George Chandler had sent an email.  Apparently, if the awkward questions from the Inland Revenue didn’t stop soon, he could make her life very difficult.  Octavia wasn’t sure what he could do that would make her life any more difficult than it would have been if she’d carried on working for him, but she’d keep his email on file.

Meanwhile, she had Tamsin and her fractured fairy tales to attend to.  Russel was out today, so there was a bit of a weight of her mind.  Octavia sat on the shiny plastic sofa, and listened to Tamsin’s story about Russel hiring a skywriter to propose to her on her birthday.  “He actually proposed to me twice,” she added, “But the first time was just him whispering in my ear when we were watching Eastenders.  You can’t say yes to that.”

“I suppose not,” said Octavia.  The living room was so cramped that, if she wasn’t careful, she ended up sitting so that the coffee table was digging right into her knees.  It wasn’t even that small a room, but it was crammed so full of extra pieces of furniture that there was barely any space for you to fit.

“And anyway, our relationship wasn’t exactly on solid ground at the time.  We’d…  Well.  Something had happened, and there was a lack of trust.”

If he had an affair, just say he had an affair, thought Octavia.

“So I’d begun to, you know, play games.  Cause drama.”  She sighed.  “At the end of the day, I was just trying to get him to prove that he wasn’t like my dad.”

“Why, what was your dad like?”  (Obviously, Russel had already told her, but Octavia didn’t necessarily trust his judgement.)

Tamsin snorted.  “How long have you got?  After my mum chucked him out, it was like he just gave up on life.  He’d just be sitting on the sofa all day, staring at the TV with his mouth hanging open.”

Octavia made a sympathetic noise.

“One time when I was fifteen, I went round his, and he asked me to go on an errand, pick up something from a friend of his.  So I take the bus across town, and when I get there, it turns out that it’s a crack den!”  Tamsin’s face twisted in disgust.  “He wanted me to pick up pills for him!”

It took Octavia a moment to decide what her reply was going to be.  “Did you?  Pick them up, I mean?”

Tamsin shrugged.  “Yeah.  I’d promised my dad.”  There was something about the dull resignation in her voice that got to Octavia.  Maybe that was how you ended up married to a seedy old bastard like Russel.

She thought it over, then decided to say it.  “My parents kicked me out when I was sixteen.”

Tamsin’s eyebrows went up, and the rest of her seemed to do a little jump along with them.  “Really?”

“Well, technically, they’d been throwing me out every few months since I was thirteen.  Since I was twelve, if you count the year they sent me to boarding school.”  To this day, Octavia was convinced they’d only pulled her out of St Agnes’ because she hadn’t missed them as much as they’d hoped she would.  “They were divorced, so what would happen was, my mum would throw me out and tell me to go to my dad’s until she’d forgiven me.  Or until he got angry and threw me out, too.”

Tamsin nodded.  “Was it like they were using you as a weapon?  To hurt each other?”

Octavia thought about it.  “Maybe a little on my dad’s side, but not on my mum’s.  She always seemed to think they were on the verge of getting back together.  I mean, he remarried twice, but Mum just saw that as a minor bump.  She was the epic love story; his other wives were just distractions.”

Tamsin said nothing, but a strange look crossed her face.  Russel had definitely had an affair, Octavia decided.

“Anyway, when I was sixteen, my mum got me to play the piano at a party.  I was quite good at it in those days- my dad was always on at me to go professional.  But then, after I finished playing, somebody asked me if my mother had taught me how to play, and I said no- I’d been taking lessons from a man called Mr Ashley who’d advertised in the paper.  And my mother completely lost it.  She refused to speak to me for the rest of the night, and after everyone had gone, she completely lost it with me.”

“What, just because you told them about your piano teacher?”

“More because I’d said no when they’d asked me if it was her.  It was true- I don’t think she’d ever touched a piano in her life- but in her head, I’d humiliated her in front of all her friends.”  Octavia tried to remember what her mother had thrown at her that night- a glass? an ornament?- but there had been so many arguments over the years that some details had merged in her mind.  “She threw me out and told me to go to my dad’s.  But I ended up at Mr Ashley’s place instead.”

“Why?”

“I think I just thought of it because he was the one we’d been arguing about.  I knew I didn’t want to go to my dad’s- my stepmother had just had a baby, and the sleepless nights were making him temperamental.  Mr Ashley was the only adult I could think of who might be pleased to see me.”

“And he let you stay?”

“Yeah.”  A smile came to Octavia’s face, completely unbidden.  “I told him I’d leave school and get a job so I could pay rent, but he told me not to be ridiculous.  He just gave me the spare room, without a second thought.  I found out later that he’d taken in a few other people before me- mostly gay kids whose families hadn’t reacted well to it- so he had it down to an art.  There were even spare clothes I could use in the wardrobe.”  For a moment, she worried that she’d phrased that wrong- made it sound as if Mr Ashley had been a serial killer or something- but Tamsin was looking at her wide-eyed, with a big smile on her face.

“So you felt safe with him,” she said softly.

“Yes,” said Octavia, “That’s exactly it.”

“That’s how I feel when I’m with Russ.”

Octavia had to put in a lot of effort not to frown at that.

(To be continued)