Page 56 of Caught in the Middle

Chapter Eighteen

As Lucy shut Joey's office door behind her, stepping out into the grand lobby, all her blood rushed to her head, and it wasn't just because of the hangover.

She didn't know how to pinpoint how she felt - she had just been handed a life of absolute luxury on a platter, something that she couldn't even begin to get her head around just quite yet.

But more importantly, she needed to call her parents, right away. She found the nearest maid and asked her where should could find a telephone. She pointed her down another vast corridor behind the main stairs that led to a glitzy room with a few leather sofas in it, and an old fashioned telephone sitting on a golden trimmed, glass table.

Lucy's heart quickened as she shut the room door behind her.

The last few days had felt like an eternity. So much had happened, in such a short space of time.

She felt like she had been waiting for this very moment, to sit in front of a telephone and call her parents, to let them know that she was safe for ages.

With a clammy hand, she picked up the receiver and glanced at the ornate clock hanging on the wall. It was midday, hopefully her mother would be on her lunch break at work.

She stabbed her mother’s number into the dial pad, and held her breath.

'Hello?' Her mother’s familiar voice crackled down the phone, bringing tears to Lucy's eyes.

'Hey mum, it's me.'

'Oh hi, honey, how's it going?'

Lucy stared at the phone.

She couldn't believe how calm her mother was being.

'Yeah...' she stammered, 'I'm fine...'

'Great to hear, sweetie - did I tell you your dad is trying to turn the garage into a work station?'

Her voice rang straight through Lucy as she babbled on with anecdotes about her father, and what she was reading in her book club.

On autopilot, Lucy managed to make the appropriate noises in the right places, but she couldn't believe what she was hearing. Her mother, quite simply put, could not give a shit about her.

So it wasn't strange for Lucy not to speak to her parents for a few weeks - they were busy working, and Lucy was usually still asleep, hungover from the night before if they tried to call her in the morning, or she was too busy getting ready to go out if they called her after work.

But she just felt like she had been through so much. She'd effectively been kidnapped by an angry Irish Mafia lord, acted as a getaway driver for when he got shot, and almost wound up on a flight to Barcelona where she had no idea what lay in store for her.

Yet, she even if she wanted to tell her mother this, she wasn't letting her get a word in edge ways.

And as much as Lucy didn't want to believe it was true, nobody would care if she went missing.

After a couple minutes of polite exchanges, her mother ran out of things to talk about, and Lucy politely made her excuses to get off of the phone.

'I'm meeting some university friends for lunch,' she lied, not that her mother was listening.

It dawned on her then, that she hadn't even asked her how her last exam had gone.

Perhaps she had expected her to fail, or, possibly more likely, didn't care if she did.

When the line went dead, she sat stiff on the sofa, staring at the second hand ticking merrily on the wall clock.

She didn't know how she felt, or how she was meant to feel. All she knew was that there wasn't even any point in telling her parents of her new plan until they specifically asked her about it. Then she'd tell them something along the lines of she was working as a personal assistant for a business man... or whatever. Who cares? Her parents probably didn't.

'Lucy! Luccccccyyyy!'

She could hear a female voice yelling for her somewhere in the house, so she leaped to her feet and opened the door. She looked up and down the corridor, but could only see a butler crossing over into Joey’s office with a silver tray.

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