Beauty and the Dark (6 page)

Sophie

T
he lunch is fun and the kids appear to thoroughly enjoy themselves. The adults are served wine. I have a glass and it goes straight to my head.

A few times when I look up I catch Jack looking at me, but I become red and get so flustered I have to look away quickly and pretend I did not see him, even though we looked directly at each other. It’s so stupid, but Jack Irish has a crazy effect on me.

Later when Santa is giving out gifts there is a loud noise outside. A fight has broken out between some drunks returning from a pub nearby. Jack and another man go to check it out and I find myself waiting for his return nervously. How bizarre, but already I can’t bear the thought of him getting hurt.

When he comes back in, the sleeve of his jacket is torn. I breathe a sigh of relief. Some part of me desperately wants to go to him, but my feet will not take me there. It is a good thing I didn’t because I notice Susan, a member of staff introduced earlier to me, go up to him, take his hand in hers and examine it.

She stands so close to him that I feel a strange sense of resentment rising in my chest as if he belongs to me and she is intruding. I watch her look up at him with doe eyes and say something, but he shakes his head, extricates his hand from her grasp, and walks away.

Once he leaves, the afternoon seems duller and though I try to join in the games, I can’t stop thinking of him. 

Before we left, Lena arranged with the woman at the front desk for us to take a class on the coming Thursday. I must admit I spend the next three days worrying myself sick about it. What if no one comes? What if I screw up or worse, freeze? I chewed my nails right down to raw flesh, but it turns out my anxiety was baseless.

Jack was right, droves of giggling girls flock to Lena’s Modelling, Fashion and Make-up Tips class. There are more than forty and we have to use the hall instead of one of the classrooms, but Lena shows no signs of nervousness, in fact, she is brilliant.

She starts off by showing them some simple catwalk moves then turns the class into a sort of finishing school lesson. Which I think is really cool. All these little girls from the estate who will have more etiquette than nineteenth century debutantes.

Her class is interesting even to me. She teaches them little tips that models employ. Apparently they don’t say cheese or sex when they want their photos to look pouty and sexy. They say prune.

“Try it,” she says, and more than forty little girls echo her and laugh at the expressions of those sitting next to them.

To my great surprise halfway through Lori turns up, but she stays at the back of the hall and does not interact with anyone. Once, I catch her giggling to herself at one of Lena’s jokes.

An hour later Lena ends the class by telling the girls to bring their make-up bags the next time. As soon as Lena says, “See you next week,” Lori jumps up and makes for the door, not however, before she catches my eyes, and flashes me a shy smile.

I grin back, pleased that she made that bit of contact with me.

Most of the girls immediately mill around Lena, so I wave to her and go into the classroom next door to conduct my singing class. My group is very much smaller, seven girls, but they are sweet, eager little things, and I forget to be nervous. Sitting at the piano I completely enjoy the session. At the end of it I feel quite proud of myself.

Baby steps.

I pack up my stuff, get into my coat and walk out to the foyer. As I open the door I see Lena leaning against the reception counter talking to Jack. He has obviously come from work and is dressed in a white shirt and a pair of black trousers. He turns his head to look at me and my heart starts pounding so madly I can barely say hello.

“How did the class go?” he asks.

“It was okay,” I reply as casually as I can.

I’m wearing a blue jumper and jeans so not even a clear outline is on show, but his eyes run down my body with interest. When his gaze returns to my face, he smiles and says, “Good. Now who wants to join me for something to eat?”

“Not me,” Lena says. “Got a hot date with my husband later,” she says with a wink. “Besides, I haven’t seen my daughter all afternoon and I like to catch a couple of hours with my baby before she goes to sleep. Why don’t you guys go off and get something to eat?”

“No, I’ll come with you,” I say.

Ignoring me she looks from me to Jack. “You’ll drop my sister off at our place when you’ve finished your meal, won’t you?”

“Of course,” Jack assures suavely.

“That will be great. Please take care of her because she is very precious to me,” she says, and smiles at him.

His eyes slide in my direction. “Yes, I agree. She is very precious.”

Sofia

O
utside the air is damp. There is a cold wind blowing and I pull the edges of my tweed coat closer together. After we wave my sister out of the car park, Jack turns towards me.

“How hungry are you?”

“Very.”

He grins a devastatingly sexy smirk, making my stomach twist. Stop it Sofia. He’s not for you and this is not a date. He offered to take both Lena and me out, only Lena didn’t want to come.

“What kind of food would you like to have?” he asks.

“McDonalds?”

He pulls a face. “You do realize that I’m a doctor and cannot condone eating stuff that is molecularly closer to plastic than food?”

I grin. “I’d still like to try it.”

“You’ve never been to a McDonalds?” he asks incredulously.

“No.” I don’t tell him that most of my life I was locked up in a brothel. “My sister and her husband always seem to end up in nice restaurants so I’ve never had the opportunity to try it.”

He stares at me oddly.

“What?” I ask defensively.

He shakes his head. “Nothing. I’ve a better idea though. A friend of mine has a no nonsense burger place. I’ll take you there and if after your first bite you don’t like it, we’ll walk to the McDonalds down the road and order one of their unhappy meals for you.”

“Deal,” I say with a big smile.

“Come on,” he says, lightly laying his hand on the small of my back. He leads me towards a monster of a black Lamborghini.

I laugh. “Are you sure this thing won’t bite?”

He holds the door open for me. “The car doesn’t bite, I do,” he teases, glancing sideways at me.

I feel my face flaming. He’s flirting with me. No one has ever flirted with me. Ever. I don’t even know what to do. I slip into the car, he closes the door, and goes around the back towards the driver’s seat. I look around me curiously. I’m in Jack’s car.

The interior is all leather and black trim. The coldness of the leather seat seeps through my jeans and bites into my skin. Once he gets in the air becomes charged with a crackling tension. A whiff of his cologne hits my nostrils. Clean and fresh with a hint of spice, maybe cloves or saffron. I breathe it in and feel my chest tighten. I don’t know why he has this effect on me. It is extremely unsettling.

The car roars into life and my eyes slide over to watch his hands. They are large and rough. There are scars on his knuckles. They are not how I imagined the hands of a plastic surgeon would be, but a working man.

I let my eyes slide up his arm and towards his neck, to where his straight black hair lies, as if inviting a woman to rake her hands through it. Before he catches me staring I turn away from the sight. I gaze blindly out of the window. I don’t know what is wrong with me. I know I can never have a man like him so I should stop fantasizing about him. It is pointless and I’ll just end up getting my heart broken.

It is only a short drive before we arrive at our destination. He parks the car on a single yellow.

“Won’t you get a ticket?”

He winks. “Nobody around here would dare give me a ticket.”

“Why not?”

“They all come to my free surgery day, and they know I’ll ruin their health forever, if they do.”

“You’d do that?”

“I don’t know. My car is very precious to me,” he teases.

We walk to a small burger bar called Earl’s Burgers.

Even before Jack has closed the door a gruff voice bellows from the open kitchen, “In the name of Jaysus it’s Jackfuckin’Irish.” Seconds later a grinning man with close cropped bright red hair and tattoos crawling up his skinny neck vaults over the serving counter and comes over to us. He claps Jack on the back enthusiastically. “Hey dude.”

“Alright there, bud,” Jack says.

The man’s pale blue eyes slide over to me. “And who’s this beauty, Junior?”

“Sofia, Paddy. Paddy, Sofia,” Jack introduces.

He leans forward and takes my hand in his. His hands are rough and hot. “And how come she’s hanging out with the likes of you?”

“She’s helping out at Kids Rule,” Jack explains shortly.

Paddy’s eyes warm up. “Aww … you’re a darling, sweetheart.”

“Watch it, mate,” Jack warns, and there is an underlying ring of steel to his voice that causes even Paddy to jump dramatically.

He raises both hands and takes a long step back.

“Ach, Jack. Don’t bite my head off just because your bachelor days are numbered.”

I flush to the roots of my hair.

“Jesus, will you leave it?” Jack swears.

Paddy laughs, hits him heartily on the back, and leads us to our table.

“Don’t mind him,” Jack says tightly. “He drank his IQ down to room temperature.”

Unconcerned with the insult, Paddy laughs garrulously. “He wants three babies,” he calls out, holding up three fingers while walking backwards. Then, he jumps back over the counter and lands back in the kitchen.

“Well. He’s a fun guy,” I say casually.

Jack scowls. “God knows what’s got into him. He’s not usually so … fun.”

I grin. “I like him.”

He loses the scowl. “Paddy’s all right, I guess.” 

A curvy waitress in a tight pink T-shirt and a pair of pink stretch-jeans comes to our table. She hands me a menu.

“All right Jack?” she says, giving him a bright pink smile.

His lips twitch in greeting. “Hello, Shannon.”

I order the Bacon Cheese Big Murphy Burger with chips and a Coke.

“The usual with a side of coleslaw and sweet potato fries,” Jack tells the girl.

“Right you are,” Shannon says and, taking the menu from me, sashays away.

I pull my eyes away from her departing back, she really does have an amazing figure, and find Jack staring at me. His look is so intense it practically takes my breath away.

“So you’re a plastic surgeon,” I say nervously.

“Guilty as charged.”

“It must be fun playing God with other people’s faces and bodies.”

He shrugs. “It’s just a job.”

“Just a job? Don’t you like it?”

“Not particularly.”

“Really? So why did you become one?”

“It’s less hypocritical.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s a long story, Sofia.”

I lean forward. “I like long stories.”

The waitress comes back with two cans of Coke and two glass tumblers. 

“Well, I didn’t start off wanting to suck fat out of people who are too lazy to get on a treadmill and inject fat into self-obsessed celebrities’ faces. When I was young I was an idealist. I wanted to cure the world. I was going to do big things, you know, make a difference.”

He stops and frowns.

“Anyway, something happened in my life, and I didn’t want to live in England anymore so I joined Doctors Without Borders and they sent me to Africa.”

“Oh, wow, Africa!” I interrupt.

For a second he looks bleak. “Yeah, Africa.”

“It must have been amazing.”

He looks at me expressionlessly. “Africa destroyed me.”

“Why?’ I ask, shocked.

He drinks his Coke straight from the can. “I realized that there was no way to change the world. Not only is the whole damn system parasitical in nature, it’s been deliberately set up to be that way, and little ole me was not going to change it. In fact, my very existence was making the system run. I was actually a cog in a well-oiled machine that was ruthlessly exploiting the poor and the oppressed so that some over-fed capitalist somewhere in the West could make another buck he didn’t need.”

I gaze at him curiously. “What do you mean?”

He sighs. I can see this is a topic that depresses him. “As a doctor you become the unwitting tool of Big Pharma manufacturers who are busy offloading their out-of-date vaccines and medicines at cut prices. They wanted me to inject poison into those kids.”

“Could you not complain to someone?” I ask, aghast.

“The politicians are bought so they turn a blind eye, and the think tanks and government officials stay silent to further their own agendas.”

“I can’t hardly believe that is going on.” What am I saying? Look at the cycle of corruption that kept me enslaved. It was politicians who were my biggest customers.

“It was going on while I was there. It’s hard to imagine it is no longer going on. The profits are too big.”

“So you left?”

“Not immediately. Even then I thought I could make a difference. I began a campaign of educating the people. In Africa life is cheap. A few bullets. One to the chest and a couple to the stomach. I was very badly wounded and would have died if Blake had not sent in an army to find me and fly me out.”

“Oh my God.”

“When I came back it was the same shit all over again. Representatives of big pharma constantly in my office pushing the most expensive drugs on me. Basically bribing me with kickback to prescribe those as often as possible. It made me sick and ashamed of the code I had undertaken. Our motto was no longer First Do No Harm, it was Keep Them Sick While You Fill Your Pockets.”

He leans back in his chair and I see the scars of his past alive in his eyes.

“Anyway, after that I decided I didn’t want to be a doctor anymore. The most fitting job for me was to become a plastic surgeon. At least I wouldn’t be pretending to be doing something important. I’d simply be tickling someone’s neurosis and filling my pockets at the same time.”