“Hey! Warts are a big issue,” she interrupted, having the audacity to look annoyed that I would even question her choice of topic. “You might not have stuff sprouting off your todger, but it’s more common than you think.”
“I don’t care how big an issue genital warts are!”
“Says you with your cauliflower-free todger.”
I took a deep breath. My eyelid was going crazy now. “Kira, the pressdoesmatter for me right now. I’m trying to make some real change. A carbon neutral UK and massive restructuring of industries – not all of which is going to be popular. The announcement wasn’t meant to be for another month, but somehow it was leaked. I’m attempting to calm down the press attention, not hand out goddamn beverages to them or give them quotes about genital warts.”
Kira bit her lip. “Okay sorry about the warts thing. But, er, well . . . you can’t just ignore them all, can you?”
“Yes, yes, that’s exactly what I am going to do and it’s whatyou’regoing to do when you finallyget out of my house!”
She flinched back at my raised voice. Her eyes went wide and she opened her mouth, but no sound came out. It was at that point that Henry walked in. He looked between my furious expression and Kira’s shocked one and his eyebrows went up.
“Barclay,” he ventured, then paused and gave a small wince. “Maybe you’d better turn on the telly again a sec.”
I released my death grip on the counter and reached for the remote. The widescreen above the kitchen table flicked on to an image of the front of my house with a crowd of reporters accepting tea from a small whirlwind of a woman at the centre. Cameras were held aloft to try and get a better view as she was a head shorter than most of the other people, but then she turned and walked up the steps with an empty tray so that they all had a clear shot of her. She opened the front door, giving a clear view of me striding down the corridor before I slam the door shut again.
“Woah,” Kira breathed, her eyes even wider now. “Maybe I should have given the old barnet a brush before I went out again. I looked alittlescary.”
I felt my hands curl into fists and heat flood my face.
“Youlookedabsolutely fucking ridiculous,” I told her, taking care to enunciate every word very clearly lest she miss any of them. It was clear she was thick-skinned in the extreme and this might be the only way to get through to her. “Maybe you think you’requirkyorjust a bit out-therewith your weirdness, but I find it unbelievably annoying.”
“No hang on mate,” Henry interrupted.
“Shut up Henry, you’re not in this.” He went to speak again but I turned away from him and back towards Kira. “I expect you breeze through life irritating the shit out of every person you meet while being blindly oblivious. But when your crazy impacts other people’s lives, it’s time to take a good look at yourself and maybetryto be a bit more bloody normal.”
Kira blinked and took a step back. Unfortunately that caused her hip to bump hard into the granite behind her. Her wince pulled me back from the rage for a moment and I swallowed. When she looked up at me, I was shocked to see actual tears swimming in her hazel-green eyes. Her face had drained of colour and the animation that always seemed to light up her features drained away with it. She broke eye contact and looked down at the tiles for a moment. One tear escaped, which she wiped away with a quick movement of her hand. When she looked back up, her eyes were dry. Somehow that made me feel even worse.
“I know exactly who I am,” she told me in a cold voice that I would never have even imagined could come from her. “And I’mhappywith who I am. Do you think you’re the first person to try to tear me down? The sad thing is that I thought I knew the kind of manyouwere. All that time watching you doing your political knight-in-shining-armour thing for the people and the planet. I idolised you. Turns out even the good guys can turn out to be arseholes. Well, I’ll take myannoying weirdnessand leave you in peace to carry on saving the country.”
She turned and started marching towards the front door. I jerked out of my frozen stance and jogged over to her, catching her small elbow in my much larger hand. I dropped her arm when she flinched away from my touch, but walked around her to block her way.
“I’m . . .” for some reason my voice was hoarse. The image of that solitary tear tracking down her cheek kept replaying in my brain. I cleared my throat. “I’m going to need you to leave the back way. There’s . . . there’s a car waiting for you, so . . .”
Henry came to stand in front of me. My little brother was glowering in my direction, displaying more emotion than he had in weeks. He reached out for Kira and put his arm around her small shoulders. She didn’t flinch away fromhim,and I started to feel a dull ache in my chest. Neither of them looked back at me as Henry led her to the back door and out of the house.
Chapter 7
Predator
Kira
“Don’t mind me, short-stuff.”
I jumped at the throaty whisper in my ear and the sudden heat of a body pressing against my back as I stood at the notes counter in the GU out patient department. I tried to slip out of the way, but an arm caged me in on one side and the wall blocked my exit on the other.
“Just need to reach this file here,” he explained, pressing against me more heavily for a long moment, then finally moved away from my tense body.
Ugh.
Smarmy Simon, aka Wankpuffin extraordinaire, was back from his skiing holiday. I’d had two weeks of not having to put up with his shit, but now my reprieve was over.
I gave a nervous laugh and moved away at lightning speed, holding the notes in front of me like a shield and wishing I’d worn heels today. Smarmy Simon was only about five-foot-ten but he still towered over me. Never had I been more desperate for a few more inches of height. Big men never normally intimidated me, but I was becoming more wary of them having worked with this twat over the last six months.
The thing was, I hadn’t always thought of Smarmy Simon as smarmy. He had been a decent bloke when I’d first met him. At least he’dseemedlike a decent bloke. A bit overfriendly for an educational supervisor, but funny; he’d made me laugh. And he was good looking. He had a sort of Ken Doll vibe about him: – really well-groomed designer beard, fitted shirts over a buff torso. In the looks stakes, he was no troll. But over the last six months it had become more and more obvious that he considered himself God’s gift to womankind. It started off with the odd wink, a few comments about my legs, inappropriate amounts of eye contact with my chest. Now it was open flirting and invading my personal space. Once, in an appraisal, he’d cupped my face and leaned in as if to kiss me; I’d jerked back so violently that I cracked my head on the wall behind my chair. He’d been all like, “Woah! Calm down, I was just getting some make-up off your cheek. What did youthinkI was going to do?” Then he’d laughed at me and,goddamn it, I’d laughed with him. What I should have done was tell him that his behaviour was inappropriate and tostopmaking me uncomfortable every chance he got. But it was all ‘just banter’, and I was the Queen of Banter. I was the easy-going joker, the girl all the lads could have a pint with and not have to watch what they said, because what came out of my mouth was often ten times filthier anyway. They knew I was notthatgirl – the one that made a fuss, the damsel in distress. If this were happening to either of my best friends Libby or Millie, it would be a different story. They were both that glamorous type of beautiful. People would believe them if they complained about inappropriate behaviour. I wasn’t exactly ugly – I was cute, quirky (I now despised this adjective since my dressing down from Mr High and Mighty Politician), pretty in a girl-next-door-meets-crazy-hippy kind of way. It felt arrogant to assume that a man like Simon was targeting me. And anyway, I wasn’t exactly a shrinking wallflower. I should have been able to deal with this situation myself.
“You’re in a rush today,” Smarmy Simon said, smiling that smile I’d come to hate. It made him look like a predator baring its teeth. “Got something planned for Friday night, have you? Need to get away early? I’m sure you know how to have a good time on the weekend.”
