anything else I can tell you on the subject of home tutoring. If you like, I’m sure Mrs Williams can recommend a few people…’ A few brave, intrepid people, she thought to herself. Emily would need brave and intrepid. She would need the sort of private tutor who did bungee jumping for fun in his spare time. Such creatures were thin on the ground.
‘I shouldn’t like to leave you with any deluded impressions of me, Miss Ryan. I know your conscience couldn’t bear it if you thought that you were dispatching my daughter off to face a life of despair and misery at the hands of an unsympathetic, absentee father.’
‘Why would I think that?’
‘Because if Emily ran to you with tales of what had happened, then it’s more than likely that she confided all about her unhappy family life.’ He gave her a shrewd, knowing look. ‘I wasn’t born yesterday, you know.’
‘Well, she just mentioned one or two things. In passing,’ Rebecca answered feebly.
‘Care to fill me in?’
‘I did happen to know that you and your wife split up when she was two, and she was taken to Australia to live.’
‘Did she also tell you that I did my damnedest to keep in touch, and that it was only years later that I was informed by her mother that every letter and present I had sent over the years had been shredded and destroyed? By which time she had been inculcated in the belief that I was the big bad wolf who had driven her innocent, victimised mother into a divorce she never wanted, and then, not content with that, had forced her to flee to the opposite ends of the earth?’
Not precisely, Rebecca thought. She couldn’t quite understand why Nicholas Knight felt obliged to fill her in on any of this, but, as a teacher, she knew that she had a duty to listen. Underneath his cool, self-contained acknowledgement of the situation, he no doubt was feeling pangs of guilt and this was his way of releasing some of it. That being the case, she tilted her head obligingly to one side, prepared to listen. He wasn’t to know that everything he said she would take with a hefty pinch of salt. Emily might have done a fair bit of exaggerating, but the truth doubtless lay somewhere between the two accounts.
‘When Veronica died, I found myself with a teenager I didn’t know and who seemed quite incapable of accepting the generous efforts made by us to smooth the path.’
‘Us?’ Rebecca’s ears pricked up. This introduced a complete new line into the story. Had Nicholas Knight remarried? Emily had made no mention of a stepmother. In fact, she had made no mention of a woman on the scene at all, but now, thinking about it, and delving back into her memories of him, he was not the sort of man who cultivated celibacy as a chosen lifestyle.
‘So she didn’t mention Fiona to you?’ The black eyes narrowed. He uncrossed his legs and stretched them out in front of him.
‘Fiona being…your wife?’
‘Fiona being my girlfriend. My dearest ex-wife rather tarnished my belief in the institution of marriage, I’m afraid.’
‘No, Emily didn’t mention a Fiona.’
‘I’m surprised. Fiona did her utmost to get to know her.’
Rebecca thought that that manoeuvre was probably the one thing guaranteed to put off someone like Emily. She would have seen it as the threat of a mother substitute in the offing and would have instinctively reacted against it.
‘Well, I’m sure that you and your girlfriend will be able to sort everything out suitably,’ she said vaguely.
There was a knock on the door and Mrs Williams poked her head around it, her eyes flitting between the two of them questioningly. Rebecca smiled, relieved, but her relief lasted approximately three seconds, until he said, without the slightest hint of apology in his voice, ‘We’re not quite finished here. Perhaps you could give us another…’ he glanced at his watch ‘…half an hour?’ It was just lip-service to politeness. The three of them knew that the principal would give him just as long as he wanted, and she nodded and retreated back, shutting the door behind her.
‘Where were we…?’ he asked, settling back to look at Rebecca.
‘You were just agreeing that once you get Emily back everything will be fine. I’m sure your girlfriend will rise to the occasion and give you both all the support you need.’
‘Well, now, I’m not at all sure I want to throw poor little Fiona into any such situation…’ he ruminated, and Rebecca ground her teeth together in sheer frustration. She had no idea where all this was going, but she had a suspicion that it was going somewhere.
‘If she loves you,’ Rebecca said firmly, ‘then she’d want to help you deal with it. And she’d also want to help Emily deal with it.’
‘Oh, I’m sure she’d like nothing better than to busily try and make herself indispensable, but, you see, I don’t want any such thing.’
‘Oh, right. Well, that’ll be up to the two of you to sort out between yourselves.’
‘But then I’m back with my little problem, aren’t I? One wayward, pregnant daughter who needs home tutoring. Even if I find the time to interview a series of prospective candidates, I’m abroad a hell of a lot, and I won’t be available to supervise how things are going. And you have to admit, knowing Emily as you seem to do, that supervision is going to be essential.’
‘Not if you find someone you feel confident in.’
‘I’m glad you said that.’ He smiled at her. The smile of a rampaging barracuda that had successfully managed to trap its prey through sheer cunning. Rebecca stared back at him blankly.
‘Because you are going to be Emily’s home tutor.’ He sat back and watched her, and she could feel her face transparently revealing every single thing that was going through her head. Stunned surprise, followed swiftly by incredulity, followed even more swiftly by a complete rejection of the idea.
‘I’m sorry,’ she apologised, ‘but there’s no way that I can…’
‘Why not? This is an appalling business and you yourself stated that the only way out of it for Emily, without ruining her chances in life for ever, is to employ a home tutor.’ He tapped his finger. ‘She trusts you, first of all.’ He tapped another finger. ‘You’re a good teacher from all accounts, well able to get her through her exams.’ He tapped a third finger. ‘I won’t need to supervise the situation if I know that whoever is with Emily can be trusted. So where’s the problem?’
‘Where’s the problem? Where’s the problem? How can you ask that?’ Her voice had risen and she had leant forward, so that her bun now did the dirty on her and collapsed. With one hand she yanked her hair free and it fell around her face, straight, shiny and ludicrously image-altering. ‘The problem is that I already have a job! Just in case it’s passed you by! I can’t just up sticks and take on a temporary private job because it suits you!’
‘I’m not the one at stake,’ he pointed out calmly. ‘Emily is. If her education fails her now, then I needn’t paint you a picture of what life holds in store for her.’ Having said that he needn’t paint a picture, he then proceeded to paint a complete and graphic picture of his daughter’s supposed state of affairs, should home tutoring prove impossible for one reason or another. He, too, leant forward, resting his elbows on his thighs, and skewered her with his eyes so that
