Unsuitable (2 page)

3:       Witherspoon

There
probably wasn’t much point going in the house. Audrey Bates had already decided
he wasn’t Reese Witherspoon so he couldn’t be Mia’s nanny, manny, au pair,
minder, whatever you wanted to call it.

Audrey
Bates held the door open, smiling to hide her initial embarrassment. He could
call this whole thing quits now and make it to the beach in time to watch Sky
play her match. That’d earn him points. But then she’d be so big on I told you
so, and the appeal of that was about as attractive as Flip’s morning breath.

He
hedged his bets, one foot resting on the step above. “I’m not what you
expected.”

“You
have a terrific
résumé
.” She pulled it together fast.

“But
you expected—”

“To
interview Reece McGovern.”

Okaaay
then. He was going to miss Sky’s game, but she’d probably still get to say I
told you so. There was no way he was getting the job. This was lose/lose. He
gave a nod and came up the few steps and into the house. In the hallway, he
offered his hand. “Hi. What would you like me to call you?”

The
way she looked at his hand it might’ve been a banana, or a grenade, he almost
turned the gesture into straightening his collar—on a polo, total dick move,
but she saved him, and he couldn’t help smiling. She had a good firm handshake
and she looked him dead in the eye, though she was a shortie, and she had to
crank her neck.

“You
weren’t really going to call me Ms Bates, were you?”

That’s
exactly what he’d have called her. Her kid, her house, her job. No Mr Bates. She
wasn’t Audrey until she told him it was okay to call her that, and even then it
felt like he should be calling her Ms Audrey like they were in
Play School
.
They didn’t even do that in
Play School
any more. But she had that kind
of name, old-fashioned, formal. She didn’t look old-fashioned, or formal, or
old enough to be the mother of a three year old. She was pretty, glossy caramel
hair and very dark blue eyes. But then he didn’t look old enough to have raised
four kids already either.

“I
was actually,” he said. She laughed awkwardly and he rolled his shoulders, this
was still worth doing for the interview practice. “That’s lame, isn’t it?”

She
shrugged, “Oh, I don’t know. Ms Bates, I could probably get used to that. Come
through.” She stepped in front of him and he caught the scent of peanut butter.
“But then I’d have to call you Mr McGovern.”

If
it meant he got the job she could call him ‘hey you’. “I could probably get
used to that.”

And
he could get used to this house too. No scuff marks on the walls, no random
shoes, or frilly knickers lying around. Gin was a slob and Flip never put
anything she used away. No wet towel smell, which was a novelty. It was light
and warm and the rooms were big and generous, the ceilings high. The house had
the kind of scale that didn’t make him feel like a giant. Like he might be able
to walk around in here without knocking things over or feel like an ogre in a
doll’s house like he did in Sky’s tiny flat.

“You
should call me Audrey, and this is Mia.”

They
were in a lounge room. The TV was on,
Little Mermaid. Under the Sea
. Flip
loved that movie. There was a line she’d sing over and over about it being
better down where it’s wetter. Made him laugh every time. Like yo, Disney, one
for the grown-ups. He kept humour off his face though, because dirty smirking
at a singing crab wasn’t going to improve his chances.

Mia
was colouring. She was a miniature version of Audrey and wore the same open-mouthed
expression her mum had done at the front door during the not Reese Witherspoon
moment.

He
had that effect on kids. He had it on most people. You couldn’t be this big and
not make people think twice about whether you were safe. Or dumb. “Hello, Mia.”
He went straight to the floor, sat cross-legged a little way from her and slumped
to make himself smaller. She stared, her mouth a perfect circle, her eyes shiny
platters of blue.

“I’m
Reece.”

Mia
closed her mouth, put pressed her lips together. She tilted her head to the
side. She was checking him out big time. He sat still and let her run the show.

“Reece,
you don’t have to—”

Mia
came a little closer, but looked over his head to her mum. “New Cameron?”

“Cameron
is the name of our current nanny.”

“Reece,”
he repeated, keeping his eyes on Mia, smiling at her, but not too much, that
could be scary too.

Mia
took a step forward, and when he remained still, she took another.

“Hello
Mia.”

She
made a shocked hmmm sound when he said her name and he thought he might get
tears. If there were tears this was a bust. No one hired a dude who made their
kid cry first up.

No
one wanted to hire a dude to do this full stop.

He
watched Mia’s lips and chin for any sign of a wobble. She wavered on her feet,
then bent forward and touched his shin with her hand. He kept very still. She
patted the laces on his shoes. Then she poked his hand, pulled the hair his
forearm. She moved closer, humming to herself, then she put both hands to his
face and stared into his eyes. He stifled a shiver. She probably knew exactly how
he planned to play suckerfish to Sky’s little mermaid tonight.

“Oh,
Mia,” said Audrey, in that fond parent tone, the one Charlie had never used.

Reece
didn’t move. Neither did Mia, but she hummed and fluttered her oversize
eyelashes and held his face. She was making up her mind. He didn’t think she
was going to start wailing now, the time for that had passed.

“Mia,
honey, don’t do that to Reece.”

Her
eyes flicked up to Audrey, then to Reece’s. She let his face go then pushed on
his arm with a grunt. “Move dis.”

He
lifted his arm and she perched on his knee and leant back on his side. “Read
me.” Hah. He’d won the kid, but her mother was another story.

“Oh
for heaven’s sake.” Audrey walked around and stood in front of them, hands to
her hips. “Reece doesn’t want to read to you,” she said to Mia, and to him,
“Sorry about this.”

“Why?”
said Mia.

She
gave a little bounce, which he felt in his hip joint. “I’m happy to read a
story.”

“I’m
being snowed.” Audrey went to the coffee table and pulled out
Hairy Maclary
.
She handed him the book. “By both of you.”

He
read
Hairy Maclary
with Mia turning the pages. When he got to the end
she bounced. “Again.”

“No,
Mia. I need to talk to Reece now. You can have
The
Little Mermaid
from the beginning.”

Mia
clung onto his arm. “No.”

“Mia,
will you draw me a picture of Hairy Maclary?”

She
looked him in the eye. “Okay.” She scrambled off his knee and went to the
colouring book.

Reece
stood, doing it slowly so not to alarm anyone.

“Neat
trick.” Audrey sounded pissed off.

“Sorry,
sometimes I scare little kids without meaning to.” Not just little kids, little
kid’s mothers. “You need to get that first impression right.” Not something he
could fix with Audrey.

“Yes,
well.” Audrey patted the couch. “You can sit here.”

He
sat beside her and Audrey grilled him like a t-bone. No medium rare about it. She
got stuck in, going over his quals and experience.

“Why
do you want to be a nanny?”

A
reasonable question. But he had to answer it and not sound like a creep. A
chick could say, because I love kids. A guy like him says it and it’s suspect.

“Little
people are fascinating. They’re learning so much at this age, every day
something new.” That’s what he felt, and he said it without cringing.

Audrey
angled her head to the side. “Everyday Mia wants to do the same things,
sometimes in a precise order. Child care isn’t exactly a job with built in
excitement, it’s more about routine at this age.”

Okaay.
He smiled. Audrey was going to make him pay for charming Mia. He could tell her
he’d spent years thinking he’d be a builder, constructing homes with cement and
glass and steel, but what he’d missed when he was laying bricks and rendering cement
was the human contact, the sense he was contributing to something more
important than a home beautiful experience. But that made him sound creepy too.

“I
appreciate the need for routine, but there’s also so much learning going on in
a kid’s head. So much to absorb and understand. I like being a part of that
process.”

“That
doesn’t tell me why you’d choose to be a nanny. You could be a school teacher.”

He’d
thought about that. Primary school. But it was kids before they even got as far
as the schoolyard who interested him most. Again, hard not to sound like he was
wearing an overcoat about to flash his privates and dangle a boiled lolly. Working
with kids was historically women’s work and yeah, he knew he was bucking the
trend, but he’d never figured on the inbuilt bias against a man wanting to work
with kids.

“I
considered regular teaching and I still might go down that track in the future.”
It was easier with older kids. There was a demand for more male teachers to
counter the number of single parent families where mum was in charge. “For now
I want a nanny position because little kids fascinate me.”

“They’re
loud, sulky, erratic egomaniacs, who haven’t got a clue they don’t run the
world.”

“Yeah,”
he laughed. “I love that. Look, I know this is the most basic question, but if
I tell you I love kids from two to five years old, I sound like a dirty
pervert. Particularly because I look like this.” He kept his eyes on Audrey,
waiting to see dismissal. “But I do love kids this age. They’re like aliens
learning everything for the first time and I find that exciting.”

“How
often do you work-out?”

The
abrupt change in tack surprised him. “I, ah. I worked my way though my degree
as a builder’s labourer. That’s what I thought I wanted to do with my life,
build homes. My size is genetic and I keep fit, but if you’re worried I’ll want
time off to work-out, don’t be. The job comes first.”

Audrey
gave a solemn nod. And fair enough. His physicality was always the elephant in
the room, courtesy of a father he’d only seen pictures of and a whole past life
she didn’t need to know about.

“Tell
me about your child care roles.”

Mia
bought him a page of scribble to look at while he told Audrey about the Flannery
boys and then Jayden Ramsey. But neither of those jobs would help her feel
comfortable about him caring for Mia. She listened politely but she was
somewhere else while he talked about Jayden’s hyperactivity and Liam Flannery’s
diabetes. Mia bought her colouring and sat closer to him. What he really needed
to do was to tell Audrey about the girls, but that meant telling her about his
family and it didn’t seem professional.

“You’ve
got excellent experience caring for boys.”

He
wanted to ask what she thought the difference was. Every kid was different. Callum
Flannery loved to play dress-ups, the more it glittered the better. Some
mornings he wouldn’t leave the house without lip gloss. He was five and he had firm
opinions about his haircuts. This was going to happen to Reece in other
interviews unless he only ever applied to care for boys.

“I
also cared for my four sisters.”

Audrey
smiled one of those polite grins that looked more like pity for a try-hard. Family
didn’t count. Except that for him it did.

“When
I was ten, Charlie—that’s Mum, remarried. She had four kids in six years, one
set of twins. My stepdad was a long distance truck driver, he wasn’t around
much and when he was, he was sick. He died of cancer the year my mum was
pregnant with my baby sis, Pippa.

“When
I was sixteen Charlie got sick. With all that I did a lot of child care. It was
me who looked after the twins and Pippa. If I wasn’t at school, I had family responsibilities.”

He’d
been too busy to be frustrated and angry about that at the time, but later,
what a blow-out, but not something Audrey needed to know about.

“Charlie
had to work and she went to hospitality college so she could get a better job. I
changed nappies, I made up bottles. I washed, cooked, cleaned, and supervised
homework. Mum worked shifts, doubles whenever she could.”

And
those hard times when he’d had to choose family over friends made him who he
was. He’d rebelled, as soon as he was out of school, three years of being bad
tempered, resenting the girls, and Charlie especially, until he realised he was
only hurting himself. He loved his family more than anything else in his life.

“I
helped to bring my sisters up.” He stood. He’d hacked this up, there was no
point sitting through further questions. “I know you probably think family
doesn’t count in a
résumé
.
I’m sorry I wasted your time.”