Things she had taken for granted and, although it hardly mattered now what he thought of her, it was just too painful not to try to justify herself, to set the record straight, even though there was no need.
‘My father bought this place for me before he left for Australia. He didn’t like to think that I might be staying anywhere...dangerous. I always made it clear that I didn’t want any money from him but he dug his heels in.’ She smiled. ‘You’d think he would have been a lot more relaxed about stuff like that, considering his misspent youth, but he wasn’t.’
She took a deep breath and looked him straight in the eyes. ‘My mum died when I was eight. In a motorcycle accident. My dad was driving and he never really recovered from the fact that she was pillion, even though he hadn’t been drinking. Just skidded. Wet night... Took a corner too fast.’
‘Where were you at the time?’
‘At home. Home was a hotel room in... I can’t even remember which country. Abroad. Paid babysitter. They partied hard but, when mum was alive, weirdly not as often as you’d think. Sometimes they took me but usually they were good at making sure that someone responsible was looking after me. I remember I woke up in the morning and nothing was the same after that. Anyway, to cut a long story short, the life of a rock star made him go off the rails completely. He lost himself in drink and drugs, even though he carried on doing his best for me. It was just that sometimes his best was a little...erratic.’ She felt the tears welling up but she didn’t dare make eye contact with her boss, just in case.
‘He played music, and had his adoring fans, and we travelled the world, but I saw him when he was on his own. I saw the sadness. Eventually, of course, the band stopped touring, and for a while my dad wrote music for other people. By then, he was in and out of rehab and I had long become his carer. Of sorts.’
‘His carer...’
‘These things happen.’ She shrugged. Thankfully, that moment of wanting to burst into tears had gone, and she was back in control now. The past was the past and she had come to terms with it a long time ago. She might not have had a normal childhood, but it had been colourful, and whatever the distractions, her dad had always been there for her. In his own way.
‘So...’ She began the process of winding up the conversation. She had said far more than she had anticipated and was thinking that it was just as well that their time together was numbered. Matt Falconer recognised no boundaries when it came to digging deep, and her story would have stoked his curiosity, no doubt about that. His spade would be at the ready, and she quailed at the thought of what her life would have been like if she’d carried on working for him indefinitely.
‘My plan is to rent this place out and go to Australia for a while to be with my dad. He doesn’t want to return to London to live. He enjoys Melbourne and he’s made friends over there. He likes the weather and the laid-back lifestyle. But I need to make sure that he’s okay while he goes through this temporary blip.’
She waited for him to say something, but he was worryingly silent.
‘It would have been different if Caroline, my stepmother, was still around.’
Silence.
‘He’s on the waiting list for a liver transplant, if you must know.’
Way too much confiding, Violet thought, angry with herself.
‘He met her when he was in rehab. She was a member of staff there.’
She clicked her tongue impatiently and wondered whether she would just keep babbling into the silence until every thought she had and every feeling she’d ever felt had been laid bare. This wasn’t like herat all.This wasn’t the cool, private, detached Violet Dunn he was accustomed to.
‘Are you just going to sit there, Matt?’ she found herself compelled to snap.
‘You were his carer...’ Matt repeated, still pensive and still staring at her in the sort of intense, focused way that made the hairs at the back of her neck stand on end. ‘Something must have been sacrificed.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘The way it usually works,’ he said slowly, as if piecing together a complex problem that could only be solved through a series of careful stages, ‘is the carer gives something up. Am I right? I’m guessing your education would have been erratic, to say the least, which incidentally says a lot about the fact that you still managed to attain so many qualifications. You must have burnt the midnight oil as a teenager.’
Violet’s mouth tightened. If only he knew the extent of the role reversal that had characterised her life! She had not really given it a second thought, growing up, but she had often looked back over the years and gazed at the adolescent who had stayed at home, head in a book, while her dad had been out getting drunk, doing drugs and staggering back in to flop in a heap on the sofa. She had been the one admonishing him about late nights and preaching about the dangers of drugs. She had made sure he took his vitamins and had his five a day whenever possible. By the time the touring had come to an end and the rehab visits had started, she had been very much used to running the household.
So had she given things up?
Had she ever! And top of the list was the carefree, reckless joy of adolescence.
‘I enjoyed studying,’ she said vaguely. ‘It’s time you left. You asked me to explain why I had to resign and I have.’
‘I’m not ready to go.’
‘What do you mean,you’renot ready to go?’
‘I’ve spent two-and-a-half years wondering what made my überefficient secretary tick...’ He leant back in the chair and looked at her from under lowered lashes. ‘You’ll have to excuse my curiosity. Also, I’m still in the game of trying to get you to change your mind. Likewise, you’ll have to excuse my persistence.’
‘Can we talk about this in the morning?’ she asked wearily.
‘You mean when you’re in your prim little suit, sitting behind your desk with your professional hat firmly flattened on your head? I think I prefer this slightly less formal Violet Dunn.’
