by Jenny Colgan
Zoe curled up her fingers very tightly and pasted a fake neutral expression on her face.
Hari stared at her. Zoe’s heart dropped at the thought of having to leave him to the mercy of every other child running about. But then, she thought, all parents felt that way leaving their children at nursery. They must do. Surely.
‘And,’ whispered Tara confidentially, ‘I believe I already know your address. Am I right?’
Zoe nodded. Tara’s face lit up.
‘Tell me,’ she said. ‘What’s it like? What’s he like? Have you seen Ramsay? How is he doing? That poor man. Such a disaster when she ran off. Left everything. That big house. Those lovely children. I mean. How could you? As a mother?’
‘I’ve only seen him briefly,’ said Zoe.
‘Such a tragedy. Well, so they say. I mean, nobody knows. I mean, are her clothes still there?’
Her head was still tilted. ‘And how are those little mites? You know they never came here. I never understood it – why they wouldn’t be better off in a wonderful creative environment like the one we have here. We could have loved them as a family. I love all the children here like family.’
Zoe smiled.
‘Well,’ she said. Then she decided the best thing to do would be to lie. ‘Everything’s fine,’ she said. ‘When can I start Hari?’
‘Tomorrow morning will be fine,’ said Tara. ‘It’s strange, you know, we seem to have lost some children recently. Well, these things do happen!’
And they walked out, through the chaos, Hari squeezing her hand so tightly it hurt. Zoe thought how she had to now head back to the big house, with its apparently violent inmates, and attempt to cook everybody supper.
It had been a long day already.
Chapter Fifteen
Zoe couldn’t believe it when she walked into the kitchen. It was as if nobody had moved all day. The place was a mess. Shackleton was grunting into a headset and playing an ancient food-spattered Xbox at high volume. His language was . . . colourful. Mary was screeching about something down the phone, and Patrick was reading out loud from his tablet in a voice meant to cover up the noise of the other two. The radio was playing at an absolutely punishing volume and she couldn’t see Mrs MacGlone at all. Then her vision cleared a little and she saw that there was someone in the laundry room pulling down a heavy and peculiar pulley system that had clothes drying on it.
‘Um, I’m back,’ said Zoe.
Mrs MacGlone let the laundry pulley drop with a thud.
‘Thank the lord,’ she said, pulling on her coat and arranging her scarf and hat. No ‘good to see you’ or ‘how was your first day’.
‘How are they?’
Mrs MacGlone shrugged.
‘That’s not my job,’ she said, and was out the back door before Zoe had her own coat off.
‘Good riddance, you old witch,’ shouted Mary behind her, and the other two laughed.
‘Oh good,’ said Zoe, who would have given a lot of money right then to be back in her horrible bedsit, unpleasant as it was, getting ready to eat own brand beans on toast and cuddle up with Hari in front of Paw Patrol.
She could cook – her own mum had been a good household cook; a single mum like herself, she’d had to make a little go a long way and was convinced her daughter should learn likewise – until, of course, her daughter went to university, got a fabulous career and hooked a wonderfully rich man. Sadie had done her best, from Spain, never to betray how sad she was about Zoe’s circumstances. But she hadn’t had to: mother and daughter could read each other perfectly.
And heading back to bed wasn’t, Zoe thought, how Sadie would have tackled things. She’d have unleashed the frying pan and said ‘come on, me luvvie, let’s see what we got ’ere’ just as she was now doing for holidaymakers in Spain who wanted a full English, and were even happier when it came from a proper cockney.
She marched into the kitchen and started peering into cupboards.
There was absolutely nothing there. Not that the cupboards were bare; far from it. They were well stocked, just not with anything she would call dinner. There was jam, lots of bread, packets of crisps, rice cakes. There was fruit in the fruit bowl, and boxes and boxes of cereal. Nobody was starving the children.
But. There were no stock cubes. No tinned tomatoes. No onions, no mince, no pasta. Nothing she would consider to be dinner material.
Maybe there was another kitchen? The house was definitely big enough to have two.
‘Um, Shackleton?’ she said, but he only grunted, and she realised she should ask Patrick. ‘Patrick, where’s all the food?’
Patrick looked at her.
‘That is absolutely all the food, Nanny Seven!’ he said.
‘What do you mean?’ said Zoe. ‘What do you eat?’
Patrick frowned.
‘Toast’ he began, counting out on his fingers. ‘Apples. Bananas. Sausages. Peanut butter. Tomatoes. Ginger biscuits. Bran flakes. Rhubarb. Crisps. Celery.’
‘That can’t be true.’
Zoe stared at them in disbelief. Patrick furrowed his little brow.
‘Um,’ he said. ‘And . . .’
Mary rolled her eyes.
‘You forgot cheese triangles,’ she hissed.
‘Cheese triangles!’ said Patrick triumphantly. ‘The end.’
Zoe shook her head in disbelief.
‘But Mrs MacGlone . . .’
The children all made gagging noises.
‘NEVER eat what Mrs MacGlone makes,’ intoned Patrick in a deadly serious voice. ‘It’s poison, Nanny Seven. Poison.’
‘And what about the other nannies you had?’
‘They were mostly crying.’
‘Or they just let us eat toast, they didn’t care,’ said Shackleton stolidly. ‘Which is fine by us. We should just do that.’
Zoe blinked. On balance, their diet, she supposed, would just about keep them from scurvy. But beyond that . . . what on earth was their father thinking?
‘Well,’ she said. ‘Why don’t we make that change today?’
‘Because toast and peanut butter is very nice, Nanny Seven?’
Zoe almost jumped in and asked what their mother had cooked for them before and managed to stop herself just in time. Just before she’d got back to The Beeches, she’d googled the family madly and found nothing beyond a piece on a music event that had been held in the grounds ten years ago. She’d gazed at the tiny, low resolution photographs for ages and had thought she might have spotted a woman with a baby in her arms, but it was truly impossible to tell.
‘Well,’ she said instead, rolling up her sleeves. ‘Let’s get started. Have you got any cheese that isn’t triangular?’
Eventually she rounded up some fish in the freezer that ‘Wilby brought us in the summertime’ which was going to have to do, with some very old breadcrumbs at the back of the store cupboard, some old, soft potatoes that could have oil poured on them and crisped up as wedges and some frozen peas, literally scraping the bottom of the barrel, or in this case the freezer.
Then she tried to work out how to turn on an oven that seemed half electric and half gas, and needed to be lit with matches in a terrifying whoof.
‘I’m not eating any of that,’ Mary had said, arms folded.
‘You don’t know what it is yet,’ said Zoe patiently.
‘Well, you’ve touched it, so . . .’
‘I’m just making some toast,’ said Shackleton.
‘No, don’t do that please,’ said Zoe, her face going red. ‘I think you’ve had quite enough . . .’
‘Who cares what you think?’
‘Please I will absolutely have some toast.’ Patrick popped up and Zoe realised to her exasperation that Hari was standing right next to him, nodding his head and pointing to his mouth quite emphatically.
‘Nobody is having any more bloody toast!’ said Zoe, conscious that the fish was burning on one side while still looking frozen on the other. The smell was not fantastic.
�
�Oh, so you’re just going to let us starve?’
‘I don’t think you’ll starve,’ hissed Zoe, concentrating.
‘Ouch!’
They all turned round, as the large shape of Ramsay appeared at the kitchen door. He had bumped his head on the door frame. Zoe squinted. He couldn’t come in the kitchen very often if he didn’t know how high the door frame was. She mentally went over what she’d just said. She thought she might have threatened to starve the children to death. Not ideal. He stood there, looking awkward. And he was absurdly tall – how did he even get about? Zoe blinked. She was all alone in this house with a man she didn’t know, whose wife had disappeared, whom Nina didn’t appear to know anything about . . .
‘DADDY!’ yelled Patrick, flinging his arms around the man’s knees. He wasn’t a small child, but he only came up to just above knee height.
‘Hello, little man,’ said Ramsay, bending down and rubbing his head. ‘What is your best fact about dinosaurs today?’
‘Dinosaurs could reach the length of seven London buses,’ said Patrick promptly. ‘What’s a London bus?’
‘Long story,’ said Ramsay, hauling the boy up. ‘Hey, Mary,’ he said, coming forward to the girl and tentatively putting his big hand on her hair. She immediately stiffened and pulled away, looking in the other direction. Zoe watched.
‘Where’s Mrs MacGlone?’
‘She’s gone home,’ said Mary sulkily. ‘She just left her.’
‘Don’t say “her”,’ said Ramsay instinctively. ‘Say . . .’ It was no use: he had completely forgotten.
‘Say Nanny Seven actually!’ said Patrick.
‘No, don’t say that either,’ said Ramsay.
‘Sorry, I have to ask . . .’ said Zoe, cutting this line of conversation off, ‘what do you eat?’
‘What, me personally?’ said Ramsay, as if she’d asked him if he ate grass.
‘Well, all of you.’
‘Oh,’ said Ramsay, looking slightly shifty. ‘Is this about the peanut butter?’
‘She going to try and change things,’ said Mary. ‘It’s always funny, this bit.’
‘Mary, hush,’ said her father. He ran his hands through his hair. ‘Mrs MacGlone says not all battles are worth fighting.’
Zoe was already of the opinion that Ramsay was not fighting a single battle, but certainly wasn’t going to start in on that.
‘Something is most absolutely smelling bad bad bad,’ came a small voice, and she dashed over to the cooker.
She looked at the fish in the pan. It was completely ruined.
‘Oh no. I’m sorry, there’s no tea.’
‘We’ve run out of tea?’ Ramsay looked confused. ‘There’s money in the . . .’
‘She means supper,’ said Mary loftily. ‘She doesn’t know what it’s called. She calls it “toilet” too.’
Zoe flushed.
‘I’m . . . this oven is really hard to work, you know?’
Now it was Ramsay’s turn to looked embarrassed.
‘Uh . . . oh. Is it?’
Shackleton got up wordlessly and headed for the toaster. Patrick cheered and Hari joined him in cheerfully jumping up and down.
* * *
Ramsay hadn’t stayed for long. He seemed, Zoe thought, oddly disconnected from the children, as if he’d just come across them living in his house. He’d taken some fruit on a plate and vanished again, back into the deep silent hallways of the house; she wondered where he went. In the front wing, she supposed, whereas of course she was confined to servants’ quarters.
She cleaned up the crumbs as best she could and picked up a visibly drooping Hari.
‘Do you have bedtimes?’ she said, already knowing the answer. Mary simply snorted.
‘No!’ said Patrick. ‘Good night, Nanny Seven.’
And having had absolutely enough of this peculiar little household to argue, she waved vaguely in their general direction, left them to it and headed to bed, laying down Hari and dreaming of nothing more than a hot bath then total oblivion. She kept both her bedroom door and the bathroom door open. She would be utterly amazed if Mary had ever been up here, but she wanted to keep on the safe side, even if it was a little eerie taking her clothes off with the pitch-dark corridor outside and the pipes gurgling.
Zoe had been – was – poor. Proper poor. She’d fed her electricity meter with a top-up card; she’d had to think about every kettle she’d ever boiled.
But she’d been able to have a bath more or less whenever she wanted. As the cold, clear water trickled out of the tap, it was the final straw. She collapsed by the side of the bath, muffled her mouth with a towel, and cried and cried and cried.
Chapter Sixteen
You can’t cry for ever, although Zoe had a pretty good try. Eventually she was simply too exhausted and lay face down on the bed next to Hari, whose steady snuffling breaths she fell into a rhythm with, until she too drifted off, utterly wrung out and worn out.
She woke without knowing where she was once again. It was just so quiet. You couldn’t hear a single thing; it was like sleeping underground. Hari had stirred. She picked up the little boy and took him to the bathroom. He must be starving too.
The old curtains were heavy with dust – the place needed a good sweep out, it weighed you down. She pulled them apart and grinned wryly. Everything may feel terrible – no, she corrected herself. Everything was terrible. She was in a strange country with strange people and couldn’t do a single thing about it and nobody liked her and some actively hated her and she was working two jobs, neither of them particularly successfully so far.
There was also the odd patrons of the bookshop; Nina’s slight awkwardness, which rather put paid to Surinder’s insistence that Nina was absolutely desperate for her to come and help; and oh my God, today she would have to leave Hari at that nursery. Zoe screwed up her face.
But out of the window – which badly needed washing but even so – the view was, she had to admit, utterly and completely beguiling.
The morning haar off the loch made the sunrise look abstract and pastel, hazily smudging the pink and gold on the horizon, giving everything the soft outlines of a watercolour. Zoe suddenly found herself wishing she could paint. She pulled Hari up in his fireman pyjamas, which were far too small for him, and showed him the window. His mouth opened in a round O and he pointed to the water.
‘Isn’t it beautiful?’ she said to him, leaning his dark curls against her face. Even with everything else gone, she still had this. ‘Isn’t it beautiful?’
* * *
Nina was eating her second breakfast, feeling exasperated.
‘No, she’s nice,’ she was saying, as Lennox looked perturbed at her bad mood.
‘So . . .’ he said.
‘So . . . oh, I don’t know. She’s just so London. I don’t know if she’s going to understand how people are here.’
‘Well, you could say you were very Birmingham,’ said Lennox, smiling.
‘Hmmm,’ said Nina. ‘Anyway, I don’t think we’re the problem. I think maybe that other job is a total nightmare and she’s going to leave us and it won’t matter whether or not she understands what people want in the bookshop and I’ll be even more stuck than before.’
She sighed. She felt absolutely awful this morning, but Lennox had enough to do and she wasn’t going to worry him. Lennox took her in his arms and looked down on her, smiling.
‘Well, we’d figure out something else,’ he said in the reliable slow way she generally adored, except this morning when she was irritable and not very good at being placated.
Nina buried her head in his chest.
‘Why does everything have to change?’
Lennox gesticulated outside. ‘Because life changes. The seasons change. The world turns round. Old things become new . . .’
He stroked her bump.
‘New things . . . good new things.’
‘I know,’ said Nina crossly. ‘I know all that. I just feel so . . . lumpy.’
‘Except you,’ said Nina, somewhat comforted.
‘Aye,’ said Lennox, still standing there holding her, steady as a tree. ‘Except me.’
Chapter Seventeen
At least if you woke up early enough, Zoe was to discover fast, you finally got the hot water. Feeling not remotely in the mood to be generous, she filled a bath as deep as she could manage and sat in it for ten minutes on her own, breathing in the scalding steam and luxuriating before it cooled enough for Hari to be able to get in it.
After that, she felt slightly better. Then bad for taking so much of the hot water. Perhaps Patrick could use the bath after her (she suggested this to Patrick, who was very much of the opinion that in fact not having a bath at all was the kindest thing to do for Patrick).
Mrs MacGlone was back, thank goodness, looking surprised to find out nobody had burned the house down at night.
‘You shouldnae use that stove,’ she said. ‘It’s no’ safe.’
‘But how can I cook for the children?’
‘Och, they dinnae care. Perfectly happy with bananas.’
She took off her coat.
‘Right. Better get on. It’s a chandelier day, and I’ve got the ballroom fireplace to sweep.’
Zoe watched her go. She guessed – rightly, as it happens – that Mrs MacGlone had been there a long time (she underestimated the time frame however: Mrs MacGlone had been there since she was fourteen years old) and that she might as well try to change the weather. The housekeeping money was kept in a biscuit box – Zoe was to help herself for shopping, then she’d get a cheque at the end of every month to get paid. Zoe hadn’t seen a cheque for years. She’d suggested direct debit and Mrs MacGlone had looked at her as if she’d suggested being paid in bitcoin, so she’d said that a cheque would be fine, even though she appeared to be an extremely long way from the nearest bank.
* * *
The children were still in the kitchen, still in tatty clothes, still attached to their devices, and Zoe wondered if they’d been to bed at all.