Sara's Child Read Free Page B

her bedsit – and yes it is still the same one she moved into at seventeen - Catherine feels the heat in her cheeks when she remembers how her hand had felt in Logan’s and rubs it on her thigh to erase the memory.
    However, she can’t erase the memory of how Mr high and mighty Sayers had looked at her. As if she was something he’d wipe off the sole of his fancy shoes, no doubt.
    Well tough shit, she doesn’t dress up for anyone, and anyone who expects her to can take a long run off a very short pier. And drown!
     
    The night of Robert Kingsley’s birthday bash is looming large and Catherine has nothing appropriate to wear. Why would she. All she possesses are a few long baggy jumpers that she wears over equally baggy tracky bottoms. All of them purchased from the local Oxfam shop and somehow, she doesn’t see them running to anything that Robert Kingsley’s crowd might be wearing this season to a posh do. Shame.
    For the first time, Catherine enters a fashion boutique. At least, she tries to. One look from the snooty sales clerks has her turning tail before she’s put a second foot in the door of one particularly smart shop. But then her loud cry of “Holy fuck,” as her eyes lighted on a price ticket for a strikingly plain evening dress might have something to do with it. She’ll be more prepared for the next one, she vows.
    Staring in the window of another fancy boutique, Catherine decides she just has to get on, do it, and not take any crap from the snobby cows that are no doubt going to earn a whacking great commission at her expense. And I don’t even want to go to the damn party! Wiping her damp palms down the sides of her jumper, Catherine enters the lion’s den . I can do this…
    The sales clerk is unexpectedly nice and very helpful, offering advice and suggesting suitable accessories. Feeling that she should at least be honest with someone who is being so nice, Catherine fesses up, “I’ve never even bought a dress before, or a skirt, come to that.” Why would I?
    “Don’t you worry, dear,” the sales clerk smiles warmly, “it took me years to get my daughter into a dress – she was very much a tom-boy right up to her late teens.” Shaking her head at the memory, the sales clerk guides Catherine over to the changing rooms.
    Trying on the dress and the dainty shoes in the small cubicle, the sales clerk stifles a chuckle when she hears a plaintive, “Fuck me,” precede the undignified exit of Catherine from one of the cubicles to face the now smiling clerk. I can’t do this… “How the bloody hell am I supposed to walk in these?” she asks, wobbling dangerously on the impossibly high heels.
    Back at the office, she asks Ben if he’s sorted his outfit out for the big bash. He’d been both surprised and delighted that she’d thought to invite him as her escort; yet had been secretly staggered at the thought of Catherine accepting an invitation to go anywhere. Let alone a birthday party for one of Britain’s richest and most eligible bachelors.
    That last thought has given Ben a few twinges, thinking Catherine might actually be attracted to the man, though her response to that suggestion put the lid firmly on any such ideas.
    “We’ll stay as long as we have to,” Catherine scowls at Ben, “and if himself has a mind for anything other than a friendly smile I expect you to deck him!”
    Ben laughs at that; then swallows noisily, nervously, foolishly reassuring himself that she doesn’t really mean him to take her literally.
    Arriving at the party venue, Ben hands the keys to his sports car over to the chap in charge of valet parking. Taking Catherine’s elbow, he steers her up the steps to the hotel entrance doors where she stares open mouthed at all the bling on display. “Bloody hell!” Looking down at her midnight blue satin sheath, that falls from shoestring shoulder straps to the matching shoes beneath; Catherine scowls at her unadorned self, then sets her spine straight,