“In my defence, I did try. I spoke to your grandparents countless times. I knew you and your brother shouldnotlive in that house. I knew that your parents weren’t… capable. But I didn’t try hard enough.”
It was only when my head started to spin and my vision narrowed that I realised I was holding my breath. I sucked in a sharp burst of air and let it out slowly before I could speak.
“It wasn’t your fault,” I told him through my thick throat.
“I understand why you would think that, but you were children and I–”
“Those animals were a law unto themselves, Mr Crawley. There was nothing you could have done. Now, I’m so sorry but I’ve got to go.”
I tapped the screen to hang up and lay the phone face down on my desk. Then I did something I’d never done, ever. I left work in the middle of the day. We had an important meeting that afternoon, but I still left. Max would have to deal with some client-facing work for once. I’d officially run out of fucks to give.
Chapter7
Worst-case scenario
Eighteen months later…
Verity
“You don’t have to be here,” Max grumbled as we pulled up at the site. “I’m not a total knob you know. I can be trusted to talk to other humans.”
I suppressed an eye roll and patted Max on the arm. “I know you can talk to the nice humans, Maxy, but it’s always better if you don’t have to.” I dreaded to think what would happen if I did actually leave Max to deal with all the contractors we were meeting today. These site visits to the LSE campus were vitally important. They were how we established all the relationships that the project would hinge on. I would have loved to leave it to Max, but there’d been too many times when clients and contractors had walked off the site muttering complaints about “grumpy northern bastards” for me to risk it. And I’d already allowed Max to do far too many of them unsupervised in my attempts to avoid Harry. Of course, I’d had to attend the many completely pointless meetings Harry seemed to insist on for various spurious reasons, which were all excruciating in their discomfort, but on-site contact had been minimal. “I doubt he’ll be there anyway,” I said lightly. “He’s more of aremote supervisiontype of chap than someone hands-on. I can’t exactly see him in a hard hat, can you?”
“Bastad better not be there,” Max muttered darkly as we pulled to a stop in front of the now cleared and level site – the size of it struck me again and I felt a surge of excitement. Yes, maybe I hadn’t wanted to take on the job, but that didn’t change how exciting it was in reality to have control over such a large area of central London real estate. The building we’d planned would be revolutionary. Yes, we’d been onDream Homes. Yes, we had a good reputation. But to be one of the big hitters we needed a project on this scale – and we’d be able to create real beauty right here in the heart of the city. Beauty that we’d designed ourselves, beauty that was sustainable, that wouldn’t hurt the environment. The entire building would be passive – completely carbon neutral. This was a big ask for something so huge, but we were confident we could do it if we had the right contractors – hence the need for me to make sure we kept them.
Site visits could be messy and dusty, they were not conducive to my normal tight-skirted outfits. So, I’d paired jeans with a fitted jumper and fabulous high-heel boots. I probably should be wearing flats, but wearing jeans was as far as I was ever willing to compromise when it came to site visits. Even when we’d been out to boggy marshes in the West Country I still wore at least three-inch heels, bunged heel-stoppers on the ends and just got on with it. I’d been wearing heels for so long that I think my body would probably topple over without them. I scowled at the hard hat I was handed (I’d never been a fan of hat hair, but at least I had opted for a low ponytail, so it wasn’t a complete disaster). Max elbowed me and I put it on. The first couple of hours went well. All the contractors were people we’d worked with before, and they all bought into the entire vision even though I knew some of it was a real pain in the arse (engineers do not like curved walls – it winds them right up). There was only one incident when I’d had to rescue Dave, a particularly competent and practical builder, from Max who was arguing over an inch difference in the position of the foundation. Max’s raised voice calling Dave a “stubborn cockney arsehole” caused me to abandon my productive talks with the engineer and hurry over to where they were arguing. Now, I was good in heels, but a near run on the rough terrain with clumps of concrete still littering the ground was too much, even for me. I tripped just as I reached them, and the ever-competent Dave caught me before I fell onto my face.
“Dave, my hero,” I said smiling up at him as he hauled me to my feet. From memory, Dave was not averse to some light flirting, and as I was keen to smooth over Max’s arsehole comment hamming it up seemed to be the best option. But just as I was steadying myself with Dave’s help and his mouth had tugged up into a reluctant smile, I was suddenly hauled back by a strong arm which felt like an iron band around my waist into a hard body behind me. I turned, expecting to see Max staring down at me, but all my breath left me in sudden exhale as my eyes clashed with the warm brown of Harry’s. His jaw was clenched tight as he searched my face. I pushed against his arm, but it didn’t budge.
“You need trainers,” Harry said in a tight voice, and I felt my eyebrows go up. An unwanted flush of desire at being this close to him burned through me. I could feel the warmth of his body and smell the clean scent of aftershave, and as heat rose to my cheeks I felt like that pathetic sixteen-year-old again. That was when my shock morphed into embarrassment and then anger, and I pushed against the steel band that was Harry’s arm.
“Get off!” I snapped, giving the offending forearm a final hard shove. He broke eye contact with me to blink down at where he had me imprisoned, as if he hadn’t really been fully conscious he’d been holding me to him, then let me go so abruptly that I almost stumbled again. His hand extended to steady my elbow, but I flinched away from him and he jerked back.
“Those boots are completely unsafe on a building site,” the arrogant sod told me, as he crossed his arms over his chest and stared down at me with disapproval.
“Oh, and your ten-thousand-pound-suit-and-no-hard-hat combo is sooo much more appropriate.”
“I’m sorry, but have I nearly fallen onto building debris? Any of which could slice open an artery or give me tetanus?”
“That is savage worst-case scenario thinking, even for you.” I bit back. Harry had always been the ultimate pessimist, thinking through things to their worst possible outcome and contrasting violently with my unrelenting optimism. I actually used to find it endearing.
“Well, I want a gap year,” I said one day on the sofa, my feet resting on Harry’s lap as he tried to concentrate on readingThe Hobbitfor what was probably the hundredth time. He tolerated this seating arrangement as long as I didn’t fidget.
“Good luck.”
“You’re not going to have one?”
“A year poncing about trying to find myself? No chance.”
I rolled my eyes. “I won’t be trying to find myself, I’ll be seeing the world. Maybe I’ll teach English in a school in India–”
“Dysentery.”
“Ride an elephant in Thailand.”
“They smell and they weigh over a tonne. If one of them loses their shit, you’ll be squashed flat.”
“Climb Kilimanjaro.”
