Page 75 of Tears of Glass
“It will pass.” Tabitha looks hopeful, but I’m not so sure.
“Where’s Lewis?”
Her eyes darken for a moment. “Gone to work with his dad. He hates it.”
I don’t have much to say to that. What with my art and tattooist career I’ve never really done a normal day’s work.
“How’s Elijah?”
“Busy.” I sigh and sit back on the sofa. “He works such long hours.”
She nods. “Remember I told you back at Bowsley I liked you being around because it meant I saw more of him?”
“Yes.” I nod.
“Now do you see what I mean?”
I scrub a hand down my face, even my skin feels tired. We haven’t been sleeping much, trying as we are to spend as much time together as we can, which is unfortunately only past the hour of nine thirty normally. “Yeah, I do. I hate the fact he’s working so hard at a job he hates.”
She shrugs. “It’s the Fairclough way.”
“The Fairclough way sucks.”
“Yeah, well at the moment I think he’s just got to keep his head down. One thing at a time. He’s pissed mother off enough I think.”
We sit in companionable silence for a moment while Tabitha stares at the ceiling until her colour comes back to normal a little.
My heart aches for Elijah. He’s still as trapped as he was when I met him, while he’s been slowly setting me free, pulling from the safety of rules, keeping me from the shadows of my fears—even if he had to make me face them by breaking my heart. Because of him I’m an artist with her own exhibition at the age of twenty-four.
“Do you know the name of any of his clients?” I sit up straighter as an idea begins to grow.
“It will be on their website. All the big clients are listed as assets.” Assets?
Whatever. I jump up and head to my bag, pulling my laptop out and my packet of cigarettes. I shake a smoke out of the packet and put it in my lips before glancing at Tabitha and remembering that she’s pregnant. I put it back in the box. I need to cut down anyway.
“Don’t mind me.”
“Nah. I don’t want you spewing all over my sofa.”
“Thanks.”
It doesn’t take me long to get Google up and search for Eli’s list of clients. Then grinning at Tabitha, I pick up my mobile and dial.
It takes me thirty seconds to get through to his secretary and ask for a lunchtime meeting as I pretend to be someone from Global Pharmaceuticals whom I found named on their website as a current client. My heart sinks when I’m told he’s in court which won’t end until noon for lunch. I need to be in class then. Bollocks. I tell the secretary I’ll see him in chambers as the meeting only needs to be quick, then I slip into the shower grinning to myself. I’ll miss class. If it puts a smile on his face, then so be it.
At five past noon I ask the law court clerk to point me in the direction of the offices and I search out the one with Elijah’s name on it, announcing my arrival to the secretary nursing a sandwich and a bottle of diet coke. “I’ll call you through,” she says, and I wait patiently while she rings and tells Eli that Janice Webster has arrived for the midday meeting. Her eyes graze over me as she answers a question I can’t hear. I’ve covered all my stories and lessons in a black button up shirt and black tailored trousers—honestly, I didn’t even know I owned something so structured and tailored. Paired with a pair of black stilettoes I look almost business like. It’s rather amusing.
“Mr Fairclough can see you now.” She points her biro at a corridor to the right. “Third door on the left.”
All the doors look the same and I count my way along. With each step, nerves twist my tummy. What am I doing here?
No seriously. What am I doing here? Outside the third door I hesitate. I can go now and not make a complete idiot of myself, not lay myself open and exposed.
Run and hide...
The door opens, and I pause there suspended in the moment, with my hand raised ready to knock.
If Elijah is startled to find me outside his office door, he hides it well. A brief flicker lights in his eyes and the nerves in my stomach morph into flames of anticipation.
