by Wendy Holden
They stared at him all the time, wherever he went. And Orlando found that he disliked being stared at because he was handsome. That he hated being looked at, full stop. And so he protected himself as best he could. He narrowed his eyes beneath his great level cliffs of brow and hid under his curtain of hair. He pushed out his full lips in go-away defiance. He slouched, he brooded, he muttered, he maintained distance. But this just made matters worse. Women and girls stared at him even more.
And now one of them had asked him if he wanted to be a model. It was hard to think of anything he wanted to be less.
Chapter Two
"Give my love to the Queen," Dad shouted from the other side of the train window, his voice faint through the thick glass.
"I will!" Emma laughed, not caring if the other people in the train car stared. Let them stare.
As the train pulled out of Leeds and her parents' faces, half proud, half anxious, slid past, a mighty wave of excitement passed through her. She was going to London. To seek her fortune, like Dick Whittington in the books at the nursery she worked at. Or had worked at.
She fought through the jumble of people and luggage at the end of the carriage. "Is anyone sitting here?" she asked a grey-haired, grey-suited, grey-skinned man, whose pink newspaper was not only the one colourful thing about him but who also occupied an entire four-seater table area. If he'd paid for all four seats so he could spread out his Financial Times to the max, then fine, Emma thought. But she doubted this. He didn't look the extravagant sort.
"No," the grey man admitted. From behind his glinting glasses, he scanned Emma as she edged into the seat, feeling, despite herself, rather self-conscious. Of course, she didn't care a button what a stuffy, miserable, old wrinkly like that thought about her looks, but even so, it would be wonderful to have the kind of whippet-skinny figure that allowed one to slide swiftly into confined areas. But her build required a little more room.
Of course, she wasn't fat; far from it, but she wasn't thin either. She defied anyone not to be plump when they lived with her parents, however. Mum put out two different types of potato every Sunday teatime—roast and mash—and there was always pudding and custard to follow. And Emma had never known the biscuit tin to be empty, even in the most difficult times, and there'd been a few of those. In fact, the leanest times were when the biscuit tin tended to be at its fullest.
But physical appearances didn't matter so much anyway, Emma reminded herself—not in the business she was in. It was how good you were at your job—and she was very good at hers. Too good in fact now, with all the extra qualifications she'd spent the last two years getting at night school. Especially as Wee Cuties, the nursery in Heckmondwike that employed her, was uninterested in keeping up with the latest educational theories. It was time to move on. And, without mortgage, without fiancé, there would never be a better time to do it.
Should she stay, she would probably remain at Wee Cuties for the rest of her life, as most of her colleagues seemed to be planning to—the ones, that was, who were not planning to defect to the soonto-be-completed supermarket, which was rumoured to be offering better wages and longer holidays. And while Emma sought both, she sought also excitement, challenge, and possibility, none of which were normally associated with supermarkets.
And so it was, when first her eye had fallen on the ad in the Yorkshire Post, that a thrill of recognition had gone through Emma. The ad leapt out at her immediately. "Nanny Sought. Smart Area of London. Well-behaved Children. Excellent Pay and Holidays." With shaking hands, she copied down the details—Dad hated his paper being vandalised.
The train was hot. So that it would not crease, Emma removed the pretty fawn jacket with its nipped-in waist bought, along with the skirt, especially from Whistles for the interview. In the shop, the pale brown had perfectly complemented the chestnut shoulder-length hair that was, Emma felt, her best feature, with its flash of red threads in the sunshine. She crossed her feet in their smart, low-heeled brown pumps at the ankles and tapped her fingers on the new matching handbag. Perhaps she looked too smart, but better to be too smart than too scruffy. After all, Mrs. Vanessa Bradstock, the mother who would be interviewing her, had sounded very grand on the phone.
Stepping out of her carriage in St. Pancras International, Emma's gaze swung automatically upwards to the great glass arc of roof flung above the station, through which poured sunlight from an optimistically blue sky.
London was as fast moving and purposeful as a colony of ants. To the right and the left of her, people swarmed off the train, darting towards the shining chrome barriers in a jostling, heaving mass, weighed down with rucksacks and briefcases.
All the rush and running made her feel she should run herself, and Emma found her pace quickening past the glossy shops in the terminal; no scruffy cafés these, but smart bookshops, glamorous French patisseries with aluminium chairs outside, and fashionable florists whose chic bouquets arranged tastefully round the door bore price tags that made Emma gasp. She lingered in front of the great glass window of Hamley's toy store, her eyes running greedily over the big, shiny, colourful, wonderful things on the other side of it. The idea of bringing a small present for her future charges—if the interview with Vanessa Bradstock went well—came to her. Emma ventured inside, amid the lights and pounding music, and quickly picked a little stuffed pink cat for the girl—girls always liked cats—and a small rubber train for the boy. She had yet to meet a boy who didn't like trains.
Emma looked just right, Vanessa thought gleefully as she opened the front door. Fat, in other words. Size twelve at least, to her own carefully preserved ten. Fourteen even, at a pinch, and there was certainly more than an inch to pinch there. Oh yes. Emma was certainly not the long drink of water Jacintha, the last nanny, had been.
One should always employ fat girls. They were so grateful and had absolutely no self-confidence. This girl, with her brown hair— not a highlight to be seen—and almost make-upless face had low self-esteem written all over her.
"You're late," Vanessa said challengingly. Best make it clear from the start who was in charge.
"I'm sorry," Emma said immediately, even though she did not consider the fault to be hers entirely. It would have helped a great deal in finding the house—one of a row of red brick Victorian terraces with pointed roofs and small front gardens—if she had known it was in Peckham and not posh Camberwell, as for some reason had been put on the letter.
"My last nanny's father was a peer of the realm," Vanessa loftily informed Emma. "She was excellent. So if you get this job, you'll have some very big shoes to fill." She glanced at Emma's shoes and twitched her lips disapprovingly. They looked plain and brown and possibly from Office Shoes.
Emma's reaction was not what Vanessa had expected. Instead of looking cowed and terrified, as had been the intention, this girl from the north turned her brown and direct gaze on Vanessa and asked her, in a quiet yet steady voice, why Jacintha had left, exactly.
Vanessa, while unpleasantly startled, nonetheless realised she had to give an answer. The windmills of her mind whirred in panic as she searched for one. That The Honourable Jacintha had left to go and work for the family of a famous writer had been a bitter blow. A more famous writer, Vanessa corrected herself; she herself had a newspaper column and was extremely well-known. In media circles. Her lack of influence in more general circles had been unpleasantly illustrated by Jacintha's resignation.
"The Honourable Jacintha had been with us for some time," Vanessa hedged. "It was time to move on."
"How long?" Emma asked steadily.
Vanessa pretended to think hard, as if the answer—six weeks— had somehow been lost in the midst of much more pressing concerns. "Three months," she asserted, with an imperious toss of her head that warned Emma that she proceeded any further down this track at her peril.
Emma added the toss to her store of impressions about Vanessa. Her main impression was that she was rather cross and unhappy looking. But why was a mystery. He
r house was big and roomy, if not particularly tidy. She clearly had money. She was also very attractive, slim in a close-fitting white T-shirt and long purple denim skirt, her pink-sequined flip-flops revealing tanned feet with red-painted nails. Her shining blonde hair was brightly streaked, but so finely it looked natural, and much chopped about in that artful way that only real good hairdressers could pull off. She had big blue eyes, which were pretty, if bulgy. And good skin, even though her face was rather red. So what did she have to look grumpy about?
Perhaps Vanessa was unhappily married. Perhaps with an overbearing alpha-male husband. Yes, that could be it.
"Sit down," Vanessa said, sitting on the edge of the battered mock-Georgian sofa.
It seemed to Emma that—beyond the obvious about driving licence (yes) and criminal record (no)—Vanessa was soon struggling for questions to ask her. She subtly took over herself, conducting her own interrogation of her employer to be. Vanessa seemed to know little about her children. She had no idea what Hero and Cosmo, as the children were apparently called, liked to eat, what books they liked to read, what games they liked to play, or whether they had special words or names for favourite people or things.
The husband Vanessa may or may not have been unhappily married to worked, it emerged, for the Foreign Office and had been sent to Equatorial Guinea, wherever that was. He would be back in several weeks. "So you see, I really need someone urgently. Now," Vanessa emphasised, skewering Emma with those bulging blue eyes.
But it did not seem to Emma that this urgent need was reflected in the salary offered, which was low. On the plus side, she would be living in, and while she had not been expecting luxury, the fact that the tall house seemed to get colder the further up you got was discouraging. Even more so was the tiny bedroom at the top she was shown into, with the peeling wallpaper, collapsing curtain rail and light fitting that appeared to be masking-taped to the wall and ceiling respectively. Next door was the children's bedroom and, next door to that, the playroom. The "nursery suite" was how Vanessa referred to the whole.
Emma went back downstairs with Vanessa, full of uncertainty. Should she not get out now? Go home? She could always write off for other jobs, after all.
"You can start immediately," Vanessa offered. Or, possibly, instructed.
"But I haven't seen the children," Emma pointed out quickly. If they were awful too, that would decide it.
"Hero! Cosmo!" bawled Vanessa.
The children appeared at the door. Hero, the solid little three-year-old, had a solemn little face and hair so flaxen, so impossibly white, that it seemed lit from within, a silver flame. Cosmo, at four, had eyes that were deep, sunken, and anxious, and his hair was a caramel pageboy, striped with lighter gold. They regarded Emma suspiciously, but that, she felt, was understandable enough, especially if five nannies had come and gone in the last twelve months.
"Ask me if I'm a passenger train or a freight train," Cosmo demanded suddenly in a low, growling voice.
Emma thought of the toy train in her handbag. She had been right, after all. Was there any little boy who didn't like locomotives?
Vanessa rolled her eyes. "God. He's absolutely bloody obsessed with trains. Just shut up, will you, Cosmo? You've driven all the nannies mad with this. Another reason why they've all left," she groaned at Emma.
But Cosmo, ignoring his mother, was looking at Emma expectantly, his blue eyes round through his blond fringe. She sensed it was some sort of test. She smiled, stooping down to his level, and felt the difficulty of doing so in wobbly high heels and trousers that bit at the waist and round the thighs. She looked into his uncertain little face. "Are you a passenger train or a freight train?" she asked, obediently.
Cosmo shuffled his little feet on the carpet. His fingers were joined together and pointing forward, and both arms were revolving by his sides, imitating the moving parts of a locomotive.
"I'm a passenger train," he told her now, his four-year-old face entirely serious.
"Can I get on you?" Emma asked.
"No," said Cosmo, causing Emma's heart to sink rather. Her initiative had been rejected.
"You can't get on me," Cosmo added, earnestly, "because I'm a special train. But you can look at me. Woo woo!" And with that, the little boy steamed out of the sitting room.
"See what I mean?" steamed Vanessa. "He wants to be an engine driver. I ask you, is that what I'll be paying millions in school fees for?"
Emma looked at Hero.
"And Hero's obsessed with cats," Vanessa added, as if this too was a crime.
Emma hardly heard. She was looking into Hero's blue eyes, in which she had spotted an unmistakeable, hungry look that was nothing to do with food but everything to do with the need for affection and attention. It twisted her heart.
"I'll take the job," she said, reaching for her handbag. "And, actually, I've got a couple of presents for them."
Chapter Three
In an apartment in Los Angeles, a phone was ringing loudly beside a bed. As his short, fat fingers made contact with the receiver, Mitch Masterson, actor's agent, squinted at the alarm clock beside his bed.
Who the hell was ringing him this early?
As if he couldn't guess.
Mitch groaned. Last night had been the annual get-together of the Association of Motion Picture Actors' Representatives, an annual red-letter day in the agenting industry that provided unmissable opportunities for networking. Mitch had done so much networking he'd been barely able to stand up at the end of the evening. And now his throat burned, his eyes ached, and his head felt as if someone had stuck a sword in it. The last thing he needed was a call from Belle Murphy.
The day had barely started, and it was a nightmare already. If only he could send it back and get a refund. Or swap it for another one. But no, it was here. Fingers of daylight as thick as his own were poking bluntly and insistently between the wenge-wood blinds that Mitch's interior designer assured him gave his apartment that breezy, Californian, young-stylish-single-guy-with-money-to-burn feel.
Californian as in originally from Cataract, Tennessee, that was. Young as in forty-four. Single in the divorced sense. The money could be better too—Associated Artists was a super-successful agency, sure, one of the biggest in Hollywood. But he was only one of its medium-ranking agents. Nor was he stylish; frankly, he was fat and irredeemably scruffy. His ex-wife had likened him to Humpty Dumpty. After he fell off the wall.
"Hey, Belle, baby!" Mitch struggled to sound as if no call could be more convenient or more delightful.
As usual, Belle didn't waste time on pleasantries. Such as asking Mitch how he was or apologising for waking him up. "You heard from Spielberg yet?" she demanded, her shrill, high-pitched voice drilling the tender insides of Mitch's ear.
Of course, he hadn't heard from Spielberg. Nor was he likely to. The casting director was an old girlfriend and had allowed Belle to try out more to get her off Mitch's back than to put her in the film. No one wanted to put her in a film. In a meeting room in the offices of Associated Artists, a room in which no client ever set foot, was a league table of those the company represented. The Fame Board covered an entire wall and was adjusted each day, like the FTSE and the Dow Jones, to reflect clients' comparative status. On this cruel, if accurate, measure of exactly where she stood in Tinseltown, Belle was currently near the bottom. And yet this time last year, she had been at the top, Associated Artists' number one, most important client.
Even the CEO of the agency had answered her calls then, and at great length. She'd been sent Christmas, birthday, Thanksgiving, Halloween, and every other imaginable kind of present from the agency, including some "just because we love you." Or, to be more accurate, just because of the hit film Marie, in which Belle had played Mary, Queen of Scots.
Mitch allowed himself a transporting moment of remembered joy at this most purple of patches. Belle had carried all before her—literally; the costume department had certainly made the most of her assets. Her take on the doom
ed, impetuous monarch, all plunging cleavage and passionate four-poster scenes, had been a stupendous success. For several months, Belle had been one of the hottest actresses in Hollywood. Her smouldering red pout had sizzled from the cover of every magazine. But then had come Bloody Mary as a follow-up.
Mitch still had no idea why Belle's studio had imagined that a film about an uptight, pyromaniac, religious nutcase was a suitable vehicle for her. No doubt he should have advised her against doing it, but the enormous amount of money the agency had pocketed over the deal had clouded his judgment, as was often the case in Hollywood. The film had bombed, or gone up in smoke, to be more accurate, and now Belle was colder than yesterday's breakfast.
"And what about Ridley Scott? Sam Mendes?" Belle was screeching now. "Have they got back to you?"
"Not as such, baby, but you know they're both pretty busy. Mendes has, ah, um, you know. Kids and stuff…"
