Chapter Twenty-six
The sun was now high and hot, but the sky's dazzling blue seemed a mockery. It would have suited her mood better if a gale had been howling and cold fingers of rain were feeling her collar.
As she turned from the mews into the street, something shot between her legs. A brown dog, the smallest she had ever seen, was cringing against the front of one of the mews houses on the other side of the road. It was staring at her with enormous black eyes and making whimpering noises.
Emma's love of small things in general had found its main outlet in children, but there was plenty left over to be kind to little animals like this one. "Come here, boy," she cooed, clacking gingerly across the cobbles towards it.
The dog let her come close. It was trembling, and the expression in its huge black eyes was one of petrified fear.
"Hey, I won't hurt you," Emma crooned.
But something else might, she now realised. There was a bloodcurdling snarl, a deep bark, a slide of claws, and suddenly, round the corner, skidded an enormous Alsatian. It was evidently in pursuit, ears erect and eyes blazing with intent to murder. Without stopping to think abut what she was doing, she snatched up the small dog, kicked out at the Alsatian, which stopped in surprise, and staggered away as quickly as her heels would permit her.
She looked back to see the Alsatian standing at the entrance to the mews, its brown eyes full of apology, its tail wagging amiably.
Emma put the dog she had rescued down to examine its collar. The collar was, she noticed, very ornate, covered in huge diamonds, in fact, which had to be fake. But there was no address on it, merely the word "Sugar" and a small silver disc with a mobile phone number engraved on it.
"Oi! You!"
Turning, she saw a ginger-haired man in jeans making his unsteady way towards her down the mews.
"Hey! You!" His accent was Scottish and aggressive. He was quite big, Emma saw too. Broad and powerful, with strong arms and a big chest.
"You stealing that dog or something?" He was squinting at her; the bright light seemed to be causing him some discomfort.
"Actually, I rescued him," Emma said. "I was just looking for somewhere to phone his owner from."
"Don't bother," the man snapped, hoisting his jeans up. "I'm his owner. Well, my girlfriend is. He's lost. I've been looking for him for the last hour." He looked at the dog with dislike.
The newcomer looked, she thought, vaguely familiar. She was sure she had seen him recently, as recently as the last couple of days. But surely that was impossible. Unless he was staying at the bed and breakfast or a regular user of Camden Library, that was.
"Let me put him down," she suggested, lowering Sugar gently to the ground.
"Be my guest," growled the other. "I'd like to put him down permanently."
As his claimant approached, Sugar immediately let out a terrified yelp and leapt back up into Emma's arms again, digging his claws into her skin.
"I thought you said you knew him," Emma said suspiciously. "You said he was your girlfriend's dog."
She wondered now if she believed in the girlfriend story. She glanced again at the dog's diamond collar. It was almost painfully dazzling to look at in the sunshine. Perhaps, incredible though it seemed, it was real, after all, and he was trying to steal it.
Emma suddenly resolved not to part with Sugar until she had returned him to his rightful owner. It was not an especially convenient decision for her; it could lead to any number of difficulties, not least persuading Mrs. Cupper, who had a No Dogs rule, to let it into the bed and breakfast. Nor was she particularly fond of the animal. She disliked his bony brown head, which felt horribly fragile, and found his big, round, prominent eyes very strange as they were entirely black and apparently consisting entirely of pupil.
But to surrender a small dog to someone whose designs on it might be nefarious was irresponsible in the least and might even be cruel. She held Sugar and looked challengingly at his claimant.
His would-be captor now abandoned all attempts at charm. "You…you…arsehole!" he hurled at Sugar in frustration. While feeling it was wrong to shout at an animal, Emma knew the claim was not inaccurate. The specified part of Sugar's anatomy, quivering upwards towards her beneath its tail, was indeed very prominent.
Meanwhile, she had better things to do than stay here. The rest of her life to sort out, not least. And as for the dog, there was only one possible option now. It was inconvenient, but anything else could be inhumane.
"Look," Emma said briskly. "I'm happy to come back with you and give it to your girlfriend. How about that?"
The man shrugged his shoulders. "Okay, then."
"Ever heard of please and thank you?" Emma rebuked, stung at this grudging acceptance of the sacrifice of her time.
His eyes flashed open with surprise. In the split second before they screwed up again, Emma could see they were an amazingly pale blue. "You sound like a nanny," he grumbled, scratching his red hair.
"I am a nanny."
"A nanny?" He sounded, for some reason, thunderstuck.
"Yes. A nanny."
"Working round here, are you?"
Emma shrugged. "Actually, I'm, um, between jobs at the moment."
"Between jobs!"
"Yes."
Before she quite knew what was happening, he had taken her arm and ushered her down the mews to where, at the bottom, a big silver car was slowly drawing up. He seemed to be very excited.
"Where are we going?" Emma bleated as she found herself propelled inside the pale leather interior.
"The Portchester Hotel."
Within a few minutes, they were getting out in front of an enormous building of golden stone with striped awnings and trees in pots. Two white-gloved doormen in green tailcoats with red facings and top hats scurried towards them.
One of them smiled at Sugar and held out a white-gloved hand to pat his head. He withdrew it hurriedly as the dog gave a vicious growl. "Nice doggy," he said, in an Italian accent. Sugar gave an earsplitting bark.
"Actually, he's not a nice doggy," Emma confided. "He's horrible. But he's not mine so it doesn't matter."
The doorman grinned and ushered her through the shiny brassand-polished-wood revolving doors after Niall. She emerged into a huge, high lobby, gilded and glittering and hung with chandeliers so huge and heavy it seemed extraordinary they could stay up there. Emma glimpsed champagne glasses, heard the sound of a piano, and caught an atmosphere that was hard to define: slightly elegant, slightly bored, entirely expensive.
In the lift, the gold doors slid together. There was a brief whooshing sensation and, within seconds, the doors opened again into another marbled lobby, smaller than the one downstairs but no less grand. The walls were painted cream, picked out with gold, and had small scenes and figures painted on them. It reminded Emma of the backdrop of a theatre. The two vast beige urns mounted on pedestals either side of the lift door were filled with lilies, from which a wonderful smell wafted. The place seemed to breathe luxury and decadence.
"Belle!" shouted Niall. "Hey, Belle. Come here. I've got a surprise for you. Two surprises."
Emma heard the approaching cry of an infant. A woman holding a baby wrapped in white entered the lobby. Sugar immediately erupted into crazed barking. Not to be outdone, the baby doubled its yells.
The woman was very beautiful. She was tiny, about twenty-five, and very thin. Her face was almost completely hidden behind enormous sunglasses. Glossy, white-blonde hair tumbled over her slender shoulders as far as her elbows. On her skinny arms, she wore a great many large and ornate bracelets, which seemed impractical for one nursing a small baby, and dark denim jeans of a tightness beyond what Emma imagined bearable, especially if one was bending to pick up a child. Her look was finished with a flimsy, leopard-skin, shortsleeved blouse and high-heeled red sandals.
"Sugar!" The blonde spoke in a breathy, girlish American accent that Emma felt she recognised. "My little baby-waby," she crooned into the dog's bony head with its bulging black eyes and disproportionately huge black-tipped ears. "Where have you been, my naughty waughty little doggy woggy?"
The baby in her arms roared on. The blonde looked at it impatiently.
"I just can't shut him up," she complained. "He's been going crazy for hours."
Hunger, Emma knew. Those sharp, pulsing yells were unmistakeable. She was surprised that the mother did not know this herself.
"Well, our problems are over!" Niall announced. "This is Emma. She's a nanny."
Immediately, the blonde thrust the bawling baby into Emma's arms. "You know what to do with it. You're a nanny. So go on. Nanny."
Emma felt a mixture of indignation and uncertainty. What made these people so sure she wanted to work for them…but no. All this could wait. In her arms, the baby, which felt incredibly light and frail, bawled its pulsing, relentless, desperate bawl. It was clearly starving. Meanwhile, at the level of the parquet floor, the dog barked on. The din was so deafening that Emma felt she might scream too. Or bark.
"Look," she said in concern. "He really needs food."
"Sugar gets fed later," the blonde declared.
"I didn't mean the dog. I meant the baby."
She noticed that the blonde's tight leopard-skin top revealed disproportionately big breasts for one of her small frame.
"Are you breast-feeding?"
"With these?" The blonde gestured at her bosoms. "They're one hundred percent silicon, sweetie."
"Got any formula?" Emma demanded. The crisis in her arms was getting worse.
"Hey, whaddy think I am? Einstein?"
"Milk formula."
"Oh. Right. There's some, like, powdery stuff in the kitchen, if that's what you mean." The blonde wafted her hand vaguely behind her.
The suite kitchen was small, white, functional, and modern. Emma soon found powdered baby milk and a number of bottles and teats. To her great relief, the fridge was well stocked with still mineral water, as well as, she could not help noticing, a great many bottles of champagne. Hastily, Emma prepared the formula.
The bottle ready, she removed the material mostly draping the baby's face. She had not until now looked at it closely; the earsplitting sound it made had been the focus of her attention. But now she noticed something so unexpected it made her almost drop the bottle with surprise.
The baby was black. Very black, with liquid brown eyes that looked desperately up into hers. While Niall and the woman—Belle, he had called her—were white.
It was the clue she needed. With a thrumming in her ears, Emma finally remembered what she had been straining to recall. The reason she recognised the man was because only yesterday he had been on the front of every tabloid newspaper with Belle Murphy eating his face off. The article accompanying it had mentioned that Belle Murphy had recently adopted an African orphan.
Belle burst into the suite's kitchen. She had taken her sunglasses off, revealing intensely green eyes that reminded Emma of the Go signal at traffic lights. Belle put Sugar on the floor, where his sharp claws skittered unpleasantly on the tiles, and got out one of the bottles of champagne.
The cork went with a violent explosion. Emma jerked in shock. The baby's tiny arms and legs flew out in the classic panic position; his eyes snapped open; and he began to roar. Sugar, meanwhile, began to bark hysterically.
Belle dropped immediately to her knees. "Sugar! Shug-shugshug!" she crooned extravagantly. "My baby! My precious pet. Mommy's so sorry her naughty wine made her baby jump. Let Mommy hug you, there you are…"
Belle looked up from where she cradled the dog on the floor. "Thank God, he's shut up," she remarked ruefully.
"He's a pretty noisy dog," Emma remarked, looking down to where Sugar lay on his back, legs out wide, exposing himself in the crudest fashion to Belle's caresses.
She found herself being regarded with annoyed green eyes. "Not Sugar. I mean, thank God, Morning's shut up."
"Morning? That's his name? I was going to ask…"
"Morning, yeah," Belle took out two champagne flutes from a cupboard. "He's actually called something unpronounceable and African, but I can't even say it, let alone spell it. So I thought Morning would be just fine. It's such a beautiful time of day—or so I'm told." She tittered.
"He's an orphan, is that right?" Emma tried to remember what the paper had said.
"Sure as hell is," Belle said matter-of-factly as she slopped the foaming wine into the two glasses. "You should have seen the orphanage. Like, gross."
"It must have been very difficult to go there," Emma said sympathetically, surprised at this evidence that Belle was perhaps not so shallow after all.
Belle put the bottle on the counter and tossed back her shimmering mane of hair. "Yeah, it was, so I didn't. I got the orphanage people to send my people some shots of the kids they had available on JPEGs and chose one that way."
"You never went to Africa at all?"
The strange green eyes pierced hers. It seemed to Emma they held a hint of warning. "Hey. Don't get me wrong. I'm gonna go there. Sometime. Keep him in touch with his heritage."