Heller (9 page)

“There must be
thousands of DVDs in here! And look at all of these books! It would
take years to read them all.” I walked around in wonder. “What kind
of books and DVDs are there mostly?”

“Mostly
thrillers, mysteries, police procedurals, war, action, horror, some
comedy, some supernatural. No relationship or romance stories,” he
said apologetically.

“Good. I hate
mushy stuff,” I returned with a smile. “And I love a good thriller.
Do we just help ourselves here too?”

“Sure. There’s
also a collection of games in that corner. For Niq’s Xbox, although
I have to admit that the twins and I like to play occasionally
too.”

“Not
Heller?”

Daniel
laughed. “No, not Heller. He doesn’t have much patience for wasting
time on frivolous activities like that. He has, um, other
interests. But he’s tolerant. To a point.”

Nothing I’d
heard so far about Heller made me any more relaxed about accepting
a position working for him. I started thinking that the next month
was going to test me in ways that I probably wouldn’t be competent
enough to face.

Unaware of my
inner thoughts, Dan carried on the same conversational topic.
“Niq’s only supposed to play once he’s finished his schoolwork
though. Do you play?”

“Sometimes.
Depends what you like to play.” A thought struck me. “Daniel, where
does Niq go to school?”

“He doesn’t.
He’s home-schooled, through distance education.”

“Why?”

Daniel sighed
and sat down on the arm of one of the library’s lounge chairs. “Niq
struggles to fit in with other kids. He missed a lot of school when
he was younger and wasn’t well-socialised. He can’t adapt to the
rigid routine and well, you’ve seen how individual he is. He’s not
good at conforming.”

I nodded and
parked my rear on the arm of another chair as he continued.

“When Heller
first bought this building, not long after Niq . . . um . . . came
to live with us, we enrolled him at the local primary school. He
was badly bullied from the first day but didn’t tell any of us for
ages. It was a very damaging experience for him, totally destroyed
his self-confidence and when Heller found out, he became quite . .
. ah . . . angry. I went with him to the school and there was a . .
. hmm, um . . . an extremely unpleasant scene between him and the
school principal that I suspect might have ended with . . . might
have ended a lot worse for everyone if I hadn’t been there to calm
things down. But the result was that Heller withdrew Niq from the
school permanently. He wasn’t willing to risk the bullying
happening again at another school so we enrolled Niq for distance
education instead.” He shrugged. “Niq’s coping remarkably well now,
so what we’re doing seems to be working for him. Everybody’s
happy.”

I nodded again
and didn’t push it any further, although I felt that Daniel had
been choosing his words very carefully as he spoke. I was growing
increasingly curious about their relationships with each other.
Heller was undoubtedly the boss, but where did everyone else fit
in?

We finished
our tour by climbing up to the roof-top. I was pleasantly surprised
to find it decked out as a leisure centre, with a couple of sun
lounges, a sheltered area with a barbeque, picnic table, pool table
and a hot tub. There was also a small herb garden off to one
sheltered sunny corner.

“We come up
here to relax,” Daniel smiled, “and to get some sunshine.”

“I like this
place,” I said, looking around happily. “Heller’s a very generous
boss.”

“Well, I
suppose that’s because we are all more like family to him than
staff,” Daniel considered. “The twins, Niq and I have all lived
with Heller for a while now. To me, he’s more like an older brother
than a boss. I guess it’s not like a normal office.”

“I figured
that out all by myself,” I teased. “Seriously though, the
relationships between you all intrigue me. Take Niq. You said
Heller isn’t related to him, but he’s a minor, isn’t he? I don’t
want to be nosy, but shouldn’t he be living with his family?”

Daniel gazed
at me for a few long moments, his lovely brown eyes filled with a
pained emotion I couldn’t decipher.

“Tilly,” he
said sadly, “you come from a fairly happy and normal family, I
assume.” I nodded, thinking of my much-loved parents and two older
brothers and their families. “That’s not the case with some people.
Niq’s family is us. He doesn’t have another family. Neither do I.
Nor the twins. Nor Heller, as far as I know. We’ve made a family,
and a business, between us.”

“Oh hell. I’m
so sorry, Daniel,” I said contritely, cursing my nosiness. “I
didn’t mean to pry. I was just curious about my new
work-mates.”

“I know, I
know,” he soothed, holding out his palms in a defensive manner.
“Heller told us that a new person would be inquisitive. It’s cool.
Let’s just say that without Heller I wouldn’t be here today. I know
that sounds melodramatic, but he really has been a saviour for all
of us here. He took us in and brought us up when the rest of the
world had kicked us to the gutter.” Daniel paused. “I suppose you
could say that Heller likes to collect damaged people.” And he
smiled at me sadly with his terribly beautiful crooked smile. I
felt lower than the bottom of a politician’s shoe at that
moment.

Daniel’s
mobile rang and he spoke for a few moments, then apologised because
he had to leave as Heller needed him back in the office. I returned
to my flat and spent my first afternoon and evening at the
Warehouse unpacking, ‘shopping’ in the pantry and luxuriating in a
long hot bath. It was blissful and so quiet. Everything was clean,
fresh and tidy, and my cupboards were full of good food. And best
of all, there were no pimply, horny engineering students around,
trying to cop a feel at every opportunity. I was in heaven.

I pulled on
some old track suit pants and a baggy t-shirt. On my way to the
kitchen to begin dinner preparations, I was startled when Daniel
and Niq walked into my flat. I must have forgotten to lock the door
behind me when I came back from the pantry.

“We came to
see how you were settling in,” Daniel smiled, examining my dinner
ingredients. “Ooh, that looks great. What are you making?”

“Baked salmon
with dill and caper sauce, baked baby potatoes and an avocado and
rocket salad. Followed by some fresh strawberries and cream.” All
the food I craved when eating stolen burgers night after night.

Daniel and Niq
exchanged glances.

“That sounds
yum! Can I have dinner with you?” asked Niq.

Daniel
scolded, “Niq, it’s rude to invite yourself to dinner.”

I smiled.
“That’s okay. He can have dinner with me. Would you like to as
well, Daniel?”

“If it’s not
any trouble, Tilly. It does sound delicious and much better than
what I was going to cook.”

“Which is the
same thing he cooks every night,” complained Niq with all the scorn
a teenager can muster – a veritable Mount Everest of scorn. “The
only thing he knows how to cook. Pasta! Nothing but pasta, all the
time. Pasta today, pasta yesterday, pasta tomorrow.”

Daniel
blushed, but admitted sheepishly, “It’s true. I haven’t got a clue
how to cook.”

“You’re going
to have to run some errands for me though,” I demanded. “I need two
more pieces of salmon and some dill and flat-leaf parsley from the
herb garden.”

“What’s dill?”
asked Daniel with a puzzled expression.

“We haven’t
got a herb garden,” frowned Niq.

“Yes, we have.
It’s on the roof-top,” I explained patiently.

“Is that a
herb garden? I thought it was a bunch of weeds.”

I slapped my
forehead with my palm. “You two have a lot to learn. Come on,” and
we all trooped up to the roof-top.

I spent the
next thirty minutes giving them a lecture about herbs, their
different tastes and uses. By the end I was confident that they
could identify the major herbs by sight and smell.

Niq regarded
me seriously, something approaching respect in his big pale blue
eyes. “How do you know all this stuff? I don’t learn anything like
this at school, but it seems really useful to know.” Daniel nodded
his agreement, equally serious.

I shrugged,
trying to appear offhand, but secretly thrilled that they thought I
knew anything worthwhile. “Well Niq, my mum and my two grandmas
taught me how to cook and they all taught me all about herbs and
spices when I was a kid. Also, Mum’s a mad keen gardener and has a
lovely herb garden that I used to help her maintain when I was
younger.”

“Cool,” he
said and pondered for a moment. “Can I meet your mum one day?”

I ruffled his
hair, causing a flurry of urgent rearrangement of those carefully
poised locks. “Of course you can! She’d love to meet you. Word of
warning though, because you’re so skinny she’ll try to feed you
until you explode. And she’ll give you a lecture about your
piercings. She’s convinced you get diseases from body piercings. I
was never allowed to get any done except for my ears.”

“That would be
okay, I guess,” he said with his shy smile, still fixing his hair.
I watched him, a surprising rush of fondness flooding me.
Maybe
he would enjoy the attention
, I thought. I determined then to
give him loads of my time while I worked at
Heller’s
.

“You’ve done
me proud today, boys. I’ll make Jamie Olivers out of you both yet,”
I praised as Daniel correctly chose both the dill and the flat-leaf
parsley.

“Who’s that?”
asked Daniel, eyes wide.

“Jamie who?”
Niq asked simultaneously.

I stared at
them and palm-smacked my forehead again. “Oh brother! This is going
to be harder than I thought. Okay, let’s get dinner started and
I’ll walk you both through the steps.”

I turned
around to go back down the stairs with the herbs and ran smack-bang
into Heller who had been quietly standing behind me. It was like
hitting a brick wall. The impact crushed the parsley and sent me
reeling, but didn’t seem to have any effect on him. He grasped my
upper arms to steady me. I glanced down at the parsley, pulled a
face and looked up at him.

“You broke my
parsley,” I reproached and held out the ruined stalks for his
inspection.

The corners of
his mouth twitched. “I believe that you ran into me,” he pointed
out reasonably.

“Yes, but I
wasn’t expecting you to be standing behind me, otherwise I wouldn’t
have run into you,” I observed, equally reasonable.

“I was
enjoying listening to your demonstration. I hadn’t realised the
garden had such a variety of herbs. I’ll let Victor know that his
hard work is finally being appreciated. He will be pleased. Niq,
pick out some more parsley for Ms Chalmers, please,” he instructed.
“We don’t want her dinner to be delayed.”

“Victor? He’s
your valet, right? I haven’t met him yet,” I said, smiling my
thanks as Niq passed me a fresh bunch of parsley.

“And you never
will. Victor is an imaginary mythical creature that Heller invented
to scare the kiddies,” said Daniel mischievously. “No one ever sees
or hears him. And yet the pantry stays stocked, the place is kept
clean and the herbs are nurtured. Spooky!”

Heller’s lips
twitched again. “Daniel is teasing,” he explained to me seriously.
“He knows perfectly well that Victor is not imaginary. He’s just a
very private person. He doesn’t enjoy socialising. I accept
that.”

“He’s the Loch
Ness Monster of the business,” insisted Daniel, grinning. “Often
spoken about, even allegedly sighted on occasion, but no reliable
proof of his existence has yet been produced.”

“Daniel,”
Heller admonished gently, not without some tiny hint of laughter.
It was obvious that there was a great deal of affection between the
two men.

“Okay, okay.
I’ll stop,” he promised. “We have to go anyway. Tilly’s making us
dinner tonight.”

Heller
frowned. “Make sure you go to bed at a sensible time,” he said to
me, his good humour evaporated. “You will have a busy day tomorrow
with the stylists.” His wintry blue eyes raked over me, taking in
the unattractive and unflattering old clothes that I’d thrown on
earlier. “Not a moment too soon either,” he said unkindly and
walked away. I tried to cover the hurt that his mean comment caused
with a gigawatt smile as the three of us went back to my place.

We had had a
very pleasant dinner and evening together. I was very relaxed with
them, enjoyed their company and we all laughed easily. They were
both gentle sweet boys and I felt myself easily bonding with them.
I learned that Niq ostensibly lived with Heller, but in fact
flitted nomadically between Heller, Daniel and the twins as the
mood struck him. I had the distinct impression that he was
preparing to bunk down on my lounge after dinner, but Daniel moved
him on, pointing out that perhaps I might be allowed to spend one
night alone in my new abode. Niq reluctantly agreed.

I obeyed
orders and was tucked up in bed by ten. I had expected to toss and
turn in a new bed, but instead slept for a solid and blissful eight
hours, not missing the incessant thumping dance music from the rave
club and the smell of cooking meat from the kebab shop.

I slid out of
bed in the morning and changed into some exercise gear, thinking
that I’d better start shifting my flab before Heller made any more
rude comments. I crept down to the gym on the floor below, hoping
nobody else would be around. Luckily for me they weren’t, so I
spent thirty minutes on the treadmill and then did some light
weights. Better start easy, I thought as I left, eyeing the
intimidating huge bar weights waiting for someone stronger than me
to use.

I returned to
my flat, showered and ate breakfast. I didn’t have a wide choice of
business apparel, the loss of my pale rose suit fairly well
depleting it, so I slipped on runners, a pair of jeans and a
t-shirt. I left my hair loose that morning. A light application of
makeup finished my preparations, but couldn’t hide the bruising
that had fully developed across the bridge of my nose, or the
scratches from the exploding glass. I looked like I’d been
scrapping on the street downtown on a drunken Friday night.