by Brigid Coady
She’d find her dad. She had to.
"Edie, can I have a word?" Edie looked up from her computer screen into the frowning face of Liz from HR.
Damn, she'd meant to go and sort out all that stuff about Rachel. Take some of it back, and soften it. Even if Rachel hadn’t turned up for work this morning.
"If it’s about the complaints I’ve made about Rachel, well I…" she started.
"Actually it is about a complaint Rachel's made about you." Liz interrupted and then quickly took a step back as if she expected Edie to come out swinging.
"A complaint?" Edie repeated. Why was Rachel talking to HR about her?
"About me?" She checked again. She'd never had anyone complain about her before.
"Yes, Rachel seems upset that you have been exposing her private life to the whole office via a series of emails."
Edie felt as if she'd been attacked by a stuffed teddy bear that she'd thought was inanimate and benign but had turned feral overnight.
"She's complained about me?" Edie thought she'd better just check that Liz was really saying what Edie thought she was saying.
"Yes. She says that the emails you've been sending asking for sponsorship for your fundraising abseil tomorrow are a violation of her privacy."
"But I'm raising money on behalf of her kid!" Edie blurted out.
Liz looked apologetic.
"What can I say? Evidently she doesn't want the world to know about Timmy and she says that your emails listing his issues are causing her concern."
"So what do I do then? Apologise to her?" Edie could feel her lip turn up in a sneer. It seemed it didn't matter how nice you were trying to be to people, you just got smacked for it.
"It is a bit more complicated than that. I've checked the policy and she also brought up some issues around 'abusive language' and 'bullying.'" Edie could see Liz cringing as she listed each complaint.
So the teddy bear had claws and teeth, did she?
The old Edie wanted to go on the attack. Annihilate Rachel until nothing would be left but a smoking hole with scattered burned paper raining down.
She opened her mouth to say something, put her hand to her chest to gather strength and felt the unfamiliar weight of the locket that now sat in the hollow of her throat.
She closed her mouth on the hot words. She felt them back up like a traffic jam in her throat.
No. She couldn't. She wanted to. Why the silly girl was getting her knickers in a twist about a few words in an email, Edie didn't know. But she would be the bigger person.
Such nonsense over nothing.
"Fine. I can see that Rachel could've misconstrued some of my training techniques as uncompromising. She is obviously quite sensitive as we can tell from her issue with my fundraising."
"Oh." Liz stood looking shocked. Edie realised she'd been expecting the scorched earth response that she'd almost given.
She wondered if Liz had lost a bet with the rest of the HR team and that was why she'd been sent to confront Edie.
"So what do we do now?" Edie asked through her teeth. The hot words were still backed up in her and she held on to the locket to keep them there. "I've already raised quite a bit of money and pledged to the charity."
"I think it will be fine as long as you keep Rachel's name out of it and…" Liz paused again and then rushed out. "And I'm afraid the complaint goes on your record."
Edie gripped the locket harder. She could feel the edges cutting into her palm.
Damn, but this was hard.
"Fine." She said. "Is that all?"
She drew all the iciness she had left in her and wrapped it around herself like a robe. Hoping it would numb the hurt.
"Sure, Edie. Rachel thought it was best to take the rest of the week off and maybe we can all meet on Monday to decide what to do next?”
Edie nodded and waited for Liz to leave.
Monday. Well, she’d know where she stood come then. If she survived the wedding and the haunting. She kept hold of the locket as she went back to staring at the computer screen.
"Do you know how to get hold of Dad?" Edie asked without a preamble.
She'd managed to swallow back most of the words she'd wanted to say to Rachel and about her but it had blown her concentration.
That never happened to her.
So she'd taken the bull by the horns, and called her mother.
Edie hadn't forgiven her. She wasn’t sure she could. She still had one hand clasped round the locket. She wondered if she'd have the shape of it and the engraving permanently etched onto her palm, in a reverse image.
"Why would I know where that good-for-nothing snake is?"
Obviously the past day had given her mum time to build up her defences. Edie wanted to shout down the phone that she'd stolen him from her. How could her mum call him a snake when he'd left her letters? Sent her cards and presents? When he'd tried to see her? But she couldn't say that.
“Mum." Edie's voice was quiet but anyone who'd worked for her would recognise it. It was her ‘don’t mess with me’ voice. Her ‘give me the house, the car, the children and the dog’ voice.
There was silence for a moment on the other end of the phone. Edie let it grow. This was much easier to do when she didn’t have to look her mother in the face. When she felt this angry, it was as much as she could do to even speak to her. But she was doing something; she needed to feel like she was moving forwards because after the chat with HR she felt like she was moving backwards.
She wasn't looking forward to the haunting on Friday. She shivered.
There was a sigh from her mum.
"No, I don't know where he is. It isn't like we're pen pals. But I suppose his mother will know."
"I have a grandmother?" Edie knew she'd had grandparents but her mother's parents were dead and she'd presumed her dad's were too. Another person she’d had taken away from her. The marks against her mother were growing. Edie could feel her hand trembling as she struggled to not shout or cry.
"If she's still alive, she never liked me," her mum said. “Have you a pen?” she said it as if she were speaking to a stranger.
Edie grabbed a pen in time as her mum rattled off an address and phone number. Edie jotted it down. The address was in London, in Kensington. Only a few miles away.
“Thank you,” she said absently and put the phone down without waiting for a response. She knew she needed to make peace with her mum if only because it would make an already hellish wedding even worse if they weren't talking. But not yet. Pink glitter or no pink glitter. Ghosts or no Ghosts.
She sat at her desk, staring blankly at Rachel's untidy desk. What did she do now?
She could phone up and announce that she was her granddaughter. And give the old woman a heart attack.
But that was the same issue if she just turned up on her doorstop. Edie could imagine the talk if she ended up scaring a little old woman to death. It was the sort of thing the office would probably expect.
What she needed to do was some reconnaissance. Her hand brushed the paper where she’d written the address. She traced it with a finger. This was scarier than the fundraising and Ghosts combined.
Chapter 16
At precisely six o’clock she left the office and headed for the station to take the Central line to Notting Hill Gate. Edie focused her energy on dodging the slower walkers that littered the pavement.
Did they deliberately step out in front of her? By the time she got to the steps to the ticket hall she was itching with impatience.
Her dad could be visiting her grandmother right this moment and she would miss him by mere minutes because she was stuck behind a tourist who was gawping at buildings older than their country.
Bloody typical.
OK, so it wasn’t likely that he was there. In fact she knew it was a silly dream that he would be visiting his mum at the same time she was going there. But, he could be. That was the point. There were now possibilities where before there had been none.
&nbs
p; Her heart gave a tug as it stretched to cradle the first dream it had held in a long time.
Did they know that her mum had kept everything from her?
Would they speak to her? Would they like her?
Would they leave her again?
Crap. With dreams and possibilities came heartache.
"This isn't your usual route." a voice came from behind her, and whispered in her ear.
What? she thought as her foot slipped and she started to topple down the stairs.
“Hold on!” Jack said.
A large hand gripped her elbow and kept her upright.
“Sorry. Didn’t know you’d fallen for me.” He laughed as he held her arm all the way down the steps.
His hand suddenly felt like the only real thing in the world. It almost pushed out her dream from her heart and replaced it with another.
No.
She shivered with attraction and then shook with anger. How had he got so near? She caught his scent over the stuffy and redolent tube station.
He made her feel too much when he was so close. He made her want that second dream.
“Thanks,” she said as she wrenched her arm away and all but ran to the ticket barriers.
But he didn’t leave her side. Jack Twist had long rugby playing legs that kept him alongside her.
Maybe if she ignored him and didn’t encourage him he’d lose interest. Because his words rang too close to the reality. She was falling for him.
He walked behind her down the escalator. Now she knew he was there she could keep track of him by the way her body reacted to his, she was attuned to his frequency.
Radio Twist.
But she was strong. She could fight it.
Like a small child she kept her head firmly turned away from him.
Concentrate Edie, she told herself. Think of the bigger picture.
“Dad. Mel’s wedding. Tomorrow’s fundraising,” she whispered it like a mantra.
They stood shoulder to shoulder on the platform.
“Kissing Jack,” slipped into her whisper.
Bugger.
Had he heard?
Edie found herself picking at her thumbnail, worrying it with her mouth.
“I’ve noticed you do that when you’re nervous,” he said.
She quickly took her thumb from her mouth.
“Now I’m wondering what could possibly make you scared about a tube journey. Or is just me that makes you like that? ”
She glanced over to find him smiling down at her.
“Nervous? As if,” she couldn’t help herself replying.
How old was she, using a comeback like that? Ten?
Thankfully the tube arrived in a rush of warm air.
I’ll get away from him, Edie thought. She’d weave her way through the carriage while he was still trying to fit those perfect hulking shoulders through the door.
She had it bad.
She waited for the usual surge of people behind her, the push that would lift her into the carriage and away.
Where were they? Looking over her shoulder she found she had her own personal bodyguard.
Jack stood behind her holding a large swathe of people back by those self same shoulders, so that she wasn't crushed. He was acting as her breakwater.
He winked.
She turned back to the front, her face feeling hot.
Tube stations in the summer got horribly warm.
Forgetting her plan, she found herself corralled into the small doorway at the end of the carriage. There was no weaving, just Jack pressed up against her.
Damn him and his winks.
“So where were we?” he said looming over her.
Was there any air in here?
“We,” she emphasised the word, “weren’t anywhere.”
At the same time she tried to hold herself as far away from him as was possible in the crush.
Why was there no air coming through the window? She didn’t care if it made her hair messy. She needed air.
The train took off from the station and the air arrived, warm and muggy. She felt hotter.
Damn it.
“That’s a pity.” He leaned closer as she leant back against the momentum of the tube. “I wouldn’t mind being somewhere with you.”
Hot. She was very very hot. It was the air. That was the reason her skin was suddenly on fire.
She opened her mouth to reply. Then shut it with a snap.
Nothing.
She couldn’t think of a single thing except how, with every shake of the train and every clatter that made it sway and bring them together, her body remembered how much it liked to be pressed up against him.
She’d lost control of her mind when she started seeing Ghosts. Then she’d lost control of her work, bloody Rachel. And now she was losing control of her body.
She should be thinking about her dad. That was why she was on this train, but all she could think was how much she wanted Jack to kiss her.
And more.
Edie felt Jack lean down and she had a flash of an X-rated image of the two of them on the tube breaking she didn't know how many laws.
He was going to kiss her, wasn't he?
If she'd thought she'd been hot before it was nothing compared to the scorching heat that engulfed her. She glanced up under her lashes.
Damn it, he was only going to speak to her.
No, that was good. Talk good. Kiss bad.
“So where do you think we should go?” he asked, earning tuts and dirty looks from everyone around them.
Didn't he know better than to break the rules of the underground?
But there were so many rules she wanted to break with him. A treacherous inner Edie let another vignette passed her defences.
Jack pressing her up against the window, her legs wrapped round his waist…
“We aren’t going anywhere.” Her voice was hoarse with want but she raised her head and glared at him.
I hope he can't read minds, she thought.
He smiled down at her, and it had enough of a naughty spark in it for her to wonder if he could. It would be just her luck; Ghosts and mind reading men.
“Well, they might arrest us for what I want to do if we stayed here,” he said.
What? He could read minds.
Her heart slammed up to her throat and then dropped to her stomach.
Her mouth flew open in shock. His finger pushed her chin up so her mouth closed and then pressed it briefly against her lips.
She could taste him.
He raised an eyebrow.
The rest of the journey passed in a tense, taut silence.
Images of their naked and naughty alter egos kept appearing in her head every time his legs brushed hers. The muscles underneath his suit flexed as he braced himself against the train’s movement.
She almost moaned as she imagined him naked.
She could feel the heat from his body; she wanted to melt into him.
His chest was inches from her face. She stared at a button and her fingers itched to open it and take a taste.
This was out of control, she thought as she fanned herself with a hand.
And Jack’s words were only making it worse.
The train rattled into Notting Hill Gate station.
She breathed a sigh of relief. Disappearing fathers, lost grandmothers and that damn fundraising abseil she’d signed up for were easier to deal with than Jack Twist.
She began her commuter shuffle, the special penguin waddle everyone does to get in the optimum position to get off.
Jack was in the way. Again.
He was a solid wall and she couldn't get past him.
"Excuse me, please." She spat it out; she couldn’t help it.
It was that or pin him against the carriage and have her wicked way.
"Relax, Slow. I'm getting off here too." He smiled down at her. “We are going somewhere together it seems.”
He was doing his charming thing again.
The
universe, she decided was definitely making her pay.
Turned on and seething, which was very uncomfortable, she waited for him to move.
It felt an eternity before the door opened, although she knew it was only seconds. Passengers started to get off.
Jack had turned so his back was to her but not before winking at her again.
I will not hit him, she told herself.
But will you kiss him?
No. She wouldn't be kissing him either.
Edie stared at his beautiful broad back and followed him off the train.
He was so close she could touch him.
Dangerous thoughts.
She held back, letting people get between them.
As he got further away she started to breathe better.
Started thinking clearer.
She was here to find her dad, not to flirt with Jack Twist or have X-rated commuting fantasies about him.
Jack turned his head and looked behind him.
Hide! She thought.
Ducking behind an overweight man in front of her, she bent her knees to ensure she was completely hidden.
The things she's been driven to.
Jack's smell was replaced in her nose. Her chosen shield had been on the tube a bit too long.
Breathing through her mouth to stop the body odour smell hitting her too hard, she realised she should've appreciated Jack's personal hygiene more.
Peeking round the man's shoulder, she spotted Jack shaking his head and turning round to carry on away from the platform.
Yes, she’d lost him.
She accidentally caught the eye of her human shield.
Raising an eyebrow in his direction and looking down her nose at him, she stepped out from the slipstream of his stench and walked away.
Jack was still in front of her; he was too tall to be swallowed by any crowd. So much bigger and broader than the people around him, she saw people do double takes as he took the escalator two steps at a time.
Now she was outside of his magnetic zone, she relaxed.
Nice arse, she couldn't help but think.
Watching the way Jack climbed the stairs would be a successful spectator sport.
She wanted to slap a honey blonde in a skimpy summer dress who turned to watch him from the down escalator.
In the ticket hall she lost sight of Jack as she fumbled for her Oyster card.