Barney crossed his arms over his chest and narrowed his eyes at Pav.
‘Youwere the one to push her there, you hypocrite.’
‘My mistake: I accept that. What I will not accept is more of the same. She has feelings. Christ, she’s so frighteningly intelligent that she probably over-thinks, and worries more than any of us numbskulls.’ Pav sighed and some of the angry tension drained out of his body. ‘Look, she works hard for you and she enjoys it. I’m not asking for that to stop. All I want is for you to do what you’re supposed to do: protect her, look after her. She’s your trainee.’
‘She doesn’tneedany bloody training,’ Barney shot back. ‘She knows guidelines that haven’t even been published yet.’
‘You still have to support her. She may know all the guidelines but she doesn’t know how to implement them. How to put her case forward for them. It’s your job to help her with that. You can start by calling her by her goddamn name.’
Barney pushed his hand through his hair and shrugged. ‘Okay, okay. I’ll try and … change things up a bit.’
‘Great,’ Pav said, forcing a smile and slapping Barney on the arm with a little too much force to be considered friendly. Barney gave him a nervous smile and started backing away. ‘Oh, and Barney?’
‘Yes?’ Barney turned back with his hand still on the door handle.
‘I can make things difficult for you. Understand?’
Barney swallowed.
‘Stop taking the piss with this, yeah?’
Chapter 14
Professor X.
‘Hello, Willy Fiddler,’ said Kira as she pulled open Millie’s door with a huge smile on her face. Pav frowned. Millie had told him Kira was coming to pick her up at eight. It was now just before seven and Pav had been hoping to beat her to it and take Millie to the group instead.
‘Kira, what are you wearing?’ he asked as he pushed into the house.
Kira’s partly blue hair was tangled up in a messy knot on the top of her head, complete with the couple of permanent small plaits with rainbow ribbons running through them. She had a loose man’s wife-beater on, which displayed her black lacy bra at the sides and where it dipped down low in front, combined with a pair of totally indecent denim short shorts and cowboy boots. Who in their right mind wore cowboy boots in London after 1997? Her lipstick was the same blue shade as the streaks in her hair.
‘Yo! Bitches! Get your arses down here pronto. We need to load up and roll out.’ Kira strutted down the corridor as she shouted, and went to the kitchen counter where there was a full shot glass waiting for her. She downed it and winced. ‘Badger me backwards, that stuff is rough as a hedgehog’s arse.’
‘What the hell is going on? I thought this was book group night. Why are you downing shots?’
Kira slammed the glass back down on the granite and poked him in the chest. ‘Field trip, my man,’ she told him.
‘Field trip?’ Pav frowned. ‘Is that why you’re dressed like a hippy prostitute on speed?’
Kira laughed. ‘How did you know that’s the exact look I’m going for? Environmentally conscious, tofu-eating slut-whore.’
‘Kira?’ a new voice sounded from across the room. Millie’s friend Eleanor was standing in the entryway to the kitchen biting her lip. ‘I don’t think she’s going to wear it. Oh … hey there, Dr …’
‘It’s Pav,’ he corrected, smiling at El whose eyes went slightly unfocused for a moment. Extracting information from this one should be a lot easier than insane-bohemian-on-crack. ‘Would you mind telling me what exactly is going on?’
‘Well –’
‘Hey,’ Crazy Woman interrupted, punching Pav quite painfully in the arm. ‘Turn off the charm-beam, Romeo, and leave El alone. You’ll find out soon enough.Right.’ She moved towards a flustered Eleanor and took her by the arm to steer her out of the kitchen. ‘Show me the patient. I’ll sort her out.’
*****
Millie pulled at the hem of her skirt and worried her bottom lip. Okay, so maybe she’d been feeling the sting of loneliness more over the last few years, maybe she wanted to break out of her self-imposed isolation a little bit. But going out in a tiny black dress with her hair totally out of control and her make-up in a style that could only be described as ‘skank’ was a little extreme. When she’d told El she couldn’t go out like that and started to search for another outfit, Kira had bowled into her room and snatched the far more conservative clothes right out of her hands, dumping them on the bed.
‘I promise,’ Kira told Millie, shocking her by taking both her hands in hers and giving them a shake. ‘I promise you’ll feel comfortable in this once we get where we’re going.’
‘Kira,’ Millie forced out (she was still getting used to being on first name terms with this woman, leave alone handholding), ‘I can’t wear thisanywhere. I just can’t. It’s … it’s beyond my limits. I’m sorry. I –’
‘Do you trust me?’
