleeding nuisance.”
For the past week, since my meeting with Lord Sterling, he’d been trying to engineer another meeting with me, and I’d been trying to avoid him – which I’d managed to do on most days. Unfortunately, yesterday, I’d been late leaving and he’d cornered me in the corridor, looking absolutely bloody furious.
“Miss Clara,” he’d said through gritted teeth, his big body blocking my way to the exit. “I have attempted to speak with you on a number of occasions regarding Ozzie.”
