Wife For Hire

‘I’ve gathered all the relevant school reports on Emily, so that he can read through them, and I’ve also collated the numerous incident reports as well. Quite a number, considering that the child hasn’t been with us very long.’ She sat back in the chair, a small, thin bespectacled woman in her forties with the tenacity and perseverance of a bulldog, and shook her head. ‘Such a shame. Such a clever child. It certainly makes one wonder what the point of brilliance is when motivation doesn’t play a part. With a different attitude, she could have achieved a great deal.’

‘She’s had a…challenging home life, Mrs Williams. I personally feel, as I said to you before, that Emily’s rebelliousness is all an act. A ploy to hide her own insecurities.’

‘Yes, well, I suggest you keep your opinions to yourself, Rebecca,’ the principal said in a warning voice. ‘There’s no point in muddying the waters with a post-mortem on why this whole unfortunate business happened in the first place. Aside from which, she’s not the first girl to have endured her parents’ divorce and all the fallout from it. And other girls do not react by…’ she looked down at one of the sheets of paper ‘…smoking through the window of a dorm, falsifying sick notes to the infirmary so that she can go into town, climbing up a tree and remaining there for a day just to watch us all run around like headless chickens looking for her… The list goes on…’

‘Yes, I know, but…’ Rebecca could feel herself getting hot under the collar of her crisply starched white blouse, which she had unearthed from the furthermost reaches of her wardrobe and now felt so uncomfortable that she was seriously regretting having put it on in the first place.

‘No buts, Rebecca. This is an immovable situation and it will do no good to try and analyse it into making sense. The facts are as they stand and Emily’s father will have to accept them whether he cares to or not.’

‘And Emily?’ Rebecca asked with concern. ‘What happens to her now?’

‘That will be something that must be sorted out between herself and her father.’

‘She doesn’t have a relationship with her father.’

‘I would advise you to be a bit sceptical about what she says on that front,’ Mrs Williams told her sharply. ‘We both know that Emily can be very creative with the truth.’

‘But the facts speak for themselves…’ Rebecca found herself leaning forward, about to disobey her first rule of command, which was to be as immovable as a rock and launch into a fiery defence of her pupil, when there was a knock on the door, and Sylvia poked her head round.

‘Mr Knight is here, Mrs Williams,’ she said with her usual gusto.

Mr Knight? Rebecca frowned. Why was his surname different from that of his daughter? References to him had always been as Emily’s father, and it hadn’t occurred to her that he might not be Mr Parr.

‘That’s fine, Sylvia. Would you show him in, please? And no interruptions, please. I shall deal with anything that crops up after Mr Knight has left.’

‘Of course.’ Sylvia’s expression changed theatrically from beaming good humour to grave understanding, but as soon as she had vacated the doorway they could both hear her trill to Emily’s father that he could go in now, and could he please inform her how he would like his coffee.

Rebecca wondered whether he would be disconcerted by the personal assistant’s eccentric mannerisms—most people who didn’t know her were—but his deep voice, wafting through the door, was controlled and chillingly assured.

Stupidly, because her role in the room was simply to impart information, she felt her stomach muscles clench as he walked through the door, then a wave of colour flooded her cheeks.

Mrs Williams had risen to her feet and was perfunctorily shaking his hand, and it was only when they both turned to her that Rebecca sprang up and held out her hand in polite greeting.

Emily’s father was strikingly tall, strikingly forbidding and strikingly good-looking. Even wearing heels, she was forced to look up at him. She didn’t know what she had expected of him. Someone older, for a start, and with the military bearing of the typical household dictator who had no time for family but a great deal for work.

This man was raven-haired, dark-eyed and the angular features of his face all seemed to blend together to give an impression of power, self-assurance and cool disregard for the rest of the human race.

And the worst of it was that she recognised him. Seventeen years on, she recognised him. At sixteen she had been as knocked sideways by the man he had been then as she was now by the man he had become.

Knight. Not the most run-of-the-mill name in the world, but even in those fleeting seconds when the principal had referred to him by name it had not occurred to her that the man she was about to meet was the same Nicholas Knight whom she had briefly known.

She could feel her hand tremble as he gripped it in his, then she pulled away quickly and sat back down, watching to see whether there were any signs of recognition on his face.

None. Of course. As she might have expected. She lowered her eyes and heard him ask, as he sat down facing them both, if they could kindly explain what was of sufficient urgency to bring him here.

‘I was due to leave for New York this morning,’ he said, crossing his legs. ‘This is all highly inconvenient. I don’t know what Emily’s done this time, but I’m sure it could have been dealt with in the usual way.’

He had a deep, lazy voice and watchful manner which seemed to convey the message that, however much you knew, he knew infinitely more. Rebecca suspected that her dress code would not be having the desired effect. Seventeen years ago, he would have been amused at the thought of female intimidation. Now, from what she could see, it would barely register.

She sneaked a glance at him from under her lashes and felt the same illicit thrill she had felt when she had first set eyes on him at the local charity function all those years ago. Even then he had had the sort of commanding presence that made heads swing around for a second look.

‘I’m afraid not, Mr Knight.’ The principal removed her spectacles and leant forward, resting both elbows on the desk. ‘Emily has quite surpassed herself this time, which is why we felt it wise to summon you immediately.’

‘Even though we realise what a very busy man you are,’ Rebecca said sweetly—a remark which was greeted by the merest thinning of his lips. She felt his dark eyes course over her and calmly refused to look away.

It was beginning to sting a little that he obviously did not remember her. True, their acquaintance had been short-lived—barely a fortnight from beginning to end—but she wasn’t that forgettable, was she?

Of course, she knew, deep down, why he didn’t recall her. Unimportant blips were hardly the foundations of solid, long-lasting memories, and her presence in his life had been an unimportant blip, even though he had remained in her head for many months afterwards. To him, she had been little more than the girl from the wrong side of the tracks with whom he had planned on having a bit of harmless fun before she pre-empted him by walking away.

‘What’s the problem this time?’ he asked in a world-weary voice. ‘What has she broken?’ He reached inside his jacket pocket to extract his cheque-book, and Rebecca gave an automatic grimace of distaste, which he caught and held.

‘Do you have a problem?’ he enquired politely, looking at her. ‘I take it from the affronted expression on your face that you disapprove of something?’

Rebecca decided that she would abandon her vow of silence on the grounds that keeping too much in was fine in theory, but in practice would probably give her irreversible high blood pressure.

‘Not everything can be sorted out with a cheque-book, Mr Knight.’ People like him thought otherwise. She was fully aware of that. He had spent his entire life cushioned by wealth and he would automatically assume that there was nothing that could not be rectified if enough cash was flung at it.

So his daughter misbehaved, or wrecked a few things, or stepped out of line—well, let’s just sort it out by adding a new wing to the school library, shall we?

He very slowly closed the cheque-book and slipped it back into his jacket pocket, not taking his eyes off her face.

‘Ah. I see where we’re heading. Before my daughter’s slip-up, whatever that might be, is to be discussed, I’m first to be subjected to a ham-fisted analysis of why she did what she did. Time is money, Miss Ryan, so if you’re bursting to get your prepared speech out, then I suggest you make it fast so that I can sort this business out and be on my way.’

‘We’re not in the business of lecturing to our parents, Mr Knight,’ Mrs Williams said firmly, before Rebecca could be tempted into taking him at his word and delivering a thorough, no-stone-unturned lecture on precisely what she thought of him.

‘In which case, you might pass the message on to your assistant. She looks as though she’s about to explode at any moment now.’

‘Miss Ryan,’ she said, throwing her a gimlet-eyed look, ‘is an experienced and immensely good teacher. There is absolutely no way that she would allow herself to voice her private opinions.’

Rebecca nearly grinned at that. They both knew that voicing opinions was something she was remarkably good at.

‘I wouldn’t dream of it,’ she agreed demurely, and he raised his eyebrows sceptically at her tone of voice.

That particular tendency was still there, she noticed. The first time she had seen him, he had been lounging at the makeshift bar in the village hall. The dance floor had been packed to the seams with youngsters, and she had been standing to one side with a drink in her hand, miserably watching everyone have fun and thinking that she should have dispensed with her frock and her high heels which made her feel stuffy and over-large, rather like a sofa deposited at random in a china shop. All her friends were so petite, so feminine and so utterly unlike her.

Then she had caught his eye and he had raised his eyebrows very much as he had done just then, as though he could cut straight through to what she had been thinking, as though they had momentarily shared some private joke together.

‘Good.’ He reverted his attention to Mrs Williams now. ‘Now that I am to be spared an unnecessary lecture, perhaps we could stop beating around the bush and you could just tell me why I’ve been summoned here at such short notice. What has my daughter done this time?’

‘Perhaps you could explain, Miss Ryan?’

Thanks very much, Rebecca thought wryly to herself.

‘Two nights ago Emily came to see me, Mr Knight.’

‘She came to see you?’ He frowned, perplexed. ‘She left the building at night to pay you a visit? Is this normal procedure? For a child of sixteen to be allowed out on her own into the town so that she can visit a teacher? Aren’t there certain rules and regulations in operation around here?’

Call me a fool, Rebecca thought to herself, but I smell a very difficult situation ahead. She wished she were a million miles away, lying on a beach somewhere, recovering from the stress of the copy-typing job she should have gone for.