Gold Digger

Lottie

After I’d accepted the money from his mother, I texted Ollie to tell him that I was resigning from my job but would work my two weeks’ notice, and that I didn’t think us going out was a good idea. He tried to ring me, but I just didn’t pick up. The next morning, I still turned up to clean his house. When I arrived there, though, a grumpy-looking lady in her sixties, clutching a bottle of bleach was barring the doorway.

“Er, hi,” I’d said to her as she glared at me. “I’m Lottie, the cleaner. Are you?—”

“I know who you are,” the woman snapped.

“Well, are you the new cleaner?”

She snorted. “New? I’ve worked for the Hardings for forty years, young lady.”

“Does Ollie know that?—”

“ His Grace told me to tell you that your services are no longer required. He will honour a full month’s pay which I think is more than generous since he’s been paying you to do sod all for months. So you can jog on.”

“Mrs H,” Ollie’s voice sounded behind the lady and she huffed in annoyance, “give us a moment please.”

“Fine,” Mrs H snapped, moving away from the door and muttering to herself about gold-digging harlots as she shuffled away down the corridor.

“Lottie,” Ollie said, his large frame filling the doorway as he crossed his arms over his chest. Our height difference was even more exaggerated by the fact I was a step down from him where he stood. I swallowed.

“Your mum told you then?” I asked in a small voice and his eyes flashed with anger.

“That she paid you off? Yes, Lottie. Mum made sure to tell me that.” His voice was so cold. Warm, teasing, kind Ollie was gone, replaced by this cold stranger who was staring at me like I was a squashed bug on the pavement.

I cleared my throat and willed the tears I could feel building back. “I’m so sorry,” I said and despite my effort it was barely above a whisper. “Ollie, I feel terrible but I really needed to?—”

“How could you?” he snapped, the coldness replaced by white-hot anger as his whole body tightened with tension. “How could you take it? Did everything mean nothing? Did you…” his voice broke off and he looked away from me, squaring his shoulders before he looked back but this time not giving me any eye contact. If I thought his voice from before was cold, the next time he spoke it was positively Arctic. “I believe my mother’s terms include no further contact. I suggest then that you leave. Unless you’d like to repay the fifty grand?”

God, Margot had told him everything. I felt like I was going to throw up. But he was right. I’d made a deal. I had my reasons, I’d apologised to Ollie. Now I needed to move on.

“I can’t repay that money,” I said in a small voice. “But, Ollie, I promise it meant something to me. You meant something.”

He snorted. “Clearly,” he said in a dry tone. “I meant so much that you were willing to be bought off for a measly fifty grand. I feel so bloody special.”

And there it was: the difference between us. A measly fifty grand? I’d been living in cloud cuckoo land if I thought the Duke of Buckingham and I stood a chance. We didn’t inhabit the same planet, or even the same universe. I swallowed down the tightness in my throat and forced my feet to move down the steps away from Ollie. On the way down I had a small kernel of hope that he’d run after me. That he’d sweep me up in his arms and tell me everything was going to be okay. But when I reached the pavement I flinched at the sound of the front door of Buckingham House slamming shut.

From then on, the only other time I saw Ollie was at the club where I still waitressed. The look he gave me was so full of hatred that I hadn’t been brave enough to keep eye contact for more than a few seconds, and when I checked back to the same spot, he was gone, and I hadn’t seen him in there since.

At first, I’d had visions of him missing me and then turning up at my flat and calling up to me from the pavement, Romeo and Juliet style (I was quite sure that if his mother could track me down, then Ollie would have had no trouble in obtaining my address). But that never happened, which I told myself was for the best.

But not long after Margot’s visit another Harding did track me down. Vicky showed up at my flat about a week later.

“This is very small,” was the first thing she’d said on entering it, and despite my depressed mood, it had startled a laugh out of me. When Hayley popped her head out of her room, Vicky waved, saying, “You don’t have to greet me if you don’t want to. I know how annoying it is when people expect you to speak when you’d rather not. I didn’t used to speak much either.”

Hayley had been shocked for a moment, then surprised me by smiling and offering Vicky a biscuit.

When Vicky told her, “I don’t eat refined sugar,” Hayley handed her an apple instead, which Vicky accepted. There was this unspoken acceptance between them, as if they could each sense that the other just did things a little differently, and that was okay.

“Why are you here, Vicky?” I’d asked as she munched on her apple after Hayley had gone to her room, sitting where her mother had sat a week before.

“I read your file.”

“The one that Margot compiled on me?”

“Yes,” she said, totally unrepentant. “You have a criminal record.”

I froze and stared at her. “Can you keep your voice down?” I hissed.

“It will be hard for you to gain other employment which pays as well as the cleaning job for my half-brother.”

“So, you know what happened with Margot?”

Vicky nodded, then tilted her head to the side. Now, Vicky was harder to read than other people. There were few subtle signs to give her away. But I could sense she wanted something from me. Very badly.

“You have abilities,” she said, and I blinked.

“W-what?”

“You can notice nonverbal cues. As a child, you were described as watchful. One report says that you survived living with your mother due to your ability to read people. You’re now doing a psychology course, I presume in order to capitalise on these abilities as these are where your strengths lie.”

I stood up from the sofa quickly and paced away from Vicky. “Let me get this straight. Margot accessed my personal , confidential files from when I was known to social services as a child?”

Vicky nodded. “School reports too: Lottie has the uncanny ability to sense exactly what people need in a conversation. She can adapt to any circumstance. She has such strong emotional intelligence, it’s almost as though she can read people’s minds. ”

My mouth fell open. “How many times have you read my school reports?”

“I have a photographic memory.”

“Of course you do.” I sighed. “Much as I’d love to sue you and Margot for invading my privacy, to be honest, I don’t have the time, the energy or the money. So, if we could just move this along? Tell me why you’re here. You want something from me.”

“You can read people. I cannot,” Vicky stated bluntly, which seemed to be the only way she stated anything. “I have autism. But you would know that already. You would have sensed it.”

I nodded.

“I don’t tell anyone that and it’s only recently been diagnosed formally. I would prefer that you didn’t share this information with anyone.”

“Of course,” I said.

“My half-brother has tried to protect me since I was dropped off at his family home at the age of six, but he has done enough now. I don’t want to work for the Buckingham Estate when I’m not a proper member of the Harding family.”

“Who says you’re not a proper member?”

“I’m the result of an affair. Technically I’m not sure I should even have their last name. Anyway, I need my own career, away from them. I’m very good with numbers, and I know how to make money.”

“I can understand you wanting to branch out from your family, but haven’t you got enough money?” I said wearily.

“Yes, I do,” she agreed. “But I need more. A lot more.”

“Of course you do,” I repeated. “So what does this have to do with me?”

“I want to hire you to help me. Investors are not always logical. They do not choose the companies to use just based on objective facts. There seems to be a subjective element which I can’t grasp. Also…” she looked away for a moment, then back at me, “people don’t like me.”

“Oh.” I felt my annoyance and anger deflate slightly at that bald statement. “Vicky, I’m sure?—”

“It’s okay. I know that I’m different. I state facts, always. But I really can’t understand why you wouldn’t. I can’t lie, or at least I see no point in it. But…” she swallowed before continuing and I could sense sadness and discomfort, “but I hurt people’s feelings sometimes, and I don’t realise I’m doing it. People don’t always want to hear the truth.”

“No, they don’t,” I said more softly now. I could see that hurting people upset Vicky.

“And most of the time, I don’t even know I’ve hurt somebody’s feelings because they don’t tell me. It’s easier with Margot and my half-siblings. They know that they need to spell everything out to me and be really clear. But even then, I can run into trouble. My half-sister sometimes takes things the wrong way. She got married to Blake last year and told me before one of her dress fittings that she wanted me there and she loved me, but she didn’t want any honest opinions about the dress. So I didn’t say anything. After half an hour she begged me for my honest opinion.”

I winced. “Which was?”

“It looks itchy.”

“Ah.”

“It did. There was a lot of lace. I’m afraid that when I look at lace, all I can think about is that it looks really itchy. I couldn’t see anything else. That’s literally all I could think about when I was looking at her.”

“She was upset,” I concluded, and Vicky’s face clouded.

“It wasn’t just the dress she wanted an honest opinion on. It was Blake too.”

“You don’t like him?”© 2024 Nôv/el/Dram/a.Org.

Vicky shrugged. “I do not feel he is an adequate partner for my half-sister or stepfather for my niece, and I couldn’t come up with any quality I admired about him other than the fact his tie coordinates well with his shirt.”

“Oof,” I said with another wince.

“The thing is, if I can’t even manage with people who know me well, then how can I deal with clients or potential clients?”

I gave her a long look. She was telling the truth, but there was something she was holding back.

“This is not the only reason you want to hire me.”

Vicky looked away from me, and for the first time, she seemed uncomfortable.

“I don’t have any friends,” she said, her voice smaller than before. “And I’ve never had a boyfriend. People think I’m weird.”

“You think I can help you with that?” I said softly.

She shrugged. “I need a people person. My half-brother has tried to help me… but he’s just too overprotective. I need to hire someone. Someone with ‘almost unnatural intuition’.”

“You really did a deep dive on those school reports, didn’t you?”

“I know that you need money for your sister, and I know how much Margot has given you, but it won’t be enough for ongoing care. I will pay you more than enough for your sister’s therapy, to continue your psychology course and for you to move out of this flat.”

I stiffened. “What makes you think I want to move out of this place?”

“It has damp. You sleep on a sofa. The area is not safe.”

“Don’t hold back,” I muttered.

“That’s kind of the problem,” she said. “I never do.”

“If I take this job, I can’t work long hours in the day. I have to be here for Hayley. So it’s school hours only. The odd evening is fine – I can get a sitter after she’s in bed, but I can’t miss her coming home from school.”

“Okay.”

“And I want to be able to study whilst I’m on the job.”

“Yes, I thought you would. Your degree course requires sixteen hours a week.”

“Of course, you’d know that,” I muttered. “You probably know what I ate for breakfast.”

She shook her head. “The only one of your consummation habits I know of is that you don’t drink alcohol, which I assume is to do with your moth?—”

“I’m going to start my job of stopping you from putting your foot in your mouth right now, Vicky,” I interrupted, my voice rising. “Do not ever, ever mention my mother.” I never talked about Mum. The fact that I told Ollie that day on the bench was a minor miracle.

“Right,” she said quietly, drawing back slightly from me and my sharp tone. Subtle cues were lost on Vicky, but she knew when someone was telling her off. She was rigid in her seat now. I could sense discomfort and maybe a little fear.

“It’s okay, Vicky,” I said softer now. “I know you didn’t realise how much that would upset me. I’m sorry I raised my voice.”

She shook her head. “It’s okay. I’m just… sensitive with sound.”

I tilted my head to the side. “I’ll remember that, okay? I wouldn’t have raised my voice, but I really don’t ever want to talk about my mother. Right?”

Vicky nodded, and her stiff posture relaxed somewhat.

“What will my job title be? I can’t very well go around saying I’m your empath .”

“No, I suppose not. You’ll be my personal assistant.”

“And one more thing. Will I have to see your brother?”

“I can’t guarantee you won’t see my half-brother. I see him a lot, and my business partner is his best friend.”

“My agreement with your stepmother is that I could not see your brother again.”

“Romantically.”

“What?”

“You were not allowed to see my half-brother again romantically. You won’t be seeing him romantically when you’re with me. He hates you now, so there is definitely not going to be any romantic element to you seeing him.”

All the air left my lungs in a sudden whoosh as if Vicky had physically winded me. To hear so bluntly that Ollie hated me was worse than I imagined it would be. I looked away, blinking rapidly to force the tears back before I looked at Vicky again.

“Well, that’s a relief,” I said with a forced smile.