by Jill Mansell
“Mummy said we were going to see a nice man,” said Josh, his dark eyes brimming with tears as Guy eased the truth from him. “But he wasn’t nice at all; he was horrid. He shouted at Mummy, then Ella was sick on his shoes. And when we came back to the hotel, Mummy wasn’t very well. Daddy, can we go home now?”
It was as Guy had suspected. He didn’t contact his father. And when Véronique died three days later without regaining consciousness, he saw no reason to change his mind. Oliver Cassidy might not have caused Véronique’s death, but he had undoubtedly ensured that her last few waking hours were as miserable as possible. For that, Guy would never forgive him.
Chapter Seven
Guy watched from the kitchen window as Maxine’s orange MG screeched to a halt at the top of the drive.
“I don’t know,” he said, looking doubtful. “I’m still not sure about this. Somebody tell me I’m not making a big mistake.”
Berenice followed his gaze. The girl climbing out of the car was wearing white shorts and a sleeveless, pale-gray tank top with MUSCLE emblazoned across her chest. She also possessed a great deal of gold-blond hair and long, brown legs.
“Just because she doesn’t look like your idea of a nanny,” she replied comfortably. Then, secure in the knowledge that by this time tomorrow she would be a married woman, she added with a slight smile, “She certainly doesn’t look like me.”
There really wasn’t any diplomatic answer to that; the differences between the two girls were only too evident. But Berenice had been such relaxing company, thought Guy, and it had never occurred to anyone who’d met her that there might possibly be anything going on between the pair of them.
The arrival of Maxine Vaughan, on the other hand, was likely to engender all kinds of lurid speculation.
“I don’t care what she looks like.” His expression was deliberately grim. Above them came the sound of thunderous footsteps as Josh and Ella hurled themselves down the staircase. “I just want her to take care of my kids.” He was about to continue, but his attention was caught by the scene now taking place on the drive.
“OK,” Maxine was saying, leaning against her car and surveying the two children before her. “Just remind me. Which one of you is Ella and which is Josh?”
Josh relaxed. She wouldn’t, he was almost sure, force them to eat cold porridge. He had high hopes too of being allowed to stay up late when his father was away. Berenice had always been a bit boring where bedtimes were concerned.
“I’m Ella,” said his sister, meeting Maxine for the first time and struggling to work out whether she was being serious. “I’m a girl.”
“Of course you are.” Maxine grinned and gave her her handbag. “Good, that means you can carry this for me while I get my cases out of the trunk. Isn’t your dad here?”
“He’s in the kitchen,” supplied Josh. “With Berenice.”
“Hmm. Nice of him to come out and welcome me.” With a meaningful glance in the direction of the kitchen window, she hauled the heavy cases out of the car and dumped them on the graveled drive. She’d been so serious about the live-in aspect of the job that she’d been up to Maurice’s flat in London to collect all her things. “Well, he can carry them inside. That’s what men are for.”
• • •
By the time Janey arrived at Trezale House in the van, Maxine appeared to have made herself thoroughly at home. Her enormous bedroom, flooded with sunlight and nicely decorated in shades of pink, yellow, and cream, was already a mess.
“Berenice has given me a list of dos and don’ts,” she said, rolling her eyes as she tossed an armful of underwear into an open drawer and kicked a few shoes under the dressing table. “She seems incredibly organized.”
“Nannies have to be organized,” Janey reminded her.
“Yes, well. I pity the chap she’s marrying.”
“And you’re going to have to be organized,” continued Janey remorselessly. “If these children have a routine, they’ll need to stick to it.”
Maxine gazed at her in disbelief. “We never did.”
This was true. Thea, engrossed in her work, had employed a cavalier attitude to child-rearing which involved leaving them to their own devices for much of the time, while she, oblivious to all else, would lose herself in the wonder of creating yet another sculpture. Janey, in the months following her own marriage, had traced her love of domesticity and orderliness back to the disorganized chaos of those early years when she had longed for order and stability. It had never seemed to bother Maxine, however. More adventurous by nature and less interested in conforming than her elder sister, she positively embraced chaos. Janey just wished she could embrace the idea of work with as much enthusiasm.
“That’s different,” she said sternly. “At least we had a mother. Josh and Ella don’t. It can’t be easy for them.”
“It isn’t going to be easy for me.” Maxine looked glum and handed over the list, painstakingly written in neat, easy-to-read capitals. “According to this they get up at six thirty. And I’m supposed to give them breakfast!”
“Oh please,” sighed Janey, exasperated. “You wanted this job! You were desperate to come and work here. Whatever’s the matter with you now?”
“I wanted to work for Guy Cassidy.” Maxine stared at her as if she was stupid. “But he’s just been going through his schedule with me, and from the sound of it, he’s going to be away more often than he’s here. While he’s leaping on planes and jetting off all over the world, I’m going to be stuck here in the wilderness with the kids like some frumpy housewife.” She paused, then added fretfully, “This wasn’t what I had in mind at all.”
• • •
Guy emerged from his study as Janey was putting the finishing touches on the flowers in the hall. Crossing her fingers and praying that it wouldn’t pour with rain overnight, she had garlanded the stone pillars that flanked the front entrance to the house with yellow and white satin ribbons and woven sprays of mimosa and gypsophila between them. Together with the tendrils of ivy already curling around the bleached-white stone, they would provide an effective framework for the bride and groom when they stood on the steps to have their photographs taken by none other than one of the country’s best-known photographers.
“It looks good.” Standing back to survey the overall effect with a professional eye, he nodded his approval. “You’ve been working hard.”
“So has the hairdresser,” Janey observed as a car drew up and Berenice stepped out, self-consciously shielding her head from the light breeze coming in off the sea. Her mousy-brown hair, pulled back from her face and teased into unaccustomed ringlets, bounced off her shoulders as she walked toward them.
“How are you going to sleep tonight?” said Guy, and Janey glimpsed the genuine affection in his eyes as he admired the rigid style.
Berenice, turning her head this way and that, said, “Upright,” then broke into a smile as she inspected Janey’s work. “This is gorgeous; it must have taken you hours!”
“I think we all deserve a drink.” Placing his hand on her shoulder, Guy drew her into the house. When Janey hesitated, he added, “You too.”
Berenice said, “Where are the children?”
“Upstairs with the new nanny.” He grinned. “And a pack of cards. I heard her saying she was going to teach them poker.”
• • •
“Enjoying yourself?” asked Guy, coming up to Janey in the sitting room the next day. She was perched on one of the window seats overlooking the garden, watching Maxine flirt with the best man.
“It was nice of Berenice to invite me,” she replied with a smile. “And even nicer for her, being able to have the reception here. She’s terribly grateful—she was telling me earlier that otherwise they would have had to hold it in the bowling alley at the Red Lion.”
He shrugged. “No problem. And forty guests is hardly over the top.�
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“You’ll miss her,” said Janey, nodding in Berenice’s direction.
“The kids certainly will. We were lucky to keep her as long as we did.” He hesitated, a shadow coming over his face. “She’s been with us since my wife died.”
Weddings were an integral part of Janey’s job, but she still found them difficult to handle at times. They invariably brought back memories of her own marriage to Alan.
“It can’t be easy for you,” she said, guessing what would be uppermost in his own mind. Out in the garden, Berenice and Michael were posing with their arms around each other’s ample waists while Josh, his expression exquisitely serious, finished up yet another roll of film. Through the open window they could hear him issuing stern commands: “Don’t laugh… Stay still… Just look happy…”
Moving her half-empty wineglass out of the way, Guy eased himself down next to Janey and stretched out his long legs.
“Not easy, but bearable,” he said, his tone deliberately even. “I don’t resent other people’s happiness. And Véronique and I had seven years of it, after all. That’s more than some.”
More than I had, thought Janey sadly, but of course he didn’t know anything of her own past. Since she wasn’t about to try and compete in the tragedy stakes, she said nothing.
Now that the subject had been raised, however, Guy seemed to want to continue the line of conversation.
“Other people’s attitudes are harder to cope with,” he said, breaking the companionable silence between them. “In the beginning, I just functioned on automatic pilot, doing what had to be done and making sure Josh and Ella suffered as little as possible. Everybody was so concerned for us; everywhere you turned, there were people being helpful and sympathetic… I couldn’t do a thing wrong in their eyes. Then, after about six months, it was as if I couldn’t handle any more sympathy. I kicked against it, went back to work, and started…well, it was a pretty wild phase. Subconsciously, I suppose, I was looking for a replacement for Véronique, but all I did was pick up one female after another, screw around like it was going out of fashion, and get extremely drunk. All I managed to do, of course, was make an awful lot of people unhappy. Including myself. And everyone who’d been so sympathetic in the early days changed their minds and decided I was a real bastard instead. Sleeping with girls and dumping them—deliberately hurting them so they’d understand how I felt—seemed like the only answer at the time, but all it did was make me more miserable. In the end, I came to my senses and stopped doing it.” With a rueful smile and a sideways glance at Janey, he added, “I suppose I was lucky not to catch anything terrible. At the time, God knows, I deserved to.”
Janey, who had read books on the subject of coping with grief, said hesitantly, “I don’t know, but I think it’s a fairly normal kind of reaction. Probably men are more likely to go through that kind of phase than women, but once it’s out of their system they…settle down again. What’s it like now? Do you feel more settled?”
It was an amazingly intimate conversation to be having with someone who was, after all, a virtual stranger. But she was genuinely interested in finding out how he had coped and was continuing to cope. She wondered too whether she would ever enter a promiscuous phase…
Guy didn’t appear in the least put out by her questions. Reaching for a bottle of white wine, he refilled both their glasses. “There’s still the problem of other people’s attitudes.” His eyes registered mild contempt. “Not that I particularly care what they think, but it can get a bit wearing at times. After three years, it seems, I’m expected to remarry. And the pressure’s always there. Nowadays, every time I’m introduced to some new female at a dinner party, I know it’s because she’s a carefully selected suitable candidate. Sometimes I half expect to find a tattoo on her forehead saying ‘Potential Wife.’ The next thing I know, everyone’s telling me how marvelous she is with children and saying how hard it must be for poor Josh and little Ella, at their ages, not having a mother.” He shuddered at the unwelcome memory. “God, that’s happened to me so many times. It’s like a recurring nightmare. And it’s a bigger turnoff, of course, than a bucketful of bromide.”
“What’s bromide?” said Ella, and they both jumped.
Guy, recovering from the surprise of her unexpected appearance, said, “It’s a kind of cold porridge. You wouldn’t like it.” Then, pulling her on to his lap, he added, “And what you need is a cowbell around your neck. Have you been eavesdropping, angel?”
“No.” She shook her head so vigorously that her white velvet headband slipped off. “I was listening to you. Daddy, when can I get married?”
He assumed a suitably serious expression. “Why? When would you like to get married?”
“Tomorrow.” Ella giggled and smoothed her lilac cotton dress over her knobbly knees. “I’m going to marry Luke.”
Luke was eight years old and Berenice’s nephew.
“I see.” Guy looked thoughtful. “Well, tomorrow sounds OK to me. But maybe I should have a word with him first.”
Ella frowned, anxious that he shouldn’t hear about the glass of lemonade she had accidentally spilled into a handbag left open and unattended in the kitchen. Biting her lower lip and looking dubious, she said, “Why?”
“Marriage is a serious business,” Guy told her. “I’d definitely need to speak to Luke, man to man. Apart from anything else,” he added severely, “I have to ask him about his future prospects.”
• • •
“You seemed to be getting on rather well with my boss,” said Maxine, polishing off a slice of seafood quiche and sounding faintly put out. “What were you doing, giving him the rundown on my sordid past?”
“Not at all.” It was early evening now and they were sitting outside on a wooden bench enjoying the light breeze. For most of the day the temperature had been up in the eighties. Janey, examining her arms for signs of sunburn and hoping she wouldn’t wake up tomorrow with strap marks, said, “I was the one who stuck up for you, remember? I’m hardly likely to scare him to death by telling him what you’re really like. He might drag me into court and sue me for misrepresentation.”
“So what were you talking about?”
Despite having wolfed down at least half a dozen sausage rolls and a slice of wedding cake as well as the quiche, Maxine’s lipstick was still immaculately in place. Shielding her eyes from the sinking sun, she was surreptitiously watching Guy Cassidy as he stood at the far end of the terrace, talking to Berenice’s new mother-in-law.
“He was telling me how fed up he gets, being chased by women hell-bent on becoming the next Mrs. Cassidy.” Janey’s tone of voice was casual, but she felt it necessary to point out this fact, both to save her sister from making a fool of herself and to ensure that Guy wouldn’t dispense with Maxine’s services. Now that she had her flat to herself once more, she wanted to keep it that way.
But Maxine only laughed. “They can’t have been very good at it then. The whole point of chasing a man—and catching him—is to make sure he doesn’t realize it’s happening. It’s a delicate process, Janey! Practically an art form in itself.”
“Well, it sounds as if he’s had plenty of practice at being on the receiving end.” Janey, having at least made her point, changed the subject. “And you seemed to be getting on rather nicely with the best man anyway,” she observed. “What was his name, Colin? He looked keen.”
“He was.” Maxine, licking her forefinger and dabbing at the crumbs of pastry on her plate, sounded gloomy. “And I may as well change my name to Cinderella. Guy wants me to stay here for the rest of the weekend so the kids have a chance to get used to me before he leaves for Paris on Monday morning. Then I’ll be here on my own with them until he gets back on Friday. I’m allowed next weekend off, apparently, but by that time Colin will have left on a cricket tour.” She shrugged. “We did try, but we couldn’t seem to get ourselves synchronized. At this r
ate my social life looks set to have all the sparkle of a squashed snail.”
“Welcome to the real world,” said Janey shortly. Her own social life had been practically nonexistent for the past eighteen months.
Maxine cast her an impatient glance. “Yes, but it’s all right for you,” she replied with characteristic lack of tact. “You’re used to it.”
Chapter Eight
The heat wave continued. On Sunday morning, Janey packed a canvas holdall and headed down to the beach. It would be packed solid, but she could amuse herself by guessing, according to the various shades of pallor, redness, and tan, how long the vacationers had been in Trezale. And eavesdropping on their conversations—bickering couples were a particular favorite—was always entertaining.
The beach was crowded, but the tide was on its way out, which helped. A lot of sand castles were being constructed along the stretch of damp sand, leaving more room for the serious sunbathers on the dry sand. Janey chose a promising spot where she could stretch out, make a start on the latest Danielle Steel novel, and simultaneously overhear the lively argument already in progress between a pair of big, sunburnt Liverpudlians who couldn’t decide whether to go for cod and fries later or splurge on a proper Sunday lunch at that posh place on Amory Street. She wondered idly whether to tell them that the posh place, Bruno’s, was closed on Sundays, but it seemed a shame to interrupt them. Uncapping her bottle of sunscreen, she smoothed the lotion haphazardly over the bits of her most likely to burn and promptly fell asleep instead.
She awoke with a start some time later. Ice-cold liquid was being dripped into her navel.
Grinning, Bruno held the Coke can aloft.
“It should be Bollinger of course,” he said, admiring her exposed body in the brief, fuchsia-pink bikini, “but sometimes one just has to improvise. Can I sit down?”
“I don’t know.” Shielding her eyes from the sun, Janey deadpanned, “Can you?”