CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Chicago, Illinois, USA

The tall, slender, immaculately groomed young woman stood with perfect posture in front of the microphone, speaking slowly and clearly to the one hundred-and-fifty people gathered before her in the sophisticated lakeside hotel’s main conference room.

‘Thank you all so much, once again, for choosing Templeton Nannies for your training, for putting your future in our hands, and more importantly, the future of your charges in our hands, the children who will shape our future. It is now my great honour to call upon our founder, Charlotte Templeton, to present your graduation certificates.’

Charlotte rose from her seat in the centre of the podium, smoothed the too-tight skirt of her size XL navy-blue suit over her unfortunately ever-expanding thighs, waited a moment for the applause to die down and then made her way to the microphone. She turned to her assistant, Dana, nodded her thanks, wished silently to herself that her assistant didn’t look so much like an after-Weight-Watchers ad compared to her own in-dire-need-of-Weight-Watchers figure, and then turned towards the audience. She waited one second, two, three, all the way to ten before she spoke again. It was a trick she’d learnt years before at a public-speaking course and had used to great effect ever since.

‘Thank you, Dana,’ she said, in her deliberately maintained English accent, ‘for that gracious introduction, but the truth of today’s ceremony is that the honour is all mine. To be here today, to see my latest graduates as they prepare to take their step out into the world, is not just a moving experience for me. It is a moment of fulfilment. Today marks the culmination of months of hard work and dedication, the coming together of ambition, intelligence, compassion and just as importantly, a sense of fun – all the ingredients that make up the finest nannies in America, the Templeton Nannies. Today, my dear graduates, as I stand here looking out proudly at you …’

As she continued her speech, Charlotte’s mind drifted towards thoughts of that night’s dinner, about phone calls she needed to make and a forthcoming interview she was doing with a leading parenting magazine. She’d given speeches like this four times a year for the past eight years, adding just a few new sentences each time to keep herself entertained. Apart from that, it was an autopilot performance. Oh, she meant it all, of course she did. She didn’t have to feign sincerity. When she talked about Templeton Nannies being the number-one nanny agency in the Midwest, she was telling the truth. She’d worked hard to claim that position. But these days she was just the figurehead. As her dear friend and mentor Mr Giles had told her many times over the years, the higher you rose in your business, the less you had to do. ‘If you do it right, if you surround yourself with the right people, they do all your work for you.’

She tuned back in completely again as she reached the final, inspirational lines of her speech (‘You leave me today in body, but I will always be with you in spirit’) and turned once more towards her assistant as she stepped forward with a tray of graduation certificates. Charlotte was happy to stay fully in the moment, as the saying had it, during this part. She did always find it somewhat miraculous that the fifteen or twenty – or in today’s case, twenty-five – graduates now stepping one by one up onto the stage could have changed so much from the sloppy, laidback students who had signed with her four months earlier.

‘You’re more like a finishing school than a nanny agency,’ one of the parents had said to her once. ‘I hardly recognise my daughter. You’ve worked miracles.’

‘And in turn your daughter will work miracles on the children in her care,’ Charlotte said. Sometimes she nearly made herself sick with her saccharine statements but it was what people wanted to hear. When it came to other people’s children, either the trainee nannies or the children of her clients, she could never be too sincere, too concerned. And she did mean what she said. Most of the time.

‘Don’t get too cynical,’ Mr Giles had warned her during one of their monthly catch-ups. She’d been telling him about one of her clients, the airhead mother of a frankly dense four-year-old. Charlotte had turned their first encounter into what she felt was a very amusing anecdote. ‘Don’t get too big for your boots, Charlotte,’ Mr Giles said. ‘Yes, you probably are smarter and funnier than many people you’ll meet in life, but it doesn’t mean you have to laugh at them. Show them respect and they will show you respect.’

If anyone else said that to her, there would have been war. No one spoke to Charlotte Templeton like that. No one but Mr Giles, that was. They’d had an honest, straightforward relationship from the start. He’d recognised something in her that he needed for his son. She’d seen in him a chance to escape, and to learn. It was a gamble but it had worked for them both. She still called him Mr Giles too, even all these years later. It was almost a pet name now. His son, Ethan, her first charge and in many ways the person who had changed her life, was now twenty-four and if she did say so herself, a model citizen. He’d moved smoothly from private school to Ivy League university to postgraduate study and was now working as an architect in New York. They were still great friends, the age difference scarcely a factor. She’d had dinner and gone to a Broadway show with Ethan and his girlfriend only two weeks earlier and it had been a wonderful night. She’d never have thought it possible, but he’d turned from her little fun client into a good teenage boy, and now an even nicer adult. It could have been so different. He could have been a spoilt brat, someone she went running from, shrieking in horror, only weeks after arriving in Chicago. Mr Giles could have turned into a lecherous old man. It was what everyone had expected, she knew that, but it hadn’t happened.

Soon after arriving in Chicago all those years ago she’d started to keep a diary. Not filled with her thoughts or first impressions, she didn’t have the time for that, but with goals, ideas, hopes. She’d re-read it recently. It entertained and amused her to see how much of it had come true. ‘Be my own boss.’ ‘Be independent and independently wealthy.’ Had she predicted her own future somehow? If she had written ‘Be happily married’, ‘Be in love’, would her dating life have been different? It was the only area of her life that hadn’t worked out so well.

At first there hadn’t been time. Her nanny duties included minding Ethan most evenings and on her one night off she preferred to laze in front of the television eating delicious American cookies rather than head out to Chicago’s bars and clubs with other nannies she’d met. She’d gone on a few blind dates in those early years but they’d been as unsuccessful as the ones she’d tried with her friend Celia in Melbourne. She just didn’t seem to like men her own age. One night, one of her nanny friends had got drunk and announced she had a crush on Charlotte. For a moment Charlotte had wondered whether that was where she’d been going wrong, whether it was women she should be dating, not men. But unfortunately that hadn’t turned out to be the case, either. The more she thought about it, the less interested she was in dating either sex. There was too much going on in her life career-wise. It also didn’t help that she’d seen so many failed relationships. Her own parents, for starters.

In her admittedly limited experience, marriages foundered for one of five reasons – basic incompatibility, money problems, infidelity, boredom, or all of the above. Her parents clearly came under the money problems banner. Severe money problems, from what Gracie had told her. Charlotte knew they had arrived in Australia with debts and it seemed they had left Australia the same way. All her father’s fault too, by the sounds of it. One far-fetched plan after the other, Templeton Hall the straw that broke the camel’s – or the accountant’s – back. None of it surprised Charlotte. As the oldest, she had heard plenty of their fights, even managed to see some of the crisply worded letters from various solicitors during some of her regular secret forays into her father’s office.

At least Henry hadn’t asked her to talk to Mr Giles about a possible bail-out. That would have been too much. Instead, he had seemingly embarked on an international tour of antique hotspots, dealing in everything from clocks to china to furniture in an attempt to raise as much cash as quickly as possible, assuaging his guilt about never seeing his children with a constant onslaught of postcards. Gracie had only ever seen the bright side of their father’s actions, of course. ‘He’s working so hard to try and fix everything, Charlotte,’ she’d written once. ‘He’s been travelling all over England and America. I don’t think there’s an antiques store or an old manor house in the northern hemisphere that he hasn’t visited in the past few years. Poor Dad.’

Poor Dad indeed, Charlotte thought. He’d telephoned her once when he was in Connecticut on a buying trip. ‘You could always visit instead of telephone, Dad. I’m just an airfare away. Your poor abandoned eldest daughter, so far away from home and hearth.’

‘I’d love to, Charlotte, but my time is just not my own this trip. I’ll be back, though.’

If he had come to the Midwest, he hadn’t visited her. Did she care? Sometimes. She had mixed feelings about her father. Perhaps she had done all her emotional-stepping-back from him and her mother when she first went to boarding school all those years ago in Melbourne. Certainly, the news that they had separated didn’t cause her world to tumble down or her heart to break. If anything, she was amazed they had stayed together for so long. They were so obviously ill-suited. Her father was charming, but so unreliable, so easily distracted, chasing one money-making venture after another. Her mother, by contrast, was so serious. Intellectual rather than emotional. The ‘adult’ in the relationship. On the bright side, from the little Charlotte had been able to prise out of her mother over the years, all the debts had now been cleared. Not that it meant her parents were back talking again.

Poor Gracie had been so upset about it all. Charlotte had tried to console her over the phone, trying to explain that it wasn’t Gracie’s fault, that their parents had a relationship quite separate to their roles as parents. She’d tried every approach she could, but all Gracie had ever wanted was for everyone she knew to be happy and live happily ever after. She had always been so sweet. Too sweet for her own good, possibly.

Perhaps it was no wonder that the accident with Tom and Spencer had upset her so much. Time would heal things for her eventually, Charlotte felt sure. She was only twenty-seven. Plenty of time yet.

Charlotte’s thoughts turned to Spencer. Her brother at least seemed to be making up for everyone else when it came to accumulating notches on his bedpost or however people counted relationships these days. In her opinion he was too much of a chip off their father’s block, all charm and not to be trusted, but there was no denying he was great amusement value, and those hippyish, boyish looks of his certainly seemed to attract girls in droves. The latest, Irish Ciara, sounded very nice on the phone. Nicer than Spencer’s Swedish Anna or Polish Katerina had ever sounded. Ciara also sounded smart. Organised. Charlotte would bet a thousand dollars it was Ciara’s brains that were behind this ridiculous but bafflingly successful Irish surf school, too. Shark Boy, indeed. P. T. Barnum had it right. There was a sucker born every minute, and anyone who fell for Spencer’s tale deserved to be taken for all they had.

And to continue her audit of her family – what about Audrey? Charlotte thought about her sister for a moment, then decided there was nothing worth mulling over. It was a little embarrassing to admit it, but Audrey bored Charlotte. Her complete self-obsession. The whole ‘Greg saved my life’ carry-on. The ‘none of you see me for the artist I am’ business. Yawnsville, Arizona, as one of her nanny students was too fond of saying. The sooner Audrey faced up to the fact that she made her living by sticking her hand up a sock’s kabootie, the better. Enough of the artistic temperament. Save it for the real artists. Not that she would ever say that to Audrey, of course. Knowing her, there’d be every chance she’d lapse back into no-speaking and Charlotte would have to put up with hours of earnest phone conversations with Grig, who seemed perfectly nice, but God, could he get any more boring either? And to think Audrey and Grig between them were in charge of the televisual stimulation of thousands of children around the world. What were they creating, a generation of sock puppet-obsessed zombies? Charlotte had sat through half of one episode of It’s Bobbie Time! during one of her rare visits to London and been appalled at how backward it was, all patronising talk into the camera and ancient songs. Thank God they hadn’t managed to sell Bobbie to any of the US cable networks. That would really have damaged Charlotte’s credibility with her client base.

Families, families, Charlotte thought. What was the saying? Can’t live with them, can’t live without them? She had her own version. Can’t live with them, don’t want to live with them. In the time since she had left Melbourne to come to Chicago she’d seen her family only once a year, sometimes even less than that. Never for Christmas. Not while Hope was still coming to the Templetons for Christmas each year, even when her boyfriend was still alive. Boyfriend? It had always sounded such a juvenile word when the pair of them were so old. Meal-ticket friend might have been a better description, from what Spencer had told Charlotte about Hope’s live-in lover. Rich, dim-witted, new-agey and inexplicably devoted to Hope until the day he suddenly dropped dead.

Hope or no Hope, the main reason Charlotte hadn’t returned home for turkey and tree-trimming was that Christmas time in Chicago was nanny bonus time. Mr Giles and Ethan always went away for Christmas. Charlotte spread the word around the nanny circles of Chicago that she was available for short-term work over the holiday season. She’d been inundated with high-paying offers. Those fraught Christmases hadn’t done anything to convince her of the positive aspects of marriage and love. She saw more examples of bad marriages in those years than she ever wanted to see again. Couples worse than strangers. Fathers who barely knew their children. Mothers who clearly favoured one child over another, or didn’t seem to like any of their children. Why would her luck be any different? Charlotte asked herself. If she did happen to meet a man, fall in love with him, have children, what was to stop it all falling apart within a few years? In the end, it had been an easy decision. She’d become a businesswoman instead, fulfilled every one of her goals. Not just fulfilled them, she’d surpassed them. Today’s graduation ceremony was just the latest example.

It was almost two p.m. by the time she shook the final father’s hand, kissed the last mother’s cheek and hugged the final graduate. All twenty-five of them had placements throughout the Midwest. Another successful term under her belt, and a waiting list one-hundred strong – not just for students but potential clients as well. The knowledge gave her satisfaction every day.

She turned on her phone again as she climbed into the backseat of her car, a black Mercedes-Benz S-Class. This car, and her driver, Dennis, were her one luxury in her business and personal life. It had been Mr Giles’s idea. ‘Think about all the time you spend commuting, all the work you could be doing instead of cursing the traffic and getting stuck in snarls. Your driver equals at least four extra working hours a day.’ He’d been right, of course. She sometimes managed to do more work in the car than she did in two or three days in the office, especially now she had her Blackberry.

It had made her decision to move out of Chicago to the small, historic town of Woodstock, just over an hour away, an easy one. She actually liked the life of a commuter. Now and then she took the train from Woodstock to Chicago and back, especially in the warmer months when she didn’t mind the walk to the station, but she usually started work so early and stayed in her office so late that getting stuck in rush-hour traffic wasn’t a factor for her – or for Dennis, at least. She occasionally stayed in one of Mr Giles’s investment apartments in Chicago – he always made sure one was available for her use, for the nights she worked back especially late – but she preferred the small-town life of Woodstock on weekends. She liked the feeling she got as she passed the ‘Welcome to Woodstock: A distinctive destination’ sign each evening. She liked the fact that the town had an unusual claim to fame, having been used as a location for the film Groundhog Day. She loved her house, especially. It had taken her only two weekends of touring available properties with a local realtor to find it: a two-storey, two-bedroom wooden stand-alone on the main road into the historic square, with a porch, stained-glass windows and a garden filled with flowers and fruit trees. It was warm in winter, cool in summer, light-filled all year around and just the right size, enough space but easy to keep tidy. It also, very importantly, had a large, modern kitchen. She loved to cook. She loved to eat too, far too much, unfortunately. On the bright side, her excess weight was surprisingly good for business. People liked fat nannies and fat nanny trainers, she’d discovered. Fat nanny trainers with English accents even more. Her voice gave her authority, her width gave her the cuddle factor.

She mostly kept herself to herself in Woodstock, venturing into the bookshop or one of the cafes or restaurants on the square on weekends if she was in the mood, occasionally attending a concert or play in the old Opera House, talking to her neighbours enough to be polite, but beyond that, happy to keep her own company. She did enough talking at work. She had the best of both worlds this way, she decided. A successful career, a peaceful home life.

In the back of the car now, she took a sip from the bottle of chilled water Dennis had thoughtfully placed in the leather holder and checked her Blackberry. Fifteen work calls to return and six personal messages waiting for her, as expected – two each from Audrey, Spencer and Gracie. She did like it when they jumped to her bidding like that. Sending quick text messages back to each of them, she arranged a conference call for noon the next day, then turned her attention back to her working life.