sitting in the corner taking notes... I’ll bet he’ll be thrilling her in all sorts of different ways tonight when they celebrate the business he’s given us without a bunch of prying office eyes on them... Although...’ she ran a canny eye over Sunny and grinned ‘...if it’s looks he’s after, you’re a hottie—if only you’d dress the part. And whoa! I’m going before you shoot me down in flames for saying that!’
She stood up briskly, still grinning as she brushed her short, short skirt and asked whether there was some paperwork she could take to the third floor. No? Well...she’d better be off and do a couple of minutes’ work...
Sunny watched her saunter back to her desk but her mind was off her work now. As if a man like Stefano Gunn would ever find her in the least bit attractive. Ridiculous.
Everyone had heard of Stefano Gunn. The whole world had heard of Stefano Gunn. Or at least anybody who was anybody and didn’t live with their head buried in the sand. The man was ridiculously rich and stupidly good-looking. Not a day passed without his name popping up in the financial pages of a newspaper, reporting some deal or other he had secured which would boost his already inflated bank balance.
Sunny never read the tabloids but she was pretty sure that if she had she would have found him popping up there as well because ridiculously rich and stupidly good-looking men never led monk-like lives of self-restraint and solitude.
They led playboy lives with Barbie-doll women tripping along behind them and hanging on to their arms like limpets.
None of this was any of her concern, but Alice had opened up a train of thought which was normally kept safely locked away and, like opening a Pandora’s box, Sunny could feel all those toxic thoughts uncurling from their dark corners and slithering through her head.
She stared at the computer winking at her and at the dense report she had been instructed to read. What she saw was her own life staring back at her—the pathos of her childhood, the foster home and all that horror, the boarding school to which she had been given a scholarship and all those girls who had made it their duty to sideline her because she wasn’t one of them.
Self-pity threatened to engulf her and she had to breathe deeply to clear her head, to focus on all the positives in her life now, all the chances she had grasped and the opportunities she had taken that had led her to this up-and-coming law firm where she could gain experience whilst completing her LPC.
Deep, deep, deep inside, she might carry those scars that could still cause her pain but she was twenty-four now and grown-up enough to know how to deal with that pain when it threatened to surface.
Like now.
The report swam back into focus and she lost herself in her work, only surfacing when her phone buzzed on the desk. Internal line. When she looked at her watch, she was startled to find that it was already twelve-thirty.
‘Sunny!’
‘Hi, Katherine.’ In her head, Sunny pictured Katherine, one of the youngest full partners in any law firm in the city. She was tall, slim, with a sharp brown bob and open, intelligent brown eyes. Her impeccable background had primed her for a life of solid achievement and she had fulfilled all her potential. Every so often, she joined some of the other girls lower down the pecking order for drinks after work because, as she had once said, it didn’t do to wedge yourself into an ivory tower and pretend that anyone who didn’t live there with you didn’t exist. So she would come out for a drink and, on one of those rare occasions when Sunny had actually been coerced into joining her colleagues, had confided that the only thing missing in her life was the husband and the kids, which she never tired telling her parents would never come. They just didn’t believe her.
Katherine was a one hundred per cent career woman and Sunny’s role model because, as far as Sunny was concerned, the only reliable thing in life was your career and, if you worked hard enough, it would never let you down. The letting down always came from people.
‘I realise it’s your lunch hour and I really do hate to impose but I’m going to have to ask you to do me a small favour... Perhaps you could meet me in the conference room?’
‘Is it to do with the files Phil Dixon asked me to go through? Because I’m afraid I’m not finished with them just yet...’ And she’d been working flat-out but, unlike most of her other colleagues, she had debts to pay and the after-work job she held down left her precious little time to devote to work once she finally made it back to the flat she shared with Amy.
She heard anxiety creep into her voice. The files weren’t due back for another week but she still tensed up in preparation for disappointment or a reprimand.
‘Oh, no, nothing like that. Meet me in the conference room and of course bring whatever you’re working on with you. And don’t worry about lunch. I’ll have whatever you want sent up to you.’
Inside, the building was cold, thanks to air conditioning. Outside, the sun was shining, the skies were blue and, as she walked up the two flights of stairs to the conference room, she noted that a lot of the offices were half empty.
St James’s Park was only minutes away from the building and, on a fine summer day, who would want to stay indoors and eat at their desk? Or even bring a sandwich back to their desk? Not many people.
She hit the third floor and immediately went into the plush cloakroom to neaten up.
The image that stared back at her was as tidy as it always was. Her long silvery-blonde hair, flyaway fine and, when loose, a riot of tumbling curls, was tightly pinned back into a chignon at the nape of her neck. Her white blouse was pristine, as was the grey knee-length skirt. There was no need to inspect her pumps because they would be shiny and unscuffed.
She was a businesswoman and she always left the flat every single morning having made sure that she looked the part.
The striking looks, which had never done her any good at all, were always ruthlessly played down. Occasionally she wished she had poor eyesight so that she could play them down even more with a pair of thick-rimmed glasses.
Alice had called her a hottie and she had flinched from the description because it was the last thing in the world she wanted to be seen as and she made strenuous efforts to make sure she wasn’t.
Katherine was waiting for her in the conference room, a large space impeccably decorated in muted colours. Long walnut table which could seat twenty people around it, a matching sideboard to house coffee- and tea-making facilities, pale tan carpet and vertical blinds at the floor-to-ceiling windows. No bright colours, no demanding paintings, no eye-catching plants.
And next to Katherine was...
A small child mutinously sitting with her arms folded and a variety of gadgets next to her—iPad, iPhone, sleek, slim computer.
‘Sunny, this is Flora...’
Flora didn’t bother looking up but Sunny’s mouth dropped open.
‘I know you’re probably surprised but I need to ask you to sit with Flora until my business with her father is over.’ She mouthed something over the child’s head that Sunny didn’t understand and then eventually said, moving to stand next to Sunny and out of earshot, ‘Her grandmother was supposed to be looking after her but she’s been called away and dropped her off half an hour ago.’
‘I’m babysitting?’ Sunny was appalled. She had never been one of those girls with a driving maternal instinct. She’d had no experience to speak of with kids and the little she did have had not left her with glorious rosy memories. The kids she had met at the school she had attended off and on until the age of ten had been horrible. Even then she had been a victim of bullying by most in her peer group because of the way she looked—blonde-haired, green-eyed with, she had overheard one parent telling another with just a hint of malice, the face of an angel. At an age where the most important thing was to blend in, she had stuck out like an elephant in a china shop and had paid the price.
Life lessons had taught her that the safest route to follow was the most invisible one and being highly visible had not