The Nanny Part 6

There was a pause.

"If this is happiness, Shaun, I'll kill myself now." Hearing the words out loud frightened her.

"Cheers," whispered Shaun, taking a gulp of wine.

"Shaun, I know it's a cliche, but this really isn't about you. It's about me. I'm worried-"

"Oh spare me!" Shaun let out a hollow laugh. "You're going to tell me you'll always love me as a friend next, aren't you?"

"Just..."

"What?"

"Give me time, Shaun. Please-"

Shaun crouched suddenly over the table toward her. "I've given you six f.u.c.king years," he hissed almost extinguishing the candle. "What do you want me to do, Jo? Fight for you? Is that it? Is this a test? See if I love you enough to visit you in London?"

"No!-"

"Then what, Jo? 'Cos I'm f.u.c.ked if I can work it out."

If she'd had the energy, Jo was sure she'd have cried. "Just be on my side, Shaun."

"You mean like in a marriage?"

"No, don't-"

"Oh don't panic," he said quickly, holding his hands up in mock arrest. "I'm not proposing to you again. I have got some pride left you know."

They sat in silence.

"See me every weekend," pleaded Jo eventually. "Please, Shaun. I need you."

The waitress came over and asked if they'd like to see the dessert menu.

Shaun lifted his head toward her, his eyes only reaching her skirt.

"No. Can we have the bill please?" As the waitress walked away, he turned back to Jo.

"There are women waiting for me, Jo," he whispered.

She nodded.

"Queuing for me. In the wings. I've had offers-" He stopped himself.

She nodded again. She didn't want to hear any more.

When the waitress came back and put the bill next to him, Jo looked out of the window.

The next day Jo told Sheila. Sheila listened in silence to it all, so it didn't take that long. Afterward there was a pause while Jo racked her brains for anything else she could say.

"So!" Sheila finally said. "How did Shaun the Braun take it?"

"How do you think?" asked Jo.

"Like a man," said Sheila. "Badly."

Jo nodded as she took a sip of her coffee. "Maybe I'm making a mistake," she said.

"If you ask me," said Sheila, "I think it's a great idea."

"Do you?"

"Yeah."

"Why?"

Sheila shook her head. "Oh no you don't," she said. "Don't start all that a.n.a.lysis s.h.i.t with me. I just do."

"But why?"

Sheila studied her. "You think too much."

"That's what Shaun said."

"Did he? I take it back."

"What else do you think?" asked Jo. In for a penny, in for a pound.

Sheila stubbed her cigarette out in the ashtray before fixing Jo with a hard stare. "You really want to know?"

Jo grimaced. "Maybe not."

"I think you and Shaun are stuck in a rut 'cos neither of you can face finishing it."

Jo leaned forward over her stomach. "So why does he keep proposing?" she asked.

Sheila shrugged. "'Cos he wants it to propel you into finishing it? You know what blokes are like: never do anything you can get her indoors to do for you."

"I'm not sure-"

"So you're both stuck in an emotional limbo land, and you need to get out so you can get on with your lives. Which explains why you've been feeling so low lately and why he's even more of a boring b.a.s.t.a.r.d than he was before he met you. You know it, and I know it," said Sheila, finishing her drink. "You deserve better."

Whatever Jo was feeling at the moment, it wasn't that she deserved better. But the thought stayed with her all week.

She hadn't known what to expect from anyone, but the reaction from her boss was the biggest shock of all.

"Well," said Davey's mum quietly. "I suppose I knew it would have to happen sooner or later. I just hadn't realized it would be quite so soon."

"Sorry."

"Don't be sorry," she said. "I knew you were too good to be true."

"Thank you."

I should have paid you more."

"No."

"I should have treated you better."

"No-"

And then, to Jo's amazement, she started crying. Jo put her arm round her.

"I'm a terrible mother," she sniffed. "I'm a terrible wife and a terrible mother." Jo tried everything to convince her this wasn't true, but she proved inconsolable. It was only when Davey came in to ask for some chocolate that she managed to stop crying and stoically turned her back on him. Jo fetched him some chocolate and he, oblivious to anything but the precious cargo in his hot little paw, trotted happily back to his Indian fort, chocolate already beginning to appear all over him.

Half an hour later, by the time Jo's boss's husband had returned home from the office, Jo had discovered that her boss hated her job and felt traumatized leaving the children every morning but was terrified of leaving work because she'd seen so many friends do it, only to find themselves three years down the line with long, empty days and an out-of-date CV.

"I've been so jealous of you when the children have asked for you instead of me," she sobbed to Jo. "I've hated you sometimes, hated you."

"Oh dear."

"And now," she said through racking sobs, "I hate you because you're leaving me."

Jo pa.s.sed her another tissue. When the husband reappeared from upstairs in his jeans and sweater, he took one look at his wife, muttered "Not again," and left them to it.

Davey's mum blew her nose loudly into the tissue and grinned meekly at Jo, eyeliner cross-country running down her cheeks. "I bet your new family aren't as dysfunctional as us," she sniffed pathetically.

Jo smiled at her boss. "I bet they are," she said.

It was only when she had to explain to three-year-old Davey that Jo realized telling everyone else had been a piece of cake.

His little face crumpled in confusion. "Why?" he asked.

"Because I've got a new job."

"With a new little boy?"

"No. A big boy and two girls."

Davey thought for a while. "Will you still be able to pick me up from nursery?"

"No, sweetie."

"Will you still be able to bathe me?"

"No, sweetie, I won't."

"Will you still be able to blow my nose and call it an 'elephant blow'?"

Jo picked him up and put him on her knee so he couldn't see her face. "I'll come and visit you loads," she whispered into his hair. "And I'll send you funny postcards in the mail. Won't that be fun?"

"Will you come and see me at bedtime?" asked Davey.

"And you'll have a nice new nanny who'll love you just as much as I do."

"Will I like her back?"

"Oh yes!" said Jo, trying not to think of her. "Of course!"

"Will you miss me?"

"Of course I'll miss you."

"So why are you leaving me?"

Jo hugged Davey fiercely. "Sometimes we have to leave people we love," she sniffed.

"Why?"

Jo sighed into his hair. "Ah," she whispered. "That's the one question I can't answer."

Jo had arranged to catch a Sunday morning train, and her parents were the only ones able to see her off. Sheila had a Sunday shift at work. Shaun had said he'd wanted to come, but he needed to be on-site that day as his firm was starting work on the biggest contract they'd ever had the next morning, and last-minute details needed to be finalized. Jo chose to accept this. After all, she could hardly expect him to support her career moves, then not support his. But she did insist that she needed to spend the last night in Niblet sleeping in her own bed, at home with her parents, and they both knew that it was her little way of punishing him for not taking half an hour out of his Sunday morning to see her off. Their good-bye was a muted affair late Sat.u.r.day night, after a tortuously touchy day together.

"I'll phone you as soon as I get there," she'd promised him.

"Cool," he'd said. "Take care, babe."

He kissed her lightly on the mouth, and she left, sniffing all the way home. When she got back, her parents left her alone, convinced that the tears were because he had not fallen for the bait and still hadn't proposed. Bill had half a mind to go and show him a thing or two and would have, if he hadn't known Jo would never forgive him, and if Hilda hadn't furiously barred the bedroom door while wearing her dressing gown and curlers, which had made him feel slightly ridiculous.

So bright and early Sunday morning, the three of them set off to Stratford-upon-Avon station. Jo had not been able to think of a kind way to explain that she really didn't need both of them to wave her off. It was only on the drive there that she realized she was letting them think they were doing her the favor because it might be the last time they'd feel needed by her, which was probably the first time she'd ever felt like the protective adult among them. Typical, she thought. Just when I'm leaving.

The train arrived twenty minutes early. Bill carried Jo's suitcase onto the stationary train, then turned to her before returning to the platform. He spoke quietly and quickly. "Mind you phone your mother. She'll miss you."

Back on the platform, he gave Jo a brusque hug, coughed, then turned away and started to saunter back toward the main concourse, whistling and jangling the change in the pockets of his grey slacks.

Hilda and Jo watched him as he went.

"Pierce Brosnan, eat your heart out," said Hilda.

Jo laughed.

"He loves you, you know," Hilda told her daughter.

"I know."

"Don't be a stranger. It'd break his heart."