Page 18 of From Notting Hill with Love…Actually
“Morning, Scarlett, glad to see you made it in at last,” he said, brushing past me. He placed some papers on Mrs. Jameson’s desk. “This is the account I was telling you about, Dorothy. Can you check the invoices back from August, please?”
“I’m not late,” I said, looking at my watch. “Actually I think you’ll find I’m early, Dad.”
“That makes a change,” he mumbled as he searched through a filing cabinet.
Mrs. J rolled her eyes at me and mouthed the words “bad mood” while my father had his back to her. So I carried on through to the tiny room Dad and I shared as an office. I heard the door close behind me.
“Good weekend?” my father inquired, as he thumbed through the files he was carrying.
“Er, not too bad,” I answered cautiously. I figured this was probably not the best of times to mention Maddie’s idea. In fact, now I was back here again, I realized it was likely there neverwasgoing to be a good time. So I decided that the best plan for now was just getting on with some work. I would bide my time and wait and see if a better moment arose later.
For the rest of our Monday morning, I chased up a few unpaid invoices while Dad spoke to potential clients about the benefits of installing a popcorn machine in their refreshment areas. Then, while Dad phoned the bank to talk to themabout extending our business loan, I surfed the net while pretending to type a letter. It was virtually the same as any other mind-numbing day at the office.
I’d soon exhausted all the movie websites I had bookmarked and was just about to log on to robbiewilliams.com when I noticed Dad was watching me from his desk.
Quickly I closed the Internet down.
“Scarlett?” he said slowly.
“Yep,” I said, opening the letter I was supposed to be typing again.
“Is everything all right with you lately?”
“Yeah,” I said, concentrating hard on the screen.
“Are you sure?”
I looked up from the monitor. What was going on? Dad never usually inquired about my state of mind during work hours.
“Yes.”
My father sighed. “Scarlett, I do have eyes, you know; you’ve not been your usual self lately. What’s wrong?”
I shrugged. “Nothing.”
My father raised his eyebrows.
“It’s nothing, really, Dad.”
“Is it David?”
“Maybe.”
“Scarlett, come on; you’ve got to give me more than that. I’m a man; I’m not good at this relationship stuff.”
I half smiled. “You always coped all right before when I had problems.”
“I had to, didn’t I?” Dad said in a gruff voice. “There was no one else to. Have you two had a fight?”
“No, it’s nothing like that,” I lied.
“Really?” Dad said, his brown eyes watching me closely over the top of his reading glasses.
“Yes…” I began. Then I stopped. Wait, something wasn’t adding up here…
“He’s been to see you, hasn’t he?” I said suddenly, as the missing link clicked into place.
My father shuffled some papers about on his desk like a newsreader at the end of a bulletin, and then he placed them back down in exactly the same spot they’d started out in. “David did come to see me on Saturday. He seemed awfully worried about things.”
