“Oh, for f—” I break off, tears pricking my eyes. We stand in silence for several minutes, my breathing ragged, him motionless behind me. The icy wind whips at my bare legs.
“I don’t mind if we walk,” he says finally. “It’s a nice evening.”
“It’s not nice, it’s freezing.” If he’s going to be with me no matter what, I may as well be warm. I turn and storm back to his SUV without a word. The indicators on the Land Rover flash and I yank open the passenger door and get inside. A moment later he gets in the driver’s side and starts the engine, and we slip out into traffic. Screw this guy and screw my dad. What am I going to do?
“I don’t think you know my name,” he says.
I shrug and turn my face away from him.
“It’s Dieter Vanderbroeck.”
“Whatever.”
“That’s not very friendly.”
“Piss off.”
I fantasize about firing this Dieter Vanderbroeck, getting in the front door and slamming it in his face. But he’s not mine to fire. I need to convince my father that he’s wrong about me needing him. My scowl deepens—admitting he’s wrong is just about the last thing my father would ever do.
It takes about twenty minutes to get across London and we pass them in stony silence. Dieter pulls into a parking space near the house and cuts the engine. “I have some things for you.” Leaning across me he opens the glove box, digs around for a moment and drops two objects into my hands. “Rape alarm. Self-defense spray.”
“Wow. And it’s not even my birthday.” I turn the spray over in my hands. I’m still annoyed that he wouldn’t let me walk home alone, but I ask, “Is this pepper spray?” He’s armed me. Neat. I’ll spray it in his stupid face.
He shakes his head, his manner brisk and businesslike. “Pepper spray is illegal in the UK. This is an indelible red ink. Press there, and aim for the eyes like you would pepper spray.”
“Ink? That sounds lame. Can’t I have something illegal?”
“No, you can’t. There’s something I need you to do. You’re still active on your social media accounts. Black them out, for a few weeks at least. Don’t just ghost, deactivate, so that journalists and stalkers can’t trawl back through your feeds and find things out about you.”
I raise an eyebrow at him. “What, that I like bubble tea?”
“No. That you associate with this person who might be persuaded to dish dirt on you for a few hundred pounds. That you made a flippant remark once that might be construed as referring to something illegal or immoral. That you have photos that can be manipulated and placed on revenge porn websites.”
“Everyone’s so hysterical about the internet.” Revenge porn. Crap. Who would do stuff like that?
He levels me a hard look, the color of his gray eyes deepening. “Don’t be naïve, Adrienne. The internet is why you need me in the first place.”
I fold my arms. I don’t need him. He’s no more than a sop to my father’s conscience.
“Do we have an agreement?” he asks.
I turned off the notifications on all my social media accounts not long after the video broke and I haven’t opened them since. Shutting them down completely for a while seems like a good idea, though my impulse is not to do what he says.
Dieter’s silent a moment, watching me closely. “How do you feel about what happened to Connie Masters?”
The question comes out of nowhere. I feel the familiar flash of anxiety that follows reading or hearing her name or seeing her picture in the paper. They always use the picture of her as a teenager, from back when she was on television. I don’t know what causes my anxiety and I don’t want to examine it. She’s dead and there’s nothing I can do. Her suicide didn’t even have anything to do with me, so why should I feel this way?
Shoving his stupid ink spray into my bag, I say, “Don’t try and do the shrink-thing on me, or pretend that you ‘care about what I’m going through.’” My fingers make air quotes. “It’s not your job to talk.”
I fling open the car door and head for the house. Being rude to him feels good. As we push through the waiting journalists I realize something: I don’t have to convince my father to get rid of my bodyguard. All I need to do is force Dieter to quit.
* * *
I find the drawing shoved under my bedroom door the next morning and study it as I go downstairs. It shows a stiff, suited man with a robotic expression standing amid a dozen art students who are bent over their easels. He’s comically large and out of place. The caption reads, I don’t always go where I’m not wanted, but when I do I make sure everyone knows what a jerk I am.
From an artistic point of view it’s rather good. Adrienne’s caught my likeness in just a few strokes. What’s more, she’s depicted exactly how it feels to be a personal security officer sometimes: intrusive and superfluous. You have to be with your principal in situations where you know they’re probably safe, but you still can’t leave them alone. At times you can feel how much your principal resents, if not you, then the fact that they need you. I’ve schooled myself to consider it just another part of the job.
Being resented wholesale, like how Adrienne resents me, is new, though.