Chapter 6
Hurt really bad
Rafe
“Where is she?” I stood my ground in the classroom door.
I wasn’t going anywhere until I had answers.
Clara had disappeared off the face of the earth.
She hadn’t been to work in over a week. Ozzie was back to being reluctant to go to school.
The way he pushed his breakfast around his plate this morning was heartbreaking.
He missed her, and this was a crucial time for him with the new dyslexia diagnosis.
“Lord Sterling,” Miss Summerfield said in a voice edged with impatience.
Christ, the outfits this woman wore. Today she was in a yellow dress that was practically neon.
She’d teamed this with tights which had, if I wasn’t very much mistaken, small pineapples all over them.
No sane adult woman would dress this way, surely?
“I’ve told you, Clara is not well. We’ve provided a perfectly good replacement teaching assistant to support Ozzie. ”
“Ozzie doesn’t want him,” I snapped, gesturing towards the classroom at the random bloke who was supervising.
Okay, so I hadn’t been convinced about Clara’s abilities, but compared to that wet lettuce, she was a fucking genius when it came to teaching.
“He wants Clara. What could possibly keep her off work for so long? It’s been over a week. ”
A troubled look passed over Miss Summerfield’s face as she broke eye contact with me to look out of the window.
“Clara will be back as soon as she can,” she said eventually, blanking her expression when she looked back at me.
“She wouldn’t have taken time off if it wasn’t strictly necessary. Believe me, she lives for her work.”
I snorted. “Fine way of showing it, swanning off for a week and leaving my son in the lurch.”
To my surprise, Miss Summerfield’s eyes flashed with anger, her face flushing. Even more surprising was how she spoke to me next.
“How dare you?” she said in a low voice.
I blinked in shock, for once at a total loss for words.
Was this woman suicidal? “You know nothing about Clara’s circumstances.
She’s…” I didn’t think I could be any more shocked, but then Miss Summerfield’s eyes filled with tears.
What the fuck was going on? One tear fell down her cheek, and she scrubbed it away in a furious motion.
“You’ve no idea what you’re talking about, okay?
For you, this is just some inconvenience.
People like you are so entitled and selfish, you just––”
“Miss Summerfield,” Mrs Clayton’s voice sounded from the door, and Miss Summerfield broke off.
Her mouth snapped shut and she gave Mrs Clayton a defiant look.
“I think it might be best if I spoke with Lord Sterling, don’t you?
” Miss Summerfield gave a stiff nod and then, with jerky movements, grabbed her handbag and stormed out of the classroom.
I turned to Mrs Clayton and threw my hands up. “Did you hear that?”
She sighed. “Yes, Rafe, I heard,” she said, walking over to the front of the classroom to sit down heavily in the teacher’s chair. At that moment, she looked every one of her sixty-five years. I put my hands on my hips and frowned over at her.
“You think it’s acceptable for a teacher to speak to a parent like that?”
“I think that Miss Summerfield is very worried, very angry and, like me, she feels incredibly helpless.”
I frowned. “What are you talking about?”
“Clara will be back at work tomorrow,” she said, and the angry energy drained out of me.
“Oh, right,” I said, still frowning. “Well, why couldn’t Miss Summerfield just tell me that?”
“I only just got off the phone with Clara. Miss Summerfield likely did not think she would be able to return as soon as she is, but Clara insists she’s able to work.”
I frowned. “You don’t agree?”
Mrs Clayton sighed heavily. “Rafe, I’ll be honest with you. I don’t agree with any of what’s happening with Clara. And, no, in my opinion, she’s not ready to come back to work.”
My eyebrows went up in surprise. “In my experience, if you don’t agree with something, you tend to be upfront about it and put it right.”
Mrs Clayton shook her head, and her shoulders slumped. The dragon lady I knew from childhood looked utterly defeated. What the fuck was going on?
“Not this time, Rafe,” she said in a quiet voice. “Not this time.”
“Maybe if you’d explain what the––”
“Just stay away from her when she gets back,” Mrs Clayton interrupted me. “God knows the girl needs some peace. At least allow her that.”
“Hey, Daddy!” shouted Ozzie as I walked out of the school.
He broke away from his aunt to run to me, grabbed my hand and then bounced up and down on the spot.
“Did you find out where she is? Are you going to bring her back?” I smiled down at him.
He had complete confidence in me and my ability to sort any problem out.
“She’s coming back tomorrow,” I told him.
“Hurrah!” he shouted, punching the air and then turning to run to my sister. “Hear that, Auntie Poppy? She’s back tomorrow!”
“I heard, little man,” Poppy said, joining him in his bouncing, the two of them dancing around the pavement like lunatics – Poppy in designer heels, a Louis Vuitton dress paired with the most ridiculous sleeveless fur coat I’d ever seen.
My sister dressed like a demented fashionista one hundred percent of the time, even if she was just picking up her nephew from school.
“Woohoo!” They were punching the air now.
Poppy nearly took out a businessman trying to pass them.
I rolled my eyes and steered them both down the road before they caused an accident.
“Come on, you two,” I muttered. “Let’s get home before we get papped again.”
This was the downside of having my famous It-girl sister look after my son.
She was constantly followed by paparazzi.
It was extremely tedious. But since I’d fired Ozzie’s nanny, Pops was my only real option.
It was tricky because, as well as running the Sterling charity foundation, Poppy looked after our Granny as well, a formidable ninety-year-old with a stubborn streak as wide as Poppy’s.
But Ozzie loved Poppy to pieces so we were making it work on a temporary basis.
I had a huge workload at the moment in the run-in to being appointed as a judge, and I needed Ozzie to be looked after by someone he loved.
Especially after everything that had happened.
After Clara asked me if there was a reason Ozzie wasn’t engaging with reading at home, I’d started asking questions – and I found out that not only had Ozzie’s nanny called him stupid, but she’d been eroding his confidence for a while.
I couldn’t get the woman out of my house quickly enough.
Unfortunately, although Ozzie was happier now, he still wouldn’t read with me at home, and as much as he loved his aunt, he wouldn’t read with her either.
Poppy had cried when I told her about his dyslexia.
She had severe dyslexia herself but it had gone undiagnosed right up until secondary school.
It wasn’t that our parents didn’t care about Poppy academically.
It’s just that, back then, the school she attended, whilst astronomically expensive, was fairly backward when it came to special educational needs, and our family’s attitude to Poppy since she’d been a tiny toddler was that of rampant indulgence.
I think that we Sterlings were just so bowled over by this happy little ball of sunshine being born into a long line of serious, boring aristocrats that we all loved her beyond reason and wanted life to be simple and easy for her.
When she struggled academically, my parents just told her it didn’t matter, and they never pushed too hard for assessments.
When she was finally diagnosed, it was too late to catch up with the rest of her year group.
She still had problems reading, especially when she was stressed out, saying that the words all blurred together if she felt under pressure.
I blamed myself somewhat as I was twelve years older, and I should have questioned everyone’s assumption that she was just a bit dim.
But by that stage I’d been off making my own way at law school, then in chambers, and I hadn’t had time for my little sister.
I hadn’t had time for much of anything. Well, I wasn’t neglecting my family anymore.
With Ozzie, I was determined not to make any of the same mistakes I’d made with Poppy.
“Hey, I wanna meet this Miss Clara,” said Poppy as we walked to my car. “She sounds like the absolute goat.”
I raised one eyebrow at Poppy. “I hesitate to ask, but how on earth do farmyard animals come into the equation, Pops?”
Both Poppy and Ozzie rolled their eyes in unison.
“Greatest Of All Time, old man.”
“She is as well!” said Ozzie as he jumped from crack to crack on the pavement.
“Miss Clara’s the bestest teacher ever.” The news of Clara’s return had seemed to revive him from the listless child I left this morning to his normal chatterbox self.
“She can help you with your words too! We play games like Amazing Alliterations and the Alphabet Game. It’s super fun. ”
“That does sound super fun, darling,” said Poppy softly when we made it to the car. “You know, you’re frightfully lucky. I wish I’d had a teacher like that when I was at school.”
“Miss Summerfield says that Miss Clara is really special. She says that she’s never met a teacher who is so good with kids whose brains work differently.
” As Ozzie climbed into the car and I pulled the seatbelt over to plug it in, his smile dropped a little.
“She looks really worried about Miss Clara. And last week, when she was telling us that Miss Clara had an accident, her face got all red, and her voice got all wobbly like mine does when I’m about to cry. ”
“An accident?” I said with a frown. “I thought she was ill.”
Ozzie shrugged. “Miss Summerfield said it was an accident. She said Miss Clara was hurt really bad but they made her all better in the hospital.”
“The hospital?” I said in shock. Nobody had mentioned hospitals to me. Ozzie frowned at me.
“Yes, Daddy, of course,” he said as if I myself was a bit dim, “that’s where people go if they get hurt really bad. I had to go there when I broke my arm after I climbed that tree with Margot, ’member?”
“Right, yeah, okay,” I muttered, my hand going to the back of my neck to squeeze the muscles there before I slammed the door shut and rounded the car to get to the driver’s side.
“You alright?” Poppy muttered from the passenger seat, and I realised I’d been staring through the windscreen for God knows how long without actually starting the car. I shook my head to clear it.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” I said, starting the engine and trying to focus as I pulled out into traffic. “It’s just they never mentioned an accident or hospital.”
Poppy shrugged. “Maybe they didn’t know when they talked to you?”
I felt my expression darken as I gripped the steering wheel harder.
“They knew,” I said in a tight voice. “I have a feeling they know a lot more than they’re letting on. I just don’t know why they would try to hide it from me.”