Chapter 4
FOUR
EVER DONE SOMETHING YOU REGRET?
Beth
For the next few days, I left James’s offer standing, unable to turn him down. A weekend away sounded heavenly, but I had priorities and I couldn’t let them slide.
On my request, he sent me the list of cars he was interested in trying. Off-road high-performance vehicles, which made sense for someone who lived in a remote part of the Scottish Highlands. I had a lady boner for getting behind the wheel of any one of them.
We talked, via text. Little exchanges about driving. Some flirting on my part, and coy responses on his.
He was honestly the most intriguing guy I’d ever met.
Him: The Land Rover Discovery is bigger, but that doesn’t necessarily mean better.
Me: Um, bigger is always better. Just saying.
A painstakingly long time later.
Him: Good to know.
No bragging, no flirting back, not really, but the messages kept coming.
I had no idea why he liked me, but he seemed to want to be friends.
Which was a whole different box to put him in.
I had male friends, and I had one-night stands.
Nothing in between. No boyfriends or people I kept seeing.
No sleeping over and no chance of catching the horrible disease of feelings.
I enjoyed the contact with James, and I’d miss it when it ended. When he found a car and had no further use for our chats. Jeez, even remembering his low, cultured voice gave me shivers. It was deep enough to be sensual, though I couldn’t imagine the guy getting down with dirty talk.
I chuckled to myself, taking the stairs two at a time down from my bedroom to the hall. The little Victorian terraced house I shared with my best friend was filled with sunlight.
“You’re happy this morning.” From her position in front of the mirror, Mattie gave me a grin before going back to her careful application of mascara.
“And you look like you’re going to a wedding.” I gave an appreciative whistle at her elegant dress—silk, at a guess, flowers printed all over it.
Not only was Mattie whip smart, tall, and gorgeous, she also knew how to make an impact. Her blonde shoulder-length curls were always perfect, her skin flawless, and her manner gentle. She was a real lady.
She gave me a swish of her skirts. “I’m meeting a wedding planner. I want to learn the business from her. Dress to impress, right?”
Mattie’s dream job right there. “Good luck! Let me know how it goes.”
My smartest shoes sat on the polished floorboards. I slipped them on, taking a second to straighten the other boots into a neat line. I was in a hurry, but the neat freak tendency I’d developed when living with my foster mother never went away.
Today, I was fixing my life.
James’s throwaway comment about making changes to his life had me thinking.
I was stuck in a rut of low pay and menial jobs—no one else’s fault than mine—and I needed to take action if I was ever going to change that.
I needed more than just my part-time study and the mathematics course I could barely afford, which would get me onto the foundation degree I definitely couldn’t afford.
I had ambitions, but I had hoops to jump through if I was ever going to realise them.
I waved to Mattie, promising that at some point, we’d find time to have a chat.
I knew she was dying to find out what was in the letter James had written, and I was winding my way up to asking her more about him, but we’d both been too busy to even share a meal.
Then I was out the door, setting off for my foster mother’s place.
It had to be a flying visit, but I needed to check in on Belle before my life-fixing appointment. The one that had my palms sweating.
After my grandfather had died, I’d lived with Belle for ten years. She was my rock. Despite an ever-changing household, with kids coming and going, she never varied in the love she gave, never wavered in how much she cared. Even for kids who’d aged out of the system and moved on. Like me.
Except for the time when she had faltered.
Six months ago, a virus knocked her out, and I’d been convinced she was going to die.
Over her six-week illness, Belle had visibly aged, and I’d panicked more and more as she’d lost her energy, keeping to her bed.
Help had to be brought in to manage the kids, and I went there every day, staying over on the couch and taking the strain.
Then she’d recovered. If you saw her now, it was like nothing had ever happened.
No one else seemed to remember, and the stream of different social workers who brought kids to her hadn’t eased up one bit.
Belle threw herself back into her work, and only I still reeled.
My heart raced to remember those dark weeks when the woman who meant the world to me had been so vulnerable, but the universe had moved on.
I lived in permanent fear of it happening again.
So, I’d put a plan in place, and today, I was here for my regular check-in on how it was working.
Alison, the support worker paid for by the government to care for the kids when Belle had been sick, waited outside Belle’s neat little red-brick house.
After Belle got better, I’d had a private chat with Alison, and she’d agreed to keep up the hours.
Over half my salary went to paying the woman, and she was worth every penny.
Belle had no idea, and nobody else had the complete picture in order to challenge the arrangement.
“Boss! Come for your weekly report?” The woman gave me a grin, wrangling a toddler between her knees.
This was probably the only scenario I could ever imagine employing someone, but she was the bomb.
“I’ve got to take Conrad to an appointment, but it’s been a good start to the day.”
“Did the girls get off to school on time?”
In her happy way, Alison gave me her update, and as she spoke, the tight knot in my chest eased. This was what Belle needed. When I’d been a scared eight-year-old, lost, and with no one to care for me, she’d made me feel safe and had given me a home. The least I could do was make her life easier.
“Belle is doing okay, you know,” Alison added at the end. She clipped Conrad into the car then turned to me. “But maybe you can have a word with her about not taking on any more babies. The sleepless nights are enough to drive a saint up the wall.”
She left, and I stood there, my resolve growing stronger. What I’d put in place for Belle worked. And if it meant I had to break my back every day forever to come, it couldn’t change.
My next appointment had my life in the balance, and I eased the car into a tight space outside the nondescript office, glancing at an arguing couple entering the door.
I grimaced. Coming to a pro bono lawyer who specialised in low-level criminal cases wasn’t exactly a walk in the park.
But I hoped to be grinning when I came out.
Entirely at random, I fired off a message to James. Ever done something you regret?
I didn’t wait on his reply. No one was as dumb as me.
Inside the lawyer’s office, I sat on the edge of the grubby beige sofa, waiting for my name to be called, avoiding eye contact with the couple who still quarrelled over who was to blame for their multitude of issues.
The day I’d turned eighteen, I’d been in a dark place.
Two things happened at once, and the strength I thought I had collapsed like a house of straw.
First, Belle told me I had to move out. Through welling tears, she explained that now I’d turned adult, she received no funding for me anymore, so I had to find a place of my own.
Then second, a social worker called, bearing news that left me cold.
I’d never really known my birth mother, only meeting her a few times before she’d passed away, but my birth dad had been a stranger.
I’d only ever heard my grandfather mutter his name.
The social worker kindly informed me that he had died, too. Well, great. Thanks a bunch.
That night, I went out with a group of kids I vaguely knew from town. I got into a car one of them had stolen, and I drove. Too fast, and far too recklessly.
Idiotic, moronic, and pathetic. Getting picked up by the police was almost a relief, and the slap in the face of my conviction gave me a wake-up call I never forgot.
Four years had passed since my arrest. Because of my age, and the fact it was a first offence, I’d been given a suspended sentence—the condition being that if I committed another crime in that time, I’d go to jail.
My time was almost served so, in a matter of weeks, I could ask for my record to be cleared.
No one would give me a better job if it remained. I needed the lawyer to make the formal request, or whatever it was they did.
“Miss Grace?” a man with a deeply bored voice exhaled.
I jumped to my feet. He gestured for me to follow him, and I entered the room, an uncomfortably messy space filled with overflowing filing cabinets and smelling strongly of burned coffee.
I explained my request. The man examined the file I’d brought and made a call. I twiddled my thumbs.
Through the walls came the sound of the angry couple’s rant.
My lawyer replaced the handset of his ancient-looking phone and returned his attention to me. I had one of those oh-fuck moments, because it wasn’t a happy expression on his face. “What arrangements have you made to pay the fine?”
“I paid the fine right off the bat. The receipt is there.”
The man shuffled the papers, confusing their order. “I have the receipt for the compensation payment, but not the court fine. Without that, your conviction will remain on your file.”
I stared, my heart dropping. ‘Oh fuck’ was right. “What do you mean another fine? Since when were there two?”
“You would have received a letter about this, and a reminder since.”
Any mail about the case would’ve gone to Belle’s house. But she would’ve handed it on. Wouldn’t she?
“How much?” My voice remained steady.
He peered at his pad. “One thousand pounds.”
A thousand. Pounds.
I boggled at the amount. There was no way I could afford that, not on my salary. But without a clean record, I had no way to increase my earnings. I already worked every hour I could.
I was caught in limbo.
Next door, the yelling reached a crescendo. I wanted to scream along, but what was the point?
The lawyer gave me a kind but not all that interested smile. “I suggest you find work and save up.”
Yeah, got it. I rose to leave, scooping my papers into my file. Tapping them on the desk to neaten them. “Thank you for your help.”
“Not at all. Pay the fine then start over with a clean slate. And most important, Miss Grace, no more driving around in stolen cars.”
Outside, I sucked in a lungful of dirty city air. A quick check of my phone showed me James had replied to my question over whether he’d ever made a mistake. Some worse than others.
How enigmatic.
In a fit of pique, I stalked to the adjacent fast food shack, bought myself a milkshake, and buried my sorrows in a sweet strawberry sugar rush.