Hate to Love You (14 page)

A vivid image of a small backpack full of crisp fifty-pound notes reared its ugly head and I lowered my eyes. “Ryan shouldn’t have to suffer for my mistakes,” I said, pushing away truths I’d tried to bury deep.

James made a disgusted noise. “My son is not suffering for the lack of you. Don’t endeavour to advance your agenda by implying he wants for anything—certainly not for a mother’s love.”

Exasperation seeped into my voice in spite of my efforts to remain cool. “All I want is to spend some time with Ryan.”

“I’m not going to change my mind.”

I stuck my hands on my hips. “Then I guess we’ll be working together for a very long time, because I’m not giving up even if I have to wait until Ryan’s eighteen. Then I’ll be able to tell him you—”

“
You
gave him up. How do you think he’ll feel if I tell him that?”

Abandoned.
Unloved.
Unwanted
, my mind whispered, but I drowned the words with anger. “Ryan won’t be happy to find out how you banned me from seeing him.”

James’s voice became quietly menacing. “Are you threatening me?”

I felt like stomping my foot but doing that at twenty-five was even more ridiculous than at eighteen. “No, I’m saying that I’m not going anywhere.”

“We’ll see,” he said, and picked up my CV. “You’re on probation and if I remember correctly you can’t handle work or responsibility.”

“We’ll see.”

Our arms crossed at the same time, battle lines drawn. We were enemies: signed, notarised and apostilled. I struggled with the idiotic urge to cry. I hadn’t expected James to feel any different and yet the fact that he despised me filled me with a disconcerting sadness.

Velma’s voice was a welcome distraction. “Knock knock, the meeting’s been brought forward.” Her smile faltered as she looked between us. “Is everything okay?”

“Ms Benítez had an accident with a picture frame. She won’t be going near anything else of mine or it might prove fatal,” James said, smiling.

I think Velma had a mini-orgasm.

She left and James picked up a folder. “Shall we proceed, Ms Benítez?”

Oh, for crap’s sake. “Are you going to insist on calling me that, James?”

“Is that not who you are?” he said, scanning my CV. “Ms Elizabeth Benítez, Brighton Technical College NVQ in Secretarial Studies and Administration...
Universidad de Valencia Diploma en Estudios Secretariales.
”

“I changed my surname but—”

“Then, Ms Benítez, please do not delay us.”

“Ready when you are... Scott-Thomas.”

“I’m glad we understand each other.”

* * *

The briefing was like one of Father Martin’s sermons without the hellfire and brimstone—boring, but necessary in order to understand my lowly place in the larger scheme of things. Greg and James outlined my duties and I listened attentively, just like a new employee should.

I was acutely aware of James, unable to dismiss the memories of stolen kisses and fierce, desperate embraces. I focused on Greg, all the while feeling the pressure of James’s blazing eyes, burning like meteors in my peripheral vision.

Mr Lemane spoke about our clients in Spain and plans to expand our services, EU tax laws governing Spain...boring, boring...

His voice was as soporific as David Attenborough on safari and my mind wandered, thinking of how ironic it was that I had once criticised James about his job and now I was employed to help him do it.

James shifted in his chair. “Please pay attention, Ms Benítez. We won’t tolerate sloppy work.”

“I got it.”

“Then I’m sure you’ll have no problem explaining it back to us.”

I matched his polite tone. “We advise our clients with their tax affairs in England and Spain, minimising their liability by establishing trusts and incorporating shell companies. We also prepare documentation and assist with international banking by placing fiduciary deposits upon instruction. In addition to the usual secretarial duties, I’ll be translating and interpreting to ensure smooth lawyer-client relations while in Spain. Oh, and I’ll be keeping my bosses in line.”

I smiled at Mr Lemane. “Did I leave anything out?”

He beamed at me and glanced at James. “Fantastic. See James? Elizabeth was the best candidate. She’s quick, concise and accurate.”

Well, if that were the case I’d have said I’d be helping to teach rich people avoid their taxes in Spanish and sitting through long meals in Spain. They take the leisurely lunch seriously over there.

During the rest of the meeting James’s unwavering stare made me feel like a novice gambler in front of a card sharp. I hardened my resolve. He could try to intimidate me as much as he wanted, because I wasn’t the same lost and desperate girl I’d been at eighteen. I met his look and raised him six months. Nobody was going to bully me ever again.

Punto final
.

“Excuse me?” Greg said.

Note to self: must not mumble my thoughts out loud, especially during briefings at work.

“
Punto final
,” I repeated. “It means full stop. The end. They say it in Spain once all parties have signed a contract. It’s a custom.”

Well it is now
, my mind sighed.

Chapter Eleven

Well and Truly Rumbled

There’s nothing school gate mums like to talk about
more than little Jack’s sporting prowess or Amy’s latest Head Teacher’s award.
It was a Sunday afternoon and I knew from lurking at Ryan’s school that he would
shortly be playing rugby on Hampstead Heath. Ryan was on the same team as
William Hawkins, whose mother was very happy to tell me all about her son’s
activities. I’d been posing as a trainee teacher doing a paper on the importance
of after school clubs and gained her trust.

I sat alone at the Bull and Bush, impatient and brimming with
nervous energy as I sipped my drink. I checked the time again. What the hell was
taking him so long? I hate sitting on my own in pubs; being surrounded by so
much booze makes me cranky. Marcia was working and I’d called the only other
person who would drop everything to come with me to Ryan’s game—provided it was
after 2:00 p.m. on a Sunday.

Two hands covered my eyes.
Ugh
, he
knows I hate it when he does that.

“Prick,” I said.

Tarzan sat and looked me over me with a puzzled frown. “Anybody
dead I should know about?”

“Look who’s talking.”

He was wearing black today, the only colour on him his buzz cut
carrot top and bright blue eyes. I clocked his collar. The sight of it never
ceases to make me smile, especially when I remember the leather and studs he
used to wear. He looked drained so he must have come straight from an
all-nighter in Soho.

Tarzan worked long hours and the company he kept could be
pretty wild, but he said his job was fulfilling so I didn’t knock it.

“You look like shit,” I said.

He flinched and made the sign of the cross. “Beg forgiveness,
my child, and I may absolve you.”

“You’re not going to spend the whole afternoon doing that are
you?”

“Why not? It’s one of the perks.”

“Because I knew you when your porn expenditure would have
provided a year’s worth of lobster bisque for the soup kitchen. I may feel the
need to divulge.”

“Killjoy.”

“No, that part comes when I spill the beans to your next
girlfriend, Reverend.”

He looked at my empty glass. “Another drink to quench the
urge?”

“Sure. The game starts at three but I don’t want to be there
until Ryan’s playing. Y’know, to avoid standing around looking suspicious.”

“Wearing that?”

His expression put me on the defensive. “This is my
uninterested bystander outfit.”

“I thought that was your scary stalker kit.”

“No, this one is different, see?” I pulled at my sleeve to show
him it was cotton jersey and not lycra.

He pinched his chin. “Ah yes, I see how the addition of a black
hoodie lends a wholesome quality to your ensemble.”

I stuck my tongue out and he laughed. “Tonic water with a slice
of lemon.”

“My favourite.”

We exchanged a look of complete understanding and Tarzan went
off to the bar. He chatted to a man and his small son as he waited patiently to
be served. Who would have thought that closing my eyes and pointing at Religious
Studies would have led Tarzan to his vocation? He said his past with drug abuse
made the addicts he tried to help more receptive. Like me, he still craved a hit
sometimes but he said God kept him on the straight and narrow.

I had my own holy trinity to keep me clean: guilt, remorse and
regret.

Tarzan set the drinks down. “How were your first few weeks at
Flintfire?”

“Peachy.”

On the second day I’d found the picture of Ryan face down on my
desk in a new frame. My heart had lifted at the thought that maybe, just maybe,
James didn’t hate me after all.

“Thank you, James,” I’d gushed.

He hadn’t look up from his desk. “It changes nothing,
Ms Benítez
.”

Remembering his pedantic tone, I gulped down my tonic and
banged the glass on the table.

“That bad?” Tarzan asked.

“‘Trash at the Bash’ is circulating on all five floors,” I said
grimly. “I heard a lot of laughter on Accounting last week so I went to see what
all the fuss was about. Then I heard my own drunken voice announcing that James
was my baby’s father and—and all that other stuff. I barely managed to escape
without being noticed and spent ten minutes cursing myself in the bathroom.”

Tarzan gave me a sympathetic look. “Yikes.”

“I knew the video was still a hit but I never thought that my
sophisticated new colleagues would circulate it as the office joke. Even the tea
lady stopped to take a look and she doesn’t offer me pastries anymore.” I sighed
heavily. “Will I never be allowed to put what I did behind me?”

I was grateful Tarzan didn’t offer me useless platitudes. “TB”
was going to stick to me like crap to a shoe. No matter how much I tried to wash
it off, the stench of it would follow me wherever I went.

The office titters were my own fault for foisting myself on
James, but I’d had no choice, right? He’d refused to answer my letters so it was
his
fault if he was the object of derision. It
served him right and—

I felt like a callous bitch.

In the single-minded pursuit of my goals I hadn’t considered
the impact on James. Again. Hell, he probably thought I’d circulated the video
myself because I wanted to humiliate him. Remorse made my throat seize up. All
I’d ever done to James was lash out with impulsive acts of anger. If I said I
was sorry for his latest humiliation at my hands he would laugh in my face.

Tarzan reached for my hand. “James will get over it. From what
you’ve told me he’s too confident in his superiority to care what people think.
Are you going to let your colleagues’ pettiness get you down?”

“No... Well, not in front of them anyway. I try to ignore the
rumours and sly looks I get.”

I hated them though. And I hated seeing the muscle in James’s
jaw twitch whenever he looked at me. I would peep into his eyes, hoping to catch
him off guard and maybe be able to see into his thoughts like I used to.
Nothing. Asking him outright if he blamed me for office gossip was out of the
question.

I did my job competently—no, I excelled, putting in extra time
and making sure James had no reason to complain. But no matter how well I worked
he was on channel
I
for iceberg, as far as I was
concerned. I tried not to let it get to me but his constant perusal was
unnerving. Why had I thought I could work with him and stay indifferent?

Because absence makes the Paisley grow
stupider
, my mind supplied helpfully.

Well, nearness was filling me with confusion. I wanted to hang
on to my hatred but it was getting harder every day. Beyond the civil politeness
required in an office situation James spoke to me very little.

“Glutton for punishment” had become my daily truism.

My mind zapped me when I insisted I didn’t care if James spoke
to me; it zapped me when I told myself his coldness was welcome. Every time I
insisted that James only affected me because he was a supercilious, arrogant
prat the pain throbbed long and hard.

I insisted a lot.

My constant headaches made me irritable and defensive and by
the end of the working day I was eager to escape the man who’d turned my mind
into a sadist. I tried to shore myself up with thoughts of future contact with
Ryan, clinging to the reasons why I had taken the job. My plan had been to wear
James down with my demands but he was wearing
me
down with his silence instead.

Our friendliest interaction so far went like this: James, in
his usual position at my back, arms crossed and looming as he double-checked my
work. Me, twisting to glare up at him.

“Should I keep a chair there for you or mark your spot with an
X?
”

“It’s Bernardo
Stuperschlick—
please
pay attention to detail, Miss Benítez.”

“I thought it was
Stupid Dick
.”

The tiniest hint of humour played tug-of-war with James’s lips
and lost. He leaned over my back and pointed to the screen, washing me in a tide
of expensive aftershave. I detested that potent, masculine smell and I hated it
when he got close. It was an invasion of my personal space and I wished he’d
stop doing it.

Zap!

Zap!

Zap!

After that, James had gone back to his desk and ignored me.
That was fine because I hated it when he looked at me.

Zappity zap
!

The same pain I’d felt that day throbbed in my temples now,
radiating behind my eyes. Damn James to hell! Through the multi-coloured spots
in my vision I pictured the face of the man who had robbed me of my child.

“I hate that man,” I said, wincing.

Tarzan’s voice was gentle. “Are you sure it’s hatred?”

I dissected the word in my mind, six little letters that
spelled out what I felt for Caroline and Manuel. Is that how I felt about James?
Did I enjoy that he was being talked about and ridiculed? Would I relish his
misfortune or feel satisfied if he were denied happiness? I shied away from
answering.

“He’ll never forgive or forget,” I said, flinching as I
imagined his reaction if he found out the truth about Ryan.

“Maybe his anger will fade.”

I snorted into my glass. I might no longer be able to read
James, but some things don’t need to be spelled out. “Kahlu thought so. She told
me to write James’s full name in blue and stick it in the freezer. It was
supposed to cool his ire.”

“Did it work?”

It had done more than that. I’d long since removed the paper
and burned it but not a bit of the James iceberg had thawed into the
blue-carpeted sea that separated us.

Tarzan frowned. “Have you tried praying?”

“Yeah right.”

I bit back another sarcastic comment, not wanting to get into a
discussion about God. Tarzan is as stubborn as I am and our arguments about
religion never end well.

“And what does Marcia think of you taking advice from the
voodoo woman?”

“It’s not voodoo—you need wax and needles for that. And Marcia
thinks it’s great. She wrote ‘Trevor Wilson’s penis and scrotum’ in black and
put it in the icebox. She hopes it’ll freeze his dick off.”

“Ouch.”

“If James allows me to see Ryan, I’m converting to African
sugar magic.”

Tarzan made
woo woo
noises.

I lifted my glass. “Fuck you.”

He gave me an admonishing look. “Every time you swear, an angel
dies.”

Shit, time to go. I checked my watch and pulled on Tarzan’s arm
as I got up. It was too hot to wear my itchy black wig so I pulled my hair into
a ponytail and put on what Tarzan snidely calls my SWAT cap.

The Bull and Bush was conveniently located on the edge of
Hampstead Heath and from there it was a ten-minute walk through the woods to
where the playing fields were located. There were several games in progress but
it was easy to spot Ryan’s team from their school colours. They hadn’t started
playing yet so we hung back at the periphery of the woods.

“Where’s Marcia today?” Tarzan asked, a little too
casually.

I told him about her shift. “She’s sworn off men for now,
Reverend. The good news is that tall Afro-Caribbean football hunks are at the
bottom of her wish list. Medium height, lanky white men of God, however, might
stand a chance when she’s back on track.”

Tarzan had never met Trevor. “Afro-Caribbean hunks, huh?”

“Sporty jocks, not computer-geek ministers.”

“Damn.”

I widened my eyes. “You just killed St. Peter.”

I pointed my camera at the players and Tarzan lowered my hand.
“You don’t want irate parents demanding to know why you’re photographing their
kids, nor do you want James to realise you’re here and take action.”

Tarzan had an excellent point. Being spotted was the last thing
I needed with a restraining order hanging over my head.

The rugby game started and I squinted at the field. From this
distance it was hard to make out which child was Ryan but I thought I saw him
playing full back.

I watched him for a few minutes, alternating between his wavy
brown head and the group of parents around the touchlines. I scanned beyond the
playing fields looking for James and saw his mother.

Francesca had gone grey but otherwise she still looked much the
same. She was sitting in a fold-up chair next to a pile of kit, staring in our
direction. Shit, I didn’t want to leave Ryan. How the hell had she recognised me
from all the way over there?

“We look like vultures,” I moaned. “Harbingers of doom.”

“Better that than creepy child watchers.”

I turned my back on the field. “Is she still looking?”

“No,” he said cheerfully. “She’s walking towards us and she
looks determined to have a word. I’m glad. It’ll be a good chance for you
to—”

“Fuck! Kiss me, Tarzan.”

Not a phrase I’d ever imagined saying but I was in a jam. I
stuck my lips on his and did a sort of nineteen forties film-kiss action,
twisting my head side to side and eliciting an “mmmph” from Tarzan. His chest
shook as I assaulted him. He was laughing, the bastard. I broke off and wrapped
my hands around his waist.

“Is she coming?” I said, squeezing tight.

His voice was constricted. “No, but soon I won’t be able to say
the same about myself—it’s been a while.”

I pulled away sheepishly. “Sorry.”

Tarzan sighed. “At least I don’t have to wonder what people
will think anymore. I’m a pervert minister who sucks tongue with the grim reaper
in front of primary-school children.”

I laughed at his martyred expression. “I’ll tell Marcia you’re
a great kisser.”

His face brightened. “And I give good hug?”

Francesca cleared her throat behind us and I turned around,
well and truly rumbled.

“I’m glad you’re here, Paisley,” she said without preamble. “We
need to talk before James arrives.”