Chapter Two
CHAPTER TWO
Ivy rubbed the ache at her left temple, hoping that the tension there was just that and nothing more.
Her boss, the formidable Mrs Tenby, was still glaring disapprovingly at her after she had burst through the doors to the library nearly forty minutes late and soaking wet from the unexpected thunderstorm.
Rain battered the large double-glazed windows, providing a light drumbeat over her fragile nerves.
Ivy was raiding the first aid box for a plaster for her heel when Mrs Tenby helpfully reminded her that if she’d hurt herself on the premises then it needed to be added to the first aid book.
‘Yes, Mrs Tenby,’ Ivy replied, feeling like an errant schoolchild for nearly misappropriating library resources.
She put the plaster back into the box and pulled the returns trolley into the stacks for reshelving, willing the quiet calm of the library to work its soothing magic after the sudden and shocking impact of that morning’s events.
But, no matter how many books she tried to shelve, all she saw was Antonio.
The sharp line of his cheekbone, proud above the dark shadow of stubble that made him look more rake than businessman.
Raven’s wing hair had glinted beneath the courthouse’s strip lighting and he seemed as out of place as a peacock strutting amongst the pigeons of Trafalgar Square.
In her mind’s eye she saw him looking after her as she walked away and guilt lashed at her conscience.
She wanted to help him, truly she did, and she hated that she couldn’t go to Italy with him at the click of his fingers.
Because marriage to him had been exactly as life-changing as she’d imagined it would be.
She thought of the picture her brother had sent her just last night. Grinning at the camera with twenty other young men and women. In military fatigues covered in mud, with a Scottish mountain range behind them, Jamie was almost unrecognisable from the angry, wayward kid he’d been at fifteen.
Thinking back to that time six years ago, she remembered how she’d been near sick with worry every minute of every day, desperate to come up with any solution to the demons he’d wrestled with.
Drink, drugs, and the extreme anger that came from the deeply rooted hurt and confusion left behind by their absent parents was all he had known and nothing she’d said or done had got through to him.
The helplessness of watching him lose the fight with his addictions over and over and over again had been devastating.
He’d only had her, and Ivy had had no one.
Her mother had left two years before and not been back once.
And when she’d called from France, or Spain, or wherever she was, it was always the same story, no matter how much Ivy had begged for her to come home.
‘Oh, love, I’ve just met this guy and he’s amazing, so I can’t leave now. But don’t worry. Jamie will be just fine! He’s a fighter, that one.’
And if Ivy asked for money…
‘Sorry, love. You’re just going to have to make do.’
So she had. Ivy had made do the best she could, and it still hadn’t been enough.
Jamie had continued to spiral…until Antonio’s proposal.
She’d used the money from their marriage to send Jamie to an intensive residential rehab facility and put down a deposit on a small flat.
For a man like Antonio Gallo, it was probably less money than he earned in a week, but to Ivy it had been a miracle.
Which was why she felt so terrible telling Antonio she couldn’t go to Italy.
She wanted to help him, she really did, but she couldn’t risk losing this job.
It had been made painfully clear to her by Mrs Tenby that the one condition of her appointment to the role was that she couldn’t take her leave during the summer holidays because all the other staff were parents who needed that time for their children.
As much as she felt guilty, she also knew that she couldn’t sacrifice her job for Antonio. Because when he got what he wanted he’d be out of her life and she’d never see him again. Just like her mother.
She shelved the last of the trolley’s books, slowly breathing through the hurt from that painful time, and returned to the desk for the next, but stopped short at the sight of Anita, the assistant librarian, eyes rimmed red, and Mrs Tenby in an uncharacteristic display of kindness rubbing circles on her back.
‘What happened?’ Ivy asked, leaving the trolley and approaching the pair.
Anita shook her head, clearly incapable of words.
‘Is it Tommy?’ Ivy asked, fear curling her stomach at the thought of something happening to Anita’s two-year-old boy.
‘No, no. Nothing like that,’ Mrs Tenby explained quickly.
‘We lost Morrison,’ Anita said through sobs. ‘He’s had to withdraw his funding.’
‘No!’ Ivy exclaimed.
‘He’s devastated but he lost one of his biggest clients and now can’t afford to donate to the afterschool programme,’ Anita explained as Ivy’s heart sank. That was terrible news. Mr Morrison had been the biggest donor to the library’s afterschool club.
‘All the children we’ve promised places to…’
‘They’ll have nowhere to go,’ Ivy finished, realising why Anita was so devastated.
‘Oh, it’s so silly. I don’t know why I’m crying,’ Anita said, waving her hands in front of her eyes.
‘It’s not his fault. And all the parents knew the places were conditional on funding.
But the children were so excited, and it’s such a shock.
Especially having just secured the library association’s agreement to match our donations. ’
They’d been so close to meeting their target, but with Mr Morrison withdrawing nearly one hundred thousand pounds in donations, and government funding going elsewhere, they wouldn’t be able to get the money they needed to get the afterschool club off the ground.
It was something all three women had invested a lot of time, energy and belief into, each of them knowing how desperately needed this was for the local community.
‘I don’t know what we’re going to do,’ Anita said miserably.
‘There will be a way,’ Ivy said, forcing a determination she didn’t feel into her words.
‘How?’ Anita asked hopelessly.
‘How much? For you to come to Italy.’
‘I’ll think of something.’ Ivy said, feeling torn.
The afterschool club was a vital resource for local families who worked multiple jobs that couldn’t fit around school hours, let alone afford childcare.
If there had been an afterschool club when she and Jamie were younger, he might have stayed away from vices that had turned to addictions.
They might have had somewhere warm, bright, creative and full of art and people to go to, instead of a cold flat with no food in the fridge and a mother who wasn’t home.
Ivy had been sixteen when her mother had first gone away.
It was just a holiday, two weeks with her new boyfriend, and of course Ivy was old enough to look after her younger brother.
Six months later, her mother was off again, only this time she didn’t come back for a month.
The next time had been even longer and Ivy couldn’t let anyone know.
Not school, not friends…because social services would come and they’d take Jamie away and she couldn’t let that happen. She had to protect him.
There were some government services that were scarier and more dangerous than helpful, but the library wasn’t one of them.
And it twisted her heart to be so close yet so far from what was such an important part of the local community.
She felt Mrs Tenby’s intense glare warning her not to make promises she couldn’t keep.
But that was the thing. Ivy kept her promises.
Every single time. Whatever it had taken.
Because she’d been let down too badly by a mother whose promises had always been empty.
Antonio’s question whispered inside her mind again, and no matter how hard she tried to force it down, it returned to her on a loop.
She bit her lip, returning to the stacks to shelve the returns on autopilot. Could she? Could she ask him for more money? Was she shameless enough to do it?
Not for herself. She could never have asked for herself.
But this wasn’t for her. It was for the library, the community, the parents who wouldn’t have to choose between their job or their child.
Thoughts crowded her brain and a wave of exhaustion overcame her.
She’d already done a lot in one day, between the court visit, Antonio and now this. Her eyes began to ache.
Take things step by step and if you need a break, take that too , she told herself.
And promptly ignored it. She returned books to their shelves quicker and quicker as her mind turned over.
She could ask him for the money—just for what they needed.
It was less than he’d paid her to marry him.
Although she baulked at the idea of extracting money from him, he’d offered it to her, hadn’t he?
Yet she’d told him that there was nothing he could do, no amount he could pay her.
She pressed her teeth together, trying to ground herself, as she thought through how it would go.
How she would, of course, be confirming every worst thought he had about her being a money-grabber.
Because she’d seen it in his eyes when he’d offered her the money.
The expectation that she was simply out for what she could get.