Anthony and Max were in high spirits, full of optimism and swaggering confidence—Max because he had all the joy of delegating every last aspect of this job to everyone else and Anthony because he was desperately trying to hide Tom’s natural pessimism. He was smiling so much he was beginning to fear the onset of lockjaw.
“We’re gonna knee McFarleys so hard,” exclaimed Max over coffee, “their gonads are gonna shoot out of their mouths.”
“What a beautiful image,” said Tom. “I’ll see what I can do with that.”
Max laughed, and Anthony impressed them all by widening his grin further still.
“So! Guys,” said Max, in a tone Anthony and Tom had been dreading all meal. He raised his elastic eyebrows high up on his ever-expanding forehead. “Any ideas?”
The best creative team in the agency stole themselves a few precious seconds by looking at each other, then looking back at Max.
“Well,” said Anthony finally, “we did have a quick brainstorm before lunch. So we have got a few ideas.”
Max gave Vanessa a wide grin. “See what I’m saying? Geniuses, these guys. Geniuses.”
Anthony didn’t feel the need to explain that the best idea they’d come with was a dwarf dressed as a telephone and the only slogan they’d come up with was “Competition’s dwarfed by VC.”
“I’m getting together with the planner on Wednesday,” said Vanessa, “to develop the strategy, then meeting up with VC Friday a.m. I’ll brief you guys ASAP.”
“When’s the pitch?” asked Anthony.
“A fortnight today.”
“Shit!” cried Tom. “We’ve only got two weeks?”
“Yup,” said Max, relighting his cigar. “That’s why we brought in the best.”
Tom and Anthony both finished their wine.
After lunch, they all walked back to the office, Anthony naturally falling into step beside Vanessa.
“Tom’s a bit tense, isn’t he?” she asked after a while.
“All the better to be creative with,” answered Anthony.
“You sure he’s up to this?”
Anthony turned to her, and she had to move back slightly to stop bumping into him. He was so short, she could look into his eyes without even tilting her head. “Vanessa.”
“Hmm?”
“This is the man who created Bobby the Baboon.”
They locked eyes.
“You’re right,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
“Hey, I understand,” said Anthony. ‘That’s the “suits” jobs—to worry. And what a job you do. Don’t know how you do it, to be honest. Rather you than me.’
They set off again, and, walking beside him, Vanessa pictured Dick saying the same to her about her contribution at home. She felt her blood start to simmer almost instantly.
“But it’s our job to create,” Anthony was saying. “So you just leave that to us.”
She smiled a wide, relieved smile and wished she could feel so confident in her husband’s abilities.
Back at the office, standing in front of Anthony in the lift, Vanessa could see him in the mirrored door collecting visual data about her body to be downloaded later. Eventually, his eyes met hers in the mirror, and he pulled a shamefaced schoolboy grin. She tutted inwardly. He must think she was born yesterday. She imagined Dick catching sight of her being ogled and smiled to herself.
The doors shut slowly behind her and Max. Finally, the boys were alone. They let out deep, grateful sighs.
“Bloody suits,” moaned Tom.
“Mm.”
“Bloody bloody suits.”
“Mm.”
“Think they know everything.”
“Mm.”
“While we have to create a masterpiece in two bloody weeks.”
“Mm.”
The lift door opened onto the penthouse floor, and they walked over plush carpet to their office-with-a-view.
“I’m not sure she’s all bad,” said Anthony.
“Bollocks. She’s one of the worst.”
Anthony shrugged.
“You’ve just got to know how to play her,” he said, shutting their office door behind him.
When Vanessa got home that evening, the kitchen was buzzing. Jo tidied while chatting to Tallulah, Dick helped Zak with his homework, Cassandra practiced her recorder in the living room, and Josh sat at the table, tapping into his laptop, occasionally shooing off the cats, who had decided his keyboard was their activity center. Vanessa felt a rare moment of contentment.
‘Hello, darling!” greeted Dick. “Josh is moving in.”
And lo. The moment was over.
Once the children were all in bed, Dick and Josh assembled a dinner of salads, cheeses and breads and Vanessa opened the first bottle of wine. She insisted Jo join them.
“I suppose it just would have been nice to have had some notice,” Vanessa told Josh.
“I kept thinking I’d find someone to replace them,” said Josh, shrugging. “But no luck.”
“Even in Crouch End?” she said incredulously.
“Yep. Even in Creche End. Too many bloody babies in that place. You can’t even have a decent pint without some bloke coming in with a baby strapped to his front, talking about how little sleep he’s getting, like he wants a medal for it.”
“I suppose your ideal flatmate would have been Claudia Schiffer,” muttered Vanessa.
“I’m not quite that shallow,” said Josh, casting Jo a quick glance. “I’d have coped with Yasmin le Bon.”
“Well, it’s okay with me,” said Vanessa, “as long as Jo’s happy sharing her suite with you.”
“So, Jo!” he said. “What’s it like having Vanessa care what you think? I’ve never known.”
“Well, if you helped with the children occasionally,” retorted Vanessa, “I’d care what you thought, too.”
“I didn’t know that was my role in life,” said Josh calmly, buttering some bread. “To look after my father’s second family after he left mine.”
There was an ugly pause. Jo stared at her unfinished meal.
“Come on, people,” whispered Dick eventually. “Come on.”
Jo noticed that Josh didn’t eat his bread.
Over freshly ground evening coffee and Chinese green tea with fresh mint from the organic grocers, Josh explained to Vanessa why he’d be spending his days at home for the first week or so of the new arrangement, until he felt well enough to go on the tube.
“Rush hour’s a nightmare at the best of times,” he said. “This way I do my annual homework leave time and don’t get my already-twisted ankle and already-crushed bones damaged even more on the tube. The doctor said I should keep it up for two weeks. So to speak. But I can’t afford two weeks off. Anyway, it’ll be fun working from here. Sharing an office with your incredibly efficient nanny.”
Dick and Vanessa gave him a pointed look.
“Hey! Don’t look at me,” he said. “It’s not my fault my body’s black-and-blue.” He toasted Jo, with a wicked glint in his eye. “You can thank Nanny Psycho for that.”
Vanessa took a deep sigh and put down her wineglass. Jo could almost hear Dick’s buttocks clench.
“Joshua,” began Vanessa. “I think we need a little talk.” She spoke to Josh as if he’d just done a poo in her shoe. “Dick and I feel genuinely wretched that you have been hurt in our home, and I think it is safe to say that Jo feels the same.” Dick and Jo nodded vehemently and attempted some half noises of assent.
“But,” continued Vanessa, “if you honestly think we’d rather have a nanny who slept through a man breaking into our home than a nanny who fought her terror and called the police, you are more of a fool than you look.”
Josh’s already-stiff body stiffened some more.
“Now, now—” started Dick.
“Richard!” shot Vanessa, as if her husband had picked up the shoe with the poo in it and eaten it. “I am handling this, thank you very much.”
If there had been any doubt before, all wa
s now squashed.
“As far as we’re concerned”—Vanessa turned her attention back to Josh—“you gave Jo here a unique opportunity to prove to us just how much of an addition she is to our family and”—she left a pause so dramatic even the goldfish tensed—“exactly how much you are not.” Jo winced. “Any more snide comments about our nanny, who after her heroics last night has proved herself clearly underpaid, will simply not be tolerated under this roof.”
The silence following this little speech was interrupted only by Molly and Bolly, who chose this moment to lift their right hind legs in corps-de-ballet synchronicity and conduct a thorough investigation of their bottoms.
“Am I making myself clear, Joshua?” asked Vanessa.
There was a pause.
“Crystal,” said Josh quietly.
Vanessa turned to Jo and spoke in the tone of Cinderella addressing her favorite fluffy kitten.
“In fact, Jo, we haven’t discussed it yet, but I know Dick would agree with me. We’d very much like to offer you a raise.”
Jo was so shocked she didn’t even notice Dick’s and Josh’s reactions.
After dinner, Jo had to move the few things she’d put into her dressing room out of it, while Josh moved his stuff in. That day, Dick had gone to IKEA and bought Jo a fabric wardrobe and a tiny table which was to act as her dressing table. It suited her fine.
Surveying her packing with a dismal air, she quickly plaited her hair out of her eyes and then started when she realized Josh was standing in her doorway, surveying her in a somewhat similar vein.
He suddenly held up a bottle of wine and two glasses, and managed a smile that Jo imagined cost him a great deal. “Fancy a cheeky little Italian?”
“Oh,” she said.
“To relax us both after our adventures.” She nodded very slowly and thoughtfully, as if her head was trying to make its imprint in treacle, and Josh commenced pouring, a tad erratically. “And to help me forget that my father’s wife hates me.” He stretched out the full glass of wine toward her, and she extended her arm to take it. As her hand clenched the glass they locked eyes.
“Thanks.”
“And of course,” he smiled, before letting go, “to dull your senses. We don’t want you phoning the police if I make any sudden moves.”
Jo heard herself let out a sudden laugh. “That’s not fair,” she said quietly, not daring to pull away the glass. “You really scared me.”
“Did I? Sorry about that,” he said, and allowed her to take the wine.
She gulped it down.
‘Forgiven,’ she said lightly, turning away.
They unpacked in silence, apart from Jo’s gentle humming. When her mobile phone rang, she picked it up, saw it was Shaun, and turned it off angrily. She didn’t feel like being told off again, especially in front of Josh.
It didn’t take either of them long to unpack. Afterward, Josh hobbled into Jo’s room and sat down slowly on her bed, putting the wine on the floor between them. He smiled pleasantly enough at her but she wasn’t convinced. Warily, she sat against the wall, strands of her plait falling round her face.
“So,” he said. “How are you enjoying working for the Munsters?”
“It’s fine,” said Jo carefully.
“Oh come on,” said Josh. “They’re bloody mad, the lot of them.”
Jo forced what she hoped was an easy smile. “It’s hard work,” she confessed. “But the kids are lovely.”
“Yeah,” agreed Josh, the corners of his mouth curving up a fraction, as if keeping a secret. “They are.”
They both nodded and smiled for a bit.
“Yep,” he added, taking some more wine. “If your dad’s gonna up-sticks and start again, you couldn’t hope for a nicer brood.”
Jo’s brain scanned all the possible things to say in response and then stopped. She decided to change tack.
“Has your mum remarried?”
As Josh shook his head, Jo scoured his face for any hints of the woman with the hard eyes and dry voice who had dropped Toby off.
“So is this the first time you’ve left home?” asked Josh.
Jo pushed some loose strands of hair behind her ears. “Is it that obvious?”
Josh shrugged and she felt compelled to fill the silence. “I suppose it is all a bit scary,” she confessed. “Everything’s so different.” Josh didn’t answer. “Maybe that’s why I overreacted last night.” She took some more wine. When she looked back at him, Josh was staring at her with an intensity that made her feel aware of the hairs on her skin. She glanced at the grains in the wood floor.
“I think you were very brave,” he said.
“I phoned the police from under my duvet,” she grimaced. “I could hardly dial for shaking.”
Another pause. This time Jo braved it out.
“Exactly,” said Josh eventually. “You were terrified and you still did it.”
Jo took some more wine and felt its warmth ooze through her body.
“People don’t like it when you’re brave, do they?” she asked suddenly. “It’s as if they want you to be scared, because it permits them to not have to take any risks either.”
Josh tilted his head at her, his forehead puckering.
“My decision to leave home wasn’t exactly a popular one,” she explained, taking another sip and wondering if she’d had enough to drink.
“Ah,” he said. “With anyone specific?”
Jo re-heard Shaun telling her off and shrugged her sudden anger away. “Just everyone,” she said grumpily.
“Really? Wow,” said Josh.
Jo eyed him suspiciously, convinced he was mocking her. But his face showed no signs of mockery.
“You must have been very strong to have gone ahead with it then,” he continued.
She tried to speak, failed, so shrugged and drank some more wine instead.
“Between you and me,” Josh went on, “I wish I could be that brave.”
“You’d like to move away?” asked Jo.
He shook his head. “I’d like to change career. But I don’t know what I’d like to do instead and both my parents would kill me.”
Jo gasped. “Tell me about it,” she said with feeling. “Guess whose idea it was for me to be a nanny?”
“Your parents?”
“Ten out ten.”
“What did you want to be?”
“Oh noth—It’s stupid—”
“Go on.”
“They were probably right.”
“Tell me.”
Jo took a deep breath. “I wanted to be a…don’t laugh—”
“I won’t—”
“I wanted to be an anthropologist.”
She gulped down more wine.
“Wow,” said Josh. “Brilliant.”
Jo shrugged. “When you’re young you’re full of silly ideas.”
“What’s silly about that?”
“Anyway, I’m a nanny. And it was hard enough being a nanny who’d moved away from home.”
Josh leaned toward her and poured more wine into her glass.
“No thanks,” she said, when he’d finished.
“So how come you did it anyway?” he asked.
She cushioned each word with a thoughtful pause. “The need to know that my choices so far in life weren’t just the easiest ones.”
They locked eyes, Josh nodding thoughtfully. “Yeah,” he whispered. “I know what you mean.”
Most of her hair slipped out of the plait and she put down her glass, shook the rest loose and looped it into a lazy ponytail. When she finished, she glanced all round the room and eventually at Josh and again found him scrutinizing her. She was just about to announce that she really needed to get some sleep when he gave her a big, warm smile and held up his wine glass to her.
“So,” he murmured. “To the right choices.”
She felt vaguely conscious that she’d just witnessed a decision being made. She picked hers up, returned his smile and they clinked glasses. �
�To the right choices,” she agreed and finished her wine.
That night she fell asleep to the sound of Josh’s slow padding round his room and slept right through till morning for the first time since she’d arrived.
Chapter 10
Over the next week, Jo discovered that the average accountant does approximately half the amount of work that an average nanny does. Josh would get up early and do two hours before she got back from dropping all the children off at school. Then he was ready for a two-hour tea break. They soon got into a routine where he’d make them both a cup of tea and, while idly tapping away at his laptop, chat while she ironed. At first she found his presence intimidating, but gradually the conversational pauses grew shorter and the tension evaporated until she didn’t mind at all. In fact, she was amazed at how much difference it made to her life having someone to chat with during the day.
After a while, he stopped asking if she was going to phone the police every time he stood up quickly and stopped asking when the laptop dancing was due to begin. He’d also started hobbling around after her as she tidied the children’s rooms—“good practice for my foot.” She didn’t mind slowing down for him to keep up, especially as part of her still felt guilty that she had been the cause of his obvious pain. And it certainly wasn’t a hardship as it meant she spent most of her time laughing. One morning, she didn’t know how it even came up, they ended up talking about how Josh’s parents had split up. It turned out Dick had had an affair with his secretary, and Josh’s mother had been unable to forgive him.
“What a waste,” he said. “A family dissolved forever—he clicked his fingers—“just like that.”
“How awful,” said Jo.
“I was bitter for a long time,” he said with a nod. “Fourteen’s not a good age to lose your dad.”
“But you’re friends now, aren’t you?”
Josh seemed to consider this.
“Yeah, we’re cool. And these things happen.”
The Nanny Page 13
