Page 8 of Emergency Engagement

Her outfit the day before hadn’t done her justice, he decided.

What she wore now suited her: faded skinny jeans, an old rugby shirt, likewise faded, some soft sneakers with the laces undone as though he’d caught her in the act of kicking them off. She had the smoothest skin he’d ever seen and the boyish haircut somehow managed to make her look ultra-feminine and very delicate.

‘When we were at school, I remember other girls tossing their long hair over their shoulders and batting their eyelids, even though they were only about fourteen or fifteen. They were already learning the tricks of the trade.’

‘The tricks of the trade?’

‘How to flirt. You never did that.’

‘I’ve never seen the point of flirting.’

‘Never?’

‘Can we just move things along, Rafael? Maybe get to the point? You said that there was something you want to run past me?’

‘You told me that I led your brother astray—that he was the model student before I came along and decided to show him that there was more to life than burying himself in books.’

‘It was okay for you! You never had to work hard! Everything came naturally to you. You could bunk off class for days on end and then show up and know exactly what the lessons were about, exactly how to get straight As without trying.’

Sammy dropped onto the sofa facing him and looked at him with open hostility.

‘I’ve thought about that since I saw you. I hadn’t thought about it for years but it all came back to me.’

‘I don’t see the point of this.’

‘He was very unhappy. He used to talk about it. Not a huge amount, but enough.’

‘He talked to you?’

‘Why is that so surprising?’

‘Because...because...’

‘I can be an attentive listener.’

‘And you were, back then? Would that be in between taking the day off to explore the great outdoors and smoking behind the bike sheds at school?’ She arched her eyebrows with incredulity and Rafael burst out laughing.

His dark eyes gleamed as he tilted his head to the side and stared at her until she blushed.

‘They were tough times for you and your brother. He used to talk about a stepfather...the name escapes me.’

Sammy’s mouth dropped open.

‘Colin talked about Deeley...our stepfather? That all happened before you showed up!’

‘I think he was still in the process of getting over it,’ Rafael said quietly. ‘Whateveritwas. He was never that expansive on the subject although, in fairness, I wasn’t always one hundred percent on the ball. Which brings me back to the accusation that I was a bad influence—I wasn’t. I was just a catalyst for his anxieties to come out into the open. Just in case some of your annoyance that things haven’t panned out the way you wanted them to might have to do with the fact that I am the Big Bad Wolf in your eyes, from a historic point of view.’

The tea had gone cold and Sammy’s thoughts were all over the place.

Colin, who was three years older than her, had seemed so contained; he had seemed just to get lost in his schoolwork while everything had swirled chaotically around him. But was Rafael right? Had he just been there...clever, wild, non-conformist, expecting nothing...allowing Colin to get rid of things buried deep inside? He’d been pretty rebellious after Rafael had left, but then he’d settled down. Now that she looked back on it, something had changed—he’d mellowed.

She heard him ask very softly, into the silence, ‘And what about you?’

‘What aboutme?’

‘It was a long time ago, but whatever disruption your stepfather caused must have affected you as well...’

And just like that Sammy was thrown back to the past—to how devastated her mother had been after Oliver Payne’s death and then how hurt and disillusioned by the mess that had come of her second marriage to John Deeley.

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