Daydreamer

Felix

“Right, that’s sorted then. The clothes are an improvement,” I said briskly. “Much more professional.”

Lucy gave me a weak smile and shrugged her shoulders. “I guess.”

I cleared my throat and rubbed the back of my neck. Calling Lucy in here had been a mistake. Agreeing for Lucy to come to work at the office at all had been a bigger mistake. But when Hetty had asked me, I really hadn’t known how to get out of it.

I mean, I liked Lucy. Granted, I hadn’t seen her in years until she came here last month, but I’d always had a soft spot for the quirky kid who used to tell the most bizarrely addictive stories. She’d been a cute, shy little girl with freckles on her nose and muddy knees. Mike, Ollie and I let her trail after us in the holidays, those big blue eyes watching as we played football, battled in video games and hung out in the treehouse (the Mayweathers’ house may have been small, but they had the best treehouse).

It was clear that Hetty worried about her even back then.

“She’s a dreamer, that’s the problem,” the ever practical and sensible Hetty would say. “Head in the clouds when she needs her feet on the ground. God knows how she’ll survive in the wide world.”

Lucy’s father, Henry, didn’t share Hetty’s opinion though. He’d doted on her, called her his little dreamer, and, if anything, wanted that instinct to be protected rather than corrected. But after he died when Lucy was eight, Hetty stopped trying to pull her into the real world, and Lucy seemed to want to avoid it even more.

That year, Mike and I were tasked with taking her trick or treating in the village. Half an hour after she’d gone up to her bedroom to grab her witch’s hat, Hetty sent me up to see what was going on. Lucy was sitting on her window sill, staring out into the night, knees up to her chest, her arms around her legs, head resting on her knees.

“Luce?” No answer. I moved to sit on the opposite side of the window seat. She was perfectly still, her big eyes just staring out of the window. It was like I wasn’t even in the room. “Hey, Shakespeare. Time for sweets.” It was only when I put my hand on her small shoulder and gave her a little shake that she seemed to come back to the room, flinching where she sat, her eyes flying to me and her mouth falling open.

“Hi,” she said, smiling her gap-toothed grin. “Whatcha doin’?”

“Lucy, we’re going to go trick or treating, remember? You went to get your hat?”

Her eyes went wide, and she bit her lip. “Oh! Oh dear, I must’ve gone doolally again.”

“Doolally?”

“It’s what Mummy and Da… I mean Mummy says I do when I forget and go to my thinking place.” A lump formed in my throat as Lucy corrected herself. Accepting that Henry wasn’t there was still hard for her; if I was honest, it was hard for me too.

“Is this your thinking place?”

She shook her head, her bunches flying from side to side and becoming even more lop-sided. “No, silly. My thinking place in my brain.”

I smiled. “What were you thinking about?”

And that was when little Lucy would become animated. Anytime you asked her what she was thinking about when she was daydreaming, she’d launch into one of her stories.

“So, there’s this king, he’s half human, half fairy and⁠—”

“Half fairy?” I said. “Isn’t that a bit girly for a king?”

Lucy shook her head again; one of her bunches gave up the fight and came out completely. “Fairies are not girly. They’re stronger than humans, they have magic, they’re way faster and they are more vicious. They can rip your throat out before you even know they’ve moved.”

That was the thing with Lucy’s stories. They weren’t what you would imagine a standard eight-year-old girl would come up with. There was too much blood and guts, and too few princesses and ponies. But they were always completely riveting. After twenty minutes of hearing about this bloodthirsty king, Mike’s head popped round the door.

“What the bloody hell is going on?” he said. We were both still sitting on the window seat opposite each other, and Lucy had just got to the part in the story where the king’s brother had tried to kill the mother of his unborn child. “Come on, all the sweets will be gone.”

Lucy told me dozens of stories over the years. In fact, there were a few times when I was an angry teenager, furious at my dad for being the piece of shit he was, when Lucy’s stories seemed like the only distraction that really soothed me. So, of course, I had a soft spot for her. But having full-grown Lucy in the office was definitely a mistake.

The moment she walked in here a month ago with the same freckles on her nose and the same big blue eyes blinking up at me, I’d felt winded. It didn’t matter how huge and tattered her woolly jumper was, how her hair was in an inexplicable mess on the top of her head with pens sticking out of it, how she didn’t wear a scrap of make-up. She was absolutely beautiful. Not in the way I usually appreciated beauty. Not like my ex had been beautiful – long legs, perfectly put together, sophisticated, chic. No, Lucy’s beauty was of the natural, cute but captivating variety. It wasn’t my cup of tea, or at least it shouldn’t have been, but the moment I saw her again, it felt like coming home. Being around her made me feel more than I had in a long time, and this bone-deep longing to touch her was worsening by the day.

What made things even more painful was her crush. She probably wasn’t aware how obvious she was, but Lucy stared at me a lot, and it was hell on my self-control. All I wanted to do was pull her into my office, kiss those freckles on her nose, strip her monstrosity of a jumper off, lay her on my desk and then give her what I could sense she wanted from me. For hours.

And weirder than even my dirty fantasies about Lucy were the post-coital ones. Because after I’d taken her very thoroughly, and when her guard was down, I imagined asking her what she was thinking about, and having her tell me one of her stories again. No sex fantasy with any other woman had been quite so bizarre.

But I had to snap out of it. This was Hetty’s and Henry’s daughter, Mike’s sister. Without Hetty and Henry, I wouldn’t be half as well-adjusted. They raised me. Without the Mayweathers’ house as my sanctuary, my childhood would have been bleak. I couldn’t let Hetty down, and I’d promised I’d help Lucy. I mean, Hetty had been so desperate that she’d even told me I didn’t have to pay Lucy. How on earth she expected Lucy to live in London without being paid was beyond me and I certainly wasn’t going to have her work for me for free. Clearly, Hetty was still supporting her daughter, which must be putting a huge financial strain on her.

I hadn’t been back home in over five years after that final straw with my father – when he crossed the line so completely there was no coming back from it. I was justified in staying away from him. But I felt the guilt of not checking in with the Mayweathers. I’d been so focused on trying to outdo my father in business that I’d let everything else fall by the wayside. Even my own mother had only seen me a handful of times and then only in London on neutral ground. I loved Mum, but nothing would get me back to Little Buckingham.

So no, I wasn’t going to give in to the desire to simply take Lucy home and keep her all to myself in my house so she could daydream to her heart’s content out of my window seat. I was going to help transform her into someone her mother didn’t have to worry about. I was going to toughen her up. Because the world isn’t kind to dreamers like Lucy. There’s no room for daydreaming in this reality. It’s harsh and cruel, and the sooner Lucy woke up to that, the better.

“You’ll feel more confident now you’re in professional clothes,” I told her. “Think of it as armour.”

“Hmm,” she hummed under her breath, turning to look out of the window and rubbing her hands up and down her arms. “That’s a bit depressing, isn’t it? Needing to wear armour for work. Is it really that much of a battle?”

I frowned. “Of course you need armour in the corporate world, Luce. We’re not in Little Buckingham now. It’s dog-eat-dog here.”

Her mouth turned down, and her shoulders slumped. “Oh, right. Dog-eat-dog. Okay.” It didn’t sound okay at all. It sounded the opposite of okay, but what did she expect? This was London. If she didn’t change, she’d be chewed up and spat out in an instant. I’d learned that the hard way – people took advantage if you showed any sign of weakness, and that included not dressing the part.

Anyway, there was no denying she looked beautiful. These new clothes were a huge improvement. She should have been happy. I should have been happy. I was sorting the brief Hetty had handed me after all. I was transforming her daughter. She completely looked the part now. But as I surveyed the new Lucy – fitted suit, high heels – I felt an awful ache in my chest and a profound sense of loss. I shook my head to clear it. I was losing my mind.

“So, now you just have to buck up your ideas a bit,” I said. “No more daydreaming. Right?”

She bit her lip but gave a slow nod. I sighed. “Lucy, honestly, you can’t stare into space when you’re a personal assistant. There’s a shit-ton to get done every day.” It was time to stop playing Mr Nice Guy. Lucy needed to really knuckle down if she wanted to succeed. “You can’t carry on being unrelentingly crap. It’s not fair to anyone. You’ve got your armour now. You can go out there, fit right in and get on with the bloody job.” She nodded slowly, looking unconvinced. There was a knock on my door, and I frowned, not finished with Lucy’s motivational talk.

“Yes,” I snapped. Will walked in, doing a double take when he spotted Lucy. Then, to my deep annoyance, he looked her up and down, and a slow smile spread across his face.

“Christ, what have you done to her, Moretti? Who knew this was what mousy little Lucy was hiding under those god-awful jumpers.” He’d stepped closer to Lucy now and touched the lapel of her suit jacket, feeling the material between his fingers. Lucy startled and flinched away from him. His grin widened, and I narrowed my eyes.

“Leave it out, Brent,” I snapped. His smile dropped, and he shoved his hands into his pockets.

“So, is this new Office Lucy actually going to deign to answer the fucking phone?” Will said, his eyebrows going up. My instinct was to go over there and punch the smug prick in the face, but I shoved that down. I was letting my feelings for Lucy get in the way of reason. Could I honestly be angry with Will for wanting a real, functioning assistant? He was handling one of our most high-profile land deals at the moment, and I’d saddled him with a real dud.

“Lucy’s totally on it now,” I said. “Aren’t you, Luce?” Silence. When I looked over at her, she was looking out of the floor-to-ceiling window of my office, fiddling with the button on her sleeve. I sighed and rubbed my hand over my face. “Lucy!” My voice cracked across the room, and she jumped; her gaze flew to me. I spoke slowly, trying to tamp the anger in my tone down. She really was impossible. “You’re ready to do better, aren’t you?” Lucy flashed a nervous look at Will and then gave a quick nod. Her hands came up to rub her arms again as she took another faltering step away from him.

“Sure,” she said, sounding anything but. “Er… best assistant ever. From now on. Brownies’ Honour.” She actually held her hand up in a Brownie salute, and I sighed as Will snorted back a laugh.