Page 38 of Knotting Hill
“Stop,” I beg him. “Please. I don’t know what I want anymore…” I bite my bottom lip, the sudden tears welling up, taking me by surprise. “Please just go.”
I rush up the steps and push my way into the office with a thundercloud over my head.
Sadie looks up and then glances at her watch with a disapproving tightening of her lips.
“Fuck you, Sadie,” I yell, not even caring that there is a patient waiting. “I’m not late. I’m two minutes early, you fucking cunt.”
I practically kick my way into the back office, thankful that Angela or David wasn’t there to hear my horrible outburst.
“Well, well…” Sadie stammers, completely taken aback by my verbal attack.
I ignore her and dump my bag on the floor, kicking my chair around so I can sit down and hope the floor swallows me up, but it spins around and around, which further exacerbates Cheryl’s snickering fit. She is snorting behind her hand and not making it easy for me to keep a straight face.
I ignore her as well, and with my head held high, I get the chair to stop spinning and sit, rolling it up tightly against my desk. Luckily my back is to Sadie, but I can feel her livid glare on me. She doesn’t have the balls to say anything to my face, but I’m fairly sure Angela will be hearing about this, if not from her, then from the client in the waiting room.
Guess I’ll be going to work at my parent’s practice after all, now.
“Wow,” Cheryl says. “No words necessary, but here, this came for you.” She rolls over to hand me a white envelope with my name scrawled in an elegant script on the front.
I frown. “What is it?”
She shrugs. “How should I know?”
With a shaking hand, I open it, half expecting to see my P45 inside, which tells me I’m fired.
Instead of the earnings tax form, I see a cheque. Pulling it out, with Cheryl practically breathing down my neck, my frown deepens when I see it is issued from England’s premier bank, where only the elite can afford to keep their money. Dropping my gaze to the bottom, I see a fancy signature. Taking in the amount for twenty pounds, I turn it over and glare at the pink post-it note stuck to the back.
For your dry cleaning
JP
The initials are large, with a little heart in the P adorning a smiley face.
“You have got to be kidding me,” I growl.
“Oooh,” Cheryl says. “He’s paying for your dry cleaning.”
I throw the cheque down and shove it over to the back of the desk. “He can fuck off, the fucking wank…head!”
“Huh?” Cheryl asks. “Wank is a verb; I don’t…I don’t get it.”
“You don’t have to get it,Cheryl;it’s a fucking insult.” I am steaming mad. I’mconvincedthere is steam coming out of my ears. “Sorry,” I mutter. “I’m being a proper bitch today.”
“No apology necessary to me,” she says with another snort behind her hand. “JP has really gotten under your skin.”
“They all have, and not in a good way,” I complain. “I know I’m being awful, but they’re coming at me and turning my head all around. They’re supposed to be the bad guys. The ones I can turn away from and not look back. Why have they changed the rules?”
“Maybe they haven’t, hun. Maybe you have?”
She glides back over to her desk and gets to work, leaving me to contemplate what she said. I don’t think I have changed the rules, but something has definitely changed. I think I’m being so against them because there is no future with them. They will get what they want and then leave me. I can’t let them in when I know I want more in my future, and I want itnow. I’m ready to share my nest with my mates, but I know it can’t be them.
With a heavy sigh, I get on with my work in the hopes that I still have a job once Angela finds out about my outburst.
Twenty-Four
Storm
As the endof the day rolls around, I lift my head up from my desk, not happy that Angela didn’t collar me about the incident yet. I worked all through lunch in case the St. Lucs were lurking, hoping it would give Angela the opportunity to call me out about my behaviour.
