A Reluctant Cinderella Read online

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  A RELUCTANT CINDERELLA

  Alison Bond worked as an agent for writers and directors in film and television for ten years before stepping to the other side. She has been published in a handful of national newspapers and magazines, and when not busy working on her next novel she has been known to dabble in hopeful screenplays. She lives in London with her family.

  A Reluctant Cinderella

  ALISON BOND

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3

  (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

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  (a division of Penguin Books Ltd)

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  (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)

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  (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)

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  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  www.penguin.com

  First published 2010

  Copyright © Alison Bond, 2010

  The moral right of the author has been asserted

  Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

  ISBN: 978-0-14-191800-6

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Acknowledgements

  1

  For as long as she could remember Samantha had nurtured a single dream. To succeed. And her dream was about to come true.

  It had been years since she’d first sniffed the heady, sour mixture of industry, exhaust and ambition that lifted her sagging spirits like fine perfume. London. The town where you could be anything.

  And she wanted to be a success.

  This phone call was the sweetest of her career.

  ‘Thirty million pounds all told,’ she said, casually dropping the figure as if this happened every day.

  On the other end of the line she thought she heard a rush of breath.

  ‘The second-to-biggest deal in the history of Premiership football,’ she added. ‘And the tenth biggest in the game. Ever.’

  It was late, very late, but she didn’t care.

  ‘So what do you say, do we have a deal?’ She had the phone on hands-free so that she could pace the floor. Otherwise the nervous tension would sneak into her voice and betray the confidence she needed to project in order to close this thing. She was, still, the only woman in the world making deals at this level.

  She walked over to the window. A view like this meant success, didn’t it? The streetlamps that studded the South Bank reflected in the Thames, Westminster floodlit and glowing golden in the night, a city of glass and steel stretching to the sky, a million windows, eight million lives, this town, its infinite possibilities, all at her feet.

  She held her breath.

  The pause filled the office for an intolerably long moment and she felt nauseous, compelled to plug the silence with promises and persuasion.

  ‘You have to trust me,’ she said. ‘You know I’ll look after your boys. I want the Welstead brothers to go to the right club for their career. And this is the right club. You know me; I’m not just about the money. It’s not just pounds and pence to me – I care about the bigger picture.’ Compassion, warmth, sensitivity. Being a woman had never been an advantage, not in this old-boys’-club business, but she would call on any feminine trait available if it helped to close a deal.

  Monty and Ferris Welstead. Sublimely talented players. Ferris was better looking but Monty was the one with the personality. Together they were an advertiser’s dream. The thirty million would be just the beginning. The man she was talking to was their manager, but he was also their father. He was selling their talents, their careers. He was selling their lives.

  ‘Do we?’ she repeated. ‘Do we have a deal, sir?’

  The ‘sir’ was a nice touch. Respect, humility, charm. He would get a kick out of it, a hard-working dad who seemed perpetually dazed because he’d accidentally raised sons who were two of the most extraordinary football players in a generation.

  Trust me, I’m a woman.

  He issued a little hesitant cough that chilled her blood. He was all that stood between her and her dream come true.

  Then at last, after six months of tense negotiation, he said the magic words.

  ‘We do.’

  She punched the air with her fist and her feet lifted off the floor one after another in a muted jig of celebration.

  She had lied through her perfect white teeth. Samantha Sharp was all about the money. Always. And thirty million pounds was a hell of a lot.

  I made it.

  Could people tell just by looking at her how far she’d had to climb, hand over fist, to get here?

  It was worth every blistering, painful moment.

  2

  Her most vivid childhood memory was of being alone.

  ‘You’ll be all right,’ their mum had said as she piled more cheap clothes into her cheap weekend bag, already bulging at the seams. ‘You take care of each other, okay?’

  Samantha looked at Liam, her big brother, and wondered what taking care of him meant.

  Their mum had all her make-up on. A face which took so long that if Samantha watched her, lying on the big double bed while Mum sat in front of the mirror, she would fall asleep before the end, hypnotized by the brush strokes and swirling fingertips that went towards Mum’s going-out face, drugged by the tang of perfume and hairspray and nail polish.

  She would wake up and her mother would have disappeared, only the smell of her remaining to soothe Samantha to sleep. If she slept where she lay, in the big double bed, it would be hours later that she was lifted, with a murmur of protest, back to her own room, awake just long enough to sense the shifting figure of a stranger, always a new man, waiting to take her place.

  ‘There’s beans,’ said their mu
m, opening one of the top cupboards and then realizing her mistake and moving sixteen cans of baked beans down to a cupboard they could reach. ‘There’s beans,’ she repeated, ‘and bread and apples, and plenty of milk and juice in the fridge. And there’s chocolate.’

  ‘Chocolate?’ said Samantha hopefully.

  ‘Only if you’re a good girl,’ said her mum, unearthing a foil-wrapped bar of chocolate and waving it just out of reach. ‘Will you be a good girl for Mummy?’

  Samantha nodded.

  Scared already, but not sure why.

  ‘It’s a secret. You understand?’ Mum put both hands on Samantha’s shoulders and dropped to her knees so that they were level. ‘You know what a secret is?’

  ‘Something you don’t tell,’ said Samantha.

  ‘Good girl.’

  The brisk hug was almost an afterthought, but Samantha didn’t care – she cherished the feeling of arms around her more than anything, even more than chocolate.

  She looked across at Liam. A whole head taller than her and always so serious. He made her feel silly sometimes. Like now. Silly for being scared. So she put on her best brave smile and told her mum to have a nice time.

  ‘Okay then.’ A final smile, her hand already on the front door handle, her heart and mind already in Ibiza and a week without her kids. ‘I’ll be back Tuesday morning. What do you do in an emergency?’

  ‘Dial 999,’ said Liam.

  ‘Good boy.’

  And she was gone.

  They both stood there and watched the door, in case it was just a joke. Then a little while later, when it became clear that she wasn’t coming back, Liam reached out his hand until it touched his sister’s. Then he held it and told her that everything would be okay.

  ‘It’ll be an adventure,’ he said. ‘We’re like castaways.’

  ‘Is that like pirates?’

  ‘A bit,’ he said.

  That didn’t sound too bad. ‘Can I have some chocolate?’ she asked.

  Liam picked up the bar of chocolate and solemnly snapped off two squares each. ‘We should make it last,’ he said.

  Liam was nine years old and Samantha five. They were on their own.

  ‘What’ll we do now?’ she asked.

  Liam looked up at the clock, his lips moving silently as he worked out the time. ‘I think we go to bed,’ he said.

  ‘But I haven’t had my bath.’ She chewed her lip doubtfully.

  ‘Some nights we don’t though, do we? When I’m in charge. So this is one of those nights. It’s not that different.’

  But it was. To five-year-old Samantha this night felt very different indeed. Like the first time she’d slept without the light on, or the first day Liam went to school. Everything had changed and her world had gone sort of wobbly. She didn’t like it.

  He found her favourite pyjamas. The pink ones with pictures of orange cats. They stood together on the step-up to the sink so that they could brush their teeth.

  ‘Do you need to do a wee?’ he said.

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  Her face flushed warm as her eyes filled with tears.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  She fought off the scratchy tight feeling in her throat. Mummy didn’t like it when she got upset and that meant bed in the dark without any dinner or, if there wasn’t really any dinner, or she’d been really naughty, then locked in the bathroom so that she couldn’t run crying to her brother the way she always did.

  But Mummy wasn’t here so she could tell the truth.

  ‘I’m frightened.’

  ‘Pah! What’s there to be frightened of, Sammy?’ He put his wiry little arm round her and led her across the landing. ‘This is still your house, isn’t it?’

  She nodded.

  ‘And this is your bedroom? And this is your bed?’

  He folded back her duvet and patted the bed. She climbed in.

  ‘And that’s your pillow? And this is your teddy?’

  She held fast to his hand even as she curled herself into the tight knot she made to sleep.

  ‘See? Nothing to be frightened of.’

  ‘Tell me a story,’ she said.

  ‘I don’t know any stories.’

  ‘Sing me a song.’

  So Liam sang the first song he could remember, about a place over the rainbow where happy bluebirds fly, and he stayed by her side until her scrappy breaths became long and smooth. Slowly and carefully he opened out her hand, finger by clinging finger, to free himself from his sister’s grip, then he crossed the room to his own bed and slept until morning.

  They were discovered of course. A schoolteacher noticed that Samantha was wearing the same clothes three days running and watched to see who collected her from school. Seeing her leave hand in hand with her young brother, she chased after them.

  ‘Does Mummy know you’re walking home on your own?’ she asked.

  ‘Mummy’s in Beefa,’ said Samantha. She squealed in pain as Liam pinched the soft flesh on her inner arm. ‘But it’s a secret. I forgot. So don’t tell anyone.’

  That night, instead of playing pirates with Liam, which meant an eye-patch and cold baked beans out of a can – pirate food, Captain – the children were placed in emergency foster care.

  They had been unable to place them together on a few hours’ notice.

  ‘Say goodbye to your brother,’ said the social worker, and, her head addled from the events of the day, Samantha thought she meant for ever.

  No! Not Liam, they couldn’t take Liam. She looked wildly around for somebody to help her, but all she saw were two grown-ups that she didn’t know, both smiling, which made it worse. In the stories the baddies were always smiling. Where were they taking him? Why wasn’t she going? Had she been really naughty? So naughty that even the damp, dark bathroom wasn’t bad enough and Liam was going somewhere nice while she went … where?

  Her breath quickened as she conjured up nasty unformed thoughts one after another. Soon she was gasping for air.

  She started to scream. She lashed out at well-meaning hands that tried to calm her.

  In the end one of the smiling strangers picked her up and hauled her away so that she didn’t get to say goodbye at all.

  She screamed so hard that she fell into an exhausted sleep and when she woke up she was in a big house that smelt funny, on a sofa she had never seen before, and a fat woman who was not her mummy was pretending that she was, making sure that she washed her face and cleaned her teeth.

  Robotically she brushed up and down with the brand-new toothbrush and toothpaste that tasted of strawberry not mint.

  Somehow her cat pyjamas had found their way to a pillow on a bed in a small room upstairs. But it was not her bed.

  Even though she asked again and again, this fat not-mummy couldn’t tell her if Liam would be here to sing her to her dreams. And so she cried herself to a fitful sleep, horribly confused and clutching her duvet around her to keep out the scary night.

  She was five. She loved her errant mummy desperately. She didn’t know what a mother was supposed to do. She didn’t know she had a bad one. So when the police arrested her mother at the airport and allowed her only a brief visit with her children, Samantha kicked the social worker with her tiny feet and told her mum that they should try to escape.

  ‘We can run away! Let’s go, come on, while no one’s looking.’

  ‘Not this time, Sammy.’

  ‘I’m sorry I told the teacher about Beefa.’

  ‘Me too,’ said her mum.

  Liam understood a little more. He refused to kiss his mother, told her that he hated her and so she lavished attention on him, ignoring the smiling Samantha who had more kisses inside her than she knew what to do with.

  Then very soon it was time to say goodbye and go back to the foster family.

  ‘What about the chocolate?’ she asked, concerned about the six squares left at home that they had diligently denied themselves.

  ‘You should have thought about that before
you told on me and spoilt everything,’ said her mum. ‘This is all your fault. You know that, don’t you? Your teachers tell me you’re so bloody clever but you’re stupid. Stupid.’

  ‘Leave her alone,’ said Liam.

  ‘Oh, Liam, I’m sorry. It’s such a mess.’

  Liam wrapped his arm round his sister. ‘We’ll take care of each other,’ he said. ‘We don’t need you.’

  Soon they found a permanent family to take in both of the Sharp children. Although Samantha painfully learnt the meaning of a big word like permanent. It meant: for a while. A year or two. Maybe even four or five. But not for ever.

  One day she would have her own home. A front door to which only she held the key. Then everything would be okay.

  By the time she was ten years old she had been to four different primary schools. Then they were placed in Nottingham with a kind-hearted woman and her lorry-driving husband. It was the closest thing either of them had ever had to a family. Except, that is, for each other.

  ‘We’ll never live with Mum again, will we?’ whispered Samantha one night.

  She was lying on the floor of Liam’s bedroom, twisting her hair into a plait so that when she woke up it would be wavy. They were too old to share a room, but she found that she couldn’t sleep unless she was with him right before she tried. Otherwise bad dreams woke her, sleep-stealing nightmares that she could never remember.

  ‘Why do you say that?’ he said.

  ‘When she said that one day she would want us again she lied, didn’t she?’ Samantha concentrated on winding her hair because she was afraid of his answer.

  It was supposed to be just a few months while Mum got herself together enough to prove to the authorities that she could take responsibility for her children. But months became years and though at first they saw her from time to time eventually the supervised visits stopped. Then the letters stopped too.

  ‘I don’t think she lied,’ said Liam. ‘I think she really thought that one day she would be a different person.’

  She wanted to grasp what Liam was trying to say. She didn’t want her to be a different person.

  ‘That she’d be a mother?’ she ventured.