by India Grey
The door opened and she stumbled into the dingy hallway. Instantly she was assailed by the smell of damp, stale air and overboiled vegetables, and automatically held her breath as she tiptoed quickly past Mr Lukacs’s door towards the stairs.
‘Is that you, Miss Jones?’
She froze for a moment on the third step, her heart thudding. No , she thought despairingly. It’s not actually. I’m not Miss Jones, I’m Emily Balfour—what the hell am I doing here? The past twelve hours—the exquisite luxury of Luis’s hotel—only served to make her more cruelly aware of the filthy carpet, the black halo on the wallpaper around the light switch left by dirty, anonymous hands. With a shudder of disgust she raced as quietly as possible up the remaining stairs and along the corridor to her room.
She’d done the right thing, she told herself fiercely. Mr Lukacs’s house in Bedford Street might not be a palace, but at least she was living there on her own terms, without compro mising herself or the values she’d already sacrificed so much to uphold. Teaching ballet to Princess Luciana sounded like a dream job on many levels, but it wouldn’t be that simple. Not with Luis Cordoba around. He did things to her head and turned her into a person she didn’t recognize and certainly didn’t want to be.
Turning the key in the lock she slipped inside and shut the door softly behind her, letting out her breath again. For preference she would have continued to hold it, as the damp, mildewy smell was almost as bad up here, but although she’d learned to do without many things she’d considered essential in her old life at Balfour, breathing wasn’t one of them. Suppressing a shudder, she tossed her keys onto the cheap bedside table and quickly crossed the horribly patterned carpet to the wardrobe.
She was late for work, which at least meant that there was no time to dwell on the clothes she had left behind at Balfour as she pulled a black dress off its metal coat hanger. Struggling out of her tights she was just about to take her top off when there was a knock at the door.
‘Miss Jones?’
Emily stiffened, her eyes darting nervously to the door. It was locked, thank goodness. From the other side she could hear Mr Lukacs’s heavy breathing as he bent to listen for sounds of life inside, and felt a fleeting moment of guilt. He was just a lonely, middle-aged man with no one to talk to, she knew that. It was just the way his small, damp eyes scuttled over her as he talked that unsettled her.
‘Miss Jones, are you there?’
Uneasiness crept up the back of Emily’s neck as, taking great care not to make a sound, she lifted her top over her head. Hopefully he’d give up and go away in a minute, she thought, tiptoeing over to the sagging chest of drawers and wondering how she was going to open them and get her underwear out without making any noise. The top drawer was broken so you had to wedge it shut in a certain way and then yank it out…
She stopped dead. The drawer was open a little way, its broken front gaping, some of the knickers and bras spilling out. Had she left it like that?
The scrape of a key in the lock made her blood run cold and answered her question. In slow motion she watched the door open, feeling as if icy, invisible hands were gripping her body and covering her mouth as a bulky, lumbering frame sidled into the room.
‘Mr Lukacs,’ she croaked grabbing the top she’d just discarded and clutching it against her, she shrank backwards. ‘What are you doing?’
For a moment she saw alarm flare in those tiny, furtive eyes. ‘Miss Jones…I…’ He held up the key. ‘I thought you were out.’
Her heart pumped adrenaline through her shaking body, returning sensation to her limbs and her numb, horrified brain. ‘Wh-what do you mean? If you thought I was out why are you letting yourself into my room?’ Her eyes flickered back to the underwear drawer, but she swallowed back hysteria and forced herself to keep her voice steady. ‘You have no right to come in here and look through my things.’
His black eyes slid away from hers. ‘I’m sure I don’t have to remind you that you’re very behind with your rent,’ he wheezed, shifting uneasily from foot to foot. ‘So you can’t very well talk to me about rights, Miss Jones.’
The apologetic note in his voice was horribly sinister. With his greying shirt straining across his dough-like stomach and his thin, greasy hair there was something pathetic about him, and Emily would almost have felt sorry for him if she hadn’t been so thoroughly unnerved.
‘No, well…’ She swallowed. ‘I’m sorry about that, but I’m on my way to work right now, so I can pay some of what I owe you…’
‘Some of it? Oh, dear.’ His beetle-like eyes had come to rest somewhere around Emily’s midriff. Surreptitiously she edged backwards as he ran his tongue over his lips before continuing. ‘However, I like to think that I’m a reasonable man, and in view of your…financial difficulties…maybe we could come to an ar rangement. A friendly arrangement…’ His eyes flickered briefly up to meet hers, and there was a hungry look in them that made Emily feel sick.
‘No,’ she said in a small, strangled voice. The wardrobe was right behind her now—there was nowhere left to run. He was too big to fight off, so she took a gamble on the only option left open to her. Standing as straight as she could she spoke in the chillingly upper-crust voice of her headmistress at ballet school. ‘No. I’ll make sure you get the money. Now, please get out.’
For a moment Mr Lukacs’s face worked and she thought he was going to argue, but he seemed to think better of it and with one last malevolent glance he was gone. Emily managed to stay upright until the door had shut behind him, but then her legs gave way and she collapsed onto the sagging bed. In the mirrored door of the wardrobe she could see her face—a waxen oval with two dark smudges for eyes.
Shaking, she closed her eyes, dropping her head into her hands and holding her breath against a sudden rush of hideous, debilitating homesickness as she thought of her bedroom at Balfour. Vividly she could picture the sun pouring through the windows with their view out over the garden, the rose-patterned curtains, the bed with its little gold corona and white muslin drapes. Unconsciously she got to her feet, light-headed at the idea of walking out of this horrible house and going home. So what if she didn’t have enough money for the train fare? All she had to do was go and flag down the nearest taxi and Oscar would pay when they arrived at Balfour. For the taxi and the rent she owed to Mr Lukacs…
Call me when you grow up.
Luis Cordoba’s voice echoed in her head, just as if he’d been in the room and whispered the words tauntingly into her ear. She sank back down onto the bed with a moan of despair. Of course she couldn’t go running back to Daddy and get him to make everything all right. She had to do this on her own.
Whatever that meant and whatever it cost.
The moment the car door shut behind him, Luis’s smile disappeared as instantly as if it had been switched off and he slumped back against the seat.
According to Tomás it had been a successful afternoon. The visit to the mother-and-toddler group had passed off smoothly, apart from the moment when one particularly attractive young mother had handed him her baby to hold and he’d been so horrified he’d almost dropped it. Women thrusting babies at him had been a stock image from his worst nightmares for years, but luckily he’d managed to make a joke about it and hand it back quickly. The sports project had been better. Sport—the urge to compete and the natural compulsion to win—was something he understood. He’d been genuinely interested to watch the children. So much so that for a while he had almost been able to stop thinking about Emily Balfour.
Consciously anyway, although the little pulse of dissatisfaction, an uncomfortable sensation of having failed, still crouched in the back of his head like a migraine waiting to strike.
The car began to move, and with massive effort he raised his hand to wave to the small crowd of elderly people gathered outside the residential centre before pushing it wearily through his hair and exhaling through tight lips.
He’d failed Oscar. And now he’d seen where Emily was livi
ng he understood that he’d failed her too. Deus …the place where they’d dropped her off earlier was beyond belief. The only positive thing he could think of to say to Oscar about the house in which his daughter was renting a room was that it didn’t have its windows boarded up, like most of the others in the street.
Guilt—his familiar companion over the past ten months—settled on the leather seat beside him, enveloping him in its suffocating embrace as he thought back to this morning. When she had refused his offer there had been a part of him that had been relieved.
Because she was right about him. She seemed to be able to see through him, right into his hollow heart in a way that few other people could. What was it that Oscar Balfour had said? She’s good, through and through… She applies the same rigorous standards she expects from herself to those around her…
And that was what had stopped him trying to change her mind about coming to Santosa. He was already perfectly aware of the coldness of his own heart, the blackness of his own sins, without having Emily Balfour pointing them out.
But that was before he’d seen where she was living.
‘I think that went very well, sir,’ Tomás said brightly, settling back into his seat and shooting a sideways glance at Luis. ‘You certainly succeeded in charming the ladies. They were all eating out of your hand.’
‘Nice to know I haven’t completely lost the ability, then,’ Luis said, staring moodily out of the window.
‘Ah. You’re still thinking about Miss Balfour? Don’t worry, sir. We’ll think of something else to help your image. You did all you could.’
‘No. I didn’t.’
Luis sat up, a muscle flickering in his cheek. ‘We’re going back to the community centre where she works. Forget charm. This time we do it my way.’
‘Sir?’
Luis turned to Tomás with a grim smile. ‘This time we try blackmail.’
Compared with the other stains on his conscience, it would hardly cause a shadow.
‘No…!’
Kiki stopped, her custard cream halfway to her mouth, her eyes wide with horror. ‘He actually let himself into your room ? While you were getting dressed ?’
Emily nodded miserably, taking a mouthful of gritty instant coffee. ‘He has his own key apparently, and I have a nasty feeling it wasn’t the first time…’ She had a sudden image of the drawer containing her underwear, open slightly, its broken front gaping and the contents spilling out. She suppressed a shudder and took another hasty mouthful of coffee.
‘Pervert,’ Kiki said disgustedly. ‘Oh my God, that is so creepy. I know the room’s cheap, Emily, but really, you have to find somewhere else.’
They were standing in the kitchen at Larchfield. Or at least Emily was standing; Kiki was perched on the countertop, the packet of custard creams beside her.
‘I know,’ Emily said with quiet despair, gripping her coffee cup in both hands and staring unseeingly out of the window. ‘But it was the cheapest room I looked at by miles, and I’m already struggling to afford the rent. I just didn’t know… I never thought…’ She shook her head, struggling to explain without giving herself away how little idea she’d had about the realities of living on the minimum wage. ‘I had no idea how expensive living in London would be.’
Kiki regarded her thoughtfully. ‘I take it your move down here wasn’t exactly well-planned, then?’ she said, through a mouthful of biscuit. ‘Were things at home difficult?’
Emily nodded. She’d come to regard Kiki as a close friend, but they’d never discussed anything personal. For obvious reasons. Like the fact that if they did, Kiki would realise that Emily had been deceiving her from the start.
‘I had a…disagreement with my dad. My mum was ill and I stayed until she died, but the day after her funeral…I…just couldn’t be there any more, knowing what he’d done.’
‘And what he’d done—’ Kiki probed gently ‘—makes going back out of the question?’
Emily’s hands tightened around her mug and she closed her eyes briefly. Cheating on her mother, fathering a child, lying to them all and expecting her to lie too…
‘Yes. It’s out of the question.’
Kiki sighed. ‘I wish I could help, but we just don’t have the budget to be able to pay you for what you do here. I would if I could.’
‘I wouldn’t do this for money,’ Emily said bleakly. ‘I do it because it’s the only thing that keeps me sane.’
‘Well, that’s another reason to hope we stay open,’ said Kiki with a rueful smile. It faded quickly. ‘So what are you going to do? You can’t stay under the same roof as the weird sex pest, and if your wages won’t stretch to somewhere decent…’
‘There is one thing.’
Emily was looking out of the window again, a strange, blank expression on her face. Outside the day hadn’t lived up to the promise of this morning, and along the street she could see the cherry tree she’d passed yesterday. Since then its extravagant froth of silken blossom had been stripped by the wind, and now it looked forlorn and ragged.
‘Marry a millionaire?’ Kiki suggested in a weak attempt at humour.
A car was drawing up by the kerb on the other side of the wire fence of the community centre—a huge, black, shiny car with tinted windows. Emily watched it dispassionately. Around here expensive cars like that meant only one thing.
‘If you could find me one that isn’t a drug dealer I’ll consider it. Until then I have to be a bit more pragmatic.’ Ruthlessly she pushed away the memory of Luis Cordoba and his tempting, tantalizing, far-too-good-to-be-true offer and said dully, ‘My boss at the Pink Flamingo has offered me a dancing job.’
‘Dancing?’ Kiki’s face fell. ‘I take it you’re not talking about ballet. Oh, Emily—you couldn’t. You haven’t said yes, have you?’
Emily’s hands were shaking, making the surface of the cooling coffee in her mug quiver. ‘I said I’d think about it. But actually, I think it’s best not to.’ She attempted a laugh, but it turned into a kind of strangled sob. ‘After all, what choice do I have? The money would be twice, three times, what I earn behind the bar, and until Prince Charming comes riding up on his white charger—’
A loud knock on the door made them both jump. Kiki rolled her eyes impatiently. ‘What do you want?’ she yelled.
The door opened. Emily gasped.
Standing there, looking relaxed and golden and as out of place as a sunflower in Siberia, was Luis.
‘Coincidentally, I want Miss…Jones,’ he said, answering Kiki’s question, but looking directly, unnervingly, at Emily. He was dressed in charcoal-grey trousers and a very pale pink shirt, the collar of which was open, as if he’d just discarded his jacket and torn off his tie. Suddenly Emily felt like she’d stepped out of the freezer and into a heatwave. ‘I hoped I might find you here.’
‘Your Highness…’ Flustered, Kiki slid down from the countertop and executed a kind of awkward curtsy. ‘I’m sorry—I mean, I didn’t know…’
Luis ignored her. His eyes were still fixed on Emily. ‘What’s wrong?’
Emily took a hasty mouthful of coffee, aiming for a fraction of the nonchalance he conveyed so effortlessly. ‘Nothing. I’m fine.’
He shifted his gaze to Kiki, saying coolly, ‘Perhaps you’d like to explain?’
Kiki looked from one to the other, clearly confused and hugely uncomfortable. Her grasp on royal etiquette was shaky, but she was obviously of the opinion that saying, ‘What business is it of yours?’ to a prince wasn’t really an option. Looking apologetically at Emily she said falteringly, ‘Emily’s having a bit of trouble with her landlord. He’s this really creepy guy—and he…he’s been letting himself into her room and—’
‘Kiki.’ Emily hissed. The pure, profound relief she had felt when she had first seen Luis standing there had lasted only a second, and now she had the feeling that she was in a small canoe on a fast-flowing river. His presence seemed to fill every corner of the tiny kitchen, his aura of effortless glamou
r and his dazzling good looks making it seem even smaller and shabbier than usual.
‘And what?’ he said, turning back to Emily.
‘Doesn’t matter.’ she said curtly. ‘What are you doing here anyway?’
‘Looking for you,’ he replied, leaning against the door frame and smiling easily. He was back to being the laid-back playboy she remembered—all signs of the tension, the despair, she’d sensed in him earlier carefully erased.
Emily gritted her teeth. ‘Kiki, would you mind—’
‘No. I’d like Ms Odiah to stay,’ he interrupted smoothly. ‘What I have to say concerns her too and I believe there’s something you haven’t told her.’
She felt as if the ground had just moved slightly beneath her. The bastard. He was going to give her away. She was trying…she was trying so hard to survive on her own, away from her family and without her name, and he was going to turn the only friend she had against her. And why? As some kind of revenge for turning him down this morning? Or was this all about the fact that she’d turned him down before that? A year ago.
She dragged her tongue over dry lips and gave him a look that was filled with venom. ‘Luis… Your Highness…’
He raised his eyebrows and said reasonably, ‘About our conversation this morning.’ He turned to Kiki. ‘I’m very impressed with what you’re doing here, Miss Odiah. The performance last night was excellent, and it made me think of my little niece back home in Santosa. She’s very keen on ballet, but terribly shy, and as I watched last night it occurred to me how much she would benefit from Miss Jones’s tuition.’
Emily had never seen Kiki dumbfounded before. Working at Larchfield she was resolutely unfazed by violence, drugs, teenage pregnancy, self-harm and many of the more extreme aspects of youth culture. But she was clearly floundering now. ‘Wait a minute,’ she said in bewilderment. ‘You’ve asked Emily to go to Santosa and teach the princess ballet?’
Luis smiled. ‘That’s right.’
