‘Will a reference from my college supervisor work?’ Kitty asked. She didn’t think the restaurant manager would give her anything if she walked out at short notice.
‘I was hoping you’d be able to give me the details of your previous employers. The ones in London.’
Kitty frowned. ‘But I was a nanny over there.’
‘That’s right.’
‘They won’t really be able to say if I’d make a good intern or not,’ Kitty told her, still blinking away her confusion. ‘My supervisor here at film school will be much better placed to say that.’
Mia laughed, a tinkling waterfall of a chuckle that made Kitty feel about two foot tall. ‘Oh no, I’m not calling about an internship, I’m calling about a nanny position. I need somebody to look after Jonas, my son, over the holidays. His last nanny quit, and the new one can’t start until January.’
‘I’m sorry, did you say your name was Mia Klein?’ It was beginning to make sense.
‘Yes. My husband’s assistant passed me your resumé. Drake Montgomery. I believe you met him.’
‘Oh yes. I definitely met him.’ He’d made a big impression, after all. Especially when he abandoned the interview halfway through.
‘So can you make it tomorrow?’ Mia asked. ‘At about two.’
‘Um.’ Kitty looked up at the library, at the grey walls, the shiny windows, her crouched body reflected in the glass.
What was it her eldest sister always said? Never look a gift horse in the mouth. The only prob
lem was, she wasn’t sure if this offer would turn out to be a gift or a poisoned chalice. It wasn’t an internship after all. Nowhere near. But it was an opportunity to prove herself, to get close to one of the top producers in the town.
She thought again of that pile of rejection letters, and of Kevin D’Ananzo, the student at the bottom of the class who’d still managed to achieve what she’d found so elusive.
‘Sure, I’ll be there,’ she finally said, standing and picking her bag up. ‘Just text me the address.’
2
Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say
– King Lear
‘So your brother is back in town. How does that make you feel?’
Adam looked at his therapist for a moment, rubbing his bearded jaw with his hand. He felt like a blinding spotlight was shining on him every time the man asked him a question. How many more hours would he have to spend here, answering questions that made every muscle in his body tense up? It had been what, three months since his first appointment, which made it another month until he’d fulfilled his commitment. The one he’d made when the LAPD had agreed to only issue him with a caution.
Another month of inquisitions. He could do that, couldn’t he?
He moved his hand around to the back of his neck, rubbing the itchy skin there. His hair was getting long – longer than he’d ever worn it before. ‘I haven’t seen him,’ Adam admitted, pulling at the collar of his checked shirt. Even the mention of Everett made his skin crawl. ‘So it doesn’t make me feel anything at all.’
Martin – his therapist – stared at him for a moment, as though he could see through the bluster and the hair and the muscle Adam had cultivated as a shield. ‘But he’s here in West Virginia? He’s staying with your parents, right?’
‘Yeah.’
‘And you still haven’t seen him?’ Martin frowned. ‘Are you actively avoiding him?’
Adam stretched his long legs in front of him, noticing the dirt encrusted on his old, frayed jeans. It had been a while since he’d bought any new clothes. A while since he’d done much of anything, except whittle and sledge and pretend everything was OK. He was teetering on the edge between ‘he’ll get over it’ and ‘we need to talk about Adam’. He’d like to stay on the easier side if he could, even if that meant doing a little clothes shopping.
‘It’s a big house,’ Adam pointed out. ‘And I don’t even live in it. I’m at least a ten-minute walk from the main building. I don’t need to be going over there every day.’
‘When did they arrive?’
‘Three days ago.’
Martin raised a single eyebrow. Adam wanted to swallow the words back down. He knew way too much information for a man who was pretending not to care at all, and Martin knew it too.