The Nanny Part 10

Twenty minutes later, three children in smartish clothes looked silently in the bowl.

"Does Mummy know you've made this?" asked Ca.s.sandra.

"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.

"h.e.l.lo," 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.

"h.e.l.lo, 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 Ca.s.sandra.

"You said it was a treat for waking up," said Zak. "Not for doing our homework."

"Can it be Zak's bottom?" asked Ca.s.sandra.

"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.

Ca.s.sandra 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."

Ca.s.sandra 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.

"h.e.l.lo, 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," Ca.s.sie 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, Ca.s.sandra 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?"

"G.o.d 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 "f.u.c.k 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 d.i.c.k'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 fete. 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 Ca.s.sandra.

"I just like eating stuff that makes me grow," lied Jo again.

"Why?" asked Ca.s.sandra. "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 Ca.s.sandra.

"I was a tree," said Tallulah.

Jo had just got everything into the dishwasher and was about to bathe Tallulah when d.i.c.k arrived home. She almost sank to her knees in grat.i.tude 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? d.i.c.k 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."

"G.o.d yes!" he said. "But as it was your first day, I just shut up shop and came home early."

Chapter 6.