Chapter 10
Emotional Safety
Clara
The Sterling house was vast, but somehow…
cosy. I was surprised. Rafe Sterling didn’t look like the kind of man to choose large, squishy sofas and velvety fabric for his living room.
The kitchen was far more what I would consider up his street with its ultra-modern, minimalist vibe, but the subtle sparkle running through the vast acres of granite worktops didn’t quite jibe with what I expected to be Lord Sterling’s taste either. Maybe his ex-wife chose everything?
Ozzie ran straight to the biscuit tin.
“Right,” I said. “Shall I make a start on dinner?”
Ozzie tilted his head to the side as he stuffed a cookie into his mouth.
“Start dinner?” he asked around his full mouth. “Whad’ya mean?”
“I mean, make dinner, Oz. You know that meal we all eat at the end of the day?”
Ozzie laughed. “You’re not cooking dinner. Dinner’s in the fridge, like always.” I opened up the fridge, revealing a huge homemade lasagne sitting on one of the shelves and a big bowl of salad next to it. “Martha makes lasagne on Mondays,” Ozzie told me. “It’s my favourite.”
“Okay,” I said, glancing between Ozzie and the lasagne. “Is Martha daddy’s… friend?”
Ozzie frowned. “Er, I guess. She cooks all our meals,” he said as if it was perfectly natural to have your own personal chef.
At least, I hoped Martha was a personal chef and not an over-enthusiastic girlfriend.
Gah! Wait! What business did I have hoping that Lord Sterling didn’t have a girlfriend who made perfect lasagnes?
I knew he was divorced. His ex-wife never came to the school – she must have been even more of a workaholic than him. Poor Ozzie.
“Right, where do you want to read, Ozzie?” I said, having put the lasagne in the oven. The helpful instructions written by the chef/girlfriend said forty-five minutes, so we had time.
Ozzie bit his lip and shuffled his feet. “I don’t really read at home, Miss Clara. I only read at school. With you.”
I crouched down in front of him so that we were at eye level. “Why only at school, Oz?” I asked softly. “I bet Daddy would love to hear you reading.”
Ozzie shuffled his feet again, his face settling into an unhappy expression.
“Daddy’s really clever,” he whispered. “Really, really clever. Everyone always says how clever my daddy is and how lucky I am to have such a clever daddy. I don’t want to make Daddy sad.
I don’t want him to know how badly I muddle up my letters and numbers.
” He paused for a moment, twisting his lips to the side before he spoke again.
This time his whisper was so quiet I had to strain to hear it. “I’m stupid.”
“Who told you that, Ozzie?” I said, trying to keep my voice steady despite how my chest tightened with anger.
Who would tell this precious boy that he was stupid?
Pigeonholing children and putting them down like this was one of the things that made me angriest when it came to teaching.
“Whoever told you that you were stupid, they were wrong – very, very wrong. And I won’t stand for it,” I said.
Ozzie looked at me in surprise, not used to hearing my voice sharp with anger.
But the more I thought about it, the more furious I became.
“Would you tell me who said that to you?”
He shook his head in sharp, jerky movements. I decided to let it lie for the moment.
“Okay, well, you know that I don’t think you’re stupid, Ozzie. So let’s do some Amazing Alliterations and then we can read from your new reading book. Okay?”
It took quite a bit of coaxing and a tiny bit of bribery from the secret stash of Fruit Pastilles I kept in my handbag. But Ozzie finally caved.
It was past seven when I heard the beeping of the alarm system.
Ozzie was curled into my side on the sofa, and we were watching Britain’s Amazing Hedgerows.
Ozzie loved hedgehogs. Apparently, there was a group called the Hedgerow Warriors, which had a monthly newsletter and was run by somebody Ozzie called Hedgehog Vicky, who sounded a special kind of eccentric.
Ozzie saved all his newsletters under his bed, and we’d actually worked on reading one of those tonight after we’d tackled his reading book.
After a few moments, I heard the heavy footsteps down the corridor, and then Lord Sterling appeared, filling the room with his ultra-masculine, almost electrically charged presence.
Rafe Sterling was an absolute force of nature.
In his three-piece suit, his hair slightly damp from the rain, and his jaw darkened with stubble, he was almost too beautiful to be real.
For a moment, my mind blanked. I just sat there staring up at him with my mouth open and Ozzie still tucked into my side, completely under this magnetic man’s spell.
“Daddy!” shouted Ozzie, jumping up from the sofa and running to his father, who lifted him up in a big hug.
“I’ve gone up another reading level! We read a whole book tonight and one of The Warrior’s newsletters.
Miss Clara says I can get up to the next level by the end of term if I carry on like this. She told me I’m amazing.”
Lord Sterling smiled at his son. It was the first time I’d seen the man smile close up and my breath caught in my throat.
It was so bright, so white, so glamorous that it almost hurt to look at him.
My belly whooshed and my heart rate, which had settled whilst feeling so safe in the house, sped up again.
“That’s fantastic, buddy,” Lord Sterling said as he lowered his son to the ground. “Maybe you and I could—?”
“Gotta go brush my teeth, Daddy,” Ozzie put in quickly, backing away from his father. I could feel the frustration rolling off Lord Sterling as his son darted out of the room. Clearly, Ozzie knew where the conversation was headed, and he didn’t want to read in front of his dad.
I felt my anger spike again from my earlier conversation with Ozzie and I jumped to my feet.
“Can I have a word?” I snapped in a voice that I didn’t even recognise as my own.
Lord Sterling’s eyebrows went up as he looked at me.
I suspected that he was not a man used to anyone snapping at him, least of all the meek, scaredy-cat teaching assistant who he was employing at vast expense to tutor his son.
When I stood up from the sofa, though, I lost my nerve.
The height difference between us, the fact that I was in his house, the fact that he was paying me an extortionate amount to look after his son – not to mention how in all my years of being beaten down it had never been safe for me to stand up for myself – all resulted in me lowering my gaze from his, my shoulders dropping.
But then a vision of Ozzie’s little face, swamped with sadness as he told me he was stupid flashed into my mind and I forced myself to look up, straight into that piercing blue gaze.
“It’s really important that Ozzie f-feels safe at home,” I managed to force out. Yes, there was a small stammer, but other than that my voice was still firm.
“Yes,” Lord Sterling said slowly. “Of course, I thoroughly agree. That is why I have a highly trained personal protection officer in place for Ozzie and why my house has a very advanced security system.”
I shook my head, dislodging my glasses, so that I had to push them back up my nose again. “I’m not talking about physical safety, Lord Sterling. I’m… well, I’m talking about emotional safety.”
Lord Sterling’s eyebrows went up. “Are you suggesting my son isn’t emotionally safe in his own home, Miss Clara?
” His tone was deceptively calm, but I could sense that subtle undercurrent of threat there.
This was not a man who took criticism well.
I would have normally shrank back and retreated from that sort of tone automatically, but it was the condescending way he was looking at me that triggered another snap of anger.
“Someone—” I said, my voice breaking before I swallowed past the lump in my throat to get the rest of my words out, “Someone told Ozzie that he’s stupid. I asked you before if anything like that could be happening and you told me no, but Ozzie isn’t lying.”
Lord Sterling’s defensive posture relaxed then, which only made me angrier. He knew about this? Would he have told his son that he was stupid? Why did that cause a huge wave of disappointment to crash over me?
“Dyslexia has nothing to do with stupidity,” I said, my voice shaking with fury now.
It wasn’t just about Ozzie; it was all the kids overlooked and belittled for something beyond their control.
How dare he make his kind, intelligent son feel less than he was?
“Ozzie is very intelligent, actually,” I went on.
“But what he lacks is confidence. Putting him down and telling him he’s stupid is absolutely counterproductive.
Even if your aim is only academic success, knocking his confidence will not help, and is the absolute worst thing you should do if you care at all about his emotional well-being. I-I won’t stand for it, okay?”
Lord Sterling was actually smirking now. He had the temerity to quirk one side of his mouth up as he stared down at me and crossed his arms over his chest.
“You’ll not stand for it, will you?” he said, his voice sounding amused rather than angry.
“N-n-no, I won’t,” I said, my arms straight down by my sides and my hands clenched into tight fists. “You can’t treat him like that. It’s not fair. Y-y-you can’t…”
To my absolute horror, I could feel the back of my eyes start to sting. Oh my God, this was probably the most unprofessional moment of my career. But I was telling this man his son wasn’t emotionally safe, and he was smirking at me like it was some kind of joke.
I often felt powerless, and this was just another situation weighted against me.
I didn’t really have any say here. Ozzie wasn’t my son.
I was just an employee. Lord Sterling didn’t have to take what I was saying seriously.
He didn’t have to change his treatment of his son. There was literally nothing I could do.
“He just doesn’t deserve to be treated that way,” I said, my voice small. Back to weak, pathetic Clara. A wave of self-disgust hit me then. Ozzie was just another kid that I couldn’t protect, that I would fail.
“Clara?” Lord Sterling’s voice was soft now, the amusement from before completely gone. When I looked up at him, I saw he had uncrossed his arms, and he wasn’t smirking anymore. “Clara, hey. I’m sorry.”
I blinked in shock. I’m sorry was not what I was expecting to hear.
“I absolutely take my son’s emotional well-being seriously.
Ozzie’s last nanny was a fucking bitch. I didn’t know what she was saying to Ozzie for a long time and he was too embarrassed to tell me.
It was actually you who prompted me to look into it.
When I found out, I sacked her. No one speaks to my son that way, Clara. I promise you that I kept him safe.”
A wave of relief shot through me, and my tense stance relaxed. But as the adrenaline faded, the pounding in my ears changed to a low ringing, and a wave of nausea swept over me. I started to feel a bit faint.
Oh bugger.
When had I last eaten?
Whilst I was staying with Lily, I couldn’t make sandwiches at her flat, so I had to pop out to get lunch every day now.
But this lunchtime, when I’d spotted Skinny Pete hovering around the newsagents, I simply didn’t have the courage to go out and buy anything.
Lily had made me take half of her tuna roll, but I was so worked up after seeing Skinny Pete that I couldn’t manage more than a couple of bites.
And I didn’t feel comfortable eating any of the Sterlings’ food.
I didn’t know if it was my place. My vision narrowed as I swayed on my feet.
“Clara?” Lord Sterling snapped, panic in his tone as he stepped closer to me.
Then his large hands enclosed my upper arms to hold me upright which was enough of a trigger for another adrenaline surge.
This close, I could smell his expensive aftershave mixed with his own clean, woodsy, masculine scent.
His broad shoulders filled my field of vision completely, his muscular frame straining under the confines of his suit jacket.
It was all too much.
I wrenched away out of his grip.
“Shit,” he muttered under his breath. “It’s okay, Clara.”
He was holding his hands palms up now like he had the last time he scared me. It wasn’t fear of him hurting me that drove me away this time, though, more fear of what I would do with him that close. A wave of embarrassment hit me then, and I moved back to sit down heavily on the sofa behind me.
Bloody hell, I thought, this man must think I’m completely off my rocker.
“Clara, I’m sorry,” he said in that soft tone again. “I shouldn’t have put my hands on you, but it looked like you were going to pass out.”
“No, it, it’s fine, I’m fine”, I told him. “Sorry, I… er… I skipped lunch, so I’m just a bit off.”
I tucked my hair behind my ears and swiped away the tear I could feel on my cheek. What I really wanted to do was put my head between my knees to help this lightheadedness settle, but I didn’t want to appear even weaker in front of this man.
Then something bizarre and almost wonderful happened. Lord Sterling walked over to me and sat on the coffee table in front of me so that he was at my level. It was a manoeuvre I would never believe possible from a man like him if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes.
“I appreciate you looking out for my son, Clara,” he said, and at his sincere tone I managed to raise my eyes from the carpet to meet his intense blue gaze.
“I’m really fucking pleased that you’d protect him even against me, and if you ever have any more concerns I want you to know you can tell me. Understood?”
I nodded woodenly, not trusting myself to speak.
“Now that we’ve got that out of the way, I want to know why the fuck you haven’t eaten lunch and what the fuck you’re playing at not eating with Ozzie?”