Nick pushed Mutley back to where he was meant to be sitting and watched his daughter walk off jauntily, falling in beside a tall, lanky boy whose body language – even from the back – suggested that he was smitten with Nick’s little girl. He felt a surge of protectiveness. As he watched, a bulkier youth pushed into the one accompanying Julie, knocking them both. Julie’s companion said something angrily to him and the bulky kid, whose solid shoulders bulged underneath his T-shirt, put his fingers up in an aggressive gesture that had existed even in Nick’s day. These kids were so big, thought Nick, they could be mistaken for teachers. The school was getting rougher and he had wondered if he should have moved Julie to do her A levels somewhere else. But Juliana had picked this school – she had even been on the PTA committee. Taking Julie away was impossible without her mother’s permission.
They seemed all right now, Julie and the boy. The big kid had gone. Nick glanced down to put the car into gear and saw his daughter’s purse on the front seat. She’d need it. He leapt out of the door without looking and stood back, just in time, as a cyclist sped past, shouting at him – not without justification. He reproached himself and began to race down the pavement. ‘Julie!’ He waved to catch her attention. ‘Darling, your purse!’
A group of mothers – whom he didn’t recognise – stared at him coldly. Maybe he shouldn’t have said ‘darling’ but he couldn’t help it: his little girl had always been his darling, his princess. That was why he was keeping her out of the modelling world for as long as he could. It had destroyed his wife and he was damned if he would let it do the same to his daughter.
He ran on through the swathes of schoolchildren, who didn’t trouble to stand back and let him through. So much for respect! He almost bumped into an older woman helping a little boy out of a turquoise Discovery. Nick’s artistic eye caught the child’s dark auburn curls. Nice-looking kid. ‘Julie!’
To his relief, she turned round. For a minute, she looked at him as she might at a stranger, then recognition flashed into her eyes. ‘Dad! What’s up?’
He held out the purse, and took a good look at the boy next to her.
‘Thanks, Dad. This is Jason.’
Nick almost held out his hand. ‘Hi, Jason, nice to meet you.’
Jason gave what passed for a nod. What the hell does she see in this oik? wondered Nick. Moody face, greasy (waxed?) lock of hair across forehead and thin lips. He only hoped he didn’t drive. That really spooked him: the realisation that if he didn’t ensure Julie learned to drive safely, she would soon reach an age where other kids of her age would be driving
her
.
‘See you tonight,’ he said, feeling suddenly awkward.
‘Sure.’ Julie looked as embarrassed as he felt. Still, what kid wouldn’t when a parent meets a boyfriend for the first time? He’d felt like Jason when he’d met Juliana’s dad.
‘Don’t you think you’re a bit old for her?’
‘Some people might think so, sir, but I love her and I’m old enough to look after her properly in the way some wouldn’t.’
Nick’s honesty had won over the old man but the conversation still rang in his head.
I’m old enough to look after her properly
. It was exactly what he hadn’t done, and now Juliana was dead.
He began to walk back briskly towards the car (walking helped when he had terrible thoughts like this) and the older woman he’d seen earlier – maybe a granny? – approached him, holding the auburn-haired child’s hand.
‘Excuse me, do you know who this little boy belongs to?’
He wondered if he’d heard her correctly. Hadn’t he just seen her opening the Discovery parked down the road and helping him out? ‘Er, no.’ He looked down at the child. He wasn’t mistaken.
That hair was unforgettable. ‘Is he lost?’
The woman nodded. She was short and plump with heavy lines creased into her forehead. Her lipstick was smudged and her rather old-fashioned, pale pink checked coat had milky-looking stains down the front. If she hadn’t been part of the school run remnant, Nick might have mistaken her for a bag lady.
Nick got down on his knees so he was the same height as the little boy. ‘Do you know where Mummy is?’ he asked.
The little boy shook his head solemnly.
Nick tried again. ‘What’s your name?’
Suddenly, without warning, the child burst into noisy tears, which made everyone walking by stare at them. Hell! thought Nick. Any minute now I’ll be accused of molesting a child.
‘Where did you find him?’ He stood up. The woman in the pink coat had disappeared. Shit. Now what was he going to do?
‘Jack!
Jack!
’ A young woman tore up to them and flung her arms round the child. One look at the little boy told Nick, to his relief, that this was indeed his mother. ‘What the fuck are you doing with him?’ she said, raising her tear-stained face.
‘Nothing. I was trying to find out who he belonged to,’ said Nick. ‘Some woman – oldish – had him. She said he was lost and asked if I knew where his mother was. Then she just . . . disappeared.’
‘Really?’ She was scowling at him. ‘Then how do you explain that I left him in the car only a few minutes ago? I’ve a good mind to call the police.’
This was ridiculous. ‘Listen, if you want to do that, go ahead. I’m telling you the truth. I’ve got a kid at this school myself and I’ve just dropped her off.’
The mother’s expression softened. ‘OK, I’m sorry. But I was scared. I knew I shouldn’t have left him in the car and I panicked.’ She hesitated. ‘Thanks for looking after him.’
‘You need to be careful,’ said Nick, firmly. ‘That woman looked a bit odd. You get some weird types around here.’
Her eyes hardened again. Over-plucked eyebrows, observed Nick. They did nothing for her. ‘I
am
careful, thanks very much. It’s OK, Jack. Mummy’s here.’
‘I’ll be off, then.’ Nick wondered if now was the time to remind her that they knew each other slightly. He’d thought there was something familiar about her face and it was only when she’d been sounding off that he’d remembered. She was the editor of
Just For You
magazine, one of his clients. Maybe it was as well she hadn’t recognised him. Rumour had it that you didn’t want to get on the wrong side of Evie Brookes and now he could see why.
Right now, he hadn’t time to worry about that. If he didn’t get a move on, he’d be late for his session at the centre before the shoot at twelve. He’d been seeing Amber for the last three months at ten o’clock on Mondays. He wasn’t sure if it had helped – and he hadn’t told Julie about it – but the GP had encouraged him. He had tried initially to get Julie to see someone too. School had been good – a Mrs Greathead had contacted him to see if Julie would like to see one of the counsellors who visited school when children needed extra support, but Julie had adamantly refused. ‘I don’t want to talk to a stranger about Mum,’ she had said. ‘How could they understand when they never even met her?’
Nick had taken her point. But it was precisely because Amber hadn’t known Juliana that he had hoped to find relief. Maybe someone with an objective point of view could put all this into context. So far, she hadn’t done a lot to clear the terrible wrangling in his head but maybe he should go today. It might help him prepare for Friday.
Friday . . . It seemed impossible that Juliana had died two years ago. Nick hated anniversaries and all the superficiality that went with them. He rubbed his eyes, raw from lack of sleep. If you really loved someone, you missed them every day of the year, not just on one day.
Especially when you had helped to kill them.
4
MARTINE
‘Long queues are already building up on the Marylebone bypass, causing severe congestion.’
Dear Diary,
What is Congestion? I must seek it in the dictionary or my Roget’s Thesaurus and engrave it in my vocab book like my tutor said. My tutor, she also say to write this diary and listen to the radio. Me, I always record in a diary every day even when I am at home. I do not know if it is aiding my studies and the radio speaks so quick. But I want to try hard and I think it is arriving. Last night I dreamed a morsel in English. I was lying in a proper bed – these English mattresses are so lumpy – with my bolster instead of these pillows that Sally donates me. The shutters at the window were open and Maman was calling me to get up. ‘Come, it is breakfast,’ she is saying. I smell the coffee – real coffee, not this nasty little grains – and croissants that dissolve like butter. And then I wake and find it is me who has to get the children breakfast. The English bread, he is heavy, and the marmalade, she is bitter. Now I am obliged to adorn Alice and Josh for school. When I was their age, I got my own selves up but these enfants are spoilt. Sometimes I feel like leaving them in a residue so they learn a lesson. But then I would be reprimanded. Maybe if Simon and Sally were not so busy working, they would understand. It is part of being a good boss, yes? Even if they are famous. In the interim period, I must endeavour to perform my optimum. You see how I try?
‘Capital Radio, da-da-dah!’ sang Martine. ‘It ees a nice tune, no, children?’
Alice and Josh giggled, nudging each other and rolling all over the leather seats, kicking the back of Martine’s.
‘Da-da-dah!’ imitated Alice; then convulsed with laughter, the kind that sounded like the snorting sounds Martine sometimes heard from the spare room when Simon had come in from what Sally mysteriously called a ‘late night’, long after he’d finished at the studios.
‘Stop that at once,’ said Martine sharply. All this stress was making her desperate for a cigarette but she didn’t dare – her employers would smell it in the car like last time. ‘When you kick, you hurt my back. In addition, it is rude to laugh. Yes?’
‘Wee,’ sniggered Alice.
‘Wee-wee,’ added Josh, between snorts. ‘W-what do you think of my p-p-p-pronunciation, Marty?’
Scratching her head (why was her scalp so itchy?), Martine turned up the radio, determined not to lower herself to their level. She could have sworn that Josh pretended to stutter just to annoy her, and it made it even harder to understand him. The English spoke so fast and the words came out in a different order from her textbooks. Sometimes she felt as though she was the one sane person in this crazy country and that everyone was speaking a mad language that only they understood.
Martine blew her nose, trying to hide the tears that were coming back again. It was so difficult to be an au pair. The agency in France had said the host family would treat her like a member of their own family. If they went out for the day, they would take her too. She would be like a
cousine
but a
cousine
who helped look after the children and drove them to school.
In reality she was no better than a slave. Simon and Sally were friendly when they saw her but they were hardly there! There had been a housekeeper when Martine had arrived but she had left, and now Martine was expected to do the laundry too. She had complained to the agency but they had said it was in her contract to wash and iron children’s
vêtements
. And, no, she would not get extra money for this chore – which, her mother had agreed in her last letter (it had smelt so poignantly of Maman’s fragrance), was most unfair.
‘Traffic building up on the Staines bypass and it’s nearly twenty to nine . . .’
‘Twenty to nine?’ Alice stopped giggling. ‘Sheet, Marty, we’re late.’
Again she and Josh collapsed into mirth. For once Martine understood the joke. When she had first arrived, Sally had asked her to put fresh linen on the beds. Afterwards she had announced proudly that she had ‘changed the shits’. It wasn’t until Sally explained the difference between sheets and something a little less fragrant that she had understood.
Vraiment
, only a language like this could encourage such ridiculous confusion. Even the radio was crazy. Why did it go on about traffic in some place called Staines when she was in Bal Ham?
Then there was the way people drove on the left while the rest of Europe was on the right. She kept having to remind herself about this, although luckily Sally wasn’t aware of it. There were several things her employer didn’t know about because she spent most of her time on television. At first, Martine had been impressed when the agency had told her she would be working for the famous couple who had their own show at teatime, interviewing celebrities, and ordinary people who had done something unusual, like that girl who had sold her virginity for such a low figure.
‘You must watch the children all the time,’ the agency had impressed on her. ‘Simon and Sally Pargeter are very well known and they are naturally concerned for their children’s safety.’
Now when Martine recalled this she couldn’t help feeling that if anyone kidnapped those two children they would soon give them back when they discovered how much trouble they were.
‘Nearly a quarter to nine now and . . .’
‘Hurry up,’ interrupted Alice, tapping Martine’s shoulder. ‘We’re going to be late for Registration.’
‘Never molest the driver,’ said Martine, horrified. ‘I will tell your mother.’