at her, his mouth suddenly bonedry. ‘Drugs?’
‘What do you take me for?’
An average teenage girl with more money than was good for her and a desperate need to lash out, to hurt the people who loved her.
‘I’ve been suspended for a week, that’s all.’ Under the white make-up he could have sworn she blushed. ‘For dying my hair, if you must know.’
It had to be relief that made him want to laugh. ‘Just for dying your hair? Mrs Warburton isn’t usually that harsh.’ Surely living with the colour while it grew out would be punishment enough. ‘Is she?’ he demanded sharply, suddenly very sure that she wasn’t telling the whole truth.
Sadie lifted her shoulders in a couldn’t-care-less shrug. ‘Yes, well, when the Warthog had me in her office to haul me over the coals for ‘‘letting down the high standards of Dower House School’’…’ she affected a nasal twang that was a cruel caricature of Mrs Warburton’s aristocratic accent ‘… I suggested it was time she touched up her own roots because the grey was showing.’
He put down his cup, turned away, his lips curled hard against his teeth. ‘I can see how that might not have helped matters,’ he said, when he was sure he wouldn’t betray himself.
‘Hypocritical old cow.’
He was forced to cover his mouth, pretend to cough. ‘Maybe so, but that really wasn’t very kind.’
‘She shouldn’t have made such a big deal about it. Anyone would think I’d had my nose pierced, or something.’
‘That’s banned too, is it?’
‘Everything’s banned. Of course if I’m not going back, I suppose I could—’
‘Your mother had her nose pierced the last time I saw her,’ he said. ‘She was wearing a diamond stud.’
Sadie said nothing; she didn’t have to. Dan knew she wasn’t about to do anything that would make her look more like her mother than she already did. Or had done, until she’d dyed her hair. That was something to be grateful for.
‘So, when do I start this wonderful job, then?’
Her tone was as belligerent as her expression, but adolescent rebellion was something he knew all about; this wasn’t the moment to demand she apologise. Despite the ‘hard girl’ act, he was sure she didn’t need to be told what was required, whether she returned to school or not. He was also sure that she was more likely to get on with it if she wasn’t nagged.
‘No time like the present. Come on, I’ll get you an overall and then we’ll go and find Bob.’
‘I can’t wait.’ The heavy sarcasm suggested that this was going to be a long week. He just hoped, for both their sakes, that at the end of it Sadie would realise that school was a soft option compared with working for a living. And that Mrs Warburton was in a forgiving mood.
Should he have tried harder to persuade her to go back? What would her mother have done? Not much. Vickie was in the Bahamas with her latest lover and a new baby to drool over. He doubted if she would welcome a phone call reminding her that she had a daughter approaching an age at which she would become competition. Instinct suggested that his best bet was to set Sadie to work and hope that a week of mind-numbing drudgery would do the job for him.
‘What am I going to have to do?’
‘The options are limited since you can’t drive—’
‘I can drive,’ she declared fiercely. ‘Better than most people.’
That was true. He’d taught her to drive in the field behind the cottage he had bought a couple of years back, and she could handle a motorbike or a car with all the panache of a professional. ‘You can’t drive a car on the road until you’re seventeen, Sadie. You can’t even move one across the yard until you have your licence because you wouldn’t be insured.’ She didn’t answer, but it was obvious that calling her bluff was not going to have any immediate effect. ‘Perhaps you should try a bit of everything. Make yourself useful about the place.’
‘Be a dogsbody, you mean?’ She was not impressed. ‘Great.’
‘If you plan on running this outfit one day you might as well find out how everything works.’
‘Who said I was?’ she demanded.
‘If you don’t go to college you won’t have much choice. You can start in the garage with Bob. He’ll show you the ropes.’
‘Cleaning cars.’ Only an adolescent could endow two such inoffensive words with quite that level of scorn. ‘You didn’t start this business by cleaning cars.’
‘I started with one car, Sadie, and I promise you, it didn’t clean itself.’
‘Very funny.’
‘You think you’re such a catch? Come back when you’ve seen what the Job Centre has to offer and we’ll talk again.’
‘But you’re my father; you can’t expect me to skivvy for you …’ Something in his expression must have warned her that she was doing herself no favours, because she stopped. ‘Okay, okay, whatever you say.’
If only. ‘And one other thing, Sadie. During working hours you’re no different from anyone else around here, you’re an employee with the same privileges and the same responsibilities. That means you arrive on time—’
‘That won’t be difficult. Just give me a call five minutes before you leave.’
‘I don’t provide a wake-up service for my staff, Sadie. And I don’t give them a lift to work, either. The only place I’m prepared to drive you to is Dower House, next Monday morning.’
‘Don’t bother. I’m sure there’s a bus.’
‘There is.’ He was looking out of the window, contemplating the business that he had built from scratch. It had been hard. Twenty-four hours a day work, and worry that had left him with too little time to invest in his marriage, too distracted by his own big ideas to notice when his wife had gone looking for company elsewhere. Or perhaps he’d needed the big ideas and the twenty-four-hour work schedule to distract him from his marriage. He turned to his errant daughter. ‘And while you’re here,’ he instructed, ‘you’ll do anything Bob asks of you. In return you get as much tea and coffee as you can drink, a cooked lunch in the café next door and clean overalls every morning. I’m afraid you have to be eighteen before you can join the pension scheme.’
‘My dad, the comedian.’
‘Your boss, the comedian. At least while you’re at the garage.’
‘You’re kidding, right?’ He didn’t bother to reply. ‘Okay … boss. How much do I get paid for doing the dirty work around here?’
‘The going rate for the job. After deductions for tax and national insurance you might earn almost as much as your allowance.’
‘Do I still get the allowance?’
‘What
