Page 27 of Gold Digger
She rolled her eyes and relaxed back on the bench we were sitting on, closing her eyes, turning her face towards the sun and letting out a contented sigh.
“This is nice,” she said with a wistful tone I didn’t quite understand. She looked so peaceful and heartbreakingly beautiful that it took me a moment to clear my throat and speak again.
“It’s not quite the date I planned,” I grumbled.
She smiled and opened her eyes to look at me. “This is way better than being stuck inside a fancy restaurant. Your friend smokes good fish. I feel completely spoilt.”
Spoilt? Sitting on a park bench in a shared garden, eating a smoked salmon bagel. I snorted.
“No, really it is,” she told me. “I’ve been dying to use this garden since I started working for you.”
“Why didn’t you ask for the key?”
Her smile fell and she shrugged. “I didn’t want to impose. Plus I’m not a resident. I’d stick out like a sore thumb around all the yummy mummies who use this.” She let out a short laugh. “You should see the park near mine. No way you’d want to eat in there – too much dog shit, used condoms and drug dealers.”
I stiffened. “That doesn’t sound particularly safe.”
She shrugged. “It’s fine. Not all of us can live in Kensington. I can look after myself. I’ve been doing it for a long while.”
My chest tightened. “How long?”
She looked away and shifted on her chair. “Since I was ten.”
“Ten?”
She shrugged. “That’s when I went into foster care.” Her hands holding the bagel lowered as if she’d lost her appetite. “You should probably know that, Ollie. You could get some flakfor my background if we go public. There can be a real stigma around foster kids.”
“We bloody well will be going public,” I said in a firm voice. “And nobody is going to say anything about your background.” I turned to her fully then, putting my bagel down to slide my hand under her jaw and turn her face to mine. “I’m sorry that happened to you, baby,” I said in a softer voice now. “That’s totally shit.”
She swallowed and her eyes became glassy with tears. One fell off the end of her long lashes and I wiped it away when it made it to her cheekbone. She cleared her throat. “Fraggle Rock, sorry,” she muttered. “You must think I’m a right wetwipe. I swear I don’t usually blub like this.” She swallowed again and her eyes dropped down to her lap. “I just… nobody’s really said sorry like that to me before, or told me that what happened was shit. My mates, the other kids in the group home, were in the same boat, so they weren’t going to say it. My social worker was always… well, she was just there to sort stuff out, and I was tricky to place so…”
A surge of anger swept through me at the thought of ten-year-old Lottie being placed into care, uprooted from her home with nobody to even say how sorry they were that it was happening to her.
“What happened to your parents?” I asked cautiously.
“Dad died when I was six,” she said. “Mum couldn’t really cope without him. She started drinking. It got really bad at home. She was never abusive, but she just couldn’t function enough to wash my clothes and go to the shops to get food. The school started to notice the state I was in, the weight I lost and the fact I was always trying to steal food. When social services went round they couldn’t wake Mum up she was so drunk. Rehab didn’t help, and eventually I had to be placed somewhere.”
“How’s your mum now?”
“She got clean when I was fifteen. But she… er… she relapsed again a year and a half ago. Then ten months ago she got sick, really sick – liver failure. She had a bleed from her stomach and she died.”
“Oh God. I’m so sorry, Lottie.”
She shrugged and blinked away her tears as she squared her shoulders. “It happens. Alcoholism can be brutal. I lost Mum but I’m lucky in a lot of ways. I’m sitting in the sun in a posh garden eating smoked salmon. I work for the cleanest man in London who always has loads of leftovers and one of the finest arses I’ve ever seen. Life’s good.”
I took her hand and gave it a squeeze, leaning into her to kiss the side of her head. We sat like that for a long moment whilst I breathed in the floral scent of her hair.
“So you’ve been checking out my arse, have you?” I said eventually to lighten the atmosphere
Lottie pulled back to look up at me and roll her eyes. “I promise you, Ollie. Any red-blooded straight female, or gay man for that matter, checks out your arse given the opportunity.”
“Is that right?” I muttered, leaning in again until my lips were against hers.
“I’ve got salmon breath,” she whispered against my mouth.
“So have I, baby,” I told her. When my tongue darted out to lick the small spot of cream cheese from the corner of her mouth, she let out a small moan and closed her mouth over mine. She must have put down her bagel because her hands slid to my chest and grasped my shirt as I deepened the kiss, drawing her closer to me.
“Oh! Tarquin, come away from there!” The woman’s voice cut through my haze of lust and we broke apart, flinching when we realised a small figure was standing right in front of us.
