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She forced herself to straighten her spine, make her tone just that bit choppier. ‘Although conning your extended family is one thing, but conning your mother rather than simply telling her the truth—’
‘You don’t know what you’re talking about.’ His low, deep voice, every word uttered with a razor-sharp edge, cut her instantly. ‘Consequently, I suggest you don’t even try.’
Despite the words he’d used, it would clearly be a mistake to actually believe it had been merely a suggestion.
Effie swallowed. Hard.
Silence enveloped them, and she found herself unable to move. Awkward in her own skin.
His expression softened. ‘I shouldn’t have spoken to you that way,’ he said, and abruptly Effie realised this was Tak apologising to her. ‘I’m just...a little protective of my family.’
It was such a familiar pain that it shouldn’t hurt her as much as it did. Her throat felt too tight, but somehow she managed to reply. ‘That’s...admirable.’
What would she have given, growing up, to have had a family who were protective of each other. Even one of her foster families. But instead...
She shuddered at the memories. An endless merry-go-round of girls’ homes and foster families, all of whom had either looked at her as though she s
hould be grateful to them for even knowing her name, or else had resented the fact that she wasn’t an adorable baby they could cuddle. Or worse. But she didn’t like to remember the nights she’d spent sleeping rough on park benches because it had been safer than any given foster home.
There had been a couple of nice families. She could remember both of them with such clarity. They had wanted to adopt her and she’d prayed that they would, even though she’d long since had any sense of faith knocked out of her. But on both occasions her biological mother had somehow—shockingly—managed to convince the authorities that she had gone clean, and they had been compelled to return Effie to her.
Of course it had never lasted.
‘I suppose you might call it admirable...’ Tak’s voice mercifully broke into her thoughts. ‘Either way, it seems we both have our reasons for wanting a buffer.’
‘I can handle myself.’ She narrowed her eyes at him, irked to concede that he might actually have a point.
‘I’m suggesting that you don’t have to. That our attending the ball together could make it a smoother night all around.’
‘Right...’ she conceded slowly, without knowing why.
‘So, do we have a deal?’
There were a hundred reasons why she should say no. Thirteen of them even had the same four letters. Nell. But suddenly all Effie could think of were all the reasons—as flimsy and as spurious as she knew them to be—why she might say yes.
‘My car is in the garage right now, so it would save me having to drive myself...’
She couldn’t believe she’d said it aloud. It didn’t even sound believable. What on earth had made her think it was better to say that than admit her car was such a clapped-out old mess she didn’t want people seeing her in it in case they asked too many questions?
It had been bad enough convincing her new colleagues that she kept it because it had sentimental value, rather than tell the truth about the fact that she’d been going to change it, but Nell’s new school had offered a last-minute place on a ski trip they’d been planning for twelve months and, given the lateness, she’d needed to make full payment of a sum which had made her eyes water.
She knew what people’s expectation of a doctor’s salary was—and why they couldn’t equate her career with her always-tight finances. Even those who know about her daughter.
However much the news made an issue of student debt, and the tens of thousands that medical students especially could incur, it was easy for outsiders to forget that such debt incurred heavy interest every year. Even many of her colleagues had had family to support them financially, at least to some degree.
But none of them had also been raising a daughter at the same time.
Effie still shuddered when she thought of how she’d had to beg and plead—and sometimes gloss a little over the truth—in order to secure every available student and bank loan out there. She could have chosen a different career, of course, but she’d had something to prove. Both to herself and in memory of the one woman who had ever believed in her.
Even when she’d qualified, every penny of her salary had been swallowed up, not just by basic living costs, but by the additional costs that a child had incurred. Food, children’s clothes which never seemed to fit for more than a year, but especially the crippling childcare costs, Especially for a junior doctor working long shifts, night shifts, and even sometimes ninety-plus hour weeks.
True, nowadays her career was more established and she was a lot more financially stable, but even now she couldn’t break the habit of putting her daughter first. Maybe it was because she needed to give Nell the opportunities she herself had never had, or perhaps it was guilt at having had to work so hard for all those years.
Either way, it was why her clever, beautiful, funny daughter was at the most prestigious private school in the area, to the tune of several tens of thousands a year—even without the additional ski trips, French exchanges, and Summer Activities program—whilst she herself kept her old car for just one year longer.
Not that she would ever confess to someone a single word of any of that to someone like Tak.
Still, his expression flickered slightly and Effie couldn’t be sure what he was thinking. She had a feeling he was laughing at her and she gave herself a mental kick. And then she kicked herself again for even caring what he thought about her.
