Chapter 8 #2
“Listen, we’ve tried everything with Ozzie. He simply won’t read with us. I really need your help. You’re the only person who can connect with him. All I want is to read with my son like any other father.”
“I’m sorry, Lord Sterling,” Clara said, shaking her head.
I’d lost her.
Jesus, this was so frustrating.
For a man who commanded everything and everyone in my work life, to have so little control over a situation and a person crucial for my son’s well-being was foreign to me. I needed to make this woman understand I wasn’t going to take no for an answer.
“I will pay you extremely well,” I told her. She glanced up at me again, something lighting in her eyes before she shut it down.
“I-I-I don’t think that I would be of any use to you,” she said. “I’m sure that Ozzie would start reading with you if you just…”
“He hasn’t read with me in months, Clara,” I was getting really frustrated now, which was counterproductive.
The sharpness of my tone caused her to take another small step back, and I gritted my teeth.
“I’m sorry, but this is not going to improve on its own.
I need your help. I need you to be his tutor, and I need it every night that I have him at home, Sunday through to Wednesday officially.
Although, in reality, most weeks I have him every day. ”
She looked to the side and then back at me again.
“How much money?” she whispered.
Ah, we’re getting somewhere, I thought. Clearly she doesn’t really care about Ozzie, but she does care about money. I swallowed down a snap of anger. So much for the beleaguered teacher just out for the welfare of their students. Well, everyone had a price, and disappointingly, Clara had hers.
“The pay is a hundred pounds an hour,” I told her. “You’d be working from three-thirty until seven every night for at least four nights a week. So that is one thousand, four hundred pounds a week; five thousand, six hundred pounds a month. Does that sound reasonable to you?”
Clara’s mouth fell open, and she gave me some rare, brief eye contact before she dropped her gaze down to my tie again. “Five thousand a month? Are you serious?”
I raised one eyebrow. “It’s five thousand, six hundred, and I’m rarely anything but serious, Clara,” I told her.
What I didn’t tell her is that if she pushed me, I’d offer her five times that amount.
“Look,” I said into the silence, “why don’t you just come with me and Ozzie tonight?
We’ll talk about it. I’ll explain the possible terms of your employment while I drive you home, and then you can make a decision.
I’d need to know by tomorrow. I want you to start working for me as soon as possible. Is that clear?”
She shook her head in small movements.
“I’m not getting in your car,” she whispered. “I can’t. I—”
It was then something caught her attention behind me. The little colour in her already pale face drained completely away and, before I knew what was happening, she’d wrenched open the door that Ozzie had gone through into the back seat of my car and jumped in after him, slamming it behind her.
“What the fuck?” I muttered, looking at the door. I could just about see through the tinted windows that she was chatting to Ozzie now, whose wide smile told me that he was thrilled that I’d managed to talk Clara around.
I turned to look down the road to see an elderly couple across the street and a skinny kid walking along with his hands shoved in his pockets.
Nothing untoward or out of place. I frowned, pulled my car door open and slid into the front seat.
When I turned to Clara and Ozzie, they were smiling at each other in the back.
“Clara,” I said, “I appreciate that you are willing to talk to me about this, but if we are going to speak about your terms of employment, it might be better if you sat in the front seat of the car rather than—”
“Right,” she said in a small voice. She glanced out of the window but didn’t move. I cleared my throat.
“Clara, that will require you to actually disembark the car in order to move to the front seat.”
“Yes, yes, totally,” she said, her gaze still fixed on the outside. I waited another full minute before she finally got out of the car to transfer to the front.
As I pulled away from the curb, she was glancing back behind her still.
Once we turned off that road, she sank back into her chair and blew out a relieved breath.
She’d pulled off her hat now, and her light brown hair was muzzed from the wool.
I snuck glances at her while I was driving.
There were dark circles under her eyes behind her thick glasses.
Her cheekbones were more prominent than a few weeks ago, as if she’d lost quite a bit of weight, which, to be honest, I didn’t think she could afford to lose.
The bruises on her face had all faded significantly, and she no longer wore her brace, but it was clear that her wrist was still bothering her.
She cradled it in her lap as if to protect it from the bumping motion as we went over potholes.
“How long would you need me to tutor Ozzie for?” she asked quietly.
“Yay!” Ozzie shouted from the back. “You’re gonna do it, Miss Clara?
I knew you would. I knew you’d do it. I told Daddy you would.
I told him I don’t want any new nannies if Auntie Poppy’s busy.
I want you to be my new nanny. And I know you can because you told me you don’t have any small people of your own at home.
You said the only thing you’ve got at home is George the Goldfish.
And George the Goldfish is fine. He can come too. You can bring him to my house.”
Clara turned in her seat and smiled back at my son, and my breath caught in my throat. When she smiled, a genuine smile like just now, her tired expression faded, and she was so beautiful it was almost blinding.