by Janey Fraser
The question seemed to take her mother by surprise because the name of the town slipped out of her mouth more easily than Marie-France had dared to hope. ‘Corrywood.’ She said it dismissively. ‘It is a small place. Not exciting like London.’
‘Corrywood,’ repeated Marie-France. ‘But why did you not marry him? Did you turn him down like you’ve turned down Maurice?’
‘That is enough.’ Collette stood up and put on her coat. ‘I do not want to answer any more questions.’ Her mother was taking out her lipstick from her bag and outlining her lips. ‘I am tired of the subject, chérie. I wish now that you had never brought it up.’
‘You mentioned it. Not me.’ She touched her mother’s arm. ‘Please, Maman. It is my history.’
‘No.’ Collette turned and she could see tears in her eyes. Real ones this time. ‘It is not your history. It is mine. But there was at least one good thing to come out of it.’
There was a silence punctuated only by the clock. ‘You, chérie,’ she said softly, drawing her daughter to her for a brief hug before turning on her heel imperiously. ‘You came out of it. And now I am going out. Maurice is taking me somewhere special. Do not wait up.’ She winked. ‘I will be late.’
The following day, Marie-France had emailed the Sorbonne to defer her entry for a year and, with the aid of a map, began scouring the net for an au pair agency in England. As close to Corrywood as possible.
*
Now, she had just a week to get ready. The days passed in a flurry of packing (‘L’Angleterre, it is always cold and rainy,’ warned her mother ominously) and saying goodbye to her friends. Yes, of course she would email and text. There was Facebook too!
‘I’ll be back for Christmas,’ she had reassured Thierry and her mother. For once, they had been thrown together in an uneasy truce, neither happy about her going but, at the same time, unable to stand in her way.
‘Christmas? I hope so,’ said Thierry, who had come to say a final goodbye. He had sprayed on too much cologne for the occasion, which added to her pre-travel nausea. ‘It’s not as though I can get time off work to come over to you. Not like your uni friends.’
Marie-France chose to ignore the last remark. He’d been making a few of those recently; sly digs at her classmates who had decided to go on to further education instead of turning to honest toil, as Thierry put it, and a weekly salary in the back pocket of his jeans along with dirty fingernails and muscles that rippled when he peeled his shirt off.
Meanwhile, Maman was still fussing over her luggage in a bid, Marie-France suspected, to hide her feelings. ‘I have bought a present for your family as the agency suggested!’
‘Thank you.’ She opened the bag and frowned. Anti-wrinkle cream with a reduction sticker on it?
Her mother smirked. ‘It might help with that frown on Madame Green’s face, do you not think?’
More likely to make her new ‘boss’ take it as the insult it was intended! Just as well that Marie-France had bought a book about France which might keep the children amused.
‘I’d better be off then,’ said Thierry, pulling up his collar even though it was a beautiful warm day. ‘Let you two get on to the airport.’
There was a short silence before her mother spoke. ‘If you want to come with us,’ she said grudgingly, ‘there is room in the car.’ She gestured to the cases. ‘You can make yourself useful by carrying my daughter’s luggage. It is full of nice things for when she goes out in the evening.’
Thierry’s face fell just as her mother had intended.
‘I’m not going there to have fun. I’m going to …’ She stopped, aware that two sets of eyes were on her. ‘I’m going to find myself.’
There was another silence. Thankfully, Thierry broke it first. ‘Right. On we go then.’
Suddenly, the enormity of what she was doing hit her. She was leaving everything she had ever known! The small but impeccably kept house where she had lived since she was a toddler thanks to her mother working so hard to pay the rent. Thierry, who was always being ogled by other girls in the street. Her mother, who drove her mad at times but who was her rock. Not to mention her place at the Sorbonne, which, true, was only being deferred but which, right at this moment, seemed much more appealing than a strange family in a cold, windy country where, according to her mother, they went to bed at ten and failed to appreciate cheese, wine or romance – in that order.
Conversation was stilted in the car with Marie-France unable to talk in case she burst into tears and her boyfriend and mother making awkward attempts to jolly up the atmosphere. ‘Just think,’ said Thierry, ‘you will be able to mount Big Ben.’
Her mother rolled her eyes. ‘You don’t climb it. They stopped people going up it years ago. Mais, ma petite, you will be able to fly on the London Eye.’
By the time they reached the airport, she was almost ready to go back home again. ‘It will be all right,’ said Thierry gruffly, hugging her to him and almost crushing the guitar slung around her left shoulder.
‘Excuse-moi.’ Her mother was virtually stamping her feet in her impatience to step in. ‘Ma chérie!’ She kissed Marie-France on top of her forehead with a loud smack. ‘You will write, will you not? It is so much nicer than those horrid emails.’
She nodded, still not trusting herself to speak. Both Thierry and her mother were fading into a blur of tears. ‘You will be all right when you are there!’ called out Thierry as she gave him one final hug before going through security.
‘Prends soin de toi!’ called out her mother.
Then Marie-France, choked with a curious mixture of excitement and homesickness (already!) rounded the corner to join the long queue at security. As she looked back, she realised with a pang that she could see neither Thierry nor her mother any more.
She was alone. Completely alone.
HOST FAMILY APPLICATION FORM
NAME: Matthew Evans.
MARITAL STATUS: Widowed.
CHILDREN: Lottie, aged 8.
PLEASE OUTLINE THE DUTIES YOU WOULD LIKE YOUR AU PAIR TO UNDERTAKE: Cook, clean and look after my daughter while I am at work.
DESCRIBE ACCOMMODATION AVAILABLE: Single room with shared bathroom.
DESCRIBE YOUR LOCATION: Pleasant market town, fifty minutes from central London (on fast train).
IS THERE A COLLEGE NEARBY OFFERING SUMMER LANGUAGE TUITION? Yes.
WILL YOU ACCEPT A SMOKER? No.
ARE YOU LOOKING FOR AN AU PAIR WITH A DRIVING LICENCE? Yes.
DO YOU HAVE ANY PETS? One lizard.
ANY OTHER STIPULATIONS? Applicants should be mature and speak reasonable English. They should also have previous experience with children.
Chapter 3
DAMN. HE WAS late! Matthew drummed his fingers on the steering wheel impatiently as he sat in the heavy traffic on the M25 into Heathrow. He could have left earlier if Lottie hadn’t had lost one of her new brown lace-ups which had finally turned up in the understairs cupboard.
‘Did you hide it, princess?’ he’d asked quietly and eight-year-old Lottie had shaken her head, her blond plaits flying furiously.
‘Course not, Daddy.’
Yet somehow he had known that was exactly what she’d done. Anything rather than go to school. Lottie hated being apart from him and that was probably his fault. Ever since Sally had died, his daughter had started to act rather childishly and speaking more like a four-or five-year-old. For his part, he’d been too clingy. Too over-protective. Too ready to let her get away with things …
The van in front began to move and Matthew released a sigh of relief. If this hold-up – due to roadworks, he could now see – began to clear, he might just be only a few minutes late for the new au pair.
‘Why do we have to have someone living with us?’ Lottie had asked on the way to school that morning. It had not been the first time and his answer was always the same. Maybe the repetition was comforting, as her bereavement counsellor had said.
‘Because I’ve got to go back to
work now,’ Matthew had said in the most reassuring tone that he could muster.
Lottie’s voice from the back seat was high with indignation, as though they hadn’t been through this before. ‘Why?’
Often, said the counsellor, the simplest words were the best such as ‘Mummy got sick and died’ and ‘That doesn’t mean that Daddy is going to die too.’
Matthew had taken another breath. ‘Because Daddy’s friends at work gave him nine months off after Mummy went to heaven but now they want him back. So Daddy has found a nice girl from a country called Bulgaria to look after you when you’re not at school.’
‘But I don’t want someone from Vulgaria,’ Lottie had said in her whiny I’m-about-to-cry-unless-you-do-what-I-want voice. ‘I want Daddy.’
So he’d had to stop the car then and comfort her which had made her miss assembly at school and now he was going to be late for Sozzy which sounded horribly like ‘sozzled’ even though she had put ‘non-drinker’ on her form. Matthew’s lips twitched with amusement and then stopped. He always felt guilty when something seemed mildly funny as though he had no right to make or enjoy a joke after Sally. Cancer was no laughing matter.
What, wondered Matthew as he put his foot down, would his wife have thought of him having an au pair? James, his fellow partner at their architectural practice, had been incredibly understanding about giving him extended compassionate leave but it couldn’t go on for ever.
It had been Christina, his own counsellor – recommended by their understanding GP – who had suggested that maybe now was the time to go back. ‘You’ve done a great job, Matthew,’ she had said, leaning back in her chair on the other side of the coffee table which lent a deceptive air of informality to her little office, ‘but you admit you miss the buzz of work. It could be healthier for Lottie too if you weren’t around all the time; it will make her more independent and less clingy.’
‘But who’s going to be there when she gets back from school?’ he had pointed out.
‘Have you thought about an au pair? I had one myself when my daughter was younger.’
Then had come the call from James to say that they had just landed a big commission and that they could really do with Matthew’s creative skills on board. If not, maybe they should ‘reconsider’ his future at the practice.
Somehow, this seemed like a wake-up call. It was true, thought Matthew as he glanced in the car mirror, observing with irritation his slightly frayed blue and yellow shirt collar. He did miss work! Missed the excitement of getting the brief and then coming up with ideas to transform someone’s conservatory or build a house with wheelchair access or design a school extension. He’d been doing some work from home but there was a limit to what you could achieve when you weren’t in the office.
Even so, he would give up tomorrow if he had to choose between it and his daughter but Christina’s words played on his mind. There was, as his counsellor had added, such a thing as being over-protective of your children. A vision of an adult Lottie – independent, happy and confident, just like her mother – flashed into his head.
So Matthew had applied to an au pair agency he’d seen advertised in a magazine. It had been going for years and was a member of a professional organisation, which was always a good thing. ‘Naturally, my girls all come with references and have been checked medically and for criminal records,’ the woman at the other end of the phone had said when he’d rung for details.
That had reassured him although he’d felt slightly sleazy when she’d emailed photographs to look at. It had been a bit like sorting through applicants for an online dating site! Eventually, with Lottie’s help, he had selected a girl who had already taken a degree in mathematics and wanted a year off. What really swung it for him was her age – twenty-two, which compared favourably with the plethora of eighteen-year-olds he’d been sent – and the fact that she came from a large family so would hopefully be maternal.
‘I want to cut my hair like that one day!’ trilled Lottie, pointing at the girl’s urchin crop.
Matthew felt a lurch of loss at the fact that his wife would never again be able to style their daughter’s long hair. ‘Maybe your new au pair will help you do some pretty things with yours.’
That idea seemed to have appeased his daughter slightly – until this morning with the lost-shoe scenario, which, he was now convinced, had been a ploy to make them late for school and the airport. Still, he thought, making a quick left off the motorway, he was only fifteen minutes behind schedule, which, all things considered, wasn’t too bad really. Now all he had to do was find somewhere to park.
By the time he’d found a space in the multi-storey, grabbed a parking ticket and dashed across to Arrivals, weaving his way through trolleys with that mixture of airport perplexity, panic and excitement, he couldn’t see anyone that looked remotely like Sozzy’s picture.
Maybe she’d spot him first? He’d sent her a snapshot of him and Lottie that Sally had taken during one of their last family days out together. His short dark hair hadn’t gone prematurely grey round his ears then, as it was now, and he’d been a bit thinner: grief had since made him put on weight rather than lose it and he could have done with a bit more height to carry it off. Lottie, in the picture, had had a gap between her teeth. She had another tooth growing in its place now. Something else Sally would miss out on.
Uncomfortably, he remembered his promise in his last email to Sozzy. ‘I’ll be carrying a notice with your name on it,’ he had said but somehow, in the rush to get Lottie off to school, he had forgotten to do so. Feverishly he searched his pockets for a pen and scrap of paper.
Suddenly, the awesome responsibility of losing a stray foreigner – who had never, according to her letter, been abroad before – dawned on him. This was utter negligence on his part! Supposing someone did this to his Lottie when she was twenty-two? He’d kill them!
Just then his phone began to ring inside his back pocket. Please don’t let it be school, telling him that Lottie was playing up again! Last week, she had hidden another child’s jacket behind her own, which had caused problems at playtime. Attention-seeking, her teacher had said kindly.
‘Mr Evans?’ The voice at the other end of the phone was slightly crisp and irritated. ‘This is Janine from the au pair agency.’
‘I’m so sorry I’m late!’ Matthew found himself babbling apologetically. ‘I got delayed but I’m here now.’ He looked wildly round the Arrivals Hall where another planeload was decanting. ‘The thing is, I can’t see her.’
There was an exasperated noise at the other end. ‘I’m afraid there’s been a bit of a problem at immigration. The silly girl left her accession worker card behind – all au pairs from Bulgaria need one to show that they are going to a proper job in the UK. You’ll have to find the Immigration Office so you can vouch for her. I’m so sorry.’ She sighed. ‘This has never happened to me before.’
It would be him, wouldn’t it? Somehow, Matthew managed to find an official who directed him along a warren of corridors and into another room. Sitting moodily on a chair was a short, plump, boyish-looking figure with cropped hair and orange roots.
‘Sozzy?’ She looked so harsh compared to her picture! Her grubby denim jacket had a crudely sewn-on ‘Bad Girl’ badge and she had a clutch of silver nose rings in her right nostril. Those eyes, which had been half closed when he came into the room, were now focused on him challengingly. Go on, they seemed to say, admit it. I’m not what you ordered.
Matthew’s heart sank. Then she looked away, making to adjust one of her large white plug earrings and, for a brief second, he caught a flash of vulnerability (almost self-loathing) which hadn’t been there before.
‘Mr Evans?’ said another official. ‘Could you please confirm that this young lady is an au pair, coming to live and work in your family for the next nine months.’
Matthew’s hand had already closed over the copy of the welcome letter he had sent to Sozzy and which the agency had, fortunately, advised him t
o bring to the airport ‘just in case’. He nodded. For a minute, he considered pushing it back in his pocket but then he noticed the girl’s feet. They looked so small in those open-toed heavy sandals. Almost like a child’s. It must be awful for her, sitting here in Immigration, in a strange country, not knowing what was going to happen to her all because she couldn’t find a document. Let’s face it, that happened to everyone at times, didn’t it?
‘Yes,’ he said heavily. ‘I have a copy of our work contract here.’ He gave the girl what he hoped was a reassuring smile. ‘Hello, Sozzy. Welcome to the UK.’
It was difficult to make conversation in the car on the way back. He asked if she’d had a good journey (silly question really) but Sozzy had merely shrugged. Apart from that, she had hardly said anything. When he glanced across at her, she just seemed to be looking out of the window as though taking it all in.
‘Don’t worry too much about leaving your card behind,’ he said in what was meant to be a reassuring voice. ‘We all make mistakes.’
Another shrug. He tried again, desperate to show that he was human too. ‘In fact, I was late at the airport. Before I set off, my daughter lost a shoe and so we had to spend ages looking for it before I could take her to school.’
‘I do not worry.’ Her voice was surprisingly deep. She reached into her bag and pulled out a piece of paper. ‘I find the document now. So it is all right.’
No apology? Matthew got a horrible sinking feeling. She wasn’t upset as he’d first thought. Just rude. Or maybe it was a cultural thing.
‘It will take us about thirty minutes to get back,’ he said in an attempt to relieve the atmosphere. ‘My daughter Lottie is being brought back from school in the afternoon by a neighbour. I thought it would give you a chance to see your room and unpack first.’
She nodded. ‘How enormous is Corrywood?’
A question at last! ‘It’s hardly enormous.’ He laughed but then saw that she was very serious. ‘Enormous in English means very large but our town is, well, medium-sized – although it’s very picturesque with a canal nearby. My wife … my wife and I moved out of London to start a family there but then she fell ill.’