Page 17 of Save Me
“This isn’t what I wanted for you at all! You’re my baby girl, but what else could I do? Tell me, I’ll do anything, please?!”
“For starters, don’t beg, it makes me feel sick,” I reply bluntly, having zero patience for his desperate pleas. “You’re supposed to protect me, guide me, not the other way round.”
“I know,” he whispers, then swallows hard, desperately trying to stop his sobbing. “I’ve let you down, but I still love you, Beth, more than words can say.”
“’Let me down’ is an understatement. You’ve destroyed our relationship, Malcolm!” I can’t even begin to hold back while this anger simmers underneath my skin, rising through the depths of my being. “So just leave…now!”
For a while, he remains seated, no doubt hoping I’ll concede and let him off lightly. When it becomes obvious that I’m more likely to turn into a unicorn than make this easy for him, he eventually gets up and shuffles over to the door. Once there, he pauses, then looks over to me, not knowing what to do or say for the best, because there isn’t anything.
“Goodnight, Beth,” he murmurs and finally leaves, not waiting for a reply because he knows he won’t get one.
Chapter 6
Malcolm, June that year
“Mal,” a friendly voice booms from behind me in the golf club bar, a place I normally only frequent when I’m meeting with clients. However, on this Wednesday evening, I needed an hour to unwind after the hideous day I had just endured. With nearly all of our computers going down mid-morning we got next to nothing done, which is going to end up delaying important deadlines for some of our best clients. Suffice to say, I am not in the best mood and I’m about as up for a polite chit-chat as I would be having to go to a prostate exam. Even the waiter, who is now delivering my bill, smiles sympathetically as I involuntarily mouth the word ‘fuck’. Being a young lad, he saw the funny side and is now walking off with a slight chuckle.
“It’s good to see you! I heard you had finally moved this way, good for you!” says a voice belonging to Samuel Lawrence, a man in his late fifties, possibly early sixties, and who has a grotesque reputation for creeping out any young female whom he comes across. He grabs my hand as he rounds my chair to greet me. Though I like to think I hide it well, I know I’m struggling to look even vaguely pleased to see him.
Wear the Mask, Mal, wear the mask!
“Samuel Lawrence!” I smile back at him, one that would have my mother blushing over its obvious fakery. Fortunately, the creepy bastard doesn’t appear to notice nor care about my greeting and continues to take up the seat opposite me. Whether I like this guy or not, we work in the same line of business, and it would be unwise of me to alienate him after just having moved here to set up shop.
“It’s been a while. How are you? Still heavily into golf, I see?”
Actually, I hate golf. It’s a mind-numbingly boring game that is only a fraction more interesting than having to engage in a seminar on GDPR. I play it for the business contacts and the distraction of a beer at the end of a heavy day.
Samuel and I had played the odd game when he was on business, down in Texas, having met through a mutual acquaintance. Someone by the name of Steele if I remember correctly. He can’t have made that much of an impression because I cannot, for the life of me, remember his first name. Steele is a big name in those parts, heavily tied up in the oil industry but still in need of the modern technology that someone like Samuel can offer.
Despite his reputation, Samuel was always a friendly enough guy to me, but something always felt a little off with him. He’d bore me to tears over his business, one that is a hell of a lot bigger than mine, and he always had a smarminess to him. My good upbringing and need to always exercise impeccable manners had him mistaking me for someone who gave a shit. I enjoy my work and I’m proud of how far I’ve come, a feat which I owe in large part to my parents’ massive support of me, as well as my wife and children. However, it doesn’t mean it is all of who I am.
I originally began my company in London before moving to Texas, where my mother originally came from, though she talks very little about her time here. Sometimes it was like trying to get blood out of a stone, so I learned to just leave it be. After my success down south, an opportunity arose to move out here, to California, where there are more prospects for Jen’s line of work and some really good schools for the kids. I know Beth would have been more than happy to stay in the tiny town we had lived in, but in the long run, I think it will do her good to get out more. I’m hoping that one day, she’ll thank me for it.
The Lawrence company is a lot bigger than mine and tends to only deal with much larger companies that often span worldwide. I deal with the little guys and enjoy doing so, especially as it makes more than enough money to put the kids through private school, pay for Beth to go to any college she wants, and have a large house in a good location. Work has paved our future for us, and I consider myself lucky to have got to where I am today.
However, when the working day is done, I leave it at the office as much as I can. And when I want downtime, the last thing I wish to be doing is talking about it. And I want to talk about someone else’s business even less so, no matter how big it is or how much money it accumulates over the year. That kind of shit is both boring and just an excuse for creeps like Samuel to brag, all the while he gets off to the sound of his own pretentious voice.
“May we join you?” he asks, even though he’s already made himself quite comfortable at my table and is now signaling for the waiter to bring over another round. I make a show of checking the time on my watch, grimacing, then sighing in a very dramatic fashion.
“Come on, Mal, for old time’s sake? You wouldn’t say no to a fellow IT nerd like me, would you? The next rounds on me!” I smile, conceding in my defeat against the cunning, old sod, while secretly chastising myself for not having more of a backbone to turn him down. I blame dear old mum for that. She was always a pillar of politeness.
“Sure, ok.” I fake a grin; one Beth has inherited from her old man. She entertains me with it often. No one could accuse Beth of being somebody else’s daughter; she’s the spitting image of her grandmother and has her old dad’s many facial expressions.
“Oh, this is Oliver, my only son, apple of my eye and all that,” he chuckles as he points up at a young man who has only just crossed the room to join us.
The young man before me must take after his mother because he is extremely attractive and not at all creepy looking like his father. To be fair, Samuel’s reputation may have a hand in how I see nothing but a suspicious look about him, one you wouldn’t trust to look after your ham sandwich, let alone anything important. I think even my wife would be gushing with a nervous laugh over the younger man before us. I would hazard a guess that he’s about thirty, but not much older than that. He has a stylish head of hair and expensive taste in clothing, and the way he eyeballs you is strangely intimidating. When I mentally compare the two men, the only thing that tells me they’re blood-related are the deep blue eyes and sandy blond hair that they share. Otherwise, I would say Oliver got lucky with his share of his parents’ genes.
“A pleasure to meet you, Sir,” he says politely, holding out his hand and edging toward the empty seat beside Samuel. “I hear you’re in the same field as my father and I?”
“Please, call me Mal,” I reply, returning his firm handgrip, a little power play between the older and younger generation. One I don’t even know why I’m bothering to engage in. “We don’t call each other ‘Sir’ in the UK, unless you’re at school, or happen to be the Queen of England’s butler.” He laughs at my small joke, though doesn’t attempt to go beyond what it was worth, merely acknowledges my attempt at humor before sitting down. “I am in technology,” I confirm, “but I’m nowhere near as big as you guys are.”
“Still, what my father has said about you is impressive; self-made too!” he says with the kind of charm these sorts of businessmen exude, which only has me inwardly laughing to myself.
“Wow, you have the looks, the business, the wealth, and the charm. You must have the ladies fopping over this one, Sam!” I smirk, hoping against hope that Beth never brings home someone as much as this. He’s a little too smooth for my liking.
“He has had a fair few admirers,” Samuel confirms as he smiles back at me. He then bites on his bottom lip and looks at his son like he’s the perfect product of him. “But Oliver is rather choosey over what kind of woman he spends his time with.”
“Oh?” I sound surprised, but don’t believe for one second that Oliver doesn’t take advantage of his good looks and suave personality. Not many men wouldn’t in his entitled position.