‘She only likes skirts and dresses on little girls. It’s not fair. I don’t want to wear stuff like that.’
Goodie gently pulled her into the room and sat on the bed next to the dress, facing away from the doorway and patted the space next to her. Arabella jumped up onto the bed, tilted her jaw at a stubborn angle and crossed her arms over her chest.
‘I do not like these things either,’ Goodie told her. Arabella let her arms drop and looked up at Goodie with a confused expression.
‘But you’re wearing a dress,’ Arabella informed her. ‘A really pretty dress.’ Goodie nodded; her midnight-blue dress had a high neck, long sleeves and was close fitting to just above her knees where it flared out subtly. She knew it was beautiful; she knew her hair and make-up were perfect.
‘I hatethis,’ she said, grabbing a handful of blue material, ‘and this,’ she indicated her face and hair, which was swept up off her neck in an elegant style, ‘with such intensity that sometimes I feel like they’re actually burning my skin.’
Arabella’s mouth dropped open and her eyes widened. ‘But why do you wear them then?’
‘In my job I have often had to wear clothes I dislike. I have been in outfits far, far worse than this. And I have had to also be … nice to people I hate whilst wearing clothes I detest in places that made my skin crawl.’
‘Why?’ Arabella asked, her hand moving to stroke Salem’s head as it rested on Goodie’s knee.
‘Sometimes I needed information from them. Sometimes it was to get closer to someone I needed to … talk to. There are some reasons I cannot tell you, not just because you are a child, but because they are secret and, the type of secret they are means that if they were known it could hurt people.’
‘Wow,’ Arabella breathed. ‘Reallysecret, secret then. But how can you stand to wear this stupid stuff if you hate it so much?’
‘There are times where I have had to wear camouflage to blend into the natural environment. In a jungle this would be greens and browns, in the snow it was white. I wore that to get the job done, because it gave me an advantage, made me more powerful than my target; this is how I look at these clothes and this make-up: it is my camouflage, it gives me power.’
Arabella nodded. ‘I like the idea of camouflage; that’s cool.’
Goodie smiled and stood up from the bed. ‘You’ll change then?’ Arabella nodded and jumped up to start toward her wardrobe, but stopped when Goodie laid a hand lightly on her arm. ‘You know that nobody has the right to hurt you or your mother, don’t you?’
‘Yes,’ Arabella said, turning to Goodie and tilting her curious face to the side.
‘If that happens you tellme; understand? I saw you with a phone earlier. Have you got it with you?’
Arabella nodded, grabbing a stuffed polar bear off her bed and unzipping the back. ‘Mummy got me this for when I use the bus from school. It’s dead boring though; can’t even get onto the internet or anything, just make calls.’
Goodie reached for the phone and Arabella handed it over.
‘I am going to put my number into this. Do not use it unless you need to.’ Goodie slipped it into the back of the polar bear and zipped it up.
‘Okay,’ Arabella agreed easily, her face lighting up at a new contact going into her phone.
Goodie smiled at her excited face, her heart clutching when she thought of Clive’s fingers digging into Arabella’s mother’s arm. ‘Now get dressed or we’ll be late and disappoint your babushka.’
* * *
Nick leanthis head back against the wall outside Bella’s room and closed his eyes. He had the almost overwhelming urge to punch something, but stifled this with the knowledge that Goodie would not have wanted him to overhear that particular conversation. He had insisted Goodie come to the party tonight just like he’d made her have her meals with his family and spend time with them over the last two days. He wasn’t stupid; he could read between the lines of what Goodie was saying, and he was beginning to realize that her past might be a good deal darker than he had predicted.
Chapter10
See someone you know?
Nick sawher from across the room and made a beeline for her immediately. He could not believe she was here at his family’s annual Easter party, of all places. For a moment he had a wild thought that she was here for Goodie, but then he noticed the man with his arm around the brunette’s shoulders. A Russian oligarch had bought one of the estates nearby in recent months, and Nick’s family had invited him as a welcome to the area.
Monty had visited the Russian’s home last week and described it as: ‘Bit more swish than when old Isaac Winthrope was living there, all very modern, acres and acres of marble. No clutter; not muchstuffthough.’ Seeing as the entire interior of the Chambers’ vast house was crammed with variousstuff– from the overstocked library, to the ram-jam motley collection of paintings on the walls accumulated after decades of very ill-advised commissioned portraits – Nick wasn’t surprised that a bit of minimalism would have struck his dad as alien. Luckily for Nick, this minimalist, super-rich Russian had accepted the invite to Nick’s family’s Easter party that they held every year, and he’d brought along Natasha Alkaev, of all people.
‘Hello, Natasha,’ Nick said smoothly, holding out his hand and smiling wide enough for his dimple to make an appearance – he knew from years of experience, starting at a surprisingly young age, that his smile and his dimple could invariably get him what he wanted. He noticed Dmitry Alexandrov tighten his grip around her waist and fix Nick with an assessing look; he was almost as tall as Nick and his hair was as dark as Natasha’s but liberally sprinkled with grey.
‘Mr Chambers,’ Natasha said through her own wide smile, shaking his hand before her eyes darted over his shoulder to scan the room.
‘Nick, please,’ Nick told her, disconcerted when she just nodded distractedly, glancing behind herself with a slight frown on her face. ‘And you must be Mr Alexandrov; my family and I are so glad you could make it tonight.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ Natasha put in, focusing back on Nick, ‘I was miles away. Dmi you remember? I told you I met Mr Chambers at Clarence House last month.’
