The Nanny (15 page)

Jenna bites her lip. I drain my coffee, feeling slightly guilty. I shouldn’t have thrown Clare under the bus like that. I don’t want this conversation coming back to bite me on the
ass one day. But these are
my
kids too, a fact both Clare and Jenna tend to forget.

Screw it. It felt good to finally say what’s on my mind.

I grab my briefcase and head into the office. For once, Lady Luck is on my side; I have a better day than I have done for months. Several potentially risky trades come off, and by the closing
bell I’ve earned several million for the bank, and 220 against my personal debt. If I can hold the line, I may – just
may
– survive this.

I emerge from the Tube a little earlier than usual into one of those rare, warm May evenings. Everyone is spilling on to the pavements from cafés and restaurants, eager to grab the first
real summer warmth of the year.

My mood lifts. I mull over my conversation this morning with Jenna as I walk home, and realize I’ve been more than a little unfair to Clare. Aside from the fact that I shouldn’t have
sold her out to the nanny, much of what I said wasn’t even true. Clare always made it clear she wouldn’t give up work – although she did say she’d stay at home for the first
six months – and it’s me who moved the goalposts, not her. I was the one who secretly hoped she’d change once the babies came. It’s not her fault she didn’t.

I’ve got to come clean, and tell Clare what I’ve done. Our marriage is in serious trouble otherwise. I can’t live with the guilt and worry any longer.

A siren shatters the calm of the evening. An ambulance roars past, jumping a red light, and I nearly get my toes run over by a van pulling onto the kerb out of its way. I don’t know how
I’m going to break it to her. I know Clare: she’ll want to close the bet now. But if we do that, we’ll have to sell the house to pay off our debts. Even then, it’ll take us
a long time to recover financially. It’ll mean living somewhere smaller, in a less upscale neighbourhood. We’ll have to let Jenna go, too. We can forget Eton for Rowan. Oh Christ. What
a fucking mess.

As soon as I see the ambulance parked outside the house, I know it’s bad.

‘Did you know Marc’s cheating you?’

Not cheating
on
you. Cheating you. Funny how I heard the difference straight away, and understood instantly what it meant.

Once Xan had sobered up, he came round and gave me the whole story. A friend of his at one of the big investment houses had heard about Marc’s losses at the bank. It’s common
knowledge in the City, apparently. And then suddenly the debt was settled. Xan had a hunch, and got one of his contacts at the Fraud Office to do a bit of after-hours checking. He didn’t know
how to break it to me, so he went out and got drunk.

Jenna’s still young enough to think an affair is the worst thing that can happen. I almost wish Marc had been unfaithful. At least I could rationalize that:
He’s so much younger
than me, men are easily tempted, it didn’t mean anything, it was just a fling
.

He’s been draining money from my company for months. I think I knew it had to be Marc, even before I sat down with my forensic lawyer and went through the books. He hadn’t really
tried to cover his tracks. He’d wiped out a year’s profit in less than two months. I didn’t know, but I could guess, why he needed it: in another life, Marc would have been one of
those desperate men crowding the bookies, grey-faced, living on hope and the never-never.

Bad enough that he’d stolen from me, but then, when I dug deeper, I discovered the second, usurious mortgage, when we’re struggling with the first. The roof over our children’s
heads. How could he think I wouldn’t find out?

Until Xan came to me, I’d had no idea of the scale of the debt. One million eight hundred and thirty thousand pounds. It’s almost inconceivable.

I nearly left him, there and then. I felt so betrayed that he could risk everything we’ve built up over the years like this. But at the end of the day, it’s
our
money, after
all. We’re not one of those couples with separate accounts, who go on holiday together and then split the bills fifty-fifty. How can you promise to share your lives with each other until
death parts you if you can’t even share a bank account?

So I decided to swallow it and say nothing. Marc would come to me in his own time and own up. And in the meantime – well, in the meantime, I quietly moved the company’s investment
funds and capital assets out of his reach.

It’s just . . . I’m so
angry
with him. I can hardly bear to look at him, much less sleep with him. I want to forgive him. I just don’t know if I can.

I startle when Craig nudges my elbow. ‘It’s
him
,’ he whispers.

The angry American, Cooper Garrett. Craig says he’s come in three times a week for nearly a month to send flowers to the same woman. Lilies, usually. Sometimes roses, once tulips; and
always white.

We’ve had customers who’ve done this sort of thing before: men who’ve sent flowers daily, an extravagant, look-at-me gesture. But whatever is going on between the American and
this woman – her name is Ella Stuart – it isn’t your typical romance. I watch him prowl the shop, briefly diverted from my own preoccupations. I can see the anger seething below
his harsh, set features; grief too, I think. Passion, certainly. How many of us ever inspire that? I know Marc loves me, in his way: as his wife, the mother of his children. I don’t doubt his
sincerity, even now; but was it a
coup de foudre
when we met, for him? Attraction, yes, interest, desire, I know he felt all of those – but not passion. Lucky Ella, whoever she
is.

‘You’re back,’ the American says, turning abruptly.

I put aside the pale green pods of a vine called love-in-a-puff that have just arrived from South America. Such a beautiful, delicate flower, so hard to grow in a cold climate. Like love, I
think, and then laugh inwardly at my own cliché.

‘I don’t work on the shop floor very often,’ I say. ‘I have an office. But sometimes, I—’

‘Need to.’

Again, this strange man who knows the meaning of flowers catches me off guard. The anger and hostility I saw in him last time have faded, leaving a melancholy that’s almost worse. His blue
eyes are midnight with sadness. What has he lost, to fill him with such despair?

He looks at a point somewhere to the left of my head. ‘For me, it’s the piano.’

Instinctively I glance down at his hands, resting on the counter. Strong, square, with the blunt, callused tips of a man used to hard manual labour; and yet there’s an elegance to the
spread of his long fingers on the wood surface. I can see them coaxing plangent music from piano keys yellowed with age. He’s a man of contradictions, this Cooper Garrett. He dresses like a
plains farmer, with his faded jeans and the worn leather duster reaching almost to the floor; but the Breitling on his wrist is expensive, his boots soft, supple leather. I’d put him in his
late forties, though at first sight he looks older. The deep grooves bracketing his wide mouth and furrowing his forehead add years, and dull otherwise classic square-jawed good looks. This
isn’t a man who smiles often.

But there’s something about him that invites confidences, and trust.
A safe pair of hands
, I think.

Tentatively, I smile. To my surprise, he returns it. He’s transformed. His blue eyes are suddenly as bright and warm and clear as the Caribbean. Something unknown tugs at me. I want to
talk to this man more. I want to know his story. I want to make him smile again.

Craig feigns a breathy little squeak of excitement. His nonsense slaps me awake like a bucket of cold water.

I flush and turn to the bank of flowers. ‘How can I help today, Mr Garrett?’

There’s a brief silence. Then, ‘The white tuberoses, please,’ he says coolly. ‘Same details as before. Your colleague has the address.’

‘The Princess Eugenie Hospital,’ Craig puts in.

‘She’s in hospital?’ I ask, surprised.

‘She’s in a coma,’ Craig sighs. ‘She was hit by a car trying to save her daughter.’

‘Stepdaughter,’ the American scowls.

I pull together a neat bouquet on automatic pilot, more curious than ever. What’s his relationship to this woman? No wedding ring – I noticed that earlier – though that
doesn’t necessarily mean anything. Mind you, if they were married to each other, he wouldn’t be sending flowers three times a week. Where does the child, the almost-stepdaughter, fit
into the picture? And what is the cause of the grief that hangs around his broad shoulders, as tangible as his travel-stained coat?

Cooper Garrett glances briefly at his flowers, and leaves without more than a curt nod in my direction.

‘Oh, be still my beating heart,’ Craig sighs. ‘That man is wasted on a woman. Who do you think she really is?’

One of these days, Craig is going to bite off more than he can chew with his camp Graham Norton act.

‘I’ve no idea. How do you know so much about him, anyway?’

‘I
ask
, darling.’

I tidy the tuberose stems and discarded twists of raffia. ‘Can you make sure the flowers get to the hospital before five?’

‘Will do. Are you ready to go over the quarterly accounts now? I’ve got the paperwork from Price—’

‘Can’t. I had to postpone the meeting with the accountants so that I could go with Jenna to the doctor’s. I’ll deal with it next week.’

‘I can handle it if you—’

‘No,’ I say sharply.

Craig looks surprised. ‘No,’ I say again, forcing my voice to sound normal. ‘It’s fine. It can wait. I’m sure you’re right, anyway. The recession’s
hurting everyone. Things will probably pick up in their own time. No point worrying unnecessarily.’

Humiliating enough to have my husband leach money from the company accounts without my knowledge. I shouldn’t have told Jenna, and there’s certainly no need for Craig to know
too.

‘Actually, I think I’ll go home,’ I say, surprising myself. ‘I want to spend some time with the twins. I miss them,’ I add.

Surely this is so much better than resentful foot-nailed-to-the-floor mothering? I’ve found my babies someone who can look after them with pleasure, while I’m free simply to love
them, to give them the best of me, the real quality time. Not only is nothing lost by my going back to work; my children are better off than if I were at home. It’s almost as if they’ve
got three parents, instead of two.

Jenna is just about to give the twins a bath when I walk in around six. ‘The chocolate pudding went well,’ she says drily.

‘I can see that,’ I say, regarding my Cadbury-coated infants. ‘Look, I’ll bath them.’

‘It’s fine, I can—’

‘I’d like to,’ I say.

Jenna hovers in the bathroom, handing me the baby soap and sponges as I need them, laughing as the babies, sitting up toe to toe, kick each other’s feet. Poppy’s cheeks are a little
red again as she sucks her sponge, but other than that neither twin seems the worse for wear.

‘Marc doesn’t know what he’s missing,’ I sigh.

I scoop Rowan out of the bath and bury my face in his neck, inhaling the sweet, milky scent of my child. Oh, how I love him: every bit as much as I love his sister. I couldn’t make
Sophie’s choice after all. Thank God. I’m not a freak, an unnatural mother. It just took a little time, that’s all.

‘I thought Marc was coming home early tonight?’ Jenna says, bundling Poppy in a towel.

‘He called and left a message on my mobile. Apparently he has a meeting.’

‘And you’re going to let him get away with that?’

‘What’s done is done,’ I say heavily. ‘I have to give him the chance to try and put it right.’

‘How can you say that? After he stole money from your company—’

‘No one’s perfect, Jenna. We all compromise with those we love, don’t we?’

Reflexively she touches the latest bruise on her jaw, acknowledging the point with a blush. ‘But how can he complain about you working?’ she adds after a moment. ‘You’d
think he’d be grateful for what you earn.’

I shrug non-committally. I may agree with her, but I’ve already confided too much. Sometimes I forget Jenna’s not actually family.

She empties the bath and picks up the rubber ducks and plastic fish. ‘If my dad told Mum she couldn’t work, she’d flip.’

I bundle Rowan in his soft blue hippo towel and take him into the nursery. Jenna follows with Poppy wrapped in her pink polar bear, and we lay them on opposite sides of the changing island, top
to tail. Together we put on Sudocrem, Pampers, vests, babygros. It’s Monday: Jenna fans out four tiny hands while I cut twenty miniature fingernails. I hold their heads steady, and she gives
each some Calpol for their teething. We’re the perfect team: synchronized mothers. If only it were an Olympic sport.

‘Marc’s so old-fashioned,’ Jenna says as we settle in the cheap sofa I bought to replace the ridiculous carved rocking chair, and give the twins their bedtime bottles.
‘He’s worse than my dad.’

‘His mother stayed home and raised six children. I suppose he’s just reverting to type.’ I stroke Poppy’s cheek as she gulps noisily. ‘It’s not that I
don’t want to look after the twins, Jenna. I adore them. But I love my job too. I couldn’t bear to give it up. Every time I walk out of the house, I feel torn in two. Marc has none of
that guilt,’ I add resentfully. ‘He’s not conflicted at all. No one expects him to quit work and stay home with the baby. It’s all so straightforward for men.’