Jo could probably have coped with the wake-up call of a pneumatic drill thundering through her skull had she not just been dreaming about chancing upon a mute, shell-shocked, virgin Ben Affleck skinny-dipping through her private lagoon. No time is good to wake up to the sound of a pneumatic drill thundering through one’s skull, but this really did feel like an all-time low.
She opened her eyes and waited for the familiar sounds of the not-so-distant River Avon to emerge from the clamor inside her head. She kept on waiting. Eventually, she poked her head out from beneath the duvet. She was most disoriented to discover that she was not in her bedroom, but in some ikea nightmare. And then suddenly, it all came back to her. She was in hell, north London.
She lay in her bed, staring at nothing and hoping for a quick, painless end when, as suddenly as it had started, the pneumatic drill stopped. Bliss. Utter silence. She treated herself to a flashback of a mute, shell-shocked, virgin Ben Affleck discovering her private lagoon’s hidden waterfall when she was disturbed by the sound of an avalanche outside her window. She screamed and leaped out of bed.
Nervously, she tweaked the curtain aside and came face-to-face with three burly builders, one wheelbarrow, and a builders’ chute down the side of the neighboring house. The builders all spotted her and as one, grinned the male grin, a highly efficient communication shortcut, specific to their gender, that makes their minds transparent. She pushed the curtain back and leaned against the wall.
After her power shower, Jo picked the first outfit from her suitcase that didn’t look like it had been through a wringer, dressed quickly, and appeared in the kitchen. It was empty. She put the kettle on and tried to remember where the tea bags were kept, while keeping an ear out for upstairs. When the pneumatic drill started up again, she decided to venture up to the children. Perhaps she could ask them to hide her.
No one was awake. She looked at her watch. It was late. The children had to be in school soon. She knocked gently on Vanessa and Dick’s bedroom door, then on Tallulah’s and Cassandra’s.
Within seconds, there was grand-scale panic in the Fitzgerald household.
“We’ve overslept!” Vanessa yelled to the world, putting up an impressive contest with the drill. “Get up now! Jo will be taking you in ten minutes flat.”
Jo decided it would be a good time to work out where the schools were, so ran downstairs to get the A-Z.
“Where are you going?” cried Vanessa.
“Downstai—”
“Dick needs help getting the kids up while I shower!”
Dick did indeed need help. Tickling children in their half sleep until they accidentally punch you in the face has never proved to be the fastest way of waking them up.
Starting to feel panicky herself now, Jo opened their curtains and told them that if they were down in ten minutes, she’d make them a surprise treat for dinner. And the first one down could have the biggest helping. It worked wonders as they had yet to sample her cooking.
Jo hardly noticed that when she left for school with the children neither Dick nor Vanessa had left their home, and Dick was not even dressed. All she did notice was that she hit a traffic jam almost immediately and her car had a much lower clutch than she’d imagined. She spent most of her first school run moving her car seat backward and forward, pretending she knew what she was cooking that night and taking a wrong turn. There simply wasn’t time for them to drive home and walk Tallulah to school, so Jo made an executive decision. “If Mummy and Daddy can’t wake her up in time, I can’t walk her to school,” she self-justified. “Maybe it will teach them not to do it again.”
As she and Tallulah drove down Highgate Hill, Jo saw with increasing trepidation just how steep it was. She had visions of her crawling up it in future. She told herself that within weeks her legs would be shapely as well as slim, and her heart would be at its peak of good health. Either that or she’d be dead from exhaustion.
When she got home after dropping Tallulah off, she had to clean the kitchen and finish the ironing. She also wanted to phone Shaun. She assumed the kitchen would be an easy job, but discovered that it couldn’t possibly have been cleaned properly since the nanny before Francesca. Afterward she was exhausted and made herself a quick cuppa, stretching her back out while the kettle boiled. With a mug of tea to fortify her, she started the ironing. She made another interesting discovery. Everything was in the ironing pile. Jo was just about to take her first swig of tea and call Shaun when she realized that if she had to walk up the hill to Tallulah’s school, she would be late if she didn’t leave five minutes ago. She picked up the keys and left the house, remembering to set the alarm first.
Her calf muscles were trembling and sweat was clinging to her back by the time she turned into the little side street where Tallulah’s Montessori nursery was. She saw the single-file line of parents queueing outside the school. She stood, at the back of it, wondering how Tallulah would feel about carrying her home.
Vanessa had mentioned that for security reasons each child was passed individually to his or her “carer of choice” by the teacher, rather than allowing anyone to wander in off the street and take any child away with them. She had expected to have to explain who she was and give everyone a potted history of her CV, as any new nanny in Niblet would have had to do. But not here.
After a few moments a woman arrived behind her, and Jo thought that at last someone friendly had come to save her.
“Hello,” came a voice behind her.
She whipped round and was about to answer when she heard the woman in front of her start up a conversation with her would-be companion. And then to her disbelief, the two women continued a wholehearted conversation around her as if she was invisible. As they spoke about the merits of Hatha yoga compared to Iyengar, Jo tried very hard not to think of her parents.
By the time Tallulah sprang out at Jo, smiling and waving her little hand, Jo wanted to hug her till she cried. Luckily, Tallulah was too interested in what was for dinner to notice anything amiss. The two of them walked down the hill, making conversation about the surprise treat.
“Is it chicken?” asked Tallulah.
“No.”
“Chips?”
“No.”
Tallulah gasped. “Cheese fondue!” she cried.
Take me home, thought Jo. “What is your all-time favorite food?” she said instead. The question was a sure winner. Every four-year-old’s favorite food fitted in nicely with her easy recipe for chocolate Rice Krispies.
Tallulah was quiet for a while. Then she opened her eyes wide, and said in hushed awe, “Homemade hummus on home-baked brioche with garlic-stuffed olives.”
Jo knelt beside her. “Well, sweetie,” she exclaimed. “It’s not that.”
Jo planned to phone Shaun during Tallulah’s ballet lesson but made the fatal error of deciding to catch a quick glimpse of Tallulah in her full tutu glory before nipping out to make the call. After half an hour of standing mesmerised by eleven fairies in the fairy wood, she realized she’d missed her chance. So she joined the other parents on the small chairs at the end of the room.
Tallulah was being a tree. Stretching up, up, up into the sky in a pink glittery concoction of feminine fancy topped with a pink flowery headband. Next to Tallulah stood, treelike, a tiny, squat four-year-old wearing a thermal vest under her tutu, ballet shoes that she would grow into well within the decade, and the face of a fairy elephant. Her mother sat beside Jo with love in her eyes.
“That’s right, Xanthe!” sang the teacher, “join in.”
Xanthe was far more interested in pensively picking her nose and watching Tallulah being a tree.
“Ooh, Tallulah,” chirruped the teacher, “you’re a lovely tree. Isn’t she a lovely tree, everybody?”
Ten four-year-olds stopped being trees for a while and looked at Tallulah. Tallulah opened her face to the sun and thought tree thoughts.
“What a lovely tree,” cooed the teacher. “Are you an oak or chestnut?”
“Banana.”
“Oooh,” said the teacher. “Lovely.”
Jo only just stopped herself from tapping the woman next to her and telling her that she was Tallulah’s nanny. Before she knew it, the class was over and she realized she would have to wait to phone Shaun until after they got back home.
By the time they got back, Jo’s schedule was tight. Tallulah had to be changed from a fairy to a four-year-old and eased down from the dizzy heights of tree stardom while tea had to be thought about and prepared, all within the strict deadline of pickup time for the older two children.
As the afternoon wore on, Jo’s need to speak to Shaun grew increasingly uncomfortable, like an unheeded blister. Usually by now they’d have spoken briefly first thing in the morning, had a lunchtime catch-up and then squeezed in a quickie mid-afternoon to make tonight’s arrangements. She’d have had macro-and micro-details of his day from the traffic jam on his way into work to today’s sandwich fillings and, if there’d been time, they’d have even managed a row. After being together for so many years they could fast-track from easy-going chat to heated row within moments. But today, there had been no time to even start one. Not talking to Shaun gave Jo the oddest sensation of having gone too far out at sea and lost sight of the shore. But every time she picked up the phone, Tallulah bounced in with another query or demand, with the energy and persistence of a delirious pup.
To her amazement, Jo got tea, Tallulah and herself as ready as they both needed to be in time to pick up the other two. She’d have to phone Shaun this evening, she told herself firmly, and until then she’d just have to cope with being all at sea. Just as she was about to leave the house, the phone had rung. It was Diane, Vanessa’s mother.
Luckily, she explained to Jo, she could squeeze in a little visit before her bridge game, as long as the children were home on time. She would be there at four on the dot, so Jo promised that would be fine and was now in a hurry. Tallulah was only too pleased to hurry along beside Jo, because she had been the best tree and she hardly had room in her little body for all the happiness. In fact, bits of happiness kept bursting out in the form of unexplained giggles and skips.
They got to Zak’s school in good time. Zak caught their eye in the playground and nodded briefly with an easy smile. Then he went to shake his teacher’s hand and doff his cap before obediently approaching, handing Jo his football as if she had been waiting for it all along, taking her hand in his, asking her how she was, then telling her about his day in intimate detail.
Zak and Tallulah spent an enjoyable ten minutes in the car together, as Jo drove to pick up Cassandra. They found her sitting on her own on a low wall wearing a glum expression of world-weariness. With barely a flicker of recognition, she got wordlessly into the back of the car. All three children were in their own little worlds, and Jo left them to it, concentrating on getting home without traveling via Manchester.
“I was a tree,” Tallulah told them all.
When Jo got them all home at one minute to four, she discovered she’d forgotten the alarm code. Zak remembered it, but fell over on the way to the understairs cupboard and wailed so loudly he almost deafened the beeping of the alarm, but not quite. Tallulah went to look at Zak’s knee while Cassandra calmly punched in the four-digit code and told Zak to stop crying like a baby. Jo wondered if now would be a good time for her to slip away home. She looked at her watch. Thirty seconds until Diane arrived. She wondered if Diane would be anything like her daughter.
Meanwhile, Diane’s daughter was rather enjoying her day. Most of it had been run-of-the-mill. That morning, she walked briskly past reception at Gibson Bead Advertising Agency in Soho, holding a steaming black coffee in one hand and a bulging briefcase in the other. She headed for the lift, her strappy shoes clacking on the marble floor. She pressed the lift button and checked her makeup in the glistening reflection of the lift door. Her eyes drifted behind her. There she saw Anthony Harrison from Creatives enter the building, wink at the receptionist, and stride toward the lift, whistling as he approached. She turned her head away from him and pretended to look at something on the far wall, a gesture which her subconscious knew was far more likely to attract his attention than actually engaging him in conversation.
Anthony Harrison was one of the few of the Creative team copywriters with whom Vanessa would have actually liked to work. Creatives were notoriously pampered, spoiled, and impossible, but Anthony Harrison managed to turn those traits into engaging proofs of genius. He was the man who had come up with the hugely successful Bloody Hell—It’s That Time Again tampon campaign and the gloriously ironic copy of the L’Oréal line, Equality—Because I’m Worth It campaign. He seemed to be able to slip effortlessly into women’s heads. Probably because he had similar access to their knickers. Vanessa prided herself on being the only woman in the entire office who was impervious to Anthony Harrison’s charms. Yes, he was good-looking, creative, intelligent, and charming, she could see all that. But from about the age of three, when Vanessa had first started loving everything about the male sex, she had been attracted only to dark men. As far as she had always been concerned, blond men were as manly as Barbie. It just didn’t work for her. All her boyfriends had been dark-haired, and her husband was dark-haired and olive-skinned, with soulful brown eyes. Anthony Harrison had thick hair that flopped over his forehead in an endearingly boyish way, but it was flaxen. His skin was smooth as silk, but it was fair; his eyes were deep and penetrating, but they were blue. Vanessa was safe.
Anthony stood next to Vanessa, and she kept her eyes firmly on the wall, conscious that he was managing to give her the once-over without moving his head. She smiled inwardly. Men were so predictable. Which was, she knew, one of the many reasons she adored them.
The lift chimed and its doors slid silently open. Here she acknowledged Anthony’s presence for the first time, at which he gestured for her to go in before him. She smiled delicately, just the right amount to accentuate her apple cheekbones and remain enigmatic. They stood next to each other in silence as the lift ascended. Vanessa got out first. Creatives was on the top floor—or the “penthouse” as it was known—offering superior views and thicker carpets than the rest of the building. As she walked away, she could feel Anthony Harrison’s eyes scan her figure once more. In the reception mirror she could see him ignoring the glances from women already at their desks, keeping his eyes focused on her retreating view as long as possible, tilting his head sideways as the doors shut in front of him. She felt her endorphins skip with vengeful satisfaction at the thought that men still found her sexy.
She walked swiftly through the office, her coffee high, her head higher, and her self-esteem somewhere in the clouds. It was the best part of the day. Unfortunately it was nearly over. She swept confidently into her office, shut the door, and walked over to her desk. She put her coffee next to the up-to-date photos of the children, hefted her briefcase onto the desk, and sat down, moving fast to distract herself from the deflation already setting in.
There was a rat-a-tat at her door.
“Come!” ordered Vanessa.
The door swung open dramatically and Max Gibson, agency founder and onetime advertising guru, stood theatrically in its center, with a smile on his face wider than his bow tie. Max’s days of inspired campaign ideas were long gone, but his onetime pulse-of-the-nation slogans were now so anachronistic they were postmodern in a totally up-to-the-minute way. He was enjoying his retrospective phase far more than he enjoyed his initial success, when he’d been too ambitious to enjoy anything.
“Vanessa, sweetie,” he bellowed through his cigar. “VC wants an agency review! We’ve been asked to pitch!”
Vanessa blinked in amazement. Archrival, McFarleys’, had held the much-coveted Vital Communications account for almost five years. Their latest campaign—a very trendy teddy bear with his own mobile phone and website—had slowly grown stale, but because the sales were still up, everyone in the business assumed McFarleys’ would be safe for years to come.
“You’re kidding!” Vanessa cried.
Max roared with laughter. “Would I kid about something this big?” he twinkled. If his bow tie could have spun it would. “Those bastards must be shitting themselves.” He laughed, then suddenly turned deadly serious. “I want the best creative team we’ve got. I don’t care how up their arses they are, in fact the higher up the better. I want a creative team who are so up their own holes, they’re fucking potholing. I want them to give you migraines, I want a team that are so goddam good, they make your life a nightmare. I want you committing suicide over this, sweetie.”
“You want me to head this?” gasped Vanessa.
“Head it? Head it?” exclaimed Max. “I want you to mastermind it! I want you to fucking Mussolini it! And I expect you to pick the best. The crème-de-là-fucking-crème.”
“Right,” said Vanessa, pen in hand.
“Anyone in mind?”
“You know,” said Vanessa. “I’ve never worked with Anthony Harrison and Tom Blatt before.”
“You’re shitting me?” exploded Max. “That’s criminal. How long have you been here? What? Eight years? Call a lunch meeting at Groucho’s pronto.”
“Okay,” said Vanessa. “You’re the boss.”
She picked up her coffee, and Max winked at her through the cigar smoke.
Anthony Harrison looked out past the line of awards on the window ledge, out toward Soho, which was starting to buzz with anticipation of the approaching summer. The rumors about the VC pitch had already started.
Tom Blatt was Anthony’s partner in crime, a graphic artist, who, in his own modest words could create images that got “blue-rinses to buy piss in a bottle.” Tom wasn’t a wordsman. He sat in the office he and Anthony shared frowning so hard it was giving him one of his heads.
“If Goofy and Grumpy get it,” he told Anthony, “I’m leaving. Leaving. That’s it. Moving onto a houseboat to paint flowers on fucking watering cans.”
“For Christ’s sake,” said Anthony. “Why do you immediately assume the worst?”
Tom shrugged. “Helps me deal,” he muttered.
“With what? Nothing’s happened yet.”
“When it does, I’ll be ready. Healthy pessimism. Worked for van Gogh.”
“How? He cut off his ear and killed himself.”
“But look how famous he is now—”
“Tom. You’re in advertising. You’re not going to cut off your ear, and you’re never going to be famous.”
Tom slumped down on the leather swivel chair opposite Anthony’s desk. “I bet that bitch gives it to Goofy and Grumpy. She wouldn’t know talent if it crapped on her face.”
“What bitch. Who’s heading it?”
“Vanessa Fitzgerald.”
“Bugger! I was in the lift with her this morning. Should have given her a bit of the old Tony treatment.”
Tom let out a big sigh. “How come the suits wield all the power, and we’re the ones with the talent?”
“Dunno, Tom.”
Anthony’s phone rang. Anthony and Tom stared at each other, and after three rings, Anthony picked it up.
“Anthony Harrison.”
“Anthony?” It was a female voice, firm but friendly.
“Yup.”
“Vanessa.”
“Hi, Vanessa!”
Tom sat up in his chair.
“I won’t bush-beat,” said Vanessa. “You know we’ve got the VC pitch?”
“I had heard some rumor.”
“You and Tom interested?”
Anthony grinned at Tom.
“Yeah, why not? I’m sure we could squeeze it in.’
“Let’s have a meet,” Vanessa continued. “Monday’s the earliest I can do it. Groucho’s, 1 p.m. You, me, Tom, and Max.”
“Great. I’ll let Tom know.” He put the phone down and punched the air.
Downstairs, Vanessa replaced her phone slowly and replayed Anthony’s answers in her head, reveling in the controlled excitement she’d heard in his voice. There was something extremely endearing about a man pretending he didn’t feel your power over him.
At four o’clock, Vanessa found a window to phone Jo at home.
“Hi! How’s it going?”
Jo cradled the phone on her shoulder. She kept an ear out for Diane, due to arrive any second, while the other ear was still ringing from the sound of the house alarm. She knew she’d have to get the Rice Krispies started if she was going to get them finished in time for tea.
“How was school?” asked Vanessa, while finishing her progress report on a cereal ad. Jo tried to think. “Fine. Zak had a spelling test. He got “whether” right with an “h.” The teacher was very pleased. He needs a new recorder because the big boys used it as a goalpost and it got broken. Cassandra had a math lesson, and Tallulah sat next to Ella for painting.” She assembled all the ingredients together on the worktop and smiled. She knew the Children Commandments. There Shall Be Ingredients for Chocolate Rice Krispies in the House at All Times.
“Mmhmm,” said Vanessa, signing the bottom of her notes. “Please put that in the diary, I’ll buy him a recorder on the weekend.”
Spider-Man hurled himself into the kitchen, unaware that baggy, saggy underpants ruined the overall effect somewhat. “Have you moved my cyberdog?” he asked Jo, his voice rising unsteadily.
“I thought you were getting ready for your nan?” said Jo, looking down at Zak. “She won’t want to see you like that, will she?”
Max poked his head round Vanessa’s office door. “Did you speak to Anthony?” he bellowed, ignoring the phone in her hand.
Vanessa grinned and nodded at Max, while saying “What’s he wearing?”
“How the fuck do I know what he’s wearing?” asked Max.
“He’s Spider-Man,” answered Jo into the phone.
“Oh dear.”
“Have you moved my cyberdog?” repeated Spider-Man, hitching up his pants and getting tearful.
“I talked to them earlier this morning,” Vanessa told Max, giving him the thumbs-up.
“Did you?” asked Jo. “They didn’t tell me.”
“No, the Creatives, not the children.”
“The what?”
“I can’t find my cyberdog!”
“If you can get into your smart trousers and shirt, I’ll come and help you look for it,” said Jo.
“Has he been holding his willy at all today?” asked Vanessa.
“I hope to Christ you’re not talking to a client,” snapped Max.
“Must dash,” said Vanessa. “I’m frantic. Bye.”
Jo clicked off the phone, gave Spider-Man a secret mission to get into his smart clothes that Nan liked (thus putting the baddies off the scent), put the phone in the fridge, took the phone out of the fridge, and continued to make chocolate Rice Krispies.
Twenty minutes later, three children in smartish clothes looked silently in the bowl.
“Does Mummy know you’ve made this?” asked Cassandra.
“No,” said Jo. “Would she like some?”
“She doesn’t let us have too much chocolate,” said Zak. “It’s bad for our teeth and, long-term, for our entire systems.”
Jo thought about asking whether Mummy’s mummy was of the same mind, when the phone rang.
With her eyes on the children, she went to pick it up.
“Hello,” she said into the phone. “Don’t eat it yet!” she yelled at the children, who were venturing nearer the bowl.
The children stared at her, and she stared back at them, holding a wooden spoon as threateningly as she could. When a voice sounded in her ear, she got a little shock.
“Hello, is Jo there please?”
“Shaun!” Jo almost wept with relief. She’d forgotten she’d given him the house number before leaving.
“Blimey is that you? I didn’t recognize you.”
“I miss you! Don’t eat it now!”
She leaped across the room and rescued her mixing bowl.
“This is for dessert after homework,” she told them. “Or it’s a wooden spoon up the bottom.”
“Whose bottom?” asked Cassandra.
“You said it was a treat for waking up,” said Zak. “Not for doing our homework.”
“Can it be Zak’s bottom?” asked Cassandra.
“No,” said Jo.
“Why?”
“Much as I love listening to dysfunctional children,” came Shaun’s voice in her ear, “I’m a bit busy at the moment. Shall we speak later?”
“Yes,” Jo told the wooden spoon.
Cassandra took the phone from her. “Could Jo call you back please?” Jo heard her say to Shaun. “She’s a bit busy right now. Does she know your number?” Then as Jo wiped chocolate off her ear, she heard the little girl say, “If she doesn’t call tonight, she’ll call you as soon as she can. Thank you for calling. Bye now.”
Cassandra switched off the phone. “He said that’s fine,” she told Jo, handing her back the phone. “Do you know where the cake tins are?”
Nodding mutely, Jo could hear the sound of a doorbell in the distance.
“Right! Homework time,” she announced, hurrying to the front door, practicing her capable smile. When she opened it no one was there, but at the front of the garden an immaculately dressed woman was deadheading the rosebush. The woman turned suddenly to look at her, and then began to approach. She was unmistakably Vanessa’s mother. As they met at the door, Jo showed the woman her smile, and the woman handed her some rose stems and stepped into the house. Her skin was taut and smooth, her makeup flawless, and her clothes expensive. She was exceedingly well preserved and seemed unable to smile properly, a bit like the Mona Lisa, thought Jo. But it was her hair that caught Jo’s eye the most. It looked like a new crown of spun gold and copper, and her every movement was as if she was still practicing walking with it on her head.
“I’ve come straight from the hairdresser’s,” she said, taking off her coat and handing it to Jo. “So I can’t stay long.”
“Right,” said Jo.
“Hello, darlings!” she called out into the house. “I’ve been to the hairdresser’s, so I can’t stay long!”
She turned to Jo, said, “Just one tea please, I’m playing bridge tonight,” and sallied forth into the kitchen, where she found the children in various stages of eating raw chocolate Rice Krispies off a wooden spoon.
“Lula!” cried Diane in dismay at Tallulah’s sticky brown mouth. “You look like a clown!”
“So do you!” exclaimed Tallulah, impressed. “I want lipstick!”
Diane turned to Jo. “Is that chocolate?” she asked.
“Yes.” Jo sighed. “It’s a long story.”
“I know the story of chocolate,” said Diane crisply. “It originates from the cacao bean and was introduced to Europe by the Spanish when they conquered Mexico. That wasn’t my point.”
Jo blinked at Diane. “I didn’t mean that story,” she whispered.
“Jo promised us a treat if we got up this morning,” Cassie explained.
“Goodness me, whatever next?” Diane asked the room. “Gifts for sleeping?”
“They overslept, so—” started Jo.
“I can’t stay long,” repeated Diane. “Who wants to watch Grandma do her nails?”
The girls cheered, and Zak blew an expressive raspberry.
“Zachariah!” cried his grandma. “I don’t think there’s any call for that, is there?”
Jo heartily agreed with Zak, so quietly got on with making the tea.
“Sorry,” said Zak, before mumbling, “And it’s ZacharIE.”
“I should think so.”
“They were just about to do their homework actually,” said Jo.
“Yes,” said Zak. “I’ve got lots.” And off he vanished.
“Girls,” said Jo, “After you’ve finished helping your nan—”
“Grandma,” corrected Diane in her best Lady Bracknell voice.
“—you can do your homework,” finished Jo lamely. She then found the cake tins and started pouring her raw mixture in, while the girls crowded round Diane doing her nails.
The quicker I do this, thought Jo, the more time I’ll have to call Shaun before the children’s tea. As soon as the Krispies were in the fridge, the phone rang. Jo glanced over at Diane, who waved wet nails in her direction. As Jo went to answer the phone she heard Diane say to the girls. “Let’s see how good your new nanny’s phone voice is, shall we, girls? It’s the perfect test of a lady.” Excited, Cassandra and Tallulah watched her keenly.
Right, thought Jo. You asked for it.
“Good afternoon,” she said into the phone, impersonating Eliza Doolittle’s post rain-in-Spain moment. “The Fitzgerald London residence. How may I help?”
In the pause that followed, Jo caught Diane’s plucked eyebrows arch toward her golden crown.
“Blimey,” came a warm male voice that Jo recognized immediately. “Do you wear a pinny and a hat, too?”
Jo stared blankly at Diane, harpooned by the woman’s scrutiny. “To whom do you wish to speak?” Jo was now on automatic-pilot, paralyzed from the fringe down.
“To you.” Josh laughed. “You’re priceless.”
Diane started to smile graciously at Jo, who felt encouraged enough to continue. “Would you like to speak to anyone in the Fitzgerald family?”
“God no, they’re all mad.”
“The children’s grandmother, Diane, is here playing with the girls.”
“Why? What have they done wrong?”
Jo controlled her smile. She managed to half turn away from Diane, which felt recklessly rebellious. “They almost ate chocolate,” she said primly.
“Oh my gosh!” mimicked Josh. “I’ll call the police while you make them sick it up.”
“They’re with their grandmother now,” complied Jo, “so I don’t think that will be necessary.”
Josh’s “Fuck me, are you for real?” spoiled the first warm feeling she’d had since she’d been there. It was one thing to be mocked, but quite another to be mocked by a moron who couldn’t tell a joke when he heard one. Disappointment fueled her anger.
“Can I put you on speakerphone?” he was saying now. “The guys in the office don’t believe me. Rupert wants a date if you let him use a dummy.”
Jo gritted her teeth. “I’ll tell the Fitzgeralds you called,” she said, and hung up.
Slowly, she turned back to Diane who was sitting very still, her head slightly tilted, her gaze questioning. The girls were long gone, finding Jo’s phone conversation almost as boring as watching nail polish dry. Instead, Diane was now flanked by the bookends Molly and Bolly, who joined her in giving Jo a superior, unflinching stare.
“It was Josh,” Jo told them.
They all looked singularly unimpressed.
“Was it?” muttered Diane.
“Between you and me,” attempted Jo, “I don’t think he’s a very good influence on the children.”
“Of course he isn’t,” said Diane, standing up. “He’s the son of Dick’s first wife, Jane, who you will soon find out is a cow. In a none-too-effective disguise. Doubtless you’ll meet her when she drops off her boy Toby. He is the devil.”
“Right,” said Jo, as Diane wafted past her into the hall, followed by the cats. “I’ll look forward to it.”
“Good-bye darlings!” Diane called up. “Grandma’s going!”
“Guys!” shouted Jo. “Say good-bye to Grandma before her bingo!”
“Bridge!” exclaimed Diane, horrified.
“Oh, I’m so sorry. I always confuse those two.”
Diane shouted upstairs again. “No need to come down, I’m in a rush!”
“Bye!” shouted three children from various rooms upstairs.
Jo handed Diane her coat, and Diane took a long last look at her as though Jo had just handed her a bouquet of flowers in thanks for opening a fête. Then after Jo had opened the front door for her, Diane instructed Jo to instruct Vanessa to instruct her gardener to dead-head the roses, and, followed by the silent cats as far as the front gate, wafted away.
“Mmm, broccoli,” lied Jo, as she took a bite.
“I hate broccoli,” said Tallulah, as the other two watched Jo, equally unconvinced.
“Imagine it’s covered in chocolate,” said Jo. “That’s what I always do.”
“Why don’t you just not eat it?” asked Zak.
“Or cover it in chocolate?” asked Cassandra.
“I just like eating stuff that makes me grow,” lied Jo again.
“Why?” asked Cassandra. “You’re already tall.”
“I’m going to be tall when I grow up,” said Tallulah, eating a piece of broccoli.
“I’m just going to wear high heels,” said Cassandra.
“I was a tree,” said Tallulah.
Jo had just got everything into the dishwasher and was about to bathe Tallulah when Dick arrived home. She almost sank to her knees in gratitude as the three children hurled themselves at him. As she watched him roll on the floor with them, she wondered how this “daddy bear” was the same man from her interview. As the children started using him as a trampoline and he grinned stupidly up at her, she decided first impressions could be very misleading.
She looked at her watch. 7 p.m. She’d worked a twelve-hour day without a single break, and she still hadn’t finished the ironing. Did all Londoners work these ridiculous hours or was it just the Fitzgeralds? Dick noticed her look at her watch.
“I know,” he said, from underneath a child. “Odd hour to be home.”
“Ah,” sighed Jo, relieved. “I thought it might be.”
“God yes!” he said. “But as it was your first day, I just shut up shop and came home early.”