The Nanny (7 page)

She contented herself with the knowledge that whatever Josh was saying about her was clearly puerile, and, anyway, she felt the same about him times infinity, with knobs on.

Josh, via the telephone, was handed round to every child, and she had to hear every single one laugh at something he said, then say, “No, she's really nice,” until she wanted to scream.

“He called you Mary Poppins,” explained Tallulah eventually. “And did an impersonation of your voice on the phone.”

Jo was so impressed that a four-year-old knew what the word “impersonation” meant that she hardly had time to be mortally offended.

Zak and Toby laughed.

“Don't worry,” Cassandra whispered. “I love Mary Poppins.”

Jo smiled at Cassandra. “Thank you,” she said.

“It's alright,” shrugged Cassandra. “Josh is just”—she looked at her brothers—“a boy.”

As the boys cheered, Jo, Cassandra, and Tallulah all shared a moment of mutual understanding.

Before tea was over, Vanessa arrived home. She wandered into the kitchen, put various shopping bags on the floor, and amid the screamed questions, “Did you get me anything?” “What's in the blue bag?” “Why's your hair a different color?” assessed the situation fairly accurately.

Hands on hips, she stared at her family until they all shut up, then said quietly, “I thought I heard a bomb while I was in Hampstead, but I had no idea it had hit my own kitchen.”

The children, including Dick, laughed at this, so it was Jo alone who took in the scene through Vanessa's eyes. The kitchen was a disaster. She felt a pang of pity for Vanessa until Vanessa said to her, “I'm sure Dick'll give you a hand with this lot,” when she felt a much bigger pang of pity for herself. Vanessa was still talking, “Then when you've finished, we can go through the week's schedule. Right!” She turned to her family. “I'm having a hot bath. Approach at your peril.”

And before Jo had time to cry, “Wait for me!” she was gone.

By the time Jo had cleared away the mess in the kitchen, learned from Dick where everything belonged, and had just enough time to open her suitcase and look at it for a while, Vanessa felt like a new woman.

They met at the kitchen table for Jo's first Sunday evening debriefing. Vanessa was in her fluffy bathrobe, her hair in a towel, and her face cleansed. Jo was in a foul mood, her hair in a mess and her face clenched.

“Right,” started Vanessa, taking a big breath. “Zak goes to St. Albert's in Hampstead—I recommend beating the rush hour, otherwise, you'll be in traffic all morning. Cassie goes to St. Hilda's on the way in Highgate, doesn't mind being dropped off halfway up the hill if there's traffic. Tallulah goes to the local Montessori, but we do like her to walk, so we'd rather you drive her back home after dropping the other two off and then walk her up there please. It's wonderful exercise, one big hill! Lulah gets picked up at midday. Once a week she does Tumble Tots and once a week she does ballet, her tutu's on the back of her bedroom door, don't forget it please, she has been known to cry until she turns blue. The other two are out at twenty past three, Zak first, because Cassie's old enough to start walking home with a friend or doesn't mind waiting—always find out which in the morning, she often forgets to tell you. After school Zak does Beavers and karate and has tutors for math and English at home, in the dining room. Cassie does drama and music at school, Brownies, ballet, tap, and jazz outside school in Muswell Hill, she can change there, address on the fridge, A-Z with the cookbooks by the kitchen door.

“The two older children practice piano and recorders once a week each at least, in the dining room. (The local pharmacist has very good earplugs.) Zak needs his recorder for school on Monday, Cassie—treble
and
descant—on Friday.

“Their weekly schedule is on the fridge calendar—off the top of my head I can't remember which day is which. All I do know is that we had a nanny once who took Cassie to karate, Tallulah to Beavers, Zak to ballet, and she was back in the bosom of her family in Norfolk that night. Oh! And of course, whenever she can squeeze it in, my mother, Diane, pops in to see the children—they adore her. All you really need to remember is that Tuesday's the nightmare day when it's so stupid you have to make packed teas for all of them as well as lunches—oh that reminds me, Zak's packed lunches must always have cheesey straws in
them, otherwise he literally doesn't eat anything else. All day. He also has every pair of pants ironed. Otherwise, he won't wear them. Tallulah's lunch box is Tweenies—Zak's is Superman—Cassie's is Buffy. Please don't mix them up or they will be bullied.” Vanessa frowned suddenly. “Any questions?”

Jo's brain started curling at the edges.

“Ooh,” remembered Vanessa, diving into her handbag. “Here's your new mobile phone.” She handed Jo a tiny, silver mobile phone. “Needs to be recharged at least every other day—don't we all?—your number is here on this card. Please keep it on at all times and feel free to give the number to friends and family. It is yours now. You may get calls for Francesca but that won't go on for long and you'll always know because they can't speak English and don't expect her to be able to either.

“My work number is here.” She handed Jo her card. “Extension 4435 if the girl on reception doesn't put you through immediately or cuts you off. Dick's work number is here.” She handed Jo Dick's card. “No extension number, but sometimes he doesn't answer because there's a customer in the shop and he's out celebrating.

“Here is your set of front door keys, our home alarm code is 4577 hash or gate, under the stairs, write that down if you need to but never keep it in the same bag as the door keys, because if you lose it and we're burgled, we won't get anything back on insurance and Dick will hire someone to kill you. Please activate it whenever you go out. We don't turn it on at night just in case one of the children wanders downstairs and sets it off. Here are your car keys, you are third-party insured and a member of the AA. There are speed cameras on every road that doesn't have speed bumps. The children get carsick over sixty miles an hour. Always keep spare paper bags in the glove compartment.”

She frowned again. “I recommend you clean out the cats' litter tray at least every other day. Otherwise, it gets unbearable. Just feed them at lunch, cat food in the utility room, I do breakfast and Dick does dinner. It's the one job we've managed to share. Fish food is in the utility room, the children feed Homer once a week, usually Fridays, but they do need help getting him down. I don't want them climbing the work tops. And I don't want cat food in the fish tank, as the last-but-one nanny found out when it lost her her job and killed the fish.”

Vanessa leaned in and whispered. “This is actually Homer I-I.” She tapped her nose.
“Entre nous.”

They blinked at each other, Jo feeling the blood draining from her limbs.

Vanessa leaned out again. “I suppose you want to unpack now,” she said brightly.

“Not really,” said Jo.

“Maybe tomorrow then,” said Vanessa, sympathetically.

Jo nodded without moving her head.

Vanessa stood up and walked to the fridge, took out a bottle of wine and, looking back at Jo, pointed at it, her perfect eyebrows arked in a question.

Jo shook her head. “I think I might go to bed actually, if that's alright.”

Vanessa's eyes widened.

“Of course!” she exclaimed. “You must be exhausted. Just say good night to the children and you're a free agent.”

Jo saying good night to the children was clearly more for Vanessa's good night's sleep than for Jo or the children's. Following Vanessa's directions, Jo popped her head round the corner of Tallulah's room. Tallulah was already in bed thumb in mouth, eyelids drooping as Daddy told her a story. Jo whispered good night to her and got a beguiling smile back. She knocked on Cassandra's door and found Cassandra sitting up on her bed, writing furiously into a furry pink diary. Jo said good night and Cassandra looked momentarily distracted, answered politely, then returned to her writing. Then Jo went upstairs to say good night to Zak.

She never saw the light saber coming and didn't stand a chance. At the sound of it hitting her skull, Zak bounced out of bed squealing with delight. His plan had worked! No burglar would see it coming! He was an Action Hero! He clutched his willy in excitement.

Vanessa was very sympathetic. “Little shit,” she confided to Jo, while rubbing arnica in her forehead. “One day I'm going to stick that light saber where the instructions specifically tell you not to.”

As way of an apology for her son's behavior, Vanessa insisted Jo join her and Dick for a welcome toast, which had the fortunate side effect of putting off their Monday morning's approach even further.

“Sunday evenings are the pits, aren't they?” murmured Vanessa as she poured her a generous glass of wine.

“Mm,” agreed Jo. “They can be.”

“Not for everyone, darling,” said Dick. “Maybe, unlike us, Jo enjoys her job.”

“Don't be ridiculous,” said Vanessa. “No one enjoys their job.”

“I do,” said Dick.

“That's because it's not a job,” countered his wife. “It's a hobby.”

“A hobby that pays for the children's education, all our holidays, half the bills, and luxuries like a full-time nanny,” said Dick quietly.

Vanessa turned to Jo.

“Dick's daddy left him a trust fund in his will,” she told her. “So he bought a record shop to play with. For the three people left in the country who haven't taken to those newfangled, one-night-wonders CDs.”

“Now, now,” said Dick, before turning to Jo. “CDs are a passing phase. Records are imbued with memories.”

“Which is why people never got rid of them in the first place and don't need to buy new ones, darling.”

“There's a flat above the shop,” Dick continued to confide in Jo, “which I did up myself at great personal cost and rent out at spectacular rates.” He sighed. “It's not easy being a landlord. Big responsibility. Which is how we never have to worry about a single bill and my wife can enjoy all the latest fashions and an extensive beauty regime.”

“With what's left over from the mortgage and children's clothes, school equipment and toys, obviously,” finished Vanessa. “It was before he met me, of course,” she continued to Jo, as if Dick hadn't spoken. “Otherwise, he'd have got a proper job and invested it in something that would have been of some use to his family, like shares or a villa in Nice or a yacht. But boys will have their toys.”

“Not all of their toys, darling.”

Vanessa responded to this under the pretext of filling Jo in on vital background information.

“I insisted on a dining room table in the dining room instead of a train set,” she explained. “Poor Dick. He'll never get over the disappointment.”

“But it's alright,” he added to Jo, their new couples' counselor, “because we've now got the ugliest dining room table in the world.”

“To match your first wife,” said his second into her Pinot Grigio.

“More wine?” Dick asked Jo.

“Yes, please,” she replied.

Jo found herself in her new bedroom suite, completely on her own, with the entire evening at her disposal, at precisely midnight. She tripped briefly over her open suitcase and discarded rucksack and lay on her bed too exhausted to cry. After a few moments, she hauled her clothes off her
body and got straight under the duvet, where she suddenly became wide-awake. There she lay, blinking in the dark for four hours. By 4
a.m
., she hated London, hated the Fitzgeralds, hated children, and hated her life. By 4:01
a.m
. she fell into a heavy sleep. And just two-and-a-half short hours later, she was very rudely awakened.

Jo could probably have coped with the wake-up call of a pneumatic drill thundering through her skull had she not just been dreaming about chancing upon a mute, shell-shocked, virgin Ben Affleck skinny-dipping through her private lagoon. No time is good to wake up to the sound of a pneumatic drill thundering through one's skull, but this really did feel like an all-time low.

She opened her eyes and waited for the familiar sounds of the not-so-distant River Avon to emerge from the clamor inside her head. She kept on waiting. Eventually, she poked her head out from beneath the duvet. She was most disoriented to discover that she was not in her bedroom, but in some
ikea
nightmare. And then suddenly, it all came back to her. She was in hell, north London.

She lay in her bed, staring at nothing and hoping for a quick, painless end when, as suddenly as it had started, the pneumatic drill stopped. Bliss. Utter silence. She treated herself to a flashback of a mute, shell-shocked, virgin Ben Affleck discovering her private lagoon's hidden waterfall when she was disturbed by the sound of an avalanche outside her window. She screamed and leaped out of bed.

Nervously, she tweaked the curtain aside and came face-to-face with three burly builders, one wheelbarrow, and a builders' chute down the side of the neighboring house. The builders all spotted her and as one, grinned the male grin, a highly efficient communication shortcut, specific to their gender, that makes their minds transparent. She pushed the curtain back and leaned against the wall.

After her power shower, Jo picked the first outfit from her suitcase that didn't look like it had been through a wringer, dressed quickly, and appeared in the kitchen. It was empty. She put the kettle on and tried to remember where the tea bags were kept, while keeping an ear out for upstairs. When the pneumatic drill started up again, she decided to venture up to the children. Perhaps she could ask them to hide her.

No one was awake. She looked at her watch. It was late. The children had to be in school soon. She knocked gently on Vanessa and Dick's bedroom door, then on Tallulah's and Cassandra's.

Within seconds, there was grand-scale panic in the Fitzgerald household.

“We've overslept!”
Vanessa yelled to the world, putting up an impressive contest with the drill.
“Get up now! Jo will be taking you in ten minutes flat.”

Jo decided it would be a good time to work out where the schools were, so ran downstairs to get the A-Z.

“Where are you going?” cried Vanessa.

“Downstai—”

“Dick needs help getting the kids up while I shower!”

Dick did indeed need help. Tickling children in their half sleep until they accidentally punch you in the face has never proved to be the fastest way of waking them up.

Starting to feel panicky herself now, Jo opened their curtains and told them that if they were down in ten minutes, she'd make them a surprise treat for dinner. And the first one down could have the biggest helping. It worked wonders as they had yet to sample her cooking.

Jo hardly noticed that when she left for school with the children neither Dick nor Vanessa had left their home, and Dick was not even dressed. All she did notice was that she hit a traffic jam almost immediately and her car had a much lower clutch than she'd imagined. She spent most of her first school run moving her car seat backward and forward, pretending she knew what she was cooking that night and taking a wrong turn. There simply wasn't time for them to drive home and walk Tallulah to school, so Jo made an executive decision. “If Mummy and Daddy can't wake her up in time, I can't walk her to school,” she self-justified. “Maybe it will teach them not to do it again.”

As she and Tallulah drove down Highgate Hill, Jo saw with increasing trepidation just how steep it was. She had visions of her crawling up it in future. She told herself that within weeks her legs would be shapely as well as slim, and her heart would be at its peak of good health. Either that or she'd be dead from exhaustion.

When she got home after dropping Tallulah off, she had to clean the kitchen and finish the ironing. She also wanted to phone Shaun. She assumed the kitchen would be an easy job, but discovered that it couldn't possibly have been cleaned properly since the nanny before Francesca. Afterward she was exhausted and made herself a quick cuppa, stretching
her back out while the kettle boiled. With a mug of tea to fortify her, she started the ironing. She made another interesting discovery. Everything was in the ironing pile. Jo was just about to take her first swig of tea and call Shaun when she realized that if she had to walk up the hill to Tallulah's school, she would be late if she didn't leave five minutes ago. She picked up the keys and left the house, remembering to set the alarm first.

Her calf muscles were trembling and sweat was clinging to her back by the time she turned into the little side street where Tallulah's Montessori nursery was. She saw the single-file line of parents queueing outside the school. She stood, at the back of it, wondering how Tallulah would feel about carrying her home.

Vanessa had mentioned that for security reasons each child was passed individually to his or her “carer of choice” by the teacher, rather than allowing anyone to wander in off the street and take any child away with them. She had expected to have to explain who she was and give everyone a potted history of her CV, as any new nanny in Niblet would have had to do. But not here.

After a few moments a woman arrived behind her, and Jo thought that at last someone friendly had come to save her.

“Hello,” came a voice behind her.

She whipped round and was about to answer when she heard the woman in front of her start up a conversation with her would-be companion. And then to her disbelief, the two women continued a wholehearted conversation around her as if she was invisible. As they spoke about the merits of Hatha yoga compared to Iyengar, Jo tried very hard not to think of her parents.

By the time Tallulah sprang out at Jo, smiling and waving her little hand, Jo wanted to hug her till she cried. Luckily, Tallulah was too interested in what was for dinner to notice anything amiss. The two of them walked down the hill, making conversation about the surprise treat.

“Is it chicken?” asked Tallulah.

“No.”

“Chips?”

“No.”

Tallulah gasped. “Cheese fondue!” she cried.

Take me home,
thought Jo. “What is your all-time favorite food?” she said instead. The question was a sure winner. Every four-year-old's favorite food fitted in nicely with her easy recipe for chocolate Rice Krispies.

Tallulah was quiet for a while. Then she opened her eyes wide, and said in hushed awe, “Homemade hummus on home-baked brioche with garlic-stuffed olives.”

Jo knelt beside her. “Well, sweetie,” she exclaimed. “It's not that.”

Jo planned to phone Shaun during Tallulah's ballet lesson but made the fatal error of deciding to catch a quick glimpse of Tallulah in her full tutu glory before nipping out to make the call. After half an hour of standing mesmerised by eleven fairies in the fairy wood, she realized she'd missed her chance. So she joined the other parents on the small chairs at the end of the room.

Tallulah was being a tree. Stretching up, up, up into the sky in a pink glittery concoction of feminine fancy topped with a pink flowery headband. Next to Tallulah stood, treelike, a tiny, squat four-year-old wearing a thermal vest under her tutu, ballet shoes that she would grow into well within the decade, and the face of a fairy elephant. Her mother sat beside Jo with love in her eyes.

“That's right, Xanthe!” sang the teacher, “join in.”

Xanthe was far more interested in pensively picking her nose and watching Tallulah being a tree.

“Ooh, Tallulah,” chirruped the teacher, “you're
a lovely
tree. Isn't she a lovely tree, everybody?”

Ten four-year-olds stopped being trees for a while and looked at Tallulah. Tallulah opened her face to the sun and thought tree thoughts.

“
What
a lovely tree,” cooed the teacher. “Are you an oak or chestnut?”

“Banana.”

“Oooh,” said the teacher.
“Lovely.”

Jo only just stopped herself from tapping the woman next to her and telling her that she was Tallulah's nanny. Before she knew it, the class was over and she realized she would have to wait to phone Shaun until after they got back home.

By the time they got back, Jo's schedule was tight. Tallulah had to be changed from a fairy to a four-year-old and eased down from the dizzy heights of tree stardom while tea had to be thought about and prepared, all within the strict deadline of pickup time for the older two children.

As the afternoon wore on, Jo's need to speak to Shaun grew increasingly uncomfortable, like an unheeded blister. Usually by now they'd have spoken briefly first thing in the morning, had a lunchtime catch-up and then squeezed in a quickie mid-afternoon to make tonight's arrange
ments. She'd have had macro-and micro-details of his day from the traffic jam on his way into work to today's sandwich fillings and, if there'd been time, they'd have even managed a row. After being together for so many years they could fast-track from easy-going chat to heated row within moments. But today, there had been no time to even start one. Not talking to Shaun gave Jo the oddest sensation of having gone too far out at sea and lost sight of the shore. But every time she picked up the phone, Tallulah bounced in with another query or demand, with the energy and persistence of a delirious pup.

To her amazement, Jo got tea, Tallulah and herself as ready as they both needed to be in time to pick up the other two. She'd have to phone Shaun this evening, she told herself firmly, and until then she'd just have to cope with being all at sea. Just as she was about to leave the house, the phone had rung. It was Diane, Vanessa's mother.

Luckily, she explained to Jo, she could squeeze in a little visit before her bridge game, as long as the children were home on time. She would be there at four
on the dot
, so Jo promised that would be fine and was now in a hurry. Tallulah was only too pleased to hurry along beside Jo, because she had been the best tree and she hardly had room in her little body for all the happiness. In fact, bits of happiness kept bursting out in the form of unexplained giggles and skips.

They got to Zak's school in good time. Zak caught their eye in the playground and nodded briefly with an easy smile. Then he went to shake his teacher's hand and doff his cap before obediently approaching, handing Jo his football as if she had been waiting for it all along, taking her hand in his, asking her how she was, then telling her about his day in intimate detail.

Zak and Tallulah spent an enjoyable ten minutes in the car together, as Jo drove to pick up Cassandra. They found her sitting on her own on a low wall wearing a glum expression of world-weariness. With barely a flicker of recognition, she got wordlessly into the back of the car. All three children were in their own little worlds, and Jo left them to it, concentrating on getting home without traveling via Manchester.

“I was a tree,” Tallulah told them all.

When Jo got them all home at one minute to four, she discovered she'd forgotten the alarm code. Zak remembered it, but fell over on the way to the understairs cupboard and wailed so loudly he almost deafened the beeping of the alarm, but not quite. Tallulah went to look at Zak's knee while Cassandra calmly punched in the four-digit code and
told Zak to stop crying like a baby. Jo wondered if now would be a good time for her to slip away home. She looked at her watch. Thirty seconds until Diane arrived. She wondered if Diane would be anything like her daughter.

 

Meanwhile, Diane's daughter was rather enjoying her day. Most of it had been run-of-the-mill. That morning, she walked briskly past reception at Gibson Bead Advertising Agency in Soho, holding a steaming black coffee in one hand and a bulging briefcase in the other. She headed for the lift, her strappy shoes clacking on the marble floor. She pressed the lift button and checked her makeup in the glistening reflection of the lift door. Her eyes drifted behind her. There she saw Anthony Harrison from Creatives enter the building, wink at the receptionist, and stride toward the lift, whistling as he approached. She turned her head away from him and pretended to look at something on the far wall, a gesture which her subconscious knew was far more likely to attract his attention than actually engaging him in conversation.

Anthony Harrison was one of the few of the Creative team copywriters with whom Vanessa would have actually liked to work. Creatives were notoriously pampered, spoiled, and impossible, but Anthony Harrison managed to turn those traits into engaging proofs of genius. He was the man who had come up with the hugely successful
Bloody Hell—It's That Time Again
tampon campaign and the gloriously ironic copy of the L'Oréal line,
Equality—Because I'm Worth It
campaign. He seemed to be able to slip effortlessly into women's heads. Probably because he had similar access to their knickers. Vanessa prided herself on being the only woman in the entire office who was impervious to Anthony Harrison's charms. Yes, he was good-looking, creative, intelligent, and charming, she could see all that. But from about the age of three, when Vanessa had first started loving everything about the male sex, she had been attracted only to dark men. As far as she had always been concerned, blond men were as manly as Barbie. It just didn't work for her. All her boyfriends had been dark-haired, and her husband was dark-haired and olive-skinned, with soulful brown eyes. Anthony Harrison had thick hair that flopped over his forehead in an endearingly boyish way, but it was flaxen. His skin was smooth as silk, but it was fair; his eyes were deep and penetrating, but they were blue. Vanessa was safe.