Chapter 7
Not people who are safe
Clara
“Jesus Christ, what happened to your face?” Martin said when he walked into the staff room. Molton Prep’s PE teacher was not known for his tact. My hand fluttered up to the still swollen cheek and left eye unconsciously and I felt myself flush.
“Bloody hell, Martin,” snapped Lily. “Bull in a china shop as usual. Let Clara eat her lunch.”
Martin shrugged. “What? I’m supposed to ignore the fact Clara looks like she’s gone a couple of rounds with Muhammad Ali? I’m not supposed to ask what the fuck happened?”
I cleared my throat. “I fell down some stairs.”
I’d decided that the walked into a door or tripped over my own feet excuse wasn’t going to cut it this time. I simply had too many visible bruises. Oh, and there was the small issue of my broken wrist.
Martin crossed his arms over his broad chest, and his eyes narrowed. “Hmm, whatever you say, love.”
He was clearly not convinced but knew he wasn’t going to get any more out of me, so he walked off to the fridge. Lily leaned over to squeeze my hand. She knew that I lived in a ground-floor flat. She knew way too much, to be honest.
I felt a twinge of unease as I smiled at her.
It wasn’t really safe for her to be close to me.
I was naturally shy, but I also kept my distance from people for a reason.
The same reason I didn’t use my real last name at school.
But Lily had been one of the only people to relentlessly pursue a friendship with me until she eventually wore me down.
After a year of us working together now, I’d thoroughly and completely let her in.
It felt so good to have someone on my side that I just couldn’t resist. And Lily was my extrovert.
She stood up for me, helped me fit in with the other teachers, stopped me looking like a mateless weirdo.
At my last school, I’d barely spoken to anyone other than the kids.
Lily had changed that here. The drawback was curiosity, like from Martin this morning.
When I glanced over at him, I noticed he was still looking at me with a troubled expression.
If a man like Martin had suspicions, he was not going to stay silent.
But he didn’t understand. He didn’t know that there was nothing he or anyone else could do.
Lily understood that now. So did Mrs Clayton.
“Do you think you should have let some of the swelling go down a bit?” whispered Lily, eyeing Martin nervously.
I shrugged. “The bruising will still take ages to fade, and I have to wear this brace for at least another three weeks. I can’t be off work for that long.” The break hadn’t been that bad. It was only a hairline fracture and was stable enough to be supported by a wrist brace.
“Okay, hun,” Lily said softly, her voice breaking a little before she got herself together again. I felt bad. Lily had done way too much crying over me in the last week. At first, when she came to pick me up from the hospital, she’d been enraged and started back on at me about going to the police.
“Surely there’s something we can do to get those bastards?” she’d cried.
But it wasn’t long until that rage faded to bleak acceptance.
That’s when the crying started. Unfortunately, there really wasn’t any other choice.
Snitching about this was not an option. I’d known practically from birth what happens to snitches.
There weren’t many rules in my family’s world, but that was one of them.
Snitches get stitches was one of their favourite sayings.
I reached up to my temple to feel the threads of the stitches there.
Okay, so sometimes you got stitches even if they didn’t think you were a snitch.
I didn’t want to find out how bad the repercussions could be then. I doubted I would survive it.
Of course, there was still The Big Terrible Thing, but I’d been promised that would never be linked to me.
I was an expert at dealing with the police now.
I simply ignored them until they went away.
I used to come up with excuses, but I couldn’t be bothered with that anymore.
The police knew what had happened. What was the point of lying?
But if they wanted to nail the Masons, they were going to have to do it without my testimony about assaults on me.
Maybe that made me a coward, but I tended to think of it simply as me trying to survive.
I wouldn’t be much help to Zach if I was at the bottom of the Thames.
And anyway, I’d done my part with The Big Terrible Thing. Anything else was asking too much.
Yes, Grant had been pissed off when he rang me last night. He didn’t buy my “fell down the stairs” excuse, and he reminded me of my options. But I wasn’t leaving London, not while Zach still needed me.
“Clara,” Lily’s soft voice penetrated through my dark thoughts. “Can you eat something, hun? Just a few bites. I know it’s sore with your mouth, but you’ve got to eat something, okay?”
I nodded and lifted my sandwich, wincing when I chewed around my swollen lip.
Unfortunately, I’d lost a fair amount of weight.
Apart from the anxiety, which was my constant companion and always put me off eating, there was the split in my lip, which kept reopening.
That particular cut hadn’t actually required stitches as it was on the inside of my mouth where apparently the mucosa would heal itself.
Well, I wished it would bloody well hurry up and get on with it.
As the day wore on, I felt myself relax ever so slightly. I loved my job; I loved the kids, and I loved working out what made them tick and how I could get them excited about learning. Ozzie was sticking to me like glue. He was shocked when he first saw me that morning.
“Wowsers, Miss Clara,” he’d breathed. “Those stairs must have been super high.”
His little face was full of worry as he stared up at me.
The questions continued throughout the day.
He wanted to know which bone was broken in my wrist, how long until it healed, if it still hurt, if I could see out of my eye, if my eye just “smushed”.
I answered all of them and eventually he settled down so that we could get some work done.
By the end of the day, though, I was exhausted and stiff. My arm had started to ache, and I had a headache building. As the kids began to leave, I sat down heavily in Lily’s chair and blew out a long breath. Maybe Lily was right. Maybe it was too soon to come back.
“What in the fuck happened to you?” I flinched as an unexpected, low, deep voice filled the classroom, the sudden movement jerking my arm and worsening the pain.
“L-L-Lord Sterling,” I stammered, straightening in the chair and wincing again at the strain on my battered body. “What are you doing here?”
He strode into the room like he owned the place, which was how I imagined Lord Sterling entered every room.
When he was in front of the desk, just a few feet from me, I had to tilt my head back to look up at him, which intensified my headache.
I was suddenly tired. So, so tired. I did a long blink, wishing I could simply teleport to Lily’s sofa to watch Bridgerton with a jar of Branston Pickle, which was the plan I’d been promised earlier.
I was staying with Lily for the moment. Not only was I too scared to go back to my flat, but with my wrist I wasn’t really able to sort out food or do other basic chores.
It wasn’t ideal as Lily only had one tiny bedroom, but she wouldn’t hear of me staying on my own until I had full use of my arm again.
“I came to see you,” Lord Sterling said, his eyes sweeping from the bruised and swollen side of my face to my wrist. “I wanted to talk to you about Ozzie.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “But now I want to talk to you about what the fuck happened to you?”
I did another long blink and let out a breath. With that breath, I seemed to expel all the fucks I had left to give. I was done. I was too tired to feel fear anymore and, anyway, Lord Sterling might be massive and intimidating, but he wasn’t going to hurt me, at least not physically.
“I fell down some stairs,” I said by rote. I’d repeated the same story a few times now.
“You fell down some stairs? Jesus Christ, your arm is broken.”
I let out a small, humourless laugh. “Oh really? I hadn’t noticed.”
“Clara, I––”
“Listen, Lord Sterling,” I interrupted him as I closed my eyes to shut out his too-handsome, too-intense presence. “I’m tired, I’m in pain, and I’m afraid I simply can’t cope with a man like you at the moment.”
There was a long silence. I really, really hoped he’d give up and go home, but the man was stubborn.
When I cracked an eyelid open, I was disappointed to see him still standing there with his arms crossed over his chest and a grumpy expression.
I’m quite sure the great Lord Sterling did not appreciate being ignored.
“Clara,” he said slowly and with waning patience, “I find it hard to believe that the injuries you’ve sustained are merely the result of falling down some stairs.
I’m not quite sure what on earth is going on here, but I do know my son missed you.
An uncomfortable amount. I would very much like to have your assurance that you will not be absent from your post in the future. ”
I pressed my lips together to prevent the nervous laugh I could feel bubbling up.
He narrowed his eyes at me.
“I’m so sorry that my injuries have inconvenienced you, Lord Sterling,” I said, still unable to conjure up the same deference and nervousness he usually inspired in me.
Honestly, it was like the tiredness had crept into my very bones.
I was starting to realise that I should have followed the hospital’s advice and taken longer off work.
But the truth was, I simply didn’t want to be alone at Lily’s whilst she was at work. I felt safer in the school.