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Con could give me safety.
But it was also true what I’d told him downstairs, that security was about more than money, more than a nice house and a security detail.
My mother had spent years not only picking apart my appearance, but also telling me that I shouldn’t be so sensitive, so emotional. That I needed to grow a spine and a hard shell because life was cruel, and you had to protect yourself from it any way you could.
I’d tried, because I’d loved my mother, and she’d been so bitter, and I’d only wanted to make her happy. She’d complained a lot about me being a barrier to her ‘getting ahead’, and even though when I was a kid I’d never known what ‘getting ahead’ meant, I’d known enough to realise that being a barrier was a bad thing. So I’d been obedient when she’d wanted me to be seen, and when she hadn’t wanted that I hadn’t been seen.
But that hadn’t been enough for her.Ihadn’t been enough for her.
She’d gone from man to man, sugar daddy to sugar daddy—for money, ostensibly, but I’d known money wasn’t really what she’d wanted. She’d wanted love.
I didn’t want my life to turn into hers—endlessly dragging my poor child around in a vain attempt to find it—and I knew that was what would happen if I married Con.
Only it would be worse. Because while I loved him, he didn’t love me, and that would only turn into bitterness for us both in the end.
Though I shouldn’t be angry at Mum. It wasn’t her fault she was the way she was. She’d been young when she’d had me, and my father had dumped her as soon as he’d found out she was pregnant. She’d lived a hand-to-mouth existence after I was born, subsisting on a single mother’s benefit until she’d found out that having no qualifications or work experience weren’t barriers when it came to charming men.
Mine had been a lonely, uncertain, unsettled childhood, and I didn’t want that for my child. So no matter how much a part of me wanted to give in, to tell Con that of course I’d marry him, I wasn’t going to. I needed to be strong.
Eventually I went over to where my handbag rested, on a small armchair near the window, and extracted my phone. I assumed Con hadn’t let my mother know what was happening, which meant that I needed to. Then again, maybe he had. He always planned for every eventuality after all.
I also needed to let the charity who operated the shelter for the homeless where I worked know what was happening, too. They struggled to get enough help as it was.
I pulled up the number from my contact list, only to realise there was no cell phone service. Well, great. So not only had Con brought me to his Scottish bolthole without asking me, I also couldn’t tell anyone I was here.
Anger joined the tangled mess of emotion sitting in my gut, but before I’d had a chance to untangle it a soft knock came on the door frame. I looked up from my phone and saw Mrs Mackenzie standing in the doorway, bearing a silver tray carrying the breakfast I’d walked away from downstairs.
‘Mr Silvera thought you might prefer to take breakfast in your room.’ She had very blue eyes that twinkled as she smiled at me. ‘Come on, pet,’ she said, bustling in and putting the tray down on a small side table. ‘Eat up, there’s a good girl. Then you’ll want a shower and some clean clothes, hmm? I’ll find you something to wear.’
My mother’s parents were both dead, so I’d never had a grandmother, and Mrs Mackenzie’s grandmotherly air eased my lonely soul. So I didn’t protest as she poured me out a cup of tea and arranged everything on the table, keeping up a stream of reassuring chatter.
The breakfast was delicious, and I felt better for it, and after Mrs Mackenzie had taken away the breakfast things I went into the huge en suite bathroom to investigate the shower. There was a deep clawfoot bath near one window, and a large tiled walk-in shower tucked away in an alcove. Everything was white and clean. I couldn’t get my clothes off fast enough.
The water in the shower was hot and the pressure fantastic, and as I washed my hair and body I let myself think of nothing at all.
After I was clean, I wrapped myself in one of the large, white fluffy towels that hung on a rail, and went back into the bedroom.
The bed had been made and a dress laid out on the thick white quilt. It was a simple wrap dress in deep red, and as I bent to examine it I saw the fabric was silk.
Mum had always insisted that ‘dressing the part’ was important, so she was never without her make-up or her designer clothes—when she could afford them—and never less than immaculate.
‘It’s all about confidence,’ my mother had told me. ‘No one wants a limp dishrag.’
But I hadn’t had any confidence. She hadn’t been interested in my marks at school, and she hadn’t wanted to hear it when I’d told her of my childhood dream to become a doctor.
‘You don’t need all of that,’ she’d said dismissively. ‘Get some work done on your face, stop eating pastries, and find yourself a rich man.’
That had been the day I’d realised that the women Con was constantly photographed with were always beautiful. They were always successful women too, models, fashion designers, politicians, CEOs. There had even been a world-renowned human rights lawyer, and I’d toyed with the idea of going to law school. But my marks hadn’t ended up being good enough for medicine, let alone for law, and I hadn’t been interested in fashion.
I didn’t have the looks to be a model, or the contacts to be a politician, or the ruthlessness needed to be a CEO. I couldn’t be one of those women at all.
Ironically, it had been a conversation with Con that had decided me. I’d been complaining about how I didn’t know what to do with my life, and he’d asked me what mattered to me most in the whole world.You do, I’d wanted to say, but I hadn’t.
Beyond that, what I’d wanted was to help people. And, after more discussion, he’d helped me figure out that charity work was definitely within my skillset. Eventually I’d found a job at the shelter. That didn’t depend on looks, or school marks, and no one cared what I wore. I was good with people, and I was organised, plus I’d discovered I had a talent for fundraising, which the charity was pleased about. And that had been enough.
Gingerly, I touched the fabric of the dress. It was warm and soft against my fingers. It had been set out for me, obviously, though I’d no idea where it had come from. Did Con have a selection of women’s clothes here? Was it Olivia’s, perhaps? If it was, there was no way it was going to fit me.
‘Here we are, pet.’ Mrs Mackenzie came bustling in again, this time with an armful of silky, lacy-looking garments. ‘Some smalls for you.’
