by Fiona Neill
“One day we’ll be those forty-something women who are married to these men,” Ali had said. “Imagine if you discovered your dad on that website.”
“It’s a simple transaction,” said Rosa.
“It’s a form of prostitution,” said Ali. For a moment Rosa looked taken aback.
“Well, just turn down the job if the father seems remotely leery,” said Rosa cheerfully.
Maia, ever pragmatic, said to make sure there was a cleaning lady, otherwise Ali would end up scrubbing toilets as well as looking after four children. Tom suggested that she look ambivalent, whatever salary they offered her. Rosa, whose family used to have money, then advised that she should avoid falling in love with her employer and talked about nannies developing Stockholm syndrome and being unable to leave even the most awful families. Although she didn’t expand, it was obvious that she was talking about her own, because their nanny still lived with them. At two o’clock in the morning Ali told them resolutely that she was going to bed, because she had to be in London for her interview in eight hours’ time.
Ali considered the wording of the advertisement again. The university degree and driving license were common professional qualifications, of course. Boxes that could be either ticked or left blank. The rest was what really mattered. But was there any significance in the fact that discretion was mentioned last, when it was obviously a more important characteristic than the desire to travel? Weren’t loyalty and discretion the same thing, anyway? Why didn’t they ask for a non-smoker? She patted her pocket and felt the comforting bulk of a packet of Silk Cut. And why Mary Poppins and not Jane Eyre?
Actually, none of it really mattered, because Ali fell at the first fence: she hadn’t graduated from university. Yet. Although surely if that was a deal breaker, she wouldn’t have got through the first two rounds of interviews. She could see a letter to that effect tucked in a transparent plastic folder marked “Ali Sparrow No 5.” It sat on top of a pile of papers beside the briefcase that Bryony had left open when she got up from the table two minutes after the interview started to take a phone call, mouthing, “Sorry, I’ve got to sort this out,” as she backed out of the room.
“The journalist got the valuation right, so I’m not sure that Merrill Lynch has got much recourse,” Bryony had said into the phone. “What I’m less clear about is who gave the numbers to Felix Naylor. You know how leaky Goldman’s is.”
As she reached the door, Bryony glanced between Ali and the open briefcase, making a quick assessment of Ali’s trustworthiness. Then she closed the door firmly after her. “I’ll call Felix and try and damp it down. He can quote me as a source familiar with the situation.”
All very cloak-and-dagger. Ali was flattered rather than insulted that Bryony wanted her out of earshot. It made her feel significant. As though she really might overhear something of importance and actually understand what she was talking about. Privacy was an alien concept to students, thought Ali. The only time she left a room for a phone call was if her parents called about her sister, because even though the news was always the same (Jo had either left home or come back again), Ali’s mother didn’t want anyone to overhear their conversation.
Ali was intrigued by the way Bryony’s whole demeanor had changed as she answered the phone. She stood up from the table, pulled back her shoulders several times, and jutted out her chin as though trying to shed a layer of skin, all the time speaking. Her pale skin didn’t color, and her wavy hair bobbed compliantly. “Listen to me carefully,” she said quietly into the phone, “I’ll give him something better on one of my Russians and he might agree to drop it.” Her eyes narrowed slightly, making her lids look heavy, and she pursed her lips. Ali admired the way she gracefully backed out of the door in her expensive-looking high-heeled shoes. This was the first time that she had met a woman who wielded so much power.
It occurred to Ali that she had never asked the woman who conducted the first two interviews exactly what the Skinners did. She sensed it would be a mark against her, but such was her ambivalence about the job that she hadn’t really been interested. Now it was apparent that not only Bryony’s husband but also Bryony had a significant career, and that fact somehow inflated the importance of the job. She wouldn’t be playing under-mummy for a spoiled City wife, as one of her friends had suggested, she would be the linchpin of the family, helping support the career of one of those women whom Ali usually encountered only on the pages of glossy magazines. For the first time since she had sent her CV and letter of application to the concierge agency charged with searching for a new nanny for the Skinners, Ali decided she actually might want the job.
Glancing around the empty room, she impulsively leaned over the table, carefully lifted the plastic folder from the briefcase, and began reading its contents. It might give her some advantage over the competition. She didn’t know whether to be gratified or alarmed by the wodge of carefully stapled papers inside. Ali found it surprising that there was so much to say about her.
The first document was a letter on headed paper from her tutor at the University of East Anglia English department, confirming that Ali was taking a year out “to secure her financial situation” and would then, he hoped, be returning to complete her degree. Professor Will MacDonald had testified to her good character, underlining the fact that she was a model student who produced work of a consistently high standard. Other phrases caught her eye. She was “willing to please,” “loyal and adaptable,” “motivated,” and “methodical and articulate.” He mentioned that Ali was the babysitter of choice for his three children and that he and his wife were very fond of her. Ali stopped reading at this point. His words made her want to cry. It was mawkish and self-indulgent reading a character reference, because of course the person you asked to write it was going to be kind.
Instead she turned to the copy of her driving license attached to this letter. It was spotless. Testament to the fact that she had barely been behind the wheel of a car since she passed her test a couple of years earlier. Living in Norwich, there was no need to drive anywhere, and her parents had only one car, which they didn’t like to lend out in case there was any trouble with Jo.
Beneath that was a three-page letter from the concierge agency retained by the Skinners for a hefty monthly fee to resolve any administrative issues ranging from contracting a new nanny to sourcing tickets for a sold-out Coldplay concert. It was signed by the woman who had conducted the first two interviews with Ali. It mentioned that a criminal check had come up clear and that although she was in debt, a £5,000 overdraft had been approved by the bank where her account was held in Cromer. Her debt was related to living expenses as a student. Her biggest expenditures, apart from her rent on the three-bedroom house she shared with friends in an insalubrious area of Norwich, were cigarettes and clothes from Topshop. She had never defaulted on her rent or utility bills.
Ali momentarily wondered how they had gathered this information, because surely it was confidential. But she was gripped by the account of her background that followed in the next document. It was the first time she had seen her life laid bare. The detail on the first page was fairly innocuous. It covered her education at local schools. It mentioned that she had been chosen for the gifted and talented program at primary school, was in the top class at secondary school, and had been a responsible and motivated student despite her older sister’s problems. Because of her older sister’s problems, Ali corrected the notes. There was even a photocopy of her last school report.
It then gave a brief picture of her parents. Her father was a fisherman and her mother worked part-time at the council. It mentioned the A-level results that had won her a place at the University of East Anglia. Then there was a brief, cold description of Cromer: “A small town whose depressed economy is dependent on seasonal tourism and the crab industry. At one time Cromer had the highest rate of registered heroin addicts in East Anglia. It used to be a fashionable
destination for Victorian travelers.”
Outrageous, thought Ali. How could they describe Cromer without mentioning the sea? She was affronted. It was as though they had missed a crucial part of her personality. Her parents’ house on the front was so close to the water that during a storm the spray would lash against her bedroom window. This defined her more than any school report. At night she would sometimes open her window to listen to the voice of the sea, trying to gauge its mood, without being able to see its surface. In a storm it was always angry, but occasionally the anger was tempered with a mournful wail that made her feel almost sorry for its lack of self-control. In the summer, it sometimes turned a luminous turquoise color. People were tempted into its embrace, and most were released. But every August someone, usually an intrepid child, was dragged out into the waters by the fierce crosscurrents.
Cromer might be a backwater, but Ali was certain its rhythms were controlled by primitive higher forces. Ali’s father made his peace with the sea through rituals and routines, listening to the forecast a couple of times a day, and learning to adapt to changes in wind direction like someone who switches effortlessly between two languages. But Ali never fully trusted the melodic tones of those who read the shipping forecast, nor the irrational store her father set by his self-imposed set of rules. On a clear day, from her bedroom window Ali could see as far as the lost village of Shipton, consumed by the water two hundred years earlier.
For Ali the sea was a beguiling friend who could never quite be trusted. Much like the Skinners, as it would transpire. But at that moment, waiting in their dining room, Ali couldn’t know this. And if she had, would it have made any difference? So she kept reading and licked the skin around her mouth, missing the taste of salt on her tongue. She remembered learning at school that salt is as essential to human beings as water, and feeling as though that was as close as she was ever going to get to anything approaching a belief system.
It said there was no mention of Ali or her parents in any local newspapers apart from an article that appeared in the Eastern Daily Press ten years ago, when her father caught a six-pound crab. To Ali’s embarrassment there was a color photocopy of this piece, with her father dressed in his yellow fisherman’s trousers, holding the crab. It even mentioned that a distant relative in Great Yarmouth had invented these trousers. Ali had her father’s smile, everyone told her. But this was the first time that she could see it herself. “A life without consequence,” she said out loud as she skimmed down the page reading notes about herself.
Unlike the people who lived here. Ali had stood outside the house in disbelief when she arrived. It was an imposing Regency-style building with stucco moldings and a glass portico that stretched from the wrought-iron gate at the end of the front path up the eight steps to the front door. Because it stood in the center of the concave arc of the crescent and was the only double-fronted building on the street, it appeared as though the other houses were leaning deferentially toward it. Everything here spoke of consequence, from the blue plaque on the façade announcing that a famous scientist had once lived under this roof, to the Francis Bacon hanging above the fireplace.
A self-important pile of newspapers sat at the opposite end of the dining room table. The headlines were all about yesterday’s foiled plot to blow up planes on transatlantic flights. Ali smiled as she remembered her mother phoning to suggest it was too dangerous to live in London.
Ali heard a noise outside the dining room and quickly turned to the next page in the plastic file. Her time was surely running out. It must have been at least ten minutes since Bryony had left the room. This bit was easier to absorb because whole sentences were highlighted in yellow pen. The first said that Ali had recently finished a relationship with another student. Someone had put an exclamation mark beside this point. The second said that Ali had an older sister with “mental-health issues.” Beside this, in tiny black writing, someone had written “interesting!” She stood up abruptly and angrily put the file back where she had found it. She was incensed, less by the fact that they had unearthed all this information about her than the casual use of exclamation marks.
Ali stood up and smoothed down her short dark hair and the skirt. She would leave the house without anyone noticing and call the woman at the concierge agency to let her know that something else had come up. As she pulled on her jacket and headed swiftly toward the dining room door, she heard a low guttural growl.
“Come on, show your face,” she said. The growling stopped, and Ali stepped decisively toward the door again, but as she touched the handle, the dog started up again. This time it gave a single bark. It stood up, and Ali could see it was a small, sandy-colored pug. Its teeth were bared and its hackles raised. It wasn’t the sort of dog that Ali would have matched to Bryony. She would have suited something smooth-coated and long-legged.
“You’re all talk,” said Ali, stretching out her hand toward its collar to find out its name and then abruptly pulling away as the pug lurched toward her and snapped at her fingers. She stepped back and the dog reverted to growling. Ali decided to wait a moment for the pug to calm down and then make her escape.
On a delicate half-moon table on the other side of the door she found a pile of hardcover books, one written by a former cabinet minister. She looked inside it and saw that there was a handwritten dedication from the author to his “very dear friends, Nick and Bryony Skinner.” If they were such dear friends, then why did he bother with their surname? Behind these was an orderly battalion of photos. There is a direct relationship between people’s wealth and the number of photos they display of themselves in their home, thought Ali. And generally, the more professional-looking the photos, the more dysfunctional the household. That’s what Rosa always said, anyway. These pictures were all encased in expensive-looking silver frames.
Center stage was a large photograph of a group of eight people gathered around a dinner table in the middle of a meal. The cutlery was still two rows deep, and there was an equal number of wineglasses. There were no women. Ali guessed the middle-aged man tipping his untouched glass of champagne toward the photographer was Nick Skinner. He stared at the camera with a benevolent smile as though bestowing the photographer with an enormous favor. His other arm was crossed tightly over his chest, making his pose a curious juxtaposition of freedom and restraint. He had the air of someone who was accustomed to such attention.
The man on his right was gripping his forearm. Ali recognized this face but couldn’t put a name to it. When she took up residence a month later, one of the children told her that it was someone very important from the Bank of England, and asked if Ali agreed that he looked like a character from The Wind in the Willows. For the moment Ali turned her attention back to Nick. His teeth were unnaturally white, she thought, but perhaps it was the contrast with the black dinner jacket. He had dark hair, cut short, sleek as an otter. For a middle-aged man, he was still in good shape. Ali observed the full glass of wine and half-eaten plate of food in front of him and the empty glasses and plates in front of his fellow diners. He was someone who watched what he ate and drank, and felt irritated if he glanced down at another man’s stomach and compared it unfavorably with his own.
Beside this was a wedding photo. Ali immediately recognized Bryony. She was engulfed by the two physically imposing men on either side of her. The taller one was Nick. The other, Ali guessed, was her father. Each had an arm around Bryony, but she somehow seemed separate from them both, as though she was stepping away from them toward the camera. Bryony was wearing the kind of wedding dress that Ali would choose if she ever got married. Handmade by Vera Wang, she would soon discover. On the end, slightly apart from the group, was a disheveled figure with wild, dark hair, tipping a glass of champagne toward the camera. He was an impostor, decided Ali. Later she discovered from the children that his name was Felix Naylor and he had once been in love with Bryony. “Still in love,” Izzy corrected the twins.
The door suddenly opened, and Ali was unnerved to find herself still holding the wedding photo and staring at an older version of Nick Skinner. His hairline had receded and there were a few wrinkles around his eyes, but otherwise he was unchanged. These changes were good, decided Ali, because they bestowed a gravitas that wasn’t present in the wedding photo.
“God, I’ve missed the interview, haven’t I?” he said, holding out a hand, and delivering a winning smile. “Bryony will kill me.”
It was said in a way that suggested that Bryony was probably so used to such shortcomings that she would barely flinch. Ali clumsily put the photograph back on the table and tried to explain, as she awkwardly shook hands, that the dog wouldn’t let her leave the room.
“Leicester was an anniversary present from Bryony’s parents,” he said, scratching the dog between the ears. “He most definitely wasn’t on our wish list. He’s so inbred that he’s developed a sort of canine dementia that means he lets people in the house but won’t let them leave. Really he should be dead.”
“Is there anything you can do?” Ali politely inquired.
“Well, I suppose we could accelerate the inevitable,” said Nick, curling his fingers into a gun shape and pulling the trigger at Leicester’s head. “We should have done it years ago, but Bryony said it would send the wrong message to her father.”
“I meant for the psychological problems,” Ali stammered.
“You’re not going to believe this, but actually, a couple of years ago, Leicester did have his very own head shrinker.” Nick laughed. Ali echoed him with a nervous laugh of her own.
“It was one of Bryony’s wilder ideas. Leicester had developed a very scatological response to situations that he couldn’t control. He was seen by an animal psychologist for almost a year. He went to the canine equivalent of The Priory for three months and came out completely cured,” explained Nick, as though relieved to find something to talk about. “Although he’s been on antianxiety drugs and a special diet ever since.”