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.
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