by Janey Fraser
‘Marie-France!’ he started to say, whirling round.
It was Christina.
‘Sorry.’ He flushed. ‘I thought you were someone else.’
She gave him a slightly odd look. ‘That’s all right.’ She looked down at his daughter, who was clasping his hand firmly. ‘You must be Lottie!’
He’d spoken so much about her that it was weird to think Christina had never met her before.
‘We thought you were our oh pear,’ said Lottie stolidly. ‘She’s gone missing. Like the other one.’
Christina raised her eyebrows. ‘Really?’
‘Mum!’ A tall thin teenager with a small silver nose ring sauntered over, ignoring Matthew and scowling at Christina. ‘Why did you order pepperoni? I said I wanted veggie!’
Christina shot him a look that seemed to say: ‘See? I have parenting problems too.’
‘This is Emma. Emma, this is Mr Evans.’
‘Matthew, please.’
‘If you two go and sit down there, Matthew and I will sort out the food. You could tell Lottie about your band.’
‘A band! Wow!’
Lottie’s excited voice sounded as she’d completely forgotten the drama over Marie-France.
‘Thanks,’ said Matthew in a low voice.
Christina gave him a conspiratorial smile. ‘I reckon we’ve bought ourselves a few minutes. Now what’s this about your missing au pair?’
Briefly he filled Christina in.
She looked shocked. ‘That’s terrible.’
‘I know.’ He nodded glumly. ‘I don’t seem to have much luck with looking after people. First Sally. Then Sozzy. And now Marie-France.’
‘Matthew!’ Christina was shaking her head but in a kind way. ‘Remember all that work we did about not blaming yourself?’
He nodded. ‘I’m trying. But it’s not easy after being married to someone who constantly blamed you for everything.’
‘I know.’ Her voice sounded as though she might just have had the same experience herself. Maybe that’s why she was so understanding with him. ‘It’s a hard habit to break.’
‘Exactly! And now you’ve probably heard from Karen about what an awful boss I am.’
‘Actually’ – Christina touched his arm – ‘I know all about Karen. Poor thing has a bit of a reputation in the block for latching on to people.’
‘Really? Then you don’t think I acted badly?’ He bit his lip. ‘I did give her a hug…’
‘She’d take that the wrong way!’
‘She did.’ He was about to say more but his phone began to reverberate in his back pocket. Unknown number? His heart leaped. ‘Sorry. I must take this.’
He turned back to the phone. ‘Yes, this is Matthew Evans. I see. So what do we do now? Right. You’ll keep me informed? Thanks.’
Numbly he stared at her. ‘That was the police. They’ve found Marie-France’s phone. In Waterloo Station. It had my number on it.’
‘But what about the girl?’
He shook his head. ‘That’s just it, Christina. They’ve no idea where she is.’
JILLY’S AU PAIR AGENCY: GUIDELINES FOR AU PAIRS
Try not to walk alone on your own at night. You need to be streetwise in England – just as you do at home!
Chapter 38
SO MARIE-FRANCE HADN’T gone back to Matthew’s. Maybe, hoped Jilly desperately, she might have returned to their place after the party. But she hadn’t.
‘Where is my daughter!’ Collette was virtually stamping her feet in those ridiculous high heels.
‘I don’t know!’ Jilly could feel her temper fraying. ‘If you hadn’t upset everyone like that, she might still be here!’
‘Jilly!’ Jeremy put a hand on her arm but David cut in.
‘My wife’s right. You can’t expect to play around, Collette, without any consequences.’
The Frenchwoman frowned. ‘What he say? I do not understand.’
‘Mum, Mum, I’m starving!’
‘We couldn’t eat Granny’s food. It was sick!’
Great. So now she had to cook dinner again on top of everything else! Well, it would have to be pepperoni pizza from the freezer. Again.
By ten o’clock, after she’d finally got the kids to bed, they began to get really worried. ‘I’m going to call the police,’ said Jeremy firmly.
‘I’ll do it.’ She wavered, not sure if they were making a fuss or not. After all, Marie-France was an adult. And she’d only been gone a few hours. On the other hand, she was one of her girls and Jilly couldn’t help feeling responsible in the wake of the argument.
It took a while to explain the situation before she was put through to the right person who, understandably, wanted some personal details about herself for ‘security reasons’. Then she listened with mounting disbelief to the voice at the other end.
‘What is it?’ demanded David, seeing her stricken face.
Her voice stuck in her throat so that it came out raw and raspy. ‘Someone’s handed in a phone near Waterloo. It’s Marie-France’s.’
‘What?’ Collette looked puzzled. ‘You speak too fast. What is it you say?’
Jilly bit her lip. Her initial anger towards this woman who had ruined her parents’ party was now dissipating into pity. ‘Your daughter’s phone has been found,’ she said slowly.
There was an excited burst of French back. It was too fast for Jilly but not, it seemed for Jeremy. ‘She says that if her phone is there, Marie-France will be too,’ he translated slowly.
Jilly felt cold. ‘Not necessarily.’
Collette’s face crumpled. ‘I want to go and search for my daughter!’
‘That would be like looking for a needle in a haystack,’ interjected David.
Marie-France’s mother squinted at him and then back at Jeremy. ‘What does he say?’
‘He says that would be hopeless.’ Jeremy reached for her hand and began stroking it in comforting circles as slow, silent tears slid down Collette’s face. ‘London is too big.’
Jilly nodded, feeling helpless. ‘The police say we have to sit and wait.’ She bit her lip. ‘I’m afraid it could be a long night.’
Miraculously, not one of the children had woken up, demanding food or laptops. Even dear old Fat Eema had crashed out after pigging out on a cheddar cheese doorstopper that she had taken from the fridge. Now the rest of them were sitting in silence in the sitting room as the clock ticked on.
Ten o’clock. Then eleven. Every now and then, she and David took it in turns to bring in a tray of tea and biscuits but no one could eat.
Each one of them was on alert in case the phone went. But it was deadly silent for a change. Mum could have rung to see if there was any news, Jilly told herself. And Dad too. Didn’t they care?
Then, when it was nearly midnight, Jeremy spoke. ‘When you were putting the children to bed,’ he said quietly, ‘Collette and I began sorting a few things out.’
David made an awkward noise in his throat. ‘That’s between you two,’ he said. ‘Don’t feel you have to do any explaining.’
‘Actually, we do.’ Jeremy was speaking in a very calm, mature manner in what their mother sometimes referred to as his ‘clerical voice’, and Jilly felt a flash of admiration for her brother. ‘We do want to explain, don’t we, Collette?’
The woman nodded. She was awfully pale, Jilly noted and shaking too. ‘I was very young,’ she began in a faltering a mixture of French and English. ‘It was my first time away from home. England was very strange to me. I did not know any other au pairs and I was homesick. I had to look after a little boy. He was extremely spoilt.’
‘Still is,’ muttered David.
It was true! Angela’s youngest son still relied on his mother’s handouts despite the fact he was on his third marriage.
‘But he had an older brother,’ continued Collette, looking up at Jeremy with a catch in her voice. ‘Adam. I thought he was very handsome.’ There was a silence. ‘And I think his friend Jeremy is handsome
too.’ She was smiling now into the distance as though recalling the memory.
This time it was Jilly who interrupted. ‘But they were only sixteen.’
David made a snorting noise. ‘Trust me. Sixteen-year-old boys feel much older.’
‘So do middle-aged men in possession of pink pants,’ she muttered.
David gave her a strange look. ‘What are you talking about, Jilly?’
‘We’ll talk about it later. Sorry, Collette, do go on.’
‘One evening, when I was babysitting, the boys came in with a bottle of wine.’
‘I think I know where this one is going,’ murmured David.
Jeremy took a deep breath. ‘I’d like to take over here, if you don’t mind, Collette.’ He withdrew his hand and sat up straight, squaring his shoulders as though preparing for a confessional. ‘Adam and I had already had too much to drink and I’m afraid we persuaded Collette to have most of the bottle.’ He coloured. ‘It’s fair to say that we took advantage of her, rather than the other way round.’
David’s face was a mixture of admiration and shock.
‘You’re just saying that,’ began Jilly.
‘NO.’
She’d never heard her brother shout before.
‘No, I’m not. Then – this is the horrible part – before we knew it, the parents walked in.’
‘You were all in the bed?’ asked David.
‘I’m afraid so.’
‘Oh God,’ breathed Jilly, thinking of how she had found Nick the other month with Antoinette. ‘How awful for them.’
‘And how embarrassing for you boys,’ said David slowly, his face looking softer.
‘Thank you, David.’ Jeremy nodded. ‘Mum, true to form, blamed Angela for leaving us alone in the house with what she called a “temptress” and I was dragged back home. I had no idea that Collette was pregnant. No idea at all.’
‘But I wrote to you!’
A look of pain flashed across Jeremy’s face. ‘I didn’t get any letters. But I wouldn’t be surprised if Mum intercepted them. Meanwhile, as you all heard earlier on today, she and Angela both sent money to France every month.’
‘Why didn’t she tell you about the baby?’ demanded Jilly.
David cut in. ‘It’s as they said. She didn’t want to ruin a young boy’s life. That’s what they thought in those days.’
‘But why didn’t they tell me?’ demanded Jilly, who was trying to work out the dates in her head. If Jeremy had been sixteen, she would have been eighteen. That meant she would have been …
‘Going off to university,’ interjected Jeremy. ‘Auntie Angela told me this afternoon that Mum didn’t want you to be upset by anything.’
‘I don’t get it.’ She swung round to face the redheaded woman. ‘Let’s just fast-forward a few years. You brought up Marie-France on your own, which couldn’t have been easy.’
Collette shrugged. ‘She was a stubborn child. Like both her fathers.’
‘But why, after all this time, did you suddenly decide to tell her more about her parentage when you had refused to discuss it for years?’ persisted Jilly.
There was a little cry. ‘Because I am ill!’ Collette put her hand up to her hair and tore it off with a flounce. Jilly gasped! There was a shiny bald pate underneath.
‘I have cancer,’ whispered Collette. ‘But I do not tell my daughter because I must protect her.’
So that explained the weird hair and the heavy make-up, disguising, perhaps, the ravages of the drugs that had no doubt been used to treat her.
Collette’s eyes seemed to be begging everyone to understand. Either that or, Jilly thought guiltily, she was piling on the dramatics.
‘But then I think, supposing I die? She would not know who her father was. So I started to tell her. I tell her I fell in love with a boy.’
Jeremy started. ‘You were in love with me?’
‘Not you, stupid. The other one. The more amusing one.’ She dabbed her eyes. ‘I still cannot believe he is dead.’
Jeremy looked away and Jilly winced as she saw the hurt in his face.
‘And then … then I begin to lose my nerve so I tell her half the truth. I say her father is called John Smith after the beer. Yet I was stupid enough to give her the name of Corrywood.’ She shrugged. ‘When she go to England, I say to myself, this is good because I can have my operation and treatment without her knowing.’
Jilly could understand that. As a mother, you would do anything to protect your children from hurt.
‘But then the cancer does not go away.’ Collette’s eyes filled with tears. ‘The treatment, she is not working. So I come to Angleterre to tell my daughter the real truth. I tell her that her real father was you.’ Here she jerked her head at Jeremy. ‘Or the dead one. I do not know which.’
Marie-France’s mother was sobbing now. Tragic sobs that made David’s face melt with compassion. She had to hand it to the Frenchwoman. She knew how to handle men! Jilly felt a touch of jealousy as her husband patted Collette’s hand reassuringly. ‘It can’t be easy. I think you’ve been very brave.’
‘Well, I think …’ she began. And then stopped at the sound of a loud snort from the door. Fatima had waddled downstairs and was standing there, resplendent in a kingsize sheet which she had made into a shift dress, waggling her finger at David.
‘You are bad husband,’ she hissed. ‘She work hard but you always criticise.’ She shot a fiery look at Collette. ‘And now you hold hands with another woman in front of her eye! I find Jee-lee a better husband in Turkey.’
‘Sounds promising,’ Jilly couldn’t resist saying, shooting David a filthy look.
‘I theenk she should accept proposal from man on doorstep.’
‘What?’ David began to laugh.
‘You not laugh. This man, he like your wife. I hear when I am in bathroom today.’
Oh my God. Fatima had been upstairs when Nigel had turned up. She must have heard everything!
Her husband was looking confused now. ‘What is she talking about?’
‘I’ll tell you later.’
‘Actually, everyone, I’d like to say something.’ Jeremy was standing up now, gripping the back of his chair so that his knuckles were white. ‘Despite what everyone thinks, I would have liked to have had a family one day.’
Jilly held her breath as she waited for the inevitable gay confession. Hadn’t they had enough revelations for one day? Now, thanks to Fatima, she was going to have to tell David about Nigel and then it might get back to Paula. What a mess!
‘But after Collette,’ continued Jeremy, ‘I felt so ashamed that … well, I went off the whole sex thing.’ He went beetroot red. ‘So I decided I couldn’t hurt anyone again. It’s why I’ve chosen my profession, I suppose, or rather, why my profession chose me.’
They were all silent for a moment. Apart from a little squeak from the biggest person in the room.
‘Jee-lee!’
‘Please, Fatima,’ she whispered. ‘Not now.’
But as she spoke, the phone rang. Jilly froze, unable to move. Was this it? Did someone finally know where Marie-France was and, more importantly, whether she was all right? Jilly began to shake and so too, she noticed, did Collette, who was now leaning against a white-faced Jeremy for support.
‘I’ll get it,’ offered David tightly.
‘Mee-sis Jee-lee!’ Fatima stumbled off the chair and was crouching on the floor, puffing in great breaths.
‘In a minute, Fatima.’
‘They’ve found her,’ said David quietly. Then he looked at Collette, clutching Jeremy’s hand with a tell-me-now expression on her mascara-streaked face. ‘I’m afraid you’re going to need to be very brave.’
JILLY’S AU PAIR AGENCY: GUIDELINES FOR FAMILIES
You may find that your au pair wishes to bring her parents over for a brief holiday. Do not feel obliged to put them up! Suggest they stay at a nearby hotel or B & B instead.
Chapter 39
‘MARY-FRANCE! MA
RY-FRANCE!’
The voice seemed to be calling her from a great distance. Go away, she wanted to say. Go away. She had been having a lovely, deep dream in which she’d been ringing the bell at her old village church. Back and forth. Back and forth. Rather like a cradle.
‘Mary-France! Can you hear me?’
This was an English voice, she found herself thinking dimly. Only the English pronounced it ‘Mary’ with an ‘air’ sound instead of the French way.
‘You’re coming round now, dear.’
Coming round from what? Slowly she opened her eyes to find herself in a white room with a nurse leaning over her. ‘You’re in Recovery, dear.’
Wasn’t that what happened to alcoholics or cars? Curiously, she looked down at her body. There was a strange tight feeling round her chest and her throat felt dry and sore. ‘What happened?’ she rasped.
The nurse started to say something but stopped. ‘You were involved in an incident but you were very lucky. You’re going to be fine. Just rest now.’
What kind of an incident? But then the nurse had gone and someone else arrived to wheel her bed through the corridors and down into another room. ‘How do you feel?’ asked another voice.
‘Sick,’ she managed to say. Merde. Too late!
‘That’s all right, dear. Don’t worry. We’ll get you mopped up in no time.’
Mopped? What was mopped?
Just then, the door opened and another nurse marched in. ‘The police are here,’ she announced briskly. ‘I’ve said they’re to have five minutes and no more.’
Feeling totally fuddled now, she looked up and saw a man and woman, both in uniform, standing at the foot of the bed. A horrible panic swept through her. Maybe they’d linked her with Antoinette’s shoplifting. Or perhaps it was because of Phillip’s insurance scam!
‘Mademoiselle Dubonne.’ The woman, quite young, spoke first. ‘I am sorry to bother you but we need to ask you some urgent questions about your attack.’