Excerpt of Wife for Hire by Cathy Williams

FROM the very moment that Rebecca Ryan opened her eyes that morning, she knew that the next few hours were going to be the worst of her teaching career.

She was not, by nature, prone to dramatic flights of imagination, but for a few brief seconds she heartily wished that she could shut her eyes and make the day go away; then she climbed out of bed and headed for the bathroom. Normally, this was her most relaxing time of the day. That long, leisurely soak in the bath before she opened the door of her small but comfortable school quarters, and braced herself for the challenges confronting anyone courageous enough to teach in an all- girls boarding-school. Or, as Mrs Williams, the principal, once put it, to exercise skilful manipulation of the homesick, the prepubescent, the adolescent, the hormonal and the premenstrual, whilst trying to educate to the highest possible standard.

Rebecca loved every minute of it.

Except, she thought, settling into the bath water, for today. Today she wished that she had mulled over her career options a bit more thoroughly at the age of twenty- one, and decided in favour of something slightly less stress-inducing, such as copy typist.

She sighed deeply and allowed her mind to scuttle over the past thirty-six hours.

There should be a tablet you could take to get rid of unpleasant situations, she thought. There would be a huge market for it. Just swallow two special, new, improved paracetamol capsules and let your problems fade conveniently away.

In the absence of any such panacea, she mentally worked out how she would deal with the problem staring her in the face. Part of it had already been handled, and she had emerged shocked, bruised but, generally speaking, still in good working order.

Part two of the problem, which she estimated was probably a mere one hour's drive away from the school, would have to be dealt with as pragmatically as possible. Parents, she knew from experience, were not particularly reasonable when it came to dealing with their children's misdemeanours. They were prone, initially, to disbelief, then to self-recrimination, and finally, in a few instances, to complete denial of all blame by placing it squarely on whomever happened to be handy, usually the teacher.

Rebecca, whose height waged a constant battle with the dimensions of most baths, stuck her feet out at the bottom, wriggled her toes and decided that, if Mrs Williams refused to allow her the luxury of sitting through the uncomfortable interview in relative silence, she would be firm, practical, sympathetic and as implacable as a rock.

She would be very careful not to let her wayward tongue get the better of her. She would keep all personal opinion to herself. She would smile a lot, with more than a hint of compassion, and she would not presume to preach to someone she didn't know from Adam on his methods of fathering. She would close her mind to every word Emily Parr had uttered to her on the subject of her father, because teenagers could be quite unreliable when it came to descriptions of their home lives, and she would do as little as possible to upset any apple carts.

That resolved, she contemplated what she should wear for the meeting. Normally, as a teacher, she invariably opted for the most comfortable clothing she could find. Loose skirts and tops, flat shoes, muted colours. From as far back as she could remember, she had always tried to wear things that diminished her size. Five feet ten inches was tall enough, but add to that a generous bustline and curves that never seemed appropriate for the role of teacher, and what remained was something, she considered, fairly Amazonian.

Today, she decided, she would take advantage of her height to ward off any attacks Emily's father might have in store for her. She knew that she frequently intimidated men. There was nothing about her at all that begged for their protective instincts. If anything, with some of the men she had dated in the past, she had ended up feeling protective. She had long ago assumed that the only men she attracted were the ones who were turned on by a dominant female. Or at least by a woman they considered would fit the role of the dominant female. It was useless telling them that the last thing she wanted was to take command or, God forbid, mother them.

She slipped on a dark grey suit, which was as prepossessing on her as a cold sore but succeeded in making her look rather intimidating, and stuck on a pair of two-inch high-heel court shoes which she had to dust down from lack of use. Then she stood in front of the mirror and surveyed the net result with a critical eye.

Definitely the outfit for a potentially difficult situation, she decided. And, from what she had heard about Emily's father from Mrs Williams, she would need all the super-ficial help she could get her hands on.

He was, she had worked out, not one of life's easygoing characters. For a start, he had made only one appearance in the two years his daughter had been at the school, and that had been to complain about her grades. Mrs Williams, recalling the incident, had blanched at the memory of it, and it took a great deal for Mrs Williams to lose her legendary calm.

So how he was going to react to this major body blow he would be dealt in a little under an hour was enough to make anyone shudder with apprehension.

Rebecca gazed thoughtfully at her reflection and was, for once, grateful for what confronted her. A woman of imposing height and stature, face attractive but well played down so that the firm jawline and widely spaced blue eyes looked strongly determined, and with her shoulder-length auburn hair tortured into something she hoped resembled a bun at the back, she looked every inch the sort of person that other people should consider very carefully before antagonising.

And her curves were well concealed under the boxy grey jacket. Curves and grim-lipped severity did not make the best of companions.

Fifteen minutes later she was striding confidently towards the principal's office, glancing in at the classes in progress and mentally hoping that her own class was being well behaved for Mr Emscote, the English teacher, who had a tendency to wilt when confronted with too many high- spirited teenage girls.

Mrs Williams was waiting for her in the office, standing by the window, and looking fairly agitated.

"He should be here in a short while. Please sit, Rebecca." She sighed wearily and took her place in the chair behind the large mahogany desk. "I've told Sylvia to make sure that we're not interrupted. Has Emily been to see you again?"

"No." Rebecca shook her head. "I think she decided that I needed a bit of a breather after the shock. How did she react to your talk with her?"

Another weary sigh, this time more pronounced. "She didn't. React, that is. Barely said a word and looked utterly pleased with herself in that insufferably insolent manner she has."

Rebecca knew precisely the insufferably insolent manner to which Mrs Williams was referring. It involved a bored expression, stifled yawns and eyes that drifted around the room as though searching for something slightly more exciting to materialise from the woodwork. She was the perfect rebel and, because of it, had a league of adoring supporters who, thankfully, while admiring her antics, were not quite foolhardy enough to imitate them.

"Did you mention anything to her father about...why he was asked to come here?"

"I thought it best to do that on a face-to-face basis." Shame, Rebecca thought. He might have simmered down if he had had a day to mull over the facts.

"I've gathered all the relevant school reports on Emily, so that he can read through them, and I've also collated the numerous incident reports as well. Quite a number, considering that the child hasn't been with us very long." She sat back in the chair, a small, thin bespectacled woman in her forties with the tenacity and perseverance of a bulldog, and shook her head. "Such a shame. Such a clever child. It certainly makes one wonder what the point of brilliance is when motivation doesn't play a part. With a different attitude, she could have achieved a great deal."

"She's had a...challenging home life, Mrs Williams. I personally feel, as I said to you before, that Emily's rebelliousness is all an act. A ploy to hide her own insecurities."

"Yes, well, I suggest you keep your opinions to yourself, Rebecca," the principal said in a warning voice. "There's no point in muddying the waters with a post-mortem on why this whole unfortunate business happened in the first place. Aside from which, she's not the first girl to have endured her parents' divorce and all the fallout from it. And other girls do not react by..." she looked down at one of the sheets of paper '...smoking through the window of a dorm, falsifying sick notes to the infirmary so that she can go into town, climbing up a tree and remaining there for a day just to watch us all run around like headless chickens looking for her... The list goes on..."

"Yes, I know, but..." Rebecca could feel herself getting hot under the collar of her crisply starched white blouse, which she had unearthed from the furthermost reaches of her wardrobe and now felt so uncomfortable that she was seriously regretting having put it on in the first place.

"No buts, Rebecca. This is an immovable situation and it will do no good to try and analyse it into making sense. The facts are as they stand and Emily's father will have to accept them whether he cares to or not."

"And Emily?" Rebecca asked with concern. "What happens to her now?"

"That will be something that must be sorted out between herself and her father."

"She doesn't have a relationship with her father." 'I would advise you to be a bit sceptical about what she says on that front," Mrs Williams told her sharply. "We both know that Emily can be very creative with the truth."

"But the facts speak for themselves..." Rebecca found herself leaning forward, about to disobey her first rule of command, which was to be as immovable as a rock and launch into a fiery defence of her pupil, when there was a knock on the door, and Sylvia poked her head round.

"Mr Knight is here, Mrs Williams," she said with her usual gusto.

Mr Knight? Rebecca frowned. Why was his surname different from that of his daughter? References to him had always been as Emily's father, and it hadn't occurred to her that he might not be Mr Parr.

"That's fine, Sylvia. Would you show him in, please? And no interruptions, please. I shall deal with anything that crops up after Mr Knight has left."

"Of course." Sylvia's expression changed theatrically from beaming good humour to grave understanding, but as soon as she had vacated the doorway they could both hear her trill to Emily's father that he could go in now, and could he please inform her how he would like his coffee.

Rebecca wondered whether he would be disconcerted by the personal assistant's eccentric mannerisms — most people who didn't know her were — but his deep voice, wafting through the door, was controlled and chillingly assured.

Stupidly, because her role in the room was simply to impart information, she felt her stomach muscles clench as he walked through the door, then a wave of colour flooded her cheeks.

Mrs Williams had risen to her feet and was perfunctorily shaking his hand, and it was only when they both turned to her that Rebecca sprang up and held out her hand in polite greeting.

Emily's father was strikingly tall, strikingly forbidding and strikingly good-looking. Even wearing heels, she was forced to look up at him. She didn't know what she had expected of him. Someone older, for a start, and with the military bearing of the typical household dictator who had no time for family but a great deal for work.

This man was raven-haired, dark-eyed and the angular features of his face all seemed to blend together to give an impression of power, self-assurance and cool disregard for the rest of the human race.

And the worst of it was that she recognised him. Seventeen years on, she recognised him. At sixteen she had been as knocked sideways by the man he had been then as she was now by the man he had become.